What medical procedures are involved with egg donation?
Egg donation requires stimulating the ovaries with hormones to bring a number of eggs to maturity, then retrieving the eggs through a minor surgical procedure.
In order to be an egg donor, you will need to make a number of trips to a fertility clinic. First, you will need to be screened to make sure you qualify. For your screening, you will meet with a social worker or psychologist, a geneticist, and a doctor. You will have a gynecological exam and blood tests to check for genetic and infectious diseases. Additionally, on the third day of your period, you will probably be asked to have a blood test at a local lab to check your hormone levels (a “day 3” test). If you are on hormone-type birth control, such as the pill or Nuvaring, you will have to go off it temporarily in order to take this test. It takes about four weeks to get these screening results back. Most egg donors pass their screenings. If you don’t pass your screening, the clinic will tell you the reason.
The clinic will then set a schedule for the egg donation (or the “cycle”) and you will go on birth control pills or a drug called Lupron that will temporarily stop ovulation. This gets your cycle synchronized with the recipient’s. Then you will begin your daily injection of hormones which lasts about eight to twelve days. You do the injections yourself. The nurses teach you how; it is easy and does not hurt. Then every other day or so you will have to stop by the clinic, usually first thing in the morning, to test your blood and (sometimes) have a sonogram. These monitoring visits usually take no more than a half hour or so, but they are important to see how you are responding to the drugs. Once the doctor sees enough mature eggs the retrieval will be scheduled.
During the retrieval, the eggs (from about eight to twenty) will be aspirated through a needle through the vagina. It usually takes about a half hour, and you are given light anesthesia. You need to take a full day off from school or work the day of your retrieval. The screening will require a few hours off, while the monitoring can usually be worked into your everyday routine.
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