What is involved in the egg donation process?
Additional materials will be provided to the donor candidate to explain the process that would be used to stimulate her ovaries to produce multiple eggs. Certain monitoring procedures, including ultrasounds and hormone blood levels, will be necessary to follow the donor’s progress. At the appropriate time, the eggs will be removed from the donor under ultrasound guidance using a slender needle placed through the vagina, while the donor is under controlled intravenous sedation. This process is safe and relatively painless and is performed with great care in the SRMS facility. Typically, the donor is able to return to work the day following the egg retrieval. Sperm from the egg recipient’s husband will then be used to fertilize the retrieved eggs in the laboratory through in vitro fertilization (IVF), and the resulting embryos will be incubated for a number of days. A small number of embryos then will be placed into the recipient’s uterus with the remainder frozen in liquid nitrogen for
