Hundreds of couples cannot fulfill their dream of becoming parents because the eggs in the woman have lost their quality due to age or they have simply lost their ovaries for some reason. These couples have in egg donation their only hope to achieve a pregnancy and in this way, the child they have dreamed of so much.
Unlike men, whose testicles produce new sperm every day of their lives, women only produce eggs in their ovaries until the 5th month of fetal life. This means that a woman never produces new eggs from the moment she is born. The ovaries store the eggs produced in fetal life to use them during the reproductive life that begins from the beginning of menstrual periods until menopause arrives. That is why as a woman ages, the number and quality of eggs inexorably decreases. However, even though the ovaries age at an accelerated rate, the uterus does not. For this reason, the latter is receptive to pregnancy until very advanced ages. This allows these women to achieve pregnancy through egg donation with proper preparation of the uterus.
Egg donors are ideally very young, healthy women. They must be under 30 years old and have had healthy children. In addition, there should be no serious inherited diseases in your family. Before donating, they should be tested to rule out the presence of infections that can be transmitted through blood, tissues, or body fluids. Your genetic health is also studied by testing your chromosomes and/or screening for potentially dangerous genes. Finally, their emotional and psychological health is evaluated through specialized tests and interviews with a professional in that area. Once they have passed all these tests, the candidates to donate eggs are entered into a list of potential donors from which a selection is made that fits as closely as possible to the characteristics of the woman who requires egg donation.
Once the donor has been selected, her ovaries are stimulated by oral medications and/or injected for approximately 8 to 10 days. When the eggs reach maturity, they are extracted from the ovaries by transvaginal aspiration and under sedation. These are fertilized in the laboratory with sperm from the couple that requires donation, thus forming the embryos, which 3 to 5 days later are deposited in their mother’s uterus.
Donors can donate eggs repeatedly. Although the procedure does not affect your health or ovarian reserve, it is generally accepted that a maximum of 6 donations is prudent. Once the eggs have been retrieved, they are recommended to start contraceptive pills, which keep their ovaries in a resting state until such time as a new donation is required from them.
According to Colombian legislation, egg donation must be done anonymously in both ways. Donors have no rights or duties over the babies resulting from their life donation. In addition, it must be a completely voluntary act and without any constraints.
As you can see, egg donation is an act of great generosity, which has allowed thousands of couples to form a family, when they thought they had lost all their hopes.
Juan Luis Giraldo
OBGYN
Human Reproduction Specialist
InSer Group
