The egg donation cycle

Relevant doctor appointments

If you pursue egg donation, you’ll be expected to have 4-8 appointments with your doctor. These are usually scheduled to be early mornings or occasionally on the weekend. If you’re traveling during a cycle or if the reproductive office is a trek from your home, you can make 2-3 of these appointments at a nearby monitoring clinic for your convenience.

After being approved as an egg donor, you’ll receive your initial screening at the doctor’s office to ensure that you’re in great health and ready for the donation process. Sometimes these visits occur on Day 3 of the menstrual cycle (the third day after bleeding begins). During this appointment, you may receive:

A blood test to test hormone levels
Tests ruling out infection, sexually transmitted diseases, and major genetic disorders
A PAP smear (possibly requested in advance of medical screening from your OB)
A urine drug screen
A health & wellness interview conducted by your doctor

In addition, you’ll take part in a number of ultrasounds that will be performed during the cycle to monitor the healthy growth of your eggs in your ovaries. This is a painless procedure that entails inserting a wand into the vagina to produce an ultrasound image so your doctor can analyse it.

Fertility hormones & medications

Although there can be variations, at the beginning of the donation cycle egg donors take birth control pills for about 10 days to sync cycles with the individual receiving the egg transfer. After these 10 days, egg donors receive a series of injections that follow this schedule:

Lupron injections for 10 days, which slow down the menstrual cycle

And injections administering one of the following fertility hormones for the next 10 days following the completed lupron injection series:

Gonal F
FHS (Follicle Stimulating Hormone)

So for approximately 2 weeks, egg donors receive hormone injections administered with a small needle, often in the thigh or belly. Egg donors can give themselves the injections or have another adult assist them.

The purpose of fertility medications

Women are born with approximately 400,000 eggs and, during each menstrual cycle, the female reproductive system selects 30 or more eggs to mature for a potential fertilization. During an egg donation cycle, increased doses of these egg-maturing hormones are offered so that additional eggs will mature (typically 8-15 more) for the egg retrieval procedure.

The egg retrieval

Your eggs will mature after about two weeks of hormones. Once this happens, you'll return to your doctor's office for the egg retrieval procedure, which takes about 30 minutes. During the egg retrieval procedure, you'll be put under light sedation, and your eggs will be aspirated vaginally with a long needle to remove the possibility of scarring. Soon after the retrieval, you may go home accompanied by a friend. When you get home, we recommend that you take the rest of the day off work.

Upon request, egg donors may be informed about a month after the retrieval if a pregnancy occurred within the recipient parents and/or gestational carrier.