Egg donors > Who needs egg donation

Why do some women need egg donation?

There are many women who have always hoped, and assumed, that they will have children, but on trying for a baby find that they can’t conceive without the help of someone else who is prepared to donate some of her eggs.

Women who need egg donation have ovaries which cannot produce eggs, and this may be for a number of reasons:

• They may have been born with a congenital condition which means that they have either absent or underdeveloped ovaries.
• Treatment for cancer such as surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy will often damage the eggs and ovaries, so that no eggs are produced.
• About one in a hundred women under the age of 40 will go though a premature menopause. Sometimes this can happen very early on when they are in their teens or early twenties.
• Some women have undergone repeated IVF treatment cycles and have either not responded to stimulation, produced poor quality eggs which do not fertilise or just don’t become pregnant.
• There are women who are fertile, produce eggs, but suffer from or carry serious genetic diseases. Using donated eggs will avoid passing the condition onto a child, and this may be the only way that these women can have a baby that survives and is fit and healthy.
• And for some women there is no reason found why they are unable to get pregnant on their own, but these women have tried for many years to start a family.

The person who you could help is very likely to fall into one of these categories. If you were to go ahead and become a donor we will usually tell you the reason why your help is needed and how long they have been trying for a baby, because any donation that you make is very special and personal.

You might like to read what one of our recipients said about finding an egg donor under: “What it feels like to find an egg donor.“