How to choose a clinic for donor eggs

Hello, I have had a number of failed ivf cycles and have been looking into using donor eggs. I wondered if you could suggest how you picked your clinic to embark on donor eggs. I looked in Create in the UK and they are in collaboration with a clinic in Spain to get fresh eggs to create embryos (opposed to using frozen eggs). Is there a difference in outcomes regarding fresh/frozen eggs? Also any advice and tips moving forwards in this journey would be much appreciated. I feel quite overwhelmed and scared about this next step. Thank you

Show your support

Hi, I don’t have a great answer because I am still in the process and don’t have a success story yet (am planned for my first FET in april). But I can share my experience so far with the donor egg process. 1, I signed up at a few different donor companies to compare their profiles, their service coordination, and prices. 2, I was pleasantly surprised at the variety of donors and was able to narrow down at least a few that I felt shared resemblance to me and also had positive attributes. I was very scared that I would never find anyone who looks like me. 3, we initially chose a fresh donor as I was hoping that fertilizing fresh eggs would give us the best chance of more embryos. We waited 2 months for the fresh donor’s cycle to start, and she literally backed out the week she was supposed to start baseline scans. I was upset but quickly pivoted to a frozen donor because didn’t want to go through taking the chance of another fresh backing out. Frozen donor already had eggs available.

We chose a plan of 2 embryo guarantee , and we ended up with 4 top grade embryos. So, there are pro’s and con’s to both. I think pros of a fresh donor are that fertilizing fresh eggs may yield more embryos. However your chosen donor could do a fresh cycle and only end up with a couple eggs, and you are stuck with what you have (unless there is a guarantee plan). The benefits of frozen donors are that they already cycled so there’s no worry of them backing out and also no worry of how they will respond to medications. The eggs are available right away. Once we chose our frozen donor, it was super quick. We signed consents and made payment that week, sperm was shipped the next week, embryos were created the following week, and shipped back to us the next week. So this was all within a 1 month span pretty much. I think it’s really all a matter of personal preference! I don’t think there is a right or wrong. But wanted to share my experience since this is a lonely road!

Hi @Makayla thank you for your message and for taking the time to respond. It’s definately not something I had thought of that the donor might back out (which is understandable). In your research did anything come up in terms of a frozen egg quality? I suppose some of the eggs may not survive thawing?