What LGBT Couples Need To Know about Egg Donation

Gestational surrogacy with donor eggs is an exciting family building option for gay couples hoping to become parents. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the process is easy—or cheap. Gay couples have many steps and decisions to make—and one of the most important is whether to use fresh donor eggs, or frozen donor eggs.

The Challenges and the Costs

Gay male couples who use a gestational surrogate with donor eggs for IVF face a time and cost-intensive process. The steps include:

• Finding and screening gestational surrogates, including time, travel expenses, legal fees, and agency fees can reach $50,000 to $75,000.
• Legal costs to prevent red tape and custody issues.
• The costs of the IVF treatment itself.
• Finding and screening egg donors, including another set of time, travel, and agency costs.

It’s a huge emotional and monetary investment for men committed to building a family. How does the choice of fresh or frozen donor eggs affect this investment?

The Risks of Fresh Donor Eggs

Fresh egg donors are often recruited through an agency. Once a couple selects an egg donor, it is recommended for the health of the unborn child that the donor is screened for any medical or psychological conditions. She usually goes through lengthy medical and psychological testing—and if you have your heart set on particular egg donor, there’s no guarantee that she’ll pass this screening.

After the person who wishes to donate eggs passes the screening, synchronizing her menstrual schedule with your surrogate’s schedule takes time. Both women may need to travel to your location and need to work around their own busy personal lives as well—more waiting for you. There’s also no guarantee on how an egg donor will respond to treatment or how many eggs will be retrieved. A whole cycle may need to be canceled due to reasons beyond anyone’s control, and for eager dads-to-be, this delay can be very tough.

The Value of Frozen Donor Eggs

Frozen donor eggs have already been retrieved from carefully screened and healthy donors, in set cohorts (amounts of eggs), that are shipped to the IVF clinic of your choice. There’s no waiting for the egg donor to undergo screening, and no donor travel costs either. You also don’t have to wait for the donor and the surrogate to synchronize their schedules—you only need to worry about your surrogate, her travel expenses, and her schedule, along with any legal or agency costs.

Frozen donor eggs can make this complicated process not only simpler for gay couples, but also faster, more affordable and more convenient. This also means lower potential costs for gay couples facing legal fees and high surrogacy costs.

When Are Fresh Donor Eggs a Better Choice?

With all this in mind, there are some circumstances where fresh donor eggs may be a better option. There’s a greater chance that a higher number of eggs can be retrieved from a fresh donor, which means more embryos. If growing your family with multiple biological siblings is important, fresh donor eggs may give you a greater chance to fulfill that dream.

What Makes Fairfax EggBank Special?

Fairfax EggBank is a pioneer in egg freezing technology with many years of experience in vitrification and ART. What sets us apart from other donor egg banks?

• Excellent customer service: Our warm, supportive, efficient customer service, plus our centralized logistics and shipping, help make the process easier and less stressful for our couples.
• Diverse egg donors: Our frozen donor eggs have been donated by very special women held to high standards: highly screened, educated, and ethnically diverse. Feel free to browse through our egg donor database.
• ID Option: What happens when children ask who their egg donor was? In response to parent requests, we offer a choice between anonymous egg donors and ID Option.
• Find out more about what makes us the leading frozen egg bank.

At Fairfax EggBank, we’re proud to help gay male couples become parents. Have more questions? Please contact us.