Egg Donation

Hey -

A friend at work mentioned she was donating eggs this summer at a well-reputable fertility clinic in the area.
It’s something I have considered in the past (though never mentioned it to my family or SO) and was wondering if any of you have had
experiences donating in the past. I’m one of those people who needs to make up my own mind like 95% of the way before asking/talking
to close family and friends. Of course my SO would have a big say in whether or not I’d donate.

If you’ve donated…
…what was it like? [name]How[/name] did it impact your daily life? [name]How[/name] do you feel about it now? (Are you happy about your donation? Are you sad you’ll never meet your potential biological children?)

If you’ve used an egg donor in the past…
…what did you look for when choosing an egg donor? What things turned you off? (I’m not looking to fudge papers I’m just curious if my grandmothers mental illness coupled with my families history of highly educated individuals with learning disabilities and old age diabetes would automatically make my eggs less desirable. <and now I feel ridiculous for asking>).

If you haven’t donated or used an egg donor…
…would you consider donating? Why? or Why not? What would be your personal concerns?

I know this is a really personal topic, we talk about IVF and other conceiving issues so I hope this is okay as well.
I really appreciate your honestly and thoughts. Thanks!

Interesting topic. I don’t have any personal experience with this, so I’ll answer hypothetically.

No, I don’t think I would voluntarily donate my eggs. However, if I ever used IVF, I would donate unneeded embryos to an infertile couple. I suppose if someone came to me asking for a donor egg, I would consider it, but its not something I would go out and do of my own volition.

I think it’s a brave choice and admire anyone who does it.

I have heard the process is pretty wretched for egg donation! That aside, though, I think it could be a great way to help an infertile couple. I looked into it a few years ago but I wasn’t eligible (the standards they have are pretty strict, and I am apparently too voluptuous!) And now I am pretty sure I’m too old. Plus I would miss having sex with my husband!

This reminds me of something that came up on the Offbeat Families website recently, link: http://offbeatfamilies.com/2013/04/thinking-of-donating-egg

If you haven’t donated or used an egg donor…
…would you consider donating? Why? or Why not? What would be your personal concerns?

I don’t think so. For one, I’m not even sure I’d be considered, as I have mental illness myself, although my family history is healthy. If I WAS “allowed” to donate (or chosen by a family privately), I wouldn’t really feel comfortable taking the hormones and medications required to do so. First of all, they would probably strongly affect me medically/emotionally/etc (moreso than a healthy person), and even if they didn’t, I’m not sure I trust how safe all of that is. Maybe if I was already done having my own children, I’d be more likely to do so.

I think it’s great when other people do so, but I also question how much is known about the process and the drugs used, and question whether in the long run it’s going to be save, or if a couple of generations down the line, we’ll see repercussions of messing with fertility.

Personally, I would not donate eggs. I read a bit about it when I was in high school and it sounded appealing at the time because I thought that the huge amount of money could fund an international adoption which was my dream at the time. But at this stage of my life I have strong personal views against egg donation. I want to personally raise any child that my body has a part in producing (and if tragedy were ever to bar me from raising any offspring I’ve produced, I would at least know that they would be raised by my husband or relatives). My faith in God is the single most important thing in my life, and although I can’t and won’t force my children to believe what I believe, I do want to know that they are raised understanding what I believe and why. I also want to raise my children to have character and a moral backbone, and if I were to donate eggs I would have no way of knowing what was instilled in my offspring. I hold myself personally responsible for any life produced by my body, and for that reason I could never in good conscience donate eggs.

The ONLY exception to this would be if one of my three sisters–and they would be the ONLY ones–struggled with infertility and needed donated eggs.

I think I remember reading in high school that egg donation requires injecting yourself daily in the stomach. I guess for a large sum of money that may not sound so bad, but I had to inject myself in the stomach twice a day for a few months following a car accident and it was BAD. I think lots of other factors may have made it more emotionally traumatizing for me than it should have been, such as a brain injury and PTSD and medicine that I was on, but injecting myself in the stomach really traumatized me and after about two months of it I flat-out could not do it anymore and we had to go a different route. Again, if my sisters ever needed donated eggs, I know I could get through that process, but I would not willingly sign up to do it for any other reason.

I can only offer 2nd hand knowledge. I work with a lot of [name]ART[/name] patients, and some of the couple use donor eggs. I have only worked a few times with the actual donors. There are only a couple of things I can think of to bring up for you to consider.

