Egg donation is a procedure in which a donor woman donates her fertile eggs to a recipient woman to help her conceive through assisted reproduction technology. It typically involves retrieval of eggs from the donor, fertilizing them in a laboratory, and then transferring the healthy embryos into the recipient’s uterus. In vitro fertilization (IVF) using donor eggs have proved beneficial for women who cannot conceive with their own eggs due to reasons such as:
- Premature ovarian failure
- Poor quality of eggs
- Advanced age
- Ovarian diseases
- Ovaries surgically removed
- Risk of inheritable genetic disease
The Procedure
The donor receives hormonal injections to induce ovulation and allow multiple eggs to mature at the same time. The doctor retrieves the mature eggs using an ultrasound guided needle and will fertilize these eggs in the laboratory using the recipient’s partner’s sperm or donor sperm. Once the eggs are fertilized, the embryos are transferred into the recipient’s uterus and monitored closely for pregnancy. After a successful implantation, the recipient carries the developing baby through the full term of the pregnancy and childbirth. In a fresh transfer, the menstrual cycles of the donor and recipient are synchronized using medications while in frozen transfer, the embryos are frozen and transferred at a later time.
Thousands of couples have become parents by opting for egg donation as an infertility treatment. It has been a boon for women to mother a child, experiencing all the joys of pregnancy and motherhood.
