It’s common practice to freeze some extra eggs recovered from an Egg Donor (assuming that they meet set medical standards), for your future use if necessary. Although use extensively, it’s still early days and successful pregnancy rates are still much lower than when you use donated eggs immediately as they are recovered.

ICSI is usually used to fertilize frozen eggs after thawing.

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Our Egg Donors may decide to donate again. In South Africa, the medics suggest a maximum of six donations, or five pregnancies, whichever comes first. Clinics may differ slightly in this, but will be able to justify their policy to you.

Once an Egg Donor is matched, or chosen, we remove her profile from our website. After at least one normal cycle and period, she may choose to donate again – so they have at least three months break between donations, and the decision to continue is theirs and theirs alone. As long as you are reasonably clear about what you are looking for, we should have a good few choices for you.

Apart from basic information such as age, weight and location, our Egg Donors also tell us about their personality and motivation for donating, their education, their medical and family medical history (up to two generations) and we disclose childhood and baby photos to you. There’s plenty of information for you to consider!

We obviously rely on the Egg Donor to be honest. We do communicate with her and will verify selected information, but – believe us – there’s no real financial gain in donating, so no motive to lie on her profile. She’s going to jab herself with needles, risk mood swings and bloating and be involved in an anonymous medical procedure that takes time out of her normal lifestyle.

It’s in all our interests to make sure that you choose the right Egg Donor in every sense of the word. There are enough checks and balances in the system to pick up problem Egg Donors well in advance of them qualifying to join our database! 

Frozen eggs, thawed later, may lose up to 50% of their fresh potential. You can imagine how difficult it is to perfectly preserve anything in this way! So, fresh is always better than frozen (although recent studies suggest that new techniques may improve this record significantly).

Anyway, the Fertility Clinics do have very strict criteria for choosing eggs that may be frozen – and they will only implant embryos that have been grown successfully in the laboratory for two days. Even then, the likelihood of a successful pregnancy is still lower than that of a fresh cycle.

Retrieved eggs are surrounded by cumulous cells, that mask the true nature of the egg until they are removed by the sperm, about 19 hours after insemination. Then, the embryos have to develop due to a specific timeline (four-cell stage on day 2 and an eight-cell stage on day 3). When this process has taken place, your specialist is able to comment with some confidence on whether the particular embryo is a “good” one.

Interestingly, embryos that develop faster, or slower than this timeline, are generally, but not always, of lesser quality.

We wish we could confidently answer this question. There’s a good summary of the debate here, but – in short – we wonder if your child’s innate (genetic) blueprint (nature), or her environmental experiences (nurture) will play a stronger role in defining the person she or he will ultimately grow to be. Our Egg Donor profiles are detailed precisely because we think that you should have enough information to choose natural features that match yours, but – as we’ve said – there’s no doubt that the family environment is critical to your child’s development. This is your baby. You are the mother.

60-70% of the time it does work, first time. As in, “you are finally pregnant!” 

It’s a real prospect if you have been struggling with infertility. If not, as the Clinics usually recover more eggs than you actually need for your IVF, you could try a Frozen Egg Transfer (FET), or you could try the routine again. After three cycles using donated eggs, the success rates reach into the 90%s.

Obviously there are many factors involved in bringing your successful pregnancy to term. Your specialists are qualified to discuss this with you in detail and we encourage you to ask for as much information as you can.

We care about one thing only – professional services to the special groups with whom we work: Egg Donors, Recipients and Clinics. We have plenty of experience in managing the process of Egg Donation and – at the end of the day – it’s all about a successful pregnancy. It’s about you, not us.

We want, manage and support committed, high-quality Donors; we provide these special people to you, our Recipients with empathy and an understanding of your special circumstances and we support busy Fertility Clinics with properly-screened, responsible and committed people.