Which clinic for donor egg IVF?

[wishIwasonholiday10]

We have two clinics nearby which we could use for donor IVF. Which ones would you go for?

Clinic A
15 min drive
Partnership with Ovobank (Argentina based one) for frozen eggs. Donors seem to be younger (mostly 18-28).
Cost for IVF with 6 frozen eggs £7000.
Clinic offers a basic service but we have our first daughter sucessfully with them with my own eggs.

Clinic B
40 min drive
Donors UK based (from their egg-sharing programme or altruistic donors). Donors up to age 35 with AMH over 22.
Cost of IVF with 6-8 frozen eggs £9500 or £12500 for fresh eggs.
Clinic seems nicer.

We are considering Clinic A mostly due to cost and convenience but is there any reason you would consider Clinic B instead? If we mare matched based on physical characteristics does it make much difference if donors are UK based or not? I wonder if the egg-sharing programme means that some donors have their own fertility problems that could lower the chance of sucess.

If you already have positive experiences with Clinic A, then I would stick with them. It's cheaper and closer to home too (though B is not that far either).

You are not going to spend much time in the clinic, so whether Clinic B is nicer or not is not going to make much difference.

I think I would go with B only if their success rate was better than A and if the ethnicity of the donor was important to me.

Whatever you decide, wishing you all the best 🍀

I would look into the implications of using UK donors versus other countries in terms of donor ID release which may be important to you or your potential DC on the future. Donor Conception Network is a good place to start looking.

I would not automatically assume that egg sharing means fertility issues - it could be a couple with male factor issues, or a same sex couple for example.

Whek you have weighed up what is important to you then you can make an informed decision - you might consider an implications counselling session.

For me a difference in travel time or a few thousand pounds difference wouldn’t be the deciding factors (having spent tens of thousand on IVF, not being flippant about the costs though you may want to lol ahead at embryo storage and future FET costs for an overall picture).
Success rates might be important to you.
Trust in the clinic is important if things don’t go to plan you want to feel that they did all they could have done.

I have been an egg share recipient twice, and both times the donor was in a same-sex relationship rather than having fertility issues as such.

Hi @wishIwasonholiday10. Just wondering what you decided as we may also be using donor eggs and our clinic also uses Ovobank as the frozen DE option, perhaps it’s the same clinic! Would be very interested to hear of your experience so far if this is an option you have progressed with. Thanks

Thanks all for the comments!

At the moment we are considering clinic A and are booked in for a consultation. We will make the final decision after that.

The success rate of clinic B is 45-55% for donor eggs but we can’t compare with clinic A as their donor program is new.

@wishIwasonholiday10 very best of luck, and thanks for the response. If you are London based then I reckon it’s the same clinic we are at - clinic A. We will know next week if we are attempting one last round with own eggs and if not we will be pivoting immediately to the frozen donor option. It’s a risk as, like you said, this option is new at the clinic but I know people using fresh donors and you still have all that stress of waiting to see how stims and collection goes so, having been through that many (many!) times now we kind of like the idea of the eggs already being available and mature, and apparently the defrost rate now is super high. We’ve done quite a number of rounds at our clinic and have great confidence in their embryologists, so we’ll see. I’ve been going through the ovobank website in advance adding favourites based on limited info, but I imagine if you are definitely going with that option you can get more info, and they can also do facial matching for you, which is quite cool!

Best of luck, keep in touch if you can x

Just wondering if you guys had any luck with the donor eggs? I'm also attending clinic A and they have offered donor info for Ovobank and Aphrodite. Just wondering if you had any luck with either?

Hi - sending you a private message