Time And Effort Involved
Another potential drawback of becoming an egg donor is the time and effort that is involved. The screening process alone can take several weeks to complete. In all, you can expect the process to take between one and two months, during which time youll have to go in for screenings, evaluations, hormone injections, check-ups, and, finally, the egg retrieval process.
Fortunately, at KindEos, our donors do not have to wait to be matched with a recipient, our process is usually very predictable from start to end and donors who are accepted can move on to donation and payment.
What If I Dont Feel Connected To My Baby
One of the most significant concerns prospective parents feel about choosing egg donation is if theyll regret not having a genetic connection to their child.
First and foremost, the bond between a parent and child is about a great deal more than genetics. Whether you share the same DNA with your child or not, you can still forge an unbreakable bond with your little one.
To help ease your concerns about lacking a genetic relationship, many intended parents find comfort in the connection between epigenetics and egg donation.
While you might not contribute to your childs initial DNA strain, the study of epigenetics has shown a persons choices throughout pregnancy can impact the genetic expression of their baby. Following good habits like eating a healthy diet and exercising can positively affect your little ones DNA.
Should I Use Donor Eggs
The decision to use donor eggs to conceive a child is an extremely personal one. No one but you can make this decision. In our experience here at Santa Monica Fertility, we have yet to see intended parents who went through the process of having a baby with the help of an egg donor and who then wished that they had not. There is nothing but love, joy and happiness once that baby joins the family!
Here is our most recent testimonial from one of our egg donation intended parents. These words speak for themselves:
I chose SMF based on their high rates of success and in house donor pool which for me had a great selection. This was my first attempt at using donor eggs, and I wanted the best chances of success I could get with one transfer, as I was already pushing my personal age cutoff of birthing at 43 and wasnt sure I was going to try a second transfer if the first didnt work. I bought the 8 egg package, and got 3 blastocysts. I got pregnant the first attempt with a beautiful embryo who is now my soon-to-be 1 year old daughter! Dr. Jain is excellent, and the nurses are great. The process was actually easy, and I flew in from the east coast for my transfer. Im thankful for SMF and their generous donors, and would highly recommend not wasting time somewhere else. ~ M.E.
For even more information, we have some great resources including our FAQ on using an egg donor, information on the cost of donor eggs and also how to choose an egg donor.
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Thinking Of Egg Donation Akin To Other Types Of Donated Tissue
This strategy looks at this as part of a medical procedure like an organ donation. With this approach, you may also consider the fact that the egg donor is just offering a very small amount of tissue as part of the process.
Also, the donor egg selection process itself can make a difference here. The more you know about the donor, the better you can feel about her being the right choice for your family. Thatâs why our egg donor matching platform is so incredible â you can truly get to know your egg donor on a human level.
Hopefully, all of these strategies can help you feel comfortable with using a donor egg if thatâs the path you choose. Not having DNA in common by no means lessens the parent-child relationship that you will develop and you will still be an amazing parent.
Dr. Shah is a Medical Advisor at Cofertility. She is an REI and board certified OBGYN at NOVA IVF in Mountain View, CA. She attended UC Berkeley and earned her MD at Stanford, then doing her OBGYN residency at UCSF. Dr. Shah completed her fellowship in reproductive endocrinology at Stanford.
What To Expect With Egg Donation
The procedure for egg donation and implantation is similar to standard IVF treatment. After a thorough exam, the woman receiving the donor egg will need a course of hormone treatments to prepare them for the fertilized egg/embryo. If they still have functioning ovaries, they’ll need estrogen and progesterone treatments in order to make their cycle coincide precisely with the donor’s.
Meanwhile, the donor will also be treated with hormones to induce superovulation. Once they are ready, the eggs will then be retrieved and fertilized. A few days later, the embryo or embryos are implanted in the recipient’s uterus. They will continue to take hormones for about 10 weeks afterward.
Donor eggs can be frozen for later use, but the chances of success are lower with frozen eggs.
A newly available option is donor embryo implantation. In this technique, you use a previously frozen embryo that was left over from another couple’s IVF treatments. That couple may have gotten pregnant, or decided against IVF. Whatever the reason, they’ve granted the clinic the right to give their leftover embryos to other couples. But keep in mind this one drawback: Donated embryos often come from older couples who were probably coping with infertility problems themselves. Success is less likely than with the eggs of a young and healthy egg donor.
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Pros And Cons Of Being An Egg Donor
Making the decision to become an egg donor, like all major life decisions, has its pros and cons. You will want to consider all the information, both positive and negative, so you can make the best decision for you. In this article, we will discuss both the pros and cons of being an egg donor so you will have the information you need.