If it were me donating, I think one of my biggest concerns would be my drug protocol I’d be given. Clinics and doctors have gotten much better over the past few years, but one of the biggest dangers as a donor is ovarian hyperstimulation. This is when the drug protocol stimulates the ovaries too much, creating an abundance of follicles and fluid in the ovaries. The ovaries become very enlarged. Symptoms range from mild to severe. Severe cases are very rare, but can be life threatening. Most cases are mild and mainly involve discomfort, bloating, and some nausea. The more severe end of the spectrum involves fluid in your abdominal cavity, breathing difficulties, and kidney problems. Ovarian hyperstimulation is most often seen in a typical IVF patient who becomes pregnant during her cycle following the ovarian stimulation and retrieval because the pregnancy hormone hCG compounds the issue. Since you’d be a donor and will not become pregnant, this situation wouldn’t pertain to you. However, because you’re young, and probably have very responsive ovaries, it is something to consider. A reputable clinic, with skilled RE’s should also decrease the risk of this. There are clinics, though, that try to harvest as many eggs as possible, and that’s when problems can arise.

The other question: Would this be an anonymous donation? For me, the most difficult part would not be the physical discomfort and pain from the injections into my abdomen or butt, the stimulation of my ovaries, and the retrieval of my eggs. The most difficult part would be to donate my eggs to anonymous couples. I’d be much more comfortable knowing the people who’d be using my eggs to create a family. I would hate to help a couple create a family who had vastly opposite political, religious, spiritual, social, and child-rearing views that I have. I think that would cause me the most distress. No amount of financial compensation could make up for the pain I’d feel not knowing what type of life those children born from my eggs were going to have. If it’s anonymous you need to assume that anyone from a same-sex couples to right-wing tea partiers could be using your eggs.

I will say, though, that in my experience, all of the couples that have used egg donors have been very lovely people (from what little I know about their lives). Couples that end up using egg donors have usually exhausted all other options in their long and painful road of infertility. They are usually very passionate about becoming parents, are financially secure, educated, and all about being the very best parents they can possibly be. It is truly a wonderful gift you can offer to a desperate couple. And, you will be financially compensated, sometimes quite generously.

I hope that helps a little bit. Best of luck. I’d be very curious to hear what you decide.

I’m pretty sure I’m not allowed to donate eggs, BPD and all. But I don’t think I would anyway. [name]Don[/name]'t get me wrong, it seems like a wonderfully generous and selfless thing to do, but I would always wonder if I had a little biological son or daughter out there. A little someone made from me that I would never meet, never know if she/he was happy, had a good family, became a decent person. No, it would haunt me forever. The only exception would be what Alzora said; my sisters. I only have one real sister, but I consider my best friend and my cousin as my sisters as well. If either of those couldn’t have one, I’d give an egg, because I know they would get the best possible families in the world.

The reason it pays so well is that it is painful and difficult, and it can negatively impact your own future fertility to a quite significant degree.

Being ‘permitted’ to donate is also basically the genetic Olympics. There are strict height and BMI criteria; appearance criteria (nearly everyone wants Nordic types, though there are occasional requests for Asians); minimal IQ/SAT scores, minimum educational attainment; maximum ages; and your family medical pedigree is carefully combed through. It’s as close to eugenics as we get (sperm banks have criteria too, but they’re much more inclusive).

If you haven’t donated or used an egg donor…
…would you consider donating? Why? or Why not? What would be your personal concerns?

I don’t even plan to give birth. Adoption has always been my number one choice. So I could never donate an egg. There are so many children in the world who don’t have homes, why do we constantly feel the need to create more rather than give the one’s already existing a family? It just never made sense to me and it would go against my morals/beliefs.

It’s also a very invasive procedure. It’s not like guys who just have to do it in a cup. Definitely not something I would be comfortable with.

I know two women who have chosen egg donation to help finance their educations. I know that you have to go through extensive screening for family and self (any mental illness or serious disease like asthma despite how easy it might be to control is essentially a complete strike against you), submit standardized test scores, level of education for your age, and certainly pictures. Actually, the agency they went through did the pictures and my friend described it kind of like Glamour Shots (lots of makeup, hair blow out). I know that if your eggs are chosen by a couple to be used, and then you undergo a second retrieval process, you will be paid more for your eggs since you’ve already demonstrated that they’re desirable. You receive payment once your eggs are actually chosen by a couple, and it’s usually about 6-7k for first time and 9-10k for second time (this was already nearly a decade ago). It’s an extremely long and invasive procedure that involves surgery and incisions. I can see how 7k would be desirable to a 21 year old, but honestly that would pay for maybe half of a decent car? Meh. That is considerably too low a price tag to justify the surgery, health risks, and loss of control in raising the child created with your DNA.

