Some women are unable to conceive for a variety of reasons including their age, genetic diseases that run in their family, surgical removal of their ovaries, or the inability to develop eggs. Many couples facing these challenges have chosen to start families through the use of donor eggs. Using donor eggs to help couples have children has been highly successful and performed in some IVF programs in the United States for over 18 years. The donation process involves a recipient couple to be matched with an anonymous donor who will go through ovulation induction procedures to produce multiple eggs. The eggs are retrieved and fertilized with the recipient's partner's sperm with the resulting embryos transferred to the recipient.

At Virginia IVF & Andrology Center, our goal is to help infertile couples achieve their dream of having children. With our anonymous egg donor program, our aim is to achieve that goal for couples with impaired ovarian function. Our Virginia IVF & Andrology Center staff recruits, screens, and matches the egg donors in our anonymous egg donor program following the rigorous egg donation recruitment and matching standards set forth by the American Society of Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). We will work closely with you and one of our Reproductive Endocrinologists to find a perfect "match."

Potential donors between 18 and 32 years of age undergo extensive psychological, genetic and medical screening. After passing the screening process, the anonymous donors are added to a database, which details their physical characteristics and ancestry for potential recipients to review.

Once an anonymous egg donor has been selected, she will then begin her egg donor cycle. She will be given fertility medications over the course of 7-10 days to stimulate production of multiple eggs. The recipient of the fertilized eggs and her partner will also need to be tested for infectious diseases to ensure there are no potential problems. The recipient will take hormones to prepare her uterus to receive the embryos and support a pregnancy.

On the day of "retrieval" the anonymous egg donor will come to Virginia IVF & Andrology Center to have her eggs aspirated. On that same day, the recipient's partner will provide a semen specimen and his sperm will be used to fertilize the eggs. Three to five days later, the recipient will come to Virginia IVF & Andrology Center and some of the embryos will be transferred non-surgically to her uterus in an attempt to establish pregnancy. Any child resulting from the process would be genetically related to the recipient's partner, but not the recipient.

If you are interested in exploring the possibility of using an egg donor, please read Egg Donor Recipient for details.

If you are interested in becoming an egg donor, please read Becoming an Egg Donor for details.