Egg donation? Is it likely to work for polycystic ovaries?

[estobi1]

A friend of mine is trying for a baby with no joy at the moment. She has polycystic ovaries and has one child and really wants another. I have been very lucky to have two children and would love to help her. I don't know very much about egg donation but wondered would that be likely to help her? Would it be a painful procedure for me that would need me to take much time out? I can cope with some pain but dont want to impact my own family too much. I want to know what it would really involve because I would not want to make an offer unless I really knew what was involved and had properly thought it through. Can anyone offer this information? Thanks

Have a look at the fertility friends website, where there is a forum re egg donation. I was a donor for my sister... and wrote a diary under the name of cluck cluck (all one word). You could do a search, and it gives details of everything involved. In short it was easy (only complication for us was that we lived on opposite sides of the world), relatively side-effect free and successful. I have a wonderful niece as a result and I'd do it again without a shadow of doubt. (Alto' can't now, as too old!)

It sounds like you're trying to be really supportive, which is lovely. Egg donation is a pretty big undertaking - you have to do all the hormonal injections that regular IVF involves and then have to have the eggs harvested.

TBH I'm not sure egg donation would help if her only fertility issue is PCOS. Her issue isn't that she doesn't have "good" eggs, rather that hormonal problems interfere with her ability to ovulate naturally. Egg donation is appropriate where her eggs aren't good quality (eg because of premature ovarian failure/early menopause). Presumably she'd be advised to go down the clomid/IUI route before IVF, to stimulate ovulation. In fact, as I understand it, should she decide to have IVF, her PCOS makes her more likely to produce more eggs than normal.