donating eggs

[Lucy90]

Hi everyone, I hope you don't mind me posting here!
We have recently found out my DDs godmother can never have her own children, the problem is with her eggs.
She has been told she has a chance if she uses an egg donor.
I've been considering offering her my eggs as I'm still young and fertile.
What do I need to consider before approaching her with this?
Any advice appreciated

Hi
I can't give any advice on the practicalities of it, however I donated eggs last year to a stranger so I know the kinds of things I thought about, the questions the mandatory clinic counsellor asked and the concerns my family had.

I consider my eggs as just cells that I donated to help others create a baby, is this how you would feel? Or would you feel you were giving away a child?

Have you got any children of your own? I wouldn't have donated before having children as I knew that if I had trouble conceiving I might have resented my previous donation (selfish I know!)

I could not have donated to anybody that I knew. Have you thought through the implications of this? I assume that you have a good relationship with your godmother as you considering donating to her, so is it likely that you would have contact with the child? How would this make you feel? Would you be constantly aware that the child was biologically yours? Would you be looking for comparisons between you? Would your godmother?

Clinics advise you to be open with donor children about conception. Would you be happy to be open about this with the child and other mutual family and friends?

What if the child had health problems? Would you feel compelled to help if you could? (Long shot I know but my mum is worried that in 18 years I will get a knock on the door from donor child asking for a kidney!)

How do you think your godmother would feel/act? If you decided to donate to her would she agree but then have implications/regrets later?

Good luck! It's a huge decision to make, I would love to be updated on what you decide x

It's a wonderful gift of a thing to consider doing for your friend.

My DS was born via donor egg IVF. I will never know our donor (anonymously done abroad) but she is revered in our family and DS knows that a kind lady gave me an egg so that I could have him - as he grows so will the details in the story.

The advice above is very good. DS is utterly, utterly, mine. I regret that he won't have the option of making contact with his donor when he's older, and I wish I could write to her and tell her how amazing DS is, but if she was someone we saw regularly I think I'd feel the need to seek her approval for my parenting decisions, and we'd have to be certain of not giving him confusing messages.

It's a terribly fraught time and it's important that you and your friend can really talk through how you'd manage if she had a child born with your egg. Once you've got over the love and grief and closeness and horror and all the other emotions that infertility brings, how would you and she feel about all the mundane little things that come up in families.

A dear friend offered me an egg donation, when I was at the point that your friend is. Despite my love and gratitude for her, I felt that a child born from that arrangement wouldn't feel truly mine (to me) and I knew her fierce protection for her own children would extend to this child too, so we didn't go ahead. My sister offered me the same thing and then withdrew because she and her husband couldn't have coped with it.

Another option that most UK clinics offer is that you donate to one of their patients, and your friend receives a donation from one of their donors. That way you've helped her by donating, but you can avoid the complications of a child that's genetically yours being her child (if you want to).

You're a wonderful friend to think of doing this.

It is a lovely thing to offer. Like the first poster I have been an anonymous egg donor and in some ways that did simplify things for me. I am open to being contacted by any children born as a result of my donations (I know there is one boy at least) but I

If she did agree, in practical terms in order to donate your eggs to your friend, you would probably need to both do a synchronised IVF cycle - this would involve about a month of hormone treatments and many self-administered injections, firstly for you to 'downregulate' (which is to induce a temporary menopause) and then you would over-stimulate your ovaries to produce more than the normal number of eggs per cycle (the ideal is between 10-20, though I never managed that much!). Some women find this a very difficult and demanding time, emotionally and physically, so that's something to think about.

I forgot to finish the first paragraph! I was going to say that for me I'm not sure how I would have felt about seeing the child or children grow up and I think that might have muddied the waters emotionally - but equally it's not insurmountable and many women do donate to people they know.