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For prospective donors

What donating actually involves

Written for someone deciding, not someone already signed up. If you read one thing before speaking to an agency, make it this page and the risks.

Whether you are eligible

Programmes vary, but almost all want donors between 21 and about 31, a BMI in a defined range, non-smoking, no significant family history of heritable disease, and regular cycles. Some also require you to have no tattoos or piercings within the last twelve months, because of infectious disease screening rules.

21 is the floor and it is not negotiable here. It is the minimum in the professional guidance for good reasons, and any programme willing to go below it is telling you something about how it operates.

The process, start to finish

  1. 01

    Application and screening

    2-8 weeks

    Medical and family history, genetic carrier screening, infectious disease testing, a psychological evaluation and usually a personality inventory. Most applicants do not get through this, and being turned down is not a verdict on your health.

  2. 02

    Matching

    Unpredictable

    Intended parents choose a donor from a profile. This can take days or many months, and it is the part nobody can give you a timeline for. Some donors are never matched.

  3. 03

    Stimulation

    10-14 days

    Daily hormone injections you give yourself, for roughly ten to twelve days, plus monitoring appointments every few days. The appointments are early morning, they are not optional, and they are the reason donors underestimate the time cost.

  4. 04

    Retrieval

    1 day

    A twenty to thirty minute procedure under sedation. A needle is passed through the vaginal wall into each ovary and the fluid in each follicle is drawn off. You go home the same day and you cannot drive.

  5. 05

    Recovery

    1-2 weeks

    Bloating, cramping and fatigue for several days is normal. Most donors are back to normal within a week or two. You should be given a number to call and told exactly which symptoms mean go to hospital.

The risks

In full on the risks page. In short:

Ovarian hyperstimulation (OHSS)

The stimulation drugs can make the ovaries swell and leak fluid. Mild cases are common and settle. Severe OHSS is uncommon but can mean hospital admission, and in rare cases is life-threatening.

The retrieval itself

A needle is passed through the vaginal wall under sedation. Bleeding, infection and damage to nearby organs are all uncommon, but they are real surgical risks and you are consenting to surgery.

Time and disruption

Expect two to three weeks of daily injections, several early-morning monitoring appointments, and a day of sedation. This is not a weekend.

What is not known

Long-term follow-up of egg donors is thin. There is no good evidence that donation harms your own future fertility, and there is also no large long-term registry that would settle the question. Anyone who tells you the long-term data is settled is overstating it.

On compensation

Compensation is for your time, discomfort and the risks you take on. It is not payment for eggs, and it should never be the only reason to do this. Any figure on this site appears alongside the medical risks, because a number without them is an advertisement rather than information.

The figures, and what moves them, are on the compensation page.

Things worth deciding before you apply

  • Whether you are willing to be identifiable to any resulting child at 18. Anonymity is no longer something anyone can promise you - consumer DNA testing has made it effectively unenforceable, whatever a contract says.
  • How you would feel about a genetic child you do not raise, in ten and in thirty years. Donors who regret it usually say they answered this too quickly.
  • Who is paying for complications, and whether that is in writing. Ask before you sign, not after.
  • Whether you have your own lawyer. The agency's lawyer is not your lawyer.
The full list of questions to ask →