Back when I was finishing up undergrad, I remember there being ads in the student paper looking for egg donors. This was in 2001. They were offering $20K! I knew a few girls who did it. [name]One[/name] of them had serious complications due to an infection following ovarian hyperstimulation with resulting torsion and ended up losing her future fertility. Another girl did it multiple times and seemed fine, though she gained a lot of weight and had difficulty losing it. She also ended up with terrible acne from the hormones. Another girl was perfectly fine. I don’t know anyone who has done it recently, though I have seen ads on Craigslist now offering only $5K for it. So it seems like either they have far more donors now or it has become significantly less risky?

When we were pursuing fertility treatments, one of the options the clinic offered us was something called an egg share. That means that they would harvest my eggs and another patient who needed eggs would buy a certain number of them. This would then lower the amount that IVF would cost us. We actually were not comfortable doing IVF at all, so it is not something we pursued. But when the doctor told me about this option, I found the whole thing super creepy. The clinic we went to took photos of patients when you started going. I don’t know why they did this, I assumed it was a security thing. Anyhow, the photo did not come out very clearly, I suppose. When I met the dr for the first time, he said, Oh! I didn’t realize you were white from the photo! Well, what is your IQ? What degrees do you have? And so on and so forth. He was really eager about this egg share option. It felt very eugenics-y to me, as someone mentioned above. I was like, hey, I am here for medical treatment, not to help you create the master race, wacko.

I’m pretty sure egg donors in Australia aren’t financially compensated at all, which is silly because $20,000 would probably convince quite a few women to donate, and egg donors are apparently very difficult to come by here.

@sarahmezz - it’s also possible than doctors or places looking for donor eggs in Australia are far more open about the risks that come with the medical procedures of it then the doctors are in the US. $20,000 sounds like a lot, unless you actually look into yourself what the statistics of losing future fertility or suffering somewhat serious complications are - they’re much higher than a fertility doctor at a US clinic will usually admit.

Thanks for your responses everyone. You gave me a lot to think about. Well most of it I knew anyway, but it’s alway good to hear what others are thinking.
I hadn’t realized though how pro-white donation centers can be. I’d definitely need to find a place that is representative (or at least close) to the general population -> super important to me for many reasons. For me it wouldn’t be about the money, I’m also on the bone-marrow registry list, and would donate blood if they’d need it (however being [name]AB[/name] positive and having had surgery abroad makes blood-banks think I’m not worth the effort except in a state of emergency). It’s more about weighing personal risk with potential gain for others.

[name]Blade[/name] do you have any idea where I can find layperson understandable research that is good and not propaganda-like?
I feel like everything I read seems to be omitting things and I’d love more info before making a decision either way.

@lexiem

The pro-white angle bothered us a lot, too. This is one of the reasons went to adoption, b.c the fertility industry just started feeling very Brave [name]New[/name] World to us. I am really bothered by so many things about this, but I don’t want to get into that here.

BUT this is all based on supply and demand. The doctors aren’t looking to create a base of gametes that is representative of the general population, they are looking to meet the demands of specific clients. The way that it worked at the clinic that we went to was that patients would come in, realize through testing/treatments that egg quality was an issue for them, and then the clinic would seek out a donor. They had a list of potential donors with written descriptions, no photographs. Donors could opt to be known, but most people who wanted donors also wanted anonymity. They didn’t want to run into their donor down at the Kroger, you know?

Generally, people are looking for a donor who looks like them, so that the resulting children will look like them. Most people do not tell their children that egg and/or sperm donors were involved. But please do consider, anonymity is more and more difficult. It is certainly possible that the children created with your eggs might find you one day. This has already happened on a very large scale with sperm donors. [name]Just[/name] think through how you would feel about this, particularly if you end up not raising any of your biological children. Also think through how you will feel if they never find you, maybe never even know that you were involved.

They told us that IVF works best with fresh never frozen gametes, so this using freshly harvested eggs gives the procedure the best chance of working. So if I had done this egg share thing, they would have essentially used hormones to sync up my cycle and the cycle of this other patient who needed my eggs and then done the embryo creation and implantation on each of us at the same time. If there were more eggs than were needed for a procedure, they would be frozen in case the couple needed to try multiple times, but this wasn’t the first choice. I am not sure if it is an option for a couple to go straight to frozen donor eggs.