Frozen Donor Egg Success Rates At Afcc
Egg freezing has improved over the past several years through fine-tuning of freezing and thawing protocols. Thawed egg survival and viability are much better than in the past. When these eggs are frozen and thawed at high-quality IVF clinics, we see high pregnancy success rates using frozen donor eggs.
How much do frozen donor egg IVF success rates vary? Quite a bit as shown below
Our 2017 live birth success rate per transfer was 71.7% for 2017 for frozen donor eggsUSA national average for 2017 was 39.3%
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Can The Child From The Donor Egg Have The Right To Contact The Donor At 18
Not in Greece, in Greece, its anonymous, and as far as I know, the same applies to Spain, The Czech Republic. Most European Union countries like Greece have the legislation of anonymous donations, so theres no obligation, theres no connection between the child and the donor. In the UK, it is possible due to the non-anonymous egg donation legislation. So it is possible to be connected between the donor and the child when the child turns 18.
Find Fertility Clinics In London & Uk
If you have been receiving fertility treatment and have managed to get pregnant, then congratulations! You will have a number of options available to you with regards to any surplus embryos you may have from your treatment. You can either keep the extra embryos in storage, donate them for research or for anothers fertility treatment, or ask to have them discarded. The choice is completely up to you, and the couples who do choose to pass their embryos on to others trying to get pregnant tend to do so because having gone through fertility treatments themselves, they understand how trying and difficult it can be and how much their donation can mean to the recipients.
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Benefits Of Being An Egg Donor
As you can see, there are numerous benefits of becoming an egg donor. These benefits include:
- a way to make a real, tangible difference in the life of another person by giving them the ability to build a family
- receiving a generous compensation package for your time and effort
- free medical and genetic screening
- an all-expenses paid trip to either Santa Monica, California or Miami, Florida.
Donor Egg Baby Stories Dont Come Easily
But there I was, years later, thousands of dollars poorer, with nothing to show for it but canceled IVF cycles and negative home pregnancy tests.
Now, to continue family planning with my biological eggs, we were facing an $88,000 price tag and years worth of treatments to embryo bank with my own eggs.
Plus, we still faced < 1% chance of success because of my diagnosis of primary ovarian insufficiency.
I remember thinking that I really didnt want to spend that kind of money to pass on my shitty genetics.
And what if I have a girl? Am I saddling her with the same fate?
I really just wanted a baby and to move on, and using donor eggs could help me do just that.
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Finding And Choosing An Egg Donor
Most egg donation is anonymous, but some couples prefer to know their egg donor and take legal steps to contract for the donation of the eggs. If the donor knows the couple, the donor may wish to receive updates once the child is born or may even request visits. An egg donor contract that explicitly spells out the terms of any future relationship should always be used, even when the donor is a close friend or relative.
If you decide to use donor eggs, ask your fertility clinic if they have available donors that they have already screened. Because some clinics have long waiting lists, you may prefer to find a donor through one of many egg donor agencies and registries. Some people place ads for donors in college newspapers or other publications that young women read.
Finding a donor yourself can be faster than going through a busy clinic, but there is a serious disadvantage: You will have to interview the donor yourself rather than having a professional screen and evaluate them. It’s crucial that donors be tested for any genetic disorders or diseases such as HIV. This is also true for women using donor sperm.
Egg Donation Using Frozen Eggs
Using cryopreservation technology, patients now have the option of undergoing an egg donor cycle using frozen donor eggs. With frozen donor eggs, the eggs are retrieved from the donor as standard and then frozen through a method known as vitrification, allowing them to be stored for future use. This is the same technology that is used in fertility preservation and elective egg freezing.
Vitrification is a technique that involves adding cryoprotectants to the eggs and then cooling them at an ultra-rapid rate. The cryoprotectants help to prevent the formation of crystals and preserve the eggs structural integrity. Once frozen, the eggs are stored in our egg bank. When ready, the donor eggs are removed from storage, thawed, fertilized with sperm, and prepared for uterine transfer.
Advanced Fertility Center of Chicago offers both fresh and frozen egg donation cycles. We have been providing fresh donor egg treatments since 1997 and frozen donor egg cycles since 2014.
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What Is The Success Rate Of Fresh Versus Frozen Egg Donation
Most of the clinics either do one method or the other, so its very difficult to quote. I dont know, I havent got an answer to that. We did a small audit in our clinic, and we found that fresh egg donation with the use of frozen blastocyst gave us the best fertility outcome in terms of success rate but maybe in other clinics hands, it would work differently. I dont know, you would have to individualize.
The Most Common Fears About Using Donor Eggs
Once youve made the choice to move forward with a frozen donor egg cycle, its not unusual for doubt to begin slipping into your mind. If this happens, please keep this in mind: youre not alone.
