Welcome Carrot Fertility Members. Family Inceptions is now part of the Carrot Fertility Network. Click to read more.
Welcome Carrot Fertility Members. Family Inceptions is now part of the Carrot Fertility Network. Click to read more.

Egg Donation & Your Future Fertility: Fact vs Fiction

There is a common misconception that egg donation can affect your future fertility by depleting your eggs supply, thereby leaving you with fewer eggs to conceive your own children. This is simply not true.

Here’s the Facts About Egg Donation

Without the generosity of egg donors, thousands of couples would never be able to experience the joy of having a family. Whether it’s a woman whose own eggs are of poor quality or a same-sex male couple that wants to start a family, egg donation is what makes it possible for individuals and couples to have what millions of others take for granted.

Egg donation is a rewarding process for women who want to help a couple struggling to have a baby, and it’s the satisfaction of knowing they were able to help someone start or build their family that drives them to do it. Though egg donors receive financial compensation for their precious gift, the ones who have worked with us say it’s giving someone the chance to have a family—not money—that motivated them to donate their eggs to a loving couple who, through no fault of their own, was unable to have a child.

Building Families Through Egg Donation

Thanks to advancements in modern science and technology, egg donation has become quite commonplace. Not everyone is an ideal candidate to donate, though. If you are considering donating your eggs, you are required, among other things, to be:

  • a non-smoker between the ages of 20 and 29
  • currently attending (or have completed) a degree through a 4-year accredited university with a minimum GPA of 2.5%
  • in good health with no sexually transmitted diseases, no family history of genetic diseases, and no personal or family history of mental illness
  • of a healthy Body Mass Index
  • flexible in your schedule to attend all medical appointments
  • able and willing to administer injections yourself (or have someone around who is)*

Egg retrieval is a pain-free outpatient procedure that lasts up to 30 minutes and is done under general anesthesia. During the procedure, a needle is passed through the top of the vagina and directed toward the ovary and follicles where it is used to draw in the fluid in the follicles. As the fluid is drawn in, the eggs detach from the follicle wall and are drawn into the needle as well.

So Does Egg Donation Affect Future Fertility?

You were born with between one and two million eggs—most of which will degenerate and reabsorb back into your body over your lifetime. By the time you reached puberty, your ovaries had fewer than half a million eggs. Each month, about 15 eggs begin to mature inside the follicles inside your ovaries, but most of the time only one follicle will reach full maturity and release an egg, which of course is when ovulation occurs.

The medications given to you for egg donation cause all of the eggs in a cycle to mature, not just one. So instead of one egg reaching maturity and your body discarding the rest, all 15 eggs will reach maturity. No other eggs are affected, and therefore your future fertility remains unchanged.

In fact, this a 2012 study conducted in Belgium confirmed there is no increased risk of infertility in women who donate eggs, even multiple times. According to the study’s findings, of the 60 women in the research group who had donated eggs, 54 later became pregnant within a year of trying to conceive, and three more women became pregnant within 18 months of trying to conceive, all without reproductive assistance. Three of the women became pregnant with the help of fertility treatments and in two of those cases, it was because of fertility problems in their male partner.

Be Informed About Egg Donation

Egg donation does require a fair bit of time and effort on your part, but the reward of knowing you helped bring a child into the world for someone facing fertility issues is entirely worth it. If you believe you would make a good egg donor candidate, we’d love to hear from you. Call us anytime for more information. Our number is 844-404-BABY.

Do you qualify to be an egg donor? Click here to find out.

Read more about the top 5 qualities that would make you an ideal egg donor

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