To find us we are at stand F10 and we’re ready to tell you all about egg donation if you haven’t yet been an egg donor, and to gently encourage and support you on your journey if you’re just starting out. There are lots of couples who need women like you, so come along and find out what is involved and talk to others who have already been on this journey and donated eggs. We’d love to meet you and look forward to seeing you there.

The fantastic aspect of this for our altruistic egg donors is that mums, students, and people not in work will be allowed this compensation, which was not the case before. It really recognises that all egg donors have to go through the same rigorous screening and treatment procedures and although this in no way reflects the enormity of the donation itself, it might help make up for some of the inconvenience.

If you are thinking about becoming an egg donor and are reading this, these changes will affect you and you will be starting under this new scheme now.

I’m sure you can imagine that Christmas is a very difficult time for couples battling fertility problems and that’s even more so for couples who need an egg donor to make their journey possible because they are totally reliant upon someone other than themselves to make the magic happen. And this Christmas, we can’t believe just how many Altrui couples have been given such a massive amount of hope about what next year has in store for them, whether it is because someone amazing like you is prepared to give them a gift of eggs next year or that they have benefited from your donation. Whether your couple’s journey has gone on to result in a successful pregnancy or not, your amazing gift remains the same: inspiring, generous and selfless.

It is truly an honour for us to work with and to get know someone like you who will consider giving this gift, and very humbling to have contact with such an amazing woman who will go on to make the most significant difference possible, in the lives of a couple longing for a child.

From the bottom of our hearts and the hearts of the couple you are giving hope to, thank you so SO much.

We hope that 2012 is a fantastic year for you and that you have the good fortune you justly deserve.

Happy Christmas from us at Altrui

In fact Alison was in popular demand on Wednesday because she was also asked to talk on BBC Radio York, BBC Radio London and BBC Radio Kent (click the links to listen) and to give her thoughts about the changes. In brief the HFEA announced that they are going to raise cap the compensation for egg donors to £750.00. This might seem a great hike from the current £250.00 for loss of earnings, but actually it isn’t as big a change as it might sound. We manage the expenses for donors at Guy’s and at the moment most egg donors incur about £550.00 in total expenses going through a cycle. This is definitely NOT payment -merely reimbursement for travelling and expenses.

The great news for egg donors is that this compensation will apply to everyone – not just those in work, which is the case at the moment. This is in recognition of the commitment and disruption that is usually involved when going through an egg donation treatment cycle. The changes will not come into effect until April 2012. Please don’t let this put you off and delay things, because it usually takes 4-6 months to work up and into a treatment cycle, by the time we have matched you and you have had all the necessary appointments.

Secondly, the fact that this opportunity was given to us by an anonymous, altruistic egg donor makes it the most precious and powerful gift we will ever receive. I don’t think many donor recipients can ever reach the stage of seeking treatment without experiencing quite devastating disappointments over a journey that may have lasted several years. For me this meant that I approached my treatment with a fair degree of fear. My donor’s enthusiasm and bright positivity, her total commitment and unfailing responsibility to the treatment was something that lifted us up through the weeks. The fact that we had to trust a complete stranger implicitly and that she never let us down will have a lasting effect on me, quite beyond any matter of a successful outcome.

Her kind and good actions have affected me deeply and I can quite honestly say that I look at the world around me, and the strangers that I encounter every day, in a quite different light because of what our egg donor has done for us”.

Virtually all our egg donors have said that they get a real high in becoming a donor, which reflects the contents of this article, and surprisingly many have stated that they feel really well and happy afterwards. On becoming an egg donor one has said, “It was the right decision for me, as I’m sure it would be for many other women, if they only know that they can do it and what they would feel if they did”. So what a great thing to do!

We have a few egg donors at the moment who, off their own bat, are in the process of losing massive amounts of weight to get below the BMI of 30 that is necessary to be a donor – for someone they don’t even know and are not yet matched with! This is such a hugely staggering commitment to becoming an egg donor that they deserve every possible benefit of this altruism – from better health to the absolute right to feel good about themselves in becoming an altruistic egg donor.

Altruistic egg donors really encapsulate the best in people. Not only are they kind; they are selfless, committed and really extraordinarily special. Who else would subject themselves to such inconvenience and submit to becoming a patient for the duration? They have their privacy invaded, their motivation questioned and frequently have to wait patiently for appointments.

At Altrui we try to make this whole experience very positive, where the clinics who we work with understand that these really are very special women. We also have pro-active systems in place to support egg donors going through the treatment cycles. We try to ensure that they go through egg donation with minimal inconvenience, receiving the greatest of medical care. Appreciation for being an egg donor needs to come from everyone – the clinical staff, the admin team, and the recipients. Unless we all make it easy for egg donors, and respect and acknowledge their contribution for the selfless act that it is, we are never going to make headway in enabling couples who long for a family of their own achieve this through egg donation in the UK, and it will continue to be an uphill battle.

But interestingly, although having been in working in fertility for 20 years or so, I really had no idea what the fundamental reasons were why egg donors were so difficult to find. But having been doing this now for 9 months (the time it takes to go through a pregnancy) I find that I am at the labour stage of Altrui. I’ve had the congratulations (as in a pregnancy), I’ve watched this baby grow and I’ve given it everything I can and nourished it, and now I am in labour. There are so many good reasons for being an egg donor, but also so many reasons why people feel that they can’t or don’t know that they can.

Funnily enough the first real live Altrui baby is due in a couple of week’s time, and he was the one who was ultimately responsible for starting Altrui – finding completely the right match in a donor for the couple. The absolute pleasure that I know will come from seeing this little one arrive in the world after so much heartache and despair will make this all worthwhile and will make the labour of Altrui reason enough to keep pushing ahead. It is now time to bring this child up.

This study looked at the number of eggs collected from cycles of treatment to the outcome of live births and found that the ideal number of eggs to collect is between 10- 15. This gives the recipient couple the greatest chance of a live birth and a family.

All the Altrui egg donors who have undergone IVF cycles to date have produced the ideal number of eggs and the donors have not found any problems with producing this number. Each ovary contains about 500,000 eggs and any egg donation leaves the donor with many more for future children for themselves.

These studies used various ways of measuring treatment outcome against levels of anxiety or depression. Understandably, stress and anxiety is a state of being for most people going through treatment cycles when they desperately want to achieve a pregnancy. However, the one major factor that has always been in this IVF equation is that medication given during the treatment cycle is designed to override the body’s own hormonal responses with increased doses of synthetic hormones. I believe that it is the combination and cocktail of these drugs, along with the heightened emotions which gives these women the bad time that is so often reported as being stressful.

Stress is not a factor for egg donors

For egg donors, who are well prepared and not attaching the same degree of emotional investment in the treatment outcome, it is not and should not be the stressful experience so often reported.