During the egg donation process, do they tak all of your eggs or just some? Will I be able to have children myself after?

An egg retrieval procedure does not remove all of your eggs. In fact, when the ovaries are stimulated in a given treatment cycle, the only eggs that respond to the stimulation medications are those that would have ovulated or would have been lost in the cycle without stimulation.

In a given cycle, there may be 50 or 100 antral follicles (immature eggs) that respond to the pituitary hormones that make follicles/eggs grow and mature. In a natural cycle, in most cases, only one egg matures and the others wither and die. In a stimulation cycle, we're able to make more than one egg mature so that we'll have better odds to produce several good quality embryos.

And again, the eggs that respond in that given cycle are not eggs that would have ovulated in a future cycle. All the eggs in the ovaries are "pre-programmed" in a sense with regard to their ability to respond to the pituitary hormones from one cycle to the next.

I hope that cleared things up for you a bit.

Published on Jul 11, 2012

Each month your ovaries naturally bring up a whole group of eggs to compete against each other so that the best egg wins (and is released). The other eggs stop growing and are no longer usable. In a donor egg cycle, we use hormones to rescue the eggs from the group that otherwise would have been lost, so we are not using up your eggs any faster than normal. Most egg donors have normal fertility after their donation cycles.

Published on Jul 11, 2012

Not all of your eggs are retrieved. You should be able to have children after donating.

Published on Jul 11, 2012

During egg donation, drugs are used to stimulate a group of eggs. These are the eggs that are beginning to mature that month. All of them but one will normally be lost and you will ovulate one egg. The goal of the donation treatment is to harvest a dozen or more. This is accomplished though the powerful stimulating hormones by injection for about 10 days.

You do not lose fertility for the future. The procedure, a needle in the ovary, does not cause injury to the ovary and fertility thereafter is normal. However, there is a risk, considerably under 1%, that there could be bleeding or infection, which could cause damage to an ovary.

Published on Jul 11, 2012

At the egg retrieval, we will retrieve as many eggs as we can. This procedure should not affect your ability to have children in the future. You should sit down with a physician to discuss this further.

Published on Jul 11, 2012

During the egg donation process you do not donate "all of your eggs." You will still have plenty of eggs remaining to serve you throughout your reproductive years. Usually the amount of eggs retrieved from an egg donor is about 20-40 depending on how many follicles (or egg sacs) their ovaries produce that month.

Published on Jul 11, 2012

If you are doing egg donation, you have to go through an agency to be selected as an egg donor. (Compassionate Beginnings)
We remove all that eggs that are possible during the cycle. You should be able to have children later on but there are always potential risks.

Published on Jul 11, 2012