I really don’t believe that fertility clinics are trying to serve predominantly white couples. I really don’t think they care. They do not do any kind of screening to determine which couples would make “good” parents. They don’t try harder for MENSA members than for high school drop outs. If you can pay for the services, they want to provide you with the services. There is definitely some institutional racism going on here, but the roots are pretty deep.

If you do end up doing this, and you think you may someday want to raise your biological children, you might want to consider having some of your eggs frozen for your own use. [name]Just[/name] in case something goes wrong w. the procedure, that way you haven’t foreclosed that option for your future.

@tarynkay is exactly right. Fertility medicine is, in many ways, much closer to cosmetic dermatology or plastic surgery than it is the rest of medicine. (And the people who go in to it are almost without exception financially motivated, venal, and have enormous God complexes.) It’s the free market, pure & unadulterated. All of these services are cash only and therefore the basic principles of economics prevail. Most couples with the means to pursue not only IVF but IVF with donated eggs/sperm have a great deal of disposable cash, and in this country that means they’re usually white, and occasionally [name]East[/name] or (even more rarely) South [name]Asian[/name] [bloodlines are very important in South [name]Asian[/name] cultures to they’re much less likely to pursue donor gametes]. This is not my field so I’m really speaking from “anec-data” here, but in general people of all backgrounds want Nordic types as donors. Jews rarely wants Jewish eggs due to the high prevalence of inherited recessive syndromes in the Ashkenazi population (and I’ve read interviews where couples specifically wanted non-Jewish eggs out of fear of silly things like male pattern baldness or nearsightedness). Nordic types want Nordic types so the kids look like them. South Asians want Nordic types so the children have lighter skin. [name]East[/name] Asians occasionally want Nordic types so the children have wavier hair and bigger eyes. Uniformly, they want donors >5’6" in height, with blonde hair and light eyes, great academic qualifications and <150lbs [the slimmer the better]. Uniformly. The fertility clinics do not take egg donors from backgrounds representative of the general population since there is no demand for eggs representative of the general population, and they will be paying you for a product they will not be able to sell.

It’s not like ART specialists are specifically attempting to create the master race, or imposing their own preferences. They’re simply realistically catering to demand.

I’ve considered it before. I hadn’t researched it much just “Oh, maybe at some point.” My motives were purely financial. Now, hearing all the awful side effects and possible future infertility, I’m not so sure. They probably wouldn’t even want me considering my scoliosis and my Ashkenazi heritage.

My dad’s ancestors are all Ashkenazi Jews. Nearsightedness and male-pattern baldness describes his family perfectly!

Clearly I didn’t express myself correctly. (go figure)
I meant that they had clients who represented the general population of the area.
In major cities like NYC, DC, and LA where people of all backgrounds make a decent amount of money
I’d assume numbers to be more representative at some clinics than at others.

you haven’t donated or used an egg donor…
…would you consider donating? Why? or Why not? What would be your personal concerns?

I would not donate my eggs. For me it’s a personal decision. I just don’t feel comfortable with that.
I am surprised by how much judgment is on this thread. Personally it would be less about being scared that the people who were using my eggs were bad people and more about not wanting to go through such a procedure.
I would think about it if a same sex couple or couple I knew slightly asked me. I think putting faces to the people who needed my help would be an incentive but probably not strong enough.
On the other hand, I think adoption is a good idea. I think there is nothing wrong with someone other than the biological parents raising a child. I think that biological relationships don’t have a monopoly of love and support.

I would never under no circumstances give an egg to my sister or one of my cousins. I read an article about a couple who used his father as a sperm donor. The article said that many doctors questioned the wisdom of using close family members saying that it confuses the relationship. I don’t if it’s true, but my aunt appropriates other people’s children all the time. She told me last time I saw I could call her Mom. I was like “uh, no, you are not my mother, I have a mother. She’s a big part of my life. I see you once or twice a year.” If she had been an egg donor for mama, she would never have let go of the fact she was my “real mother”. Maybe what I am really saying is that I would never let a sister or a cousin be an egg donor for me. I think my family members would try to appropriate “my” child. In our family it would be really messy.

I don’t mean to judge, but I do think that if you can’t handle the idea of your biological children being raised by someone who isn’t you yourself then you should not be an egg donor. On the hand, if you think you could help people that would be your choice. I would do research to make sure the offer seems credible. I would also support any friend (or you) if they decided to this. Only you can make your decision. Good [name]Luck[/name]!