How follicle stimulation works in an egg donor

In some women infertility is directly related to poor egg quality. In this case the woman is advised to use donor eggs to increase the chances of a successful conception and reduce the chance of mutation or miscarriage. This gives women a unique chance to experience the joy of pregnancy and having a baby. It also makes it possible to have a baby that will be genetically related to at least one partner.

Egg donors are young healthy women who voluntarily provide their eggs for a fee to treat women with infertility. In one menstrual cycle, however, a woman only matures one egg. For both infertility treatment and egg donation this number is insufficient. It is for this reason that egg donors as well as women undergoing fertility treatment receive ovarian stimulation.

If you are interested in cost of gestational surrogacy, we advise you best surrogacy agency – Delivering Dreams.

Before donor eggs can be retrieved, a rather lengthy preparatory phase is required. It is not enough that there are just a lot of eggs: they must be of a high enough quality to conceive successfully. This is why the egg donor is prescribed ovarian stimulation, which takes place under the watchful eye of a doctor. At this stage, the doctor’s job is to induce a higher number of eggs to mature than in a normal cycle. To do this, the doctor prescribes special medication that will alter the donor’s hormonal balance during the stimulation period.

When the eggs are fully mature they are removed from the donor’s body with the help of a special thin needle. The procedure is minimally invasive, i.e. it is carried out under local anaesthetic and is not life or health threatening. The whole procedure takes an average of 15 minutes, after which the donor can safely go home.

Immediately before the puncture, the donor should abstain from food and water that very day and not drink anything after midnight of the previous day, and preferably abstain from food on the evening of the previous day. But immediately after the egg retrieval the woman can eat and drink if she feels like it.

After egg retrieval, the donor may experience some discomfort in the pelvic area, directly where the procedure was carried out. However, this discomfort passes quickly and the contacts of the doctor who carried out the procedure should always remain with the donor in case the discomfort becomes too serious or there are rare cases of serious consequences of the puncture.

Remember that if you feel any discomfort after the puncture, you should see a doctor immediately rather than waiting for it to go away on its own. Although the procedure is safe, the body’s reaction is strictly individual and feeling unwell may be the first sign of serious problems. You should see a doctor straight away if you:

• you feel a significant increase in temperature;
• you have bloody discharge from your pelvic organs;
• you have been experiencing pelvic pain for a long time;
• you have difficulty urinating;
• Unrelated nausea, vomiting or diarrhoea;
• back pain;
• abdominal bloating.

Remember that any of these symptoms could be a serious signal to your body. This is why it is so important to only go to specialised clinics, where you can also contact your doctor after the procedure if you feel unwell for any reason.