Recipient Egg Donor Programme
We manage and support responsible and committed Egg Donors from all ethnic backgrounds; we provide these special people to you – our Recipients – with empathy and an understanding of your special circumstances. We work with professional, busy Fertility Clinics who are at the top of their field.
Your first step, then, is to register as an interested person. Let’s start, shall we?
1. HOW TO REGISTER AS A RECIPIENT
The link above, and throughout the site, provides your email address with a username and a password. As usual, you can verify your details on the verification link you receive immediately and you are away, with clear direction to our secure database! Please check your spambox as well.
We’ve taken care to include only the most committed and best-suited Egg Donors on our database. These women are aware of the important role that they play in the shared goal of your pregnancy and we base our service around professional and focused handling of these special people.
Our secure database is comprehensive enough to give you all the sureties you prefer when you choose somebody to partner you.
Registered ababySA Egg Donors are anonymous, by law. You can view their profile; you will not know who they are in reality, but will see a lot about what makes them tick, their physical appearance as a child (with current information about their look de jour), as well as relevant details from their questionnaire that may make the difference in your final selection.
We are a completely anonymous egg donor agency! Confidential or identifying information will not be shared with anyone, ever.
We are also available on info@ababysa.com to assist you if you are looking for specific characteristics or more advice. Have a browse first, though, as we’re confident that you will find plenty of interesting Egg Donors! Egg donors are added to our database daily, so visit over a few days.
2. CHOOSING AN EGG DONOR
After browsing our short summaries, you will find profiles that interest you. These may be expanded to get more information; you’ll find a “Choose this Egg Donor” button at the top of every profile. Follow the online prompts to set the process in motion.
Your donation cycle must start within three months of your Egg Donor being chosen and committed. We will do the back office work to make sure that all the administration is complete, so you can concentrate on looking forward to falling pregnant!
Importantly, you may not be quite ready to commit to another IVF, but you may find a suitable Egg Donor now.
We don’t book donors too far in advance, as we can’t predict what may be happening in our Egg Donors’ life at any given moment (which may disrupt your planning as a Recipient) and – also – because we then remove her as a choice for other couples who may want to use her to partner them, now.
There’s much we can do, though: if you are sure that you really want her in the future, let us chat to her about donating again – immediately – for you once she completes her cycle with another Recipient couple, or let us keep her in touch as you reach your final decision.
Talk to us and we’ll work with her to schedule as suits you best (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).
3. WHAT YOUR EGG DONOR DOES
Once an Egg Donor is matched, or chosen, we remove her profile from our website. After she has completed a successful donation and had 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.
Your Egg Donor has a medical examination and a psychological assessment at your Fertility Clinic to make sure that your Egg Donor is (mentally and physically) ready to donate. Your Clinic will close a contract with you to protect your equal rights.
You’ll then liaise directly with your chosen Doctor and IVF co-ordinator to discuss your and the Egg Donors’ treatment plans and to co-ordinate and plan a timeline for the donation and embryo transfer. Then, once timing is agreed, your Egg Donor is started on a low dose birth control pill, so that her menstrual cycle can be synchronized with yours. This usually takes four to six weeks, marked by the first day of your next menstrual cycle.
She’ll take a two-week course of fertility medication, to stimulate her ovaries to produce eggs on time. Your Egg Donor will do regular Clinic visits, so the Doctor can keep a close eye on her progress, and set medication to optimum levels to help produce eggs.
Eggs grow at their own pace, and Clinics use slightly different methods, but the last two weeks of the Egg Donation Cycle, for your Egg Donor, typically mean a daily injection, three ultrasounds to see how the egg follicles are developing and careful checks to make sure that Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome (OHSS) stays away.
When all is satisfactory, at the end of this two-week Egg Donation Cycle, you’ll set a date for the actual Retrieval and your Egg Donor will take final medication, exactly thirty-six hours before the procedure. (This injection starts the last stage of maturation, to time the Egg Retrieval perfectly, and goes hand in hand with your shared commitment to the Retrieval Date.
The Retrieval happens using a suction needle, the eggs are released and collected and taken straight to the lab to be fertilised. Here, an Embryologist examines them and puts them in a special fluid that protects and prepares them for sperm, which is added after two or three hours (outside the body: in-vitro). By the next day, the eggs are fertilised and are now called embryos. After three to five days, embryos are transferred to you!
Nature will then decide if the embryo transplants successfully and you fall pregnant. You’ll have to wait for about two weeks to find out, with a blood test, if you are pregnant.
4. DOES IVF WITH EGG DONATION WORK?
It’s not always a successful procedure. Although success rates are high when compared with the process you have gone through to get to this point, it is always possible that you won’t have a successful pregnancy after trying Egg Donation. But:
- 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.
Have a look at our Frequently Asked Questions for Recipients. There’s a lot of information there that you should find interesting.