Egg Donation

Egg donation involves one woman donating her eggs to another couple or individual in the hope of helping them achieve a pregnancy that otherwise wouldn’t be possible. Egg donation is one aspect of what the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) refers to as third-party reproduction, in which a third party (a woman) donates her eggs to use in assisted reproductive technologies.

The process begins by recipients identifying a suitable egg donor who goes through a rigorous screening process. Through IVF procedures, the eggs are retrieved from the donor and fertilized using the male partner’s (or donor’s) sperm. The resulting embryo is then transferred to the womb of the recipient mother for possible pregnancy.

The first pregnancy through egg donation occurred in 1984, and the practice has expanded significantly since then as fertility specialists have improved IVF and the egg freezing and storage process, called cryopreservation. The practice of egg donation has also gained in social acceptance and has increasingly become an option for overcoming several female infertility factors.

According to ASRM, average pregnancy success rates using donated eggs are 55-60 percent in the United States. Many factors determine success, but the age of the recipient does not appear to be one of them, although using donor eggs from a young woman (less than 31 years of age) is critical to the success of the procedure.

Women & Infants Fertility Center works with MyEggBank, a network of fertility centers that connects patients with highly qualified and extensively screened egg donors.

The online MyEggBank interface allows current patients to browse egg donors and review their photos, as well as relevant medical and genetic information such as eye color, hair color, blood type and the age of the donor at time of donation. MyEggBank uses a unique cryopreservation process that safely freezes and stores eggs, leading to strong IVF success rates for cycles in which their eggs are used.

To learn more about finding an egg donor, please contact us using our online form. We’re happy to answer your questions. You may also use the online appointment request form to schedule a visit to discuss using an egg donor.

Egg donation requires the donor and the recipient to undergo certain aspects of the IVF process. Egg donation can be done as a fresh IVF cycle. This involves careful timing to coordinate egg retrieval from the donor, lab fertilization to create an embryo, and transfer of the donated egg to the recipient’s womb, making sure that the endometrium is in the proper time of the cycle to be receptive to the embryo.

Using frozen donor eggs in what is known as a frozen IVF cycle allows for fewer timing restrictions on the part of the donor and the recipient. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that the pregnancy success rate using fresh eggs is slightly higher than in egg donations involving frozen eggs. However, other donor or patient factors may make frozen egg donation in a subsequent IVF cycle more likely to succeed.

The steps for both fresh and frozen egg donation IVF cycles are similar.

1. Ovulation induction using medications stimulates the egg donor to produce more than the normal one egg per menstruation.
2. Egg development is monitored using ultrasound and hormone level evaluation.
3. A fertility specialist collects the eggs at the proper time by means of transvaginal ultrasound aspiration, which involves a needle placed through the vaginal wall into the ovary to retrieve each egg.
4. The eggs are fertilized in the lab using the male sperm to create embryos.
5. The recipient mother takes progesterone to prepare her uterine lining to receive the embryo(s), which are implanted in the recipient’s uterus about three to five days after initial egg fertilization.