Medical tests for egg donation
To become an egg donor, you have to go through some pretty thorough medical screening.
What I hadn’t considered to begin with was the benefit to my own peace of mind that going through fertility screening tests would give me. As a women who’s yet to reach the stage in life where I start obsessing over baby name books and the benefits of a Baby Braun, compared to a Maxi Cosi, I’ve often wondered if I’d face the same gruelling fertility hurdles that friends and family have faced. But the consultant explained that by having this medical screening, I could rule out some fertility problems I’d had in the back of my mind and this was a massive relief to hear.
Most of the screening involved blood tests that screened for diseases that could be passed onto a baby or the recipient, like hepatitis, CMV and cystic fibrosis. Each time I’ve donated some of the tests are redone, because they become invalid very quickly, other tests – like those for chromosome abnormalities – only needed to be tested for once.