How Often Can You Donate Eggs?: 5 Things to Know About the Safe Frequency of Egg Donation

Did you know that when you’re born, you have upwards of 2 million oocytes (eggs) in your ovaries? How does this large number translate for egg donation? If we were born with this many eggs, couldn’t we donate a generous number of times? When aspiring egg donors ask how many times they can donate their eggs in the program, our answer focuses on the safe frequency of donations, not the women’s current egg count. So, how often can you donate eggs, and at what frequency?

Join us in our talk as we lay out the 5 most important things you should know about egg donation frequency and safety caps on donations!

 

 

How Often Can You Donate Eggs?: 5 Things to Know About the Safe frequency of Egg Donation

Number 1: You must wait a certain period of time after egg retrieval to start another donation cycle.

After a donor has finished their two weeks of hormone stimulation and undergoes egg retrieval, there is a necessary waiting period before they can begin another cycle. For subsequent donations, if you choose to go through another cycle with our bank, we require donors to have at least 2 normal menstrual cycles before you can start up again. So around 2 months.

 

Number 2: You can only donate your eggs six times in your lifetime.

So, how often can you donate eggs? No matter which egg bank you choose to donate with, all banks follow the guidelines set by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. These state that you can only donate 6 times in your lifetime. This applies still if you donate at multiple banks. For example, if you donate twice at one bank and visit another, you could only donate a maximum of 4 times at that other bank.

 

Number 3: Egg Donation caps protect your physical and reproductive health.

One of the main reasons for the 6-egg donation cap, is ensuring the short- and long-term health of the donor. We also want to ensure that their fertility is in no way impacted when and if they choose to have children or have more children down the line.

Egg donation is always meant to be a temporary journey for multiple factors.

• Mental and physical stamina: Egg retrieval, while minimally invasive, is like any procedure. Any procedure puts a certain mental and physical strain on the stamina in our bodies and brain. While we always appreciate the altruism of wanting to continue to donate. All donor bodies deserve rest and a conclusive end, knowing that they are helping multiple singles and couples start their families.

 

Egg donation caps also stop from increasing certain risks.

With any procedure we look out for, infections, allergic reactions, and/or needle infections. While this occurs in less than 0.05% of our patients, and our strict standards and protocol heavily mitigate this, excessive donations only promote the very rare cases to occur.

• Hormone stimulants required: Before our clinical team can retrieve eggs from a donor, their ovaries, and the eggs inside of them, must be stimulated via self-administered hormone stimulation. This medication mimics the body’s natural ovulation cycle. This will promote pregnancy for an future parent, once those matured eggs are retrieved. But isn’t this what is already naturally happening in the body? In a normal period, you lose around 1,000 immature eggs, but only one egg each month maturing. So, using this medication allows us to collect multiple matured eggs.

 

So, how does this medication affect egg donation caps?

We always inform our donors of all potential but extremely rare risks of egg donation. OHSS, or Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome, occurring only in 0.01% of our donors, is where the ovaries become overstimulated from the hormones. If there were no restrictions on donor cycles, the repeated use of the medication would eventually cause complications such as this.

• Future Pregnancy: Some donors have never had children, or already have one or multiple. Another common question we get from these donors, is whether they can have kids or continue having kids once they are done. The answer is YES! Only 10-20 eggs are retrieved each cycle, eggs that would have otherwise been left unmatured and reabsorbed into your body during your period. Limiting egg donation cycles to 6, ensures that your egg count won’t be negatively affected in terms of pregnancy.

 

Number 4: Egg Donation caps help uphold family limits (inadvertent consanguinity)

When talking about how often you can donate eggs, we must not think only of the donor. Whave to think about the future children as well that may come from donated eggs. There are donation limits to follow family limit guidelines set by ASRM. There is only a set number of families allowed to use the same donor’s eggs. In order to severely reduce the chances of half-siblings, from the same donor eggs, meeting without knowing their genetic ties.

 

Number 5: Donating your eggs for the first time takes longer than consecutive donations.

If you’re donating eggs for the first time ever, it can take 2-4months to complete your donation. This is due to the following medical steps a donor must finish and pass:

• An online application
• Zoom interview with our donor coordinator
• Medical screening for any serious, genetic and inheritable physical or mental diseases.
• Psychological evaluation
• STD screenings
• Ultrasounds
• Hormone stimulation (2 weeks)

If you donate a second time, you won’t need to worry about completing the vetting and screenings again. The cycle will be quicker for all future donations.

A recurring donor could donate up to 3 cycles per year, with menstrual cycles in mind.

 

 

Start Your Journey Today!

Now that we’ve answered the question, “how often can you donate eggs?” Start the process with us today by applying at the link here (30-40 minutes on average to complete).

 

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