The Mock Cycle
Because a fresh egg fresh transfer donor egg IVF cycle requires your cycles be synched and in order to properly time the transfer you must do a mock or practice cycle to properly understand the effects of estrogen on your lining. This ensures that your lining will be thickened and properly developed when the embryos are ready for transfer.
During your mock cycle, you will take either estrogen pills or skin patches for approximately 10 days. Your lining will be checked the day you start your estrogen protocol and after 10 days of estrogen. Your specific protocol will be explained in detail at your baseline appointment (or by phone if you are an out of town recipient).
Synching Cycles
After your mock cycle and understanding how your lining responds to medications, we must sync your cycle to the donor’s cycle. This is the second critical step in getting your lining to the proper stage of development when the embryos are ready to transfer. The birth control pill and various other meds will be used to synchronize your cycle to the donor’s cycle. Your recipient coordinator will be in constant contact with you providing you with step by step instructions on when to start and stop the birth control pill. After your cycles are synced, you will start preparing for your transfer while your donor prepares for their retrieval.
Lining Development
Beginning on day 2,3 or 4 of the cycle, you will begin a series of medications, first estrogen, then progesterone.
If the recipient still has ovarian function and a period, they will be given Lupron, which transiently suppresses their own ovarian function, before starting estrogen and progesterone.
The Donor Retrieval and Fertilization
Simply ensure your sperm is at our office frozen prior to the beginning of your cycle, this can be partner sperm or that of a sperm donor. If possible, it is advantageous to provide a fresh sample on the day of the retrieval to improve fertilization, implantation and live birth rates.
The donor will have their egg retrieval which will subsequently be fertilized and grown in the lab for 3-5 days.
The Embryo Transfer
During the transfer, the embryos are “loaded,” into the tip of a catheter along with a very small amount of transfer medium. The physician, along with a member of the embryology team and a nurse will confirm the client’s identity to ensure the embryos are properly matched. The catheter is then gently passed through the cervical canal and into the uterus using an abdominal ultrasound to provide visual guidance during the transfer. The embryos are slowly expelled near the top of the uterus. After carefully removing the catheter, an embryologist will double-check that the embryos indeed left the catheter using a microscope.
Fertility Treatment
Donor Egg IVF
Donor Egg IVF is an IVF cycle that uses another woman’s eggs (usually a young, healthy, and fertile donor), which are then fertilized and implanted into the recipient’s uterus. Incredibly, using donor eggs gives recipients similar odds of success as the young fertile women who donated the eggs.
Why Use Donor Eggs?
The Top Reasons to Use Donor Eggs for IVF
Repetitive IVF Failures
Unfortunately, sometimes IVF is unsuccessful for no known reasons. In these cases, it is often advised to turn to Donor Eggs after a few tries.
Age & DOR
Given that advanced age and the often associated diminished ovarian reserve that accompanies age are associated with lower odds of IVF success, many choose donor eggs to improve their odds.
Male Couples
Gay men wanting to have a genetically related child will need to have an egg donor accompanied by a gestation carrier or surrogate.
Single Men
For similar reasons as gay men, single men looking to become fathers of genetically related children will need an egg donor coupled with a gestational carrier or surrogate.
Cancer Survivors
Post cancer fertility treatments often require donor eggs unless the woman was able to preserve their fertility prior to undergoing their life-saving cancer treatment.
Genetics
Some are born without ovaries or with non-functioning ovaries. Others have genetically related diseases that are difficult or impossible to screen for making the transfer of the disease likely.
Who Are They?
The Egg Donors
CNY Egg Donors
CNY Fertility offers an extensive donor egg program that offers both frozen eggs and fresh eggs. All donors are young, fertile females who have been screened for the top 20 most highly genetic-related diseases and selected based on guidelines of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Our donors offer recipients a chance of IVF success that would only be seen by fertile women in the same age group as the donors themselves. Our donor packages are the 1/3 the price of the national average starting at $9,453 for 6 eggs inclusive of one embryo transfer.
Family or Friends
Your egg donor can also be a family member or friend willing to undergo a stimulation and egg retrieval procedure. Ideally, this person should still be young, fertile, and otherwise healthy. The benefit of using a family member or friend is exactly what it seems – you are either related to them or know them well. The positive . . . or negative is that you get to keep all of the eggs retrieved by your known donor but we do not guarantee any number. Could be more than 6, could be less.
Can’t find donors you like from our own program. No problem . . . we work with a number of egg banks to make sure you’re using the donor that is right for your family.
How Do You Choose Your Egg Donor?
We make every effort to find a donor that the recipient couple will feel entirely comfortable with and we guide you through this difficult and unique process.
