Mom-life blog posts abound with tips and tricks to make your life as a parent easier. But what if you’re struggling to become a parent? Female infertility affects women around the world. And there can be many causes including a suboptimal supply of eggs due to advancing age or premature menopause. If you are otherwise healthy but have difficulties producing healthy eggs, egg donation could help you fulfill your dream of becoming a parent.
What Is Egg Donation?
Egg donation is a process in which a healthy young woman — usually in her 20s — offers some of her eggs to a family in need. This is done with the help of hormones and a quick surgical procedure. The eggs are then combined with sperm from the father or a sperm donor to create a group of healthy embryos. One or more of these embryos are implanted in the uterus of the mother via IVF after one or more cycles of hormone medications. The recipient mother then carries, births, and raises her child(ren).
How Common Is Egg Donation?
The egg donation journey may sound complicated or even overwhelming if you’ve never experienced it before. However, it’s much more common than many people think. The first baby was born by egg donation in 1984. And in 2018, more than 18,000 young women donated eggs in the United States. The success rate of a donor egg IVF cycle is also very good. Approximately 47-50% of IVF cycles using a donor egg result in a successful pregnancy. It’s no wonder many people struggling with infertility turn to egg donation to grow their families.
How Egg Donors and Families Are Matched
If you’re carrying another woman’s donated eggs, trust and compatibility is extremely important. Donation agencies use strict egg donor requirements that include age limits and a healthy BMI. While egg donors typically remain anonymous, most agencies allow potential recipients to view donors’ ethnicity, education, medical history, and other factors that are essential for ensuring the best possible match. You’ll have plenty of information to make the best decision for your family.
The Egg Donation Process
There are two main ways that future parents can receive their donated eggs.
1. Fresh Egg Cycle
When using fresh eggs, the donor will typically travel to your location and donate their eggs through your chosen fertility clinic.
2. Frozen Eggs
If using frozen eggs, the eggs can be carefully transported using a cold-storage transport vehicle and kept in cold storage until use.
After the eggs are thawed, they are combined with the sperm to create embryos, and one or more embryos are transferred to the recipient mother via in-vitro fertilization (IVF). Legal arrangements entered into at the beginning of the process ensure that the baby or babies born to the recipient mother are 100% legally hers. It also makes sure that they have no link with the egg donor other than genetics. Before acceptance into the program, egg donors are carefully screened. It is done to ensure they can cope psychologically with this aspect of egg donation.
Raising a Child Born by Egg Donation
The good news is that once you get pregnant, your journey will be just like any other mom’s! It will be the same newborn baby experience, the same parenting challenges as your child grows up. Also, the same decision-making process regarding your child’s education, values, and careers.
The only differences between your parenting journey and mothers who conceive naturally will be:
- The costs of the donor eggs, fertility treatment, and in-vitro fertilization
- Time spent at medical appointments before falling pregnant
- Closer monitoring of the pregnancy and birth, especially if you’re over 35
- A support team of professionals will be available to you throughout the process
Growing your family is one of the most meaningful experiences we can have. And you will feel all the same joys, love, and hope as any other pregnancy even if you are raising a baby born by egg donation.
Telling Your Child About Their Origins
As far as explaining their genetic origins to your child, research shows that the best approach is to be completely transparent from the start. There’s no need to have a “deep, dark family secret.” Just answer your child’s questions as they arise. It is best to explain that babies are made with an egg and a sperm and that a very kind lady helped mommy by providing the egg. There are now several picture books available for explaining egg donation to your child.
Taking the Next Step
If you’ve always wanted to be a mom, but things haven’t worked out the way you’d planned, egg donation could be the pathway that helps you to complete your family. Although egg donation was once revolutionary, it’s now a common and accepted path to parenthood. Begin by talking to your partner, other recipient parents, and a trusted agency to see if this possibility could be suitable for you!
Hope you found the article useful! Parenting is not easy and procedures like the above mentioned make the journey more difficult! But in the end, everything’s worth it! Please leave your experiences in the comments!
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