What Is Egg Donation?
Egg donation is a form of assisted reproduction that lets a woman become pregnant using eggs from a donor.
The Egg Donation Process
Who Can Be a Donor?
To donate eggs, a woman must meet several health rules. She should:
- Be 18‑35 years old.
- Have healthy ovaries and no gynecological disease.
- Be in good physical and mental shape.
- Have a clean medical record showing no genetic or hereditary disease.
- Have a body‑mass index (BMI) between 18 and 25.
- Not have already given birth to more than five children.
Eggs can be given fresh at body temperature (about 37 °C) or frozen (vitrified) at –196 °C.
How the Donor’s Eggs Are Collected
First, the donor takes hormone shots at the start of her menstrual cycle. The hormones (GH and LH) help the eggs grow for 10‑12 days. She visits the clinic for blood tests and ultrasound checks.
When the eggs are ready, a doctor performs a transvaginal, ultrasound‑guided egg‑pull (called a follicular puncture). The doctor uses a thin needle, a gentle suction system, and light sedation to collect the fluid from each follicle. Usually 10‑20 mature eggs are retrieved.
Preparing the Receiving Woman
The woman who will carry the pregnancy takes hormone medicines to ready her uterus. If she still has normal ovarian function, the clinic will first stop her own hormone production with GnRH‑analog shots on day 22 of her cycle.
Then she follows a step‑by‑step plan:
- GnRH‑analog injections – keep her ovaries at rest.
- Estrogen – given in increasing doses (often as a patch) to thicken the uterine lining.
- Progesterone – started on the day the donor’s eggs are taken (or after thawing frozen eggs). It can be taken by mouth or vaginally to make the lining ready for implantation.
Ultrasound checks monitor the lining until it reaches the right thickness for an embryo.
In‑Vitro Fertilization (IVF) and Embryo Culture
After the eggs are collected (or thawed), the receiving couple provides a semen sample. The lab picks the most active sperm and mixes them with the donor’s eggs using a technique called intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI).
The next day the embryologist looks at how many eggs were successfully fertilized. The embryos are grown for a few days. Often they are frozen (vitrified) so the uterus can be prepared first.
When the uterine lining is 7‑10 mm thick, a single embryo is placed in the uterus with a thin catheter. This transfer usually happens between day 3 and day 5 of embryo development and is checked by ultrasound.
About two weeks after the transfer, a blood test tells whether the pregnancy has started. If the test is positive, the doctor will ask the woman to keep taking estrogen and progesterone until the end of the first trimester (around week 12).