Donor Eggs

iloveflipflops

Are there usually wait lists for Donor Eggs? I might be exploring this option and wasn't sure how it works.

stinkerbell6879

Fist off, you would want to see if you want to go through an agency or see if there is a donor pool at the RE you want to work with. Then it will depend on whether or not the donor is available yet or if there is a wait list for her.

BeckyP005

If you go to a small clinic like I am I have been on the waiting list for 12 months BUT I am doing a "shared" cycle so that plays into the waiting. Donor pool is not big either. Our choice since we didn't want go travel.

LittleLady77

We went through an agency. There were hundreds of ladies to pick from. Once we had selected our donor it took months to get everything together (legal contracts, testings, syncing cycles etc.) the whole cycle took from April to a BFP in late July.

HopefulSoul2

I was wondering the same thing @littlelady77, @beckyp005, and @stinkerbell6879.  My clinic has a donor pool but it is anonymous.  We aren't able to view photos - not sure how I feel about that.  How did your DE pool work?

stinkerbell6879

I am able to see photo's and there is a brief medical history. I know that there are many who don't get to see pictures, or only childhood pictures. Mine is still anonymous since I do not know her name.

JM1977

We went to Shady Grove in Maryland for our DE cycles.  They have an in-house donor pool.  Once you get accepted into their program (preliminary testing, payments, etc.), you get access to their online pool.  They have quite a bit of information about their donors including medical background, family history, an essay, childhood pictures, etc.  There are donors available at all times, but we found that if we waited, there seemed to be ones who were better matches for us added each day, and those tended to go fast, so we just kept an eye on the database.  It only took about a week to find our donor, so there really was no wait other than getting all lined up with their program, which took us about 4 months.

BeckyP005

@HopefulSoul2 I was not able to look at photos. It bothered me in the beginning but got over it

LittleLady77

HopefulSoul2 The agency we used is called Gifted Journeys and they are located in Southern California.  Most of their donors are in that area too.  I got to see all kinds of pictures, family history, writing samples etc.  We could ask for more info and pictures from the donors (which we did).  When we picked our girl (Alyssa) we had grown quite attached to her.  At first we wanted a totally anonymous relationship but after seeing her whole life we were open to chatting with her.  We left it up to Alyssa if she wanted to meet us, she said she did.  In her profile she had mentioned she wanted to do this anonymously so we were really surprised! She told us later she felt really connected to us and was happy to meet us.

We did a skype call with her and we were there with her and her family when she did her egg retrieval. That's clearly not the common path but it was nice to have an agency that agreed to let us if we wanted to go that route. 

iloveflipflops

JM1977 said:

We went to Shady Grove in Maryland for our DE cycles.  They have an in-house donor pool.  Once you get accepted into their program (preliminary testing, payments, etc.), you get access to their online pool.  They have quite a bit of information about their donors including medical background, family history, an essay, childhood pictures, etc.  There are donors available at all times, but we found that if we waited, there seemed to be ones who were better matches for us added each day, and those tended to go fast, so we just kept an eye on the database.  It only took about a week to find our donor, so there really was no wait other than getting all lined up with their program, which took us about 4 months.

I also go to Shady Grove in Maryland. What location do you go to?? I'm so distraught by the thought of donor eggs my husband and I have the upsetting where do we go from here conversation with the dr next week sometime. So have you gone through a donor egg cycle already?

JM1977

I cycled from out of town so I did all my monitoring locally, but when I did go to SG I went to either the Annapolis or Rockville offices (my dr was Dr. Mottla). We did 2 fresh DE cycles for our daughter and then an FET from the second cycle for our son. DE is a lot to handle at first. Having a good therapist who specialized in IF was really helpful.