While anxiety over using donor eggs can feel unsettling, you might be surprised to learn that its not an uncommon experience for donor egg parents.
In fact, many parents undergoing the donor egg cycle process all face similar fears and what ifs, including:
- What if my baby doesnt look like me?
- What if I cant get over the lack of a genetic connection to my child?
- What if I cant bond with my baby?
- What if my child doesnt see me as their parent?
- What if my family rejects my child?
- What if I cant decide if I want to tell my child they were conceived using donor egg?
- What if I cant afford the process?
Whether youre facing just one of these fears or all of them, the mental strain can be enough to make you consider feeling regret over your decision.
Luckily, there are simple responses to all these concerns to help ease your worries about choosing to use donor eggs.
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Whats Your Perspective On Telling The Child That Was Convinced With The Help Of A Donation
I do not have a straight opinion on this with my limited counselling knowledge. I would suggest that you find a good counsellor. Each couple, each individual are different, and theres no right or wrong, theres whats right or wrong for you. For some couples depending on the social circumstances, backgrounds, religion and so forth, it may be best to tell the child at a proper age. What is a proper childs age depends on the child. Please, do not try to sort everything out before you even get pregnant because its virtually impossible.
Youre not going to be the same when youre pregnant, youre not going to be the same when you have a newborn, a toddler, a teenager, and you dont know what kind of child youre going to have. Although we like to have things organized beforehand, I think its too much stress, and I have seen amazing situations. Do not try to fit everything into a pattern because those patterns may change. Overall its a very variable decision, its a complex decision that has to be addressed and readdressed and depends on the couples or the single mothers dynamics but also depends on the childs or childrens dynamics.
Egg Donation Allows For A Larger Family
Because a batch of 8 donor eggs can result in as many as 3 embryos, it gives the intended parents a chance of having up to 3 children. With larger egg batches, there will be more embryos available for transfer, allowing for a larger family. For intended parents who want large families and who thought they would never be able to achieve this, the use of donor eggs can help make that dream a reality.
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Risk Of Ovarian Hyperstimulation And Irreversible Physical Changes
If an egg donor experiences over-stimulation of the ovaries, she may run the risk of developing Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome. This is a rare condition that occurs in less than 5% of egg donors. Severe instances may result in some damage to an egg donors ovaries.
In less severe cases, egg donors experience some cramping and severe bloating. If ones symptoms are consistent with hyperstimulation, fertility doctors are expected to reduce the dosages of prescribed medication.
A doctor may call off the egg donation cycle in severe cases to avoid medical complications.
Why Do The Donor Eggs Have More Screening Than Your Own Eggs If The Patient Had The Same Screening Level Could This Potentially Assist The Patient Using Their Own Eggs Rather Than Donor Eggs
I can specify what tests they are having. I mean, egg donors in Greece are having extra Karyotype DNA testing, which the majority of own egg patients do not have, and yes, that could reveal some issues that would alter our approach. Egg donors have a full cystic fibrosis screening, the full gene of cystic fibrosis where the majority of all the patients who use their own eggs do not have, most of them havent even heard of it before and again. Sometimes, we identify some issues that may affect fertility, they have the fragile X genetic screening, which is some genetic screening affecting mental disorders which may not have an impact on fertility, but it definitely has an impact on the offspring.
They have a full endocrine profile, they have a full screening in terms of psychology, they have biochemical profiles, they have the pap smears sorted, they have all the infection screening and so forth. On top of that, in Greece, they have genetic thalassemia screening. My usual quote to my patients is that I know about my donors more than I know about myself, and this is vastly true, so yes, if own eggs patients had that screening, they may have a better chance.
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Advantages Of Using An Egg Donor
To sum up all above, there are many advantages of using an egg donor to have a baby, including:
- Having a high chance of successful pregnancy many women who have already undergone unsuccessful fertility treatments are attracted to using an egg donor because of its high success rate. These women are thrilled they can avoid the heartbreak of repeatedly failed IVF cycles, that bring physical and emotional strain.
- Sex selection and genetic screening some intended parents consider using an egg donor because this option allows them to select the sex of their child and makes it possible to screen for potential chromosomal abnormalities.
- Planning for a larger family because intended parents can secure an unlimited number of donor eggs resulting in several embryos available for transfer, they can plan for siblings for their children in the future. This is often not the case when women go through the IVF process with their own eggs, because the number of retrieved eggs and resulting embryos will be limited, especially for women in advanced maternal age .
- Baby can have a genetic link to the father with either heterosexual or same sex male couples, and single men, the baby can be biologically related to the father.