Frozen Embryo/Blast Donation/Adoption?

SweetyPy17 · February 2013

Happy Valentine's day Ladies! Question from a lurker.

My DH and I are looking into donating our 2 of our 3 frosties. I could probably ask our clinic about the details, but I know you ladies will tell me the good, the bad and the ugly.

We are pretty set on donating/adopting them since we would love to give someone the opportunity for a little munchkin, but have tons of questions.

1. How does it work? We go through a pretty large clinic (Shady Grove), do we go through them, or use one the clinic's I've seen posted on this board?

2. Payment? It's considered a donation right? How about lawyer fees, any kind of compensation?

3. Is 2 even worth donating? or do you feel worth donating?

Thanks for any help as we are starting to look into it.

liz4paws · February 2013

Hi! First of all, I want to applaud your decision for donating. I know it's not always easy, but as the receipient of donor embryos myself,nbsp;I can tell you what a life changing decision you're making for your recipients.
nbsp;I can tell you what I know in regards to your questions.
You will want to decide what kind of arrangement you want with your recipient. Do you want anonymous? Do you wan an open relationship? Or maybe you want a semi open where you get pictures and updates every year, but that's it. Depending on your answer, there are different routes you can take.
You can donate them in a whole bunch of ways. You can go on www.miracleswaiting.org and post a freenbsp;ad. There are many many couples looking for donors there. The recipients are required to paynbsp;for a 125 yearly membership so that helps vet out most spammers. Most of the matches done there are done openly, but if you are interested in anonymous or semiopen, you can post this request in your ad. It's best to be 100 clear about what you are looking to do with any potential recipient from the get go. Once you decdide you have found a match, you will want to have a contract drawn upby attorneys that protects each of your interests. I'd say in most cases, the recipient will pay for the fees associated. We did in our case. They will also need to arrange to have them shipped to their clinic, OR if you prefer to have the transfer done at the clinic where the embryos are frozen at currently, you can specify this to your recipient as well. Again, anything and everything you'd like surrounding the donation is best to be up front about from the get go. Nothing is really unusual, I've seen all kind of requests be made on miracles waiting and there are all different kinds of recipients. You're bound to find your match. :
You're right, you cannot be compensated for the embryos themselves because that is illegal. However, you can ask for a compensation for past storage fees. We paid 1000 to our recipient for their storage fees. It was clearly outlined in our contract.
Two is definitely worth donating. Even one is! So many couples are looking to add a child to their existing family, or maybe just want an oppotrunity of two.
If you find a recipient on miracles waiting, most of the recipients will be the one to drive the ship since they are super motivated!
You can also choose to donate them to an embryo adoption agency like Snowflakes or the NEDC. You can google both for contact information and they will walk you through their process. I think you can request they be adopted openly or anonymously. Most of these require a homestudy be done of the recipients and sometimes donors feel more comfortable with this. They should help walk you through the next steps.
Lastly, if your clinic has a donor embryo program, you can donate them that way. This is probably the easiest, but it will be anonymous and you may never know who they go to.
I hope this information helps. Again, thank you so much for choosing to donate. What an incredible gift!

Neener73 · February 2013

liz4paws gave an excellent response.

If your clinic has an embryo donation program, you can go through them. If not, there are other options that liz4paws mentioned. We used NEDC because we didn't have any luck getting matched through Miracles Waiting and our RE's office didn't have an embryo donation program yet. You will need to decide if you want to proceed with an open, semi-open, or anonymous donation. While we were open to any of the options when we pursued embryo adoption, we chose anonymous donors because it took less time to get matched/finalize paperwork, and I wasn't getting any younger.

It usually doesn't cost the donors anything to donate, but they also don't receive a payment. We paid storage and shipping fees for the embryos we adopted.

Yes, even 1 would be worth donating. Some programs have long waiting lists for embryo adoptions. We used embryos from two different donors for the cycle when DS was born because each donor had 2 embryos and we wanted to make sure that at least 2 embryos survived thawing.

jcath · February 2013

We only had one frozen embryo and our initial wishes were to use it for scientific purposes but we both changed our minds. Our two year storage fee was up in December and we donated the embryo through our clinic - RBA We had to fill out paperwork and sign and notarize documents but didn't need an attorney. It didn't cost us anything and we won't receive any compensation.

TwinMommyDoubleBlessings · February 2013

As a donor embryo receipient, first let me say thank you so very much for considering this route. You cannot imagine how your decision will effect someone else's life and change their lives forever.

Resolve.org has tons of great, neutral information on donating. What to consider, questions to ask. Here is link: https://www.resolve.org/family-building-options/donor-options/using-donor-embryo.html

here is link to National Embryo Donation Center: https://www.embryodonation.org/ I believe if you only have 2 to donate, NEDC will ask you to consider combining your embies with another batch so the receipient couple has a better chance / better odds of conceiving. If a baby is conceived, then after the baby is born, genetic testing can be done to determine the biological parents if desired.

As PP said, the relationship can be anything you want it to be from anonymous to semi-open to open. You, as the donors, decide on the level of contact you want with the receipient couple. Every clinic / agency is different - some only offer anonymous. Some offer both anonymous and open. It just depends.

There are no costs to you as donors that I am aware of. The receipient couple pays for lawyer (if used) and can pay storage fees and pays for medial testing if needed (blood work for infectious diseases if needed). There is no monetary compensation to you because as someone else mentioned that would be illegal.

Another resource (Christian) is Bethany Christian services - see link: https://www.bethany.org/main/embryo-services

I recently discovered You Tube has videos on this topic, which are really great to watch. Several videos show real couples who have gone through the process and talk about their experience. Some videos provide info on process. Here are a couple links and then there are more links listed on the side bar of the videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg4C7w7iU6M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UNSVu6oqRY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02M-xYv9uQM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEGoXegJKIg

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