For the past 20 years working with hundreds, if not thousands, of people undergoing IVF I have always maintained that stress doesn’t affect the outcome, whether they are using their own or donor eggs. Recent research supports this and has found that there is no correlation between IVF success rates and stress levels, see the article in BioNews.
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.