Choosing to become an egg donor is a commitment. You commit your time in filling out the application. You commit to medical and psychological testing. You commit to ovarian stimulation via self-administered hormone injections for a short time. You spend a fairly significant amount of time preparing for your egg donation. At times, the process may seem stressful—all the more reason to remind you of some of the benefits of egg donation that you may not see.
On the other side of this process is a couple who has been dreaming of having a child—a couple who has likely experienced many failed attempts at conception before looking into egg donation. While the overwhelming majority of our egg donors have decided to pursue egg donation for altruistic reasons, truly understanding the other side of the donation process and how meaningful your time and dedication are, can be hard to comprehend.
The Benefits of Egg Donation: Finding the Perfect Fit
Some of the Shady Grove Fertility donor egg team nurses, like Gail Felperin, R.N., have the benefit of seeing both sides of this experience. Over the years Gail has had the opportunity of working both with the egg donors as well as the egg donor recipients. According to her, “When you see [the egg donor and egg donor recipient] have the same passion together, and the personalities click, I’m like ‘you guys have such a good fit and you don’t even know it.’ It’s so heartwarming for the nurses just to feel that.”
Gail also shared that, often times, when recipients find out they are pregnant, they have come back and said that they couldn’t thank their donor enough for giving them this wonderful gift.
Egg Donation: What You Don’t See
Sarah Esdaile, a Shady Grove Fertility egg donor recipient and now SGF Patient Liaison, sums up the sentiment when she says, “People who haven’t been through this process used to say to me, ‘oh, you’ll never think about the donor ever again,’ and that hasn’t been true. I think about her every day of my life and I hope that she knows what she’s done for this stranger over the other side of the world.”
Being an egg donor can be a long process filled with applications and doctors visits, but what egg donors don’t see are the struggles recipients experience when they cannot conceive and their tears of joy when they finally hear they are pregnant.
As an egg donor you may not hear any praise or gratitude, and you may not even realize what a perfect fit you are for that recipient family because you are anonymous, but you are truly the hero in someone else’s story. And we, at Shady Grove Fertility, hope you know how tremendously thankful they are.
Learn more about the benefits of egg donation at Shady Grove Fertility or apply today to see if you are eligible to become an egg donor. For questions, call 1-877-DonateEggs.
