I hope you are doing well. It's been a while since I've posted, but I needed some time to grieve the loss of my last cycle and my own eggs. Following four failed IVF cycles using my own eggs, my partner and I have decided to pursue the egg donor route.
I have a few questions and would be grateful for any advice or experiences you may be willing to share:
1. We are considering clinics in the UK for egg donation. Does anyone have any recommendations? Also, do they guarantee 2 blastocysts?
2. We were with CRGH for our last IVF cycle, and we are considering staying with them for the donor eggs. However, they only guarantee a minimum of six eggs and not blastocysts. They have a shared donor program, where if less than 12 eggs are collected, they all go to the primary recipient. If more than 12 eggs are collected, they are equally shared between the primary and secondary recipients. Has anyone been with CRGH and would you be willing to share your experience?
3. Alternatively, has anyone been with IVI Clinic in London?
4. How long does the process of finding a donor typically take? What criteria did you prioritize when choosing a donor?
5. Have you used fresh or frozen donor eggs?
6. We are interested in the biometric scan that some clinics now offer. Has anyone used it, and how does it work?
7. Have you faced any unexpected challenges during the process?
I would appreciate hearing your stories and any other advice or information you may have to share.
Thank you, and I wish you all the best on your journey. xxx
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ourbundleofjoy
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I used the London Egg bank and Londons Womans clinic. Very straight forward, no waiting list but I did find they were more expensive with no gurentees.
We bought 6 eggs, recieved 8 as there would have only been two left after what we bought so we got them for free. we got 3 blastocysts and were successful on out first transfer.
Hope you find the right clinic for you and wish you all the luck xx
Hi LouCollier, thank you for your reply and such great news that it worked out for you the first time! I hope we will get lucky too. I will check your suggestions too, thank you.
I too used London Egg Bank and LWC. As has already been said they do seem more expensive and no guarantee of blastocysts. I purchased 10 eggs, 9 survived the thaw, 7 fertilised and I got 2 blastocysts (1 top quality 5AA and 1 3BC)…I’m currently 18 weeks pregnant from the 5AA and this was my first try with donor eggs (frozen….I’m not sure LEB do fresh)
There was no waiting list and a lot of choice of donors. I was able to short list some and then send photos of me for the egg bank to see if they were a good match features wise and they were happy to answer any questions I had. A very positive experience.
I personally chose the short list of donors from their personal profiles rather than whether they had same egg colour, hair colour etc.
I hope this helps. Wishing you lots of luck with your journey xxx
Thank you Happy2022 🤍 I am so happy for you, congratulations! Thank you for sharing your experience with LEB. I find it interesting that you focused on personal profiles, I quite like that. Thank you for pointing that out. I hope you don’t mind but I have sent you a DM. xxx
I am currently using the LWC and London Egg Bank. Like Happy2022 we concentrated more on the personal profiles of the donors, shortlisted to about 5, then sent in photos of me at various times of my life for the egg bank to do a comparison. They then sent us back a list of likely matches ,good or excellent.
There was no waiting list and they were very helpful.
we bought 6 eggs but got 9 as there were only 3 left.
After a few set backs with polyps, we are hoping to start our cycle on Monday.
I hope this helps and happy to answer any questions.
For more information take a look at hfea.gov.uk Using donated eggs ,sperm or embryos in treatment Also Donor Conception Network dcnetwork.org They offer help and support to donor conception families and prospective families
Thank you Janet, HFEA is the first place I look, so much useful information there. And thank you for the advice regarding Donor Conception Network dcnetwork.org
Hi MrsBless, as mentioned above we decided to stay in the UK, currently, we are looking at two clinics but will look up others if recommended. I am happy to share my findings if I find something useful. Thank you, I wish you all the best too. I really wish that anyone who longs for a baby would get one (at least one) xx
we also went with leb. Basically because of efficiency - we went from making the decision to go ahead with DE to embryo transfer in less than 2 months. In an ideal world, I think fresh eggs are better, but I was already 41 and didn’t want to delay the process by looking for a fresh donor. I also liked that with frozen eggs you know exactly how many eggs you would get, instead of the unknown of a fresh round. It was also good to be able to see lots of different profiles via their online portal: it’s definitely worth registering with them online just to see the type of information available on donors, whether there are profiles that meet any criteria / wish list you have etc. our criteria evolved over time: initially we thought physical criteria were more important, but over time we became more focused on personality and what the donor had written to us/any donor conceived children. The leb do tell you if donors would look in/out of place in your family and how good a match they are facially, but I’m not sure if that’s based on biometrics.
we went for 10 frozen eggs because we thought there would be less risk of needing to go through the process again: we ended up with 12, all survived the thaw, only 6 fertilised, but we ended up with 4 good quality embryos. I’m 23 wks with one of them now. But I know someone who also went to leb for 10 eggs and wound up with 2 eggs of very average quality. The first transfer was unsuccessful and when she raised her concerns with the clinic, they basically told her to go somewhere else for her second transfer if she wasn’t happy with LWC.
So in terms of outcome, so far we have had a very good experience (fingers crossed that continues to be the case!), but the process at LWC felt very much like a business, with more focus on revenues rather than the patient. I would be more a lot more cautious going there if you had any other issues (eg endometriosis or similar) because their approach felt very one size fits all. There are very limited alternatives to frozen donor eggs in the uk though and, eg, care makes you pay £500 just to look at their de register and I believe only lets you look at one detailed profile at a time (effectively a reservation system that makes it harder to compare profiles). So I think there are pros and cons to all clinics!
I also think it’s shameful that the hfea restricts the amount that a donor can receive to £750, but leb are able to charge you an additional £2.5k for 10 rather than 6 eggs, even though that’s likely the same ivf cycle of the donor, so pure profit for the clinic. But that’s another conversation :o)
Wishing you lots of luck: we had a similarly difficult journey before arriving at donor eggs but it still wasn’t an easy decision to make. Xxx
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