Donating eggs
Informations for eggs providers in an egg sharing arrangement
Egg donation has been a standard form of fertility treatment since 1984. It is used in women in circumstances where the ovaries have lost the ability to produce eggs of a suitable quality, or in some cases have lost the ability to produce eggs at all, e.g. premature ovarian failure. In these women there is usually nothing wrong with the uterus itself and they can successfully become pregnant using donated eggs with no increased risk to the pregnancy. In fact, in egg donation the chance of pregnancy is higher than in normal IVF treatment mainly because donors tend to be younger and more fertile than women seeking IVF treatment with their own eggs. As egg donation has become more available, so also has the need for to find suitable egg donors. Although most women today have heard of egg donation, there is still a great lack of knowledge about what is involved in being a donor. Egg donation involves outpatient treatment with approximately four visits to the Clinic, no hospital admission and a procedure performed using ultrasound under sedation whereby the eggs are collected from the ovaries. On average 12 eggs are collected at the time of egg collection. This is an insignificant number if you consider that a woman's ovaries contain over half a million eggs at puberty. Also although only one egg is usually ovulated each month, several hundred eggs are probably lost each month through natural wastage.
Our team has been very active in our attempts to raise awareness of the need for egg donors over recent years and we are very conscious of the enormous gift that donors are making to an infertile couple. In egg sharing the egg donor is called the provider. This is a unique situation because in return for free IVF treatment the provider agrees to donate half of her eggs to an infertile recipient. This is a very big decision to take and it is important that you think carefully about both the practical issues involved as well as the emotional consequences.
