Donor eggs and sperm can help you have the family you want

There are times when infertile couples who truly desire to become parents may need to consider additional alternatives. Some of those options may be donor eggs, donor sperm, or even donor embryos. We work closely with many qualified donor centers and are happy to offer you information to help you with your decision.

For many couples, especially those where the woman is over 39,  the man is not able to produce viable sperm, or there is unexplained infertility, these forms of ART can be successful. Once you choose your donor, the ART process follows a similar pattern, except the sperm that come from a donor are cryopreserved and delivered to our laboratory. These sperm have undergone a six-month quarantine to assure the sperm donor has no communicable diseases at the time of cryopreservation. Currently, egg donation occurs in a fresh cycle. The egg donors must be shown to be free of infectious diseases during the cycle of egg retrieval to be utilized as a source of donor eggs.

The eggs and/or sperm will be fertilized in our embryology lab where they will be carefully monitored for fertilization and development. At a specified time in incubation, the quality of the fertilized eggs is evaluated and appropriate embryos are then transferred to the uterus.

Embryo donation occurs when a couple requests available embryos from an embryo donation agency or organization. Such embryos are unused by the couple that produced them, and they are made available for adoption and transfer to the wife’s uterus in a cryotransfer cycle.

Giving hope

You know the angst and challenges of infertility. And you know the joy that donated eggs, sperm, or embryos can bring to couples in need. If you cryopreserve your eggs, sperm, or embryos and you choose not to use this frozen material, you may consider making your frozen gametes or embryos available to a couple in need. This is a serious decision and one you will want to thoroughly weigh together before deciding the disposition of your cryopreserved samples.