The egg donation process has many moving parts, from assembling your fertility team to choosing a donor, coordinating your donor egg cycle, and beyond. Many factors can impact the timing of your egg donor cycle, but it can often be a matter of months to complete your egg donation journey.
Just how long does the egg donor process take? Here’s a breakdown of what you can expect from start to finish.
Months 1-2 – Finding your egg donor
Once you’ve started the search for your egg donor using the Tulip database, you’ll likely be able to find a donor within a month. However, this depends on just how flexible you are with your criteria. Remember that the best egg donors are the women who are available to donate, who have good fertility health and who can travel to your clinic.
While Tulip has the largest egg donor database in the world, not all the donors will be available to donate or willing to travel to your clinic. You’ll need to talk with the agencies directly to confirm if the donor is available. Check out these tips on talking to agencies and choosing your egg donor. When you’ve identified a donor that you like, ask the agency if they have any previous cycle records that can be shared with your clinic. At this point, you might want to let your clinic know that you’ve found a donor and have them review her profile. She may not have had any testing done, but your clinic can assess whether she meets their basic requirements.
Months 2-3 – Egg Donor Screening
Once you’ve chosen an egg donor, you’ll sign an agreement with the agency and pay the agency fees according to the agency’s fee schedule. A match sheet will be sent to your clinic and the agency and your clinic will coordinate a day for your donor to come to the clniic to have her initial screening tests done. She’ll have genetic testing, a psychological evaluation, fertility testing including ultrasound and hormone tests. Once the screening is done, and she has been formally approved, a calendar will be established in order to have her start injectable medications in anticipation of having her egg retrieval.
Legal contracts must be signed before the donor starts her injections. While this is fairly straightforward, it’s important that you have a call with your specialist reproductive law attorney to go over the contract and discuss any issues you may have. The donor will also have an attorney appointed so that she can discuss any legal issues she may be concerned about.
Month 3-4 – Retrieval and Fertilization
Once your egg donor contracts are signed, the donor will start taking her medications, then travel to your clinic for her egg retrieval. She’ll usually stay near your clinic for around 7-10 days and will be monitored to ensure that her eggs are developing and she’s reacting well to the medications.
Finally, the egg retrieval will be scheduled. Your egg donor will likely stay near your clinic for a day or two after retrieval to make sure she is healthy. The eggs will be fertilized and then the resulting embryos will be allowed to grow for about five days until they reach the blastocyst phase.
Please note, the above timeline is a guideline only. Sometimes things don’t go according to plan, but your egg donor agency will keep track of what’s happening and coordinate with your fertility clinic. We hope your egg donation journey goes as smoothly as possible, and our team is here to help you through the donor selection process.
If you are considering egg donation and don’t know where to find your donor – sign up for Tulip today.