Schedule Your Consultation
Your first step is setting up and having a consultation. After your consultation, your physician will send a note to the donor team to follow up with you and start the process.
Your Donor Coordinator
Through your patient portal you will receive a message from our donor coordinator who will upload our Recipient information packet and a link to an informational video. Once reviewed you will set up a day and time to speak together and discuss the entire process. She’ll be with you every step of the way from here on out.
Narrowing it Down
Time to start selecting your donor from our portal. Typically people go by: skin and eye color, heritage, likes, and dislikes. Send a web correspondence to your coordinator when you see a donor that fits your criteria.
You Decide
Whether you’d like to match with an available donor, use frozen eggs that are ready to go, or wait for a donor who has a waitlist is 100% up to you! Just let your donor coordinator know.
Start your treatment
We’ll guide you ever step of the way.
Pre-Donor Egg IVF Considerations
Testing
The minimum pre-treatment evaluation of the recipient couple includes:
HSG (dye study of the uterus) or hysteroscopy for evaluation of the uterine cavity within 1 year.
Blood tests for the female carrying the pregnancy.
A semen analysis within 1 year.
Sperm
If there is any doubt about the male partner’s ability to be present on the day of the egg retrieval (which can be a few days earlier or later than expected), then a backup specimen of his frozen sperm should be sent to our program well in advance of the scheduled treatment.
Similarly, if donor sperm will be used, the sperm must be at our office prior to the start of the recipient’s cycle.
Finances
Donor Egg IVF Cycles are rarely if ever covered by insurance.
Even though we offer the nation’s most affordable donor egg packages – they are by no means inexpensive and often require a good deal of financial planning.
We’ve got in house payment plans and a donor financial coordinator who will be dedicated in helping every way possible.
The Donor Egg IVF Process
Most donor egg cycles take eggs from a young healthy donor and fertilize them with sperm prior to transferring them back into the recipient’s uterus, however . . . there are a few noteworthy differences that are good to understand.
Fertilization + Development
Because a frozen transfer cycle does not require the donor and recipient cycles to be coordinated the first step is ensuring the sperm is at our office for the fertilization.
If doing a fresh egg retrieval we require the sperm to be at our office prior to the start of your donor cycle.
If doing a frozen egg cycle, the eggs will simply be thawed and then fertilized once we have your sperm and everything else in order.
After fertilization, the embryos will be grown for 3-5 days – preferably until they reach a blastocyst stage.
Embryo Freezing
After appropriately developing, the embryos will be frozen using a flash-freezing vitrification process which ensures the highest quality freeze, thaw survival, implantation, and live birth results.
The embryo freezing process is so advanced in our day and age that there is little to no difference in success rates between fresh and frozen embryos.
Lining Development and Embryo Transfer
Most often, the transfer cycle begins with the onset of one’s menstrual cycle, which will subsequently be followed by a course of medication to help thicken and prepare the lining. If the recipient does not have regular cycles, then they will first take a number of medications to suppress their hormones before beginning the standard medications. While most use medications as they often improve implantation and birth rates, it is not a requirement. Your medication protocol will be discussed at length with your recipient coordinator and provider.
The embryo transfer itself is a simple and quick process. On the day of your transfer, the embryo you plan to transfer will be thawed and prepared for transfer. It will be loaded into the tip of a catheter along with a very small amount of transfer medium. The catheter is then gently passed through the cervical canal and into the uterus using an abdominal ultrasound to provide visual guidance during the transfer, where the embryos are slowly expelled.
Where It Happens. . .
Donor egg retrievals and patient embryo transfers take place at one of our full-service locations. That said, patients come from around the world for our high-quality affordable donor eggs utilizing our friendly travel program that requires patients to be away from home for just a few days.
Donor Egg Recipients - 9:04
When my test showed "PREGNANT" I was over the moon and in complete shock!!! It worked and my dream to become a Mommy is finally coming true :) Thanks to my amazing donor and CNY I am a Mommy now and it feels amazing :)
Single and at 43 years of age I welcomed my little boy into the world. His midnight cries are welcomed with smiles and a content heart for my home is filled with sweet giggles and endless love! He is my biggest blessing.
When all hope was gone we got that positive test. This was the only positive test I had throughout the whole journey. My pregnancy was an easy one and on her due date my water broke and we were off to the hospital. She was born a couple of days later and our lives were forever changed.
At age 41 I found myself single and without having fulfilled my dream of being a mother. I was sad but kept fighting and thankfully found CNY fertility. With their help, I was able to fulfill my dream with donor eggs and sperm.
