By: Physician's Surrogacy
IntroductIon •
After an egg donor has been matched with prospective parents, they will undergo a screening process prior to starting the egg donation cycle. This screening may either be done at the prospective parents’ clinic, or Egg Donor America can arrange for the screening to be carried out at a clinic more convenient to the egg donor.
How Egg donatIon works • Egg Donor Application and Screening • Egg Donor Matching • Suppression and Ovarian stimulation for Egg Donor • Endometrial Lining Development for the Donor Recipient • Fertilization and Embryo Transfer for the Recipient
Egg Donor Application and Screening •
Before everything else can happen, egg donors must apply to our egg donation program, go through an initial screening and two rounds of interviews (one with our clinical coordinators and another with our physicians) as well as some testing. Only the donor applicants who pass all these screening steps will be added to our egg donor program, and can be matched with a recipient couple.
Egg Donor Matching • Our IVF coordinator will contact the egg donor to confirm her availability. If the egg donor is available for the recipient's desired time frame, and passes an FDArequired round of testing, an official match is made. Some donors are selected and matched to a recipient very quickly after they apply; others may take months or years before they are selected; still others may never be selected.
Suppression and Ovarian stimulation for Egg Donor • The egg donor will selfadminister daily injections of a medication called Lupron to suppress her natural cycle, so that her and the recipient's cycles are synchronized. During the ovarian stimulation phase, the egg donor uses daily injections of gonadotropin to stimulate her ovaries. In a natural cycle, only one egg matures; gonadotropins injections encourage more than one egg to mature for retrieval.
Endometrial Lining Development for the Donor Recipient • On the recipient's side, a favorable uterine environment, especially an endometrium of at least 7 mm, is crucial in the success of a donor egg cycle. While the egg donor develops eggs for retrieval, the recipient takes estrogen and progesterone to prepare her endometrial lining for implantation. Developing the endometrium for embryo transfer is usually not a problem.
Fertilization and Embryo Transfer for the Recipient •
The retrieved eggs are fertilized with partner's or a donor's sperm. If using fresh sperm, the partner will need to visit CHR to produce a sample at this time. The embryos that result from this fertilization are incubated and graded.
all • Physician’s Surrogacy provides necessary resources to help make the surrogacy process as streamlined as possible for both intended parents and surrogates.