Women and Man : Gender Issues

With the rise in IVF and the many women that can’t produce eggs on their own, there’s a great need for egg donors. It might seem like a great idea if the reason is to help others that can’t have children of their own or for the very fact that a high quality egg is worth a lot to a fertility center.

For either reason, it’s quite an extensive process and not all potential egg donors make the cut. Learn about the process of what potential egg donors need to do to donate eggs to a recognized fertility center.

• It starts with the patients paperwork. Be ready to fill out a lot of paperwork. Most reputable fertility centers that use patients have a database of information for the egg recipient to review before using the patients egg. It gets very specific, so be ready to give details of yourself including photos of your childhood up to adulthood.

• Next, the donors meet with the donor coordinator for an initial interview and a time to sign all the consents to go ahead with the egg donation.

• Donors have to pass screenings from many other prerequisites to further advance in the process.

• All donors must undergo extensive genetic testing. There must not be any occurrences of genetic disorders in your family.

• After the genetic testing, patients sit down and have a consult on all the gene testing that was performed.

• Patients are also required to undergo a complete psychological evaluation. Anyone that decides to donate their eggs must be mentally stable and not have any family history of mental illness.

• After all the tests and evaluations, egg donors go to the next phase of being monitored and medicated to begin inducing ovulation, so eggs can be extracted.

• After the period of monitoring, medication and when the eggs are ready, egg donors are taken in to have their eggs retrieved and the in vitro fertilization process begins.

• The fertilization requires the patients partners sperm to be introduced to the egg in the laboratory where the process of fertilization and growth of the embryo begins.

• If the egg develops into a quality embryo, the patients egg is frozen to be used at a later time in a future IVF procedure.

• The Post Egg Retrieval Visit is then conducted and the egg donors are finished with the process.

As you can see, egg donors must go through an extensive process to donate their eggs. It’s something that the donor must really want to do and all tests and evaluations must be passed with flying colors to be able to donate eggs to a reputable fertility center.