Our Egg Donation Program 

Our egg donation program is led by Dr. Danielle Lane and Mrs. Vivian DeLima, her exceptional coordinator. They are backed by a dedicated team of clinical coordinators and embryologists. Since her beginnings as a physician in the fertility industry, Dr. Lane has made it her mission to make fertility and reproductive health care affordable and accessible to more families in the Bay Area, across the United States, and globally. Using our in-house egg donation program, allows parents wanting to grow their families using donor eggs to choose options that are more cost-effective for them, while still receiving high-quality care. The team members at Lane Fertility Institute and Egg Bank are experts in egg donation and have very high success rates working with both fresh and frozen eggs and embryos! Choosing our program for your egg donation journey either as a parent or a donor ensures you will have the best experience possible while achieving your dream of growing your family.!

What is Egg Donation

Egg Donation is a fertility treatment where a young, fertile woman donates some of her eggs to a recipient who is otherwise unable to get pregnant. This may be due to advanced maternal age or infertility. Egg donation is also a way for same-sex couples to build a family using an egg donor and a surrogate. The donated eggs are fertilized with sperm and grown through the blastocyst stage to become an embryo. The embryo is then transferred into the recipient’s uterus to achieve pregnancy.

The technique is most commonly used in women who are unsuccessful after undergoing multiple cycles of in vitro fertilization (IVF), those with premature ovarian failure or elevated FSH levels, and those over the age of 43. Egg donation is a very successful fertility procedure with a live birth rate of 70% per transfer and doesn’t affect the donor’s own ovarian reserve!

How Does Egg Donation Work

The process of egg donation requires that the components of an IVF cycle be divided between the donor and the intended mother or surrogate. The egg donor goes through the first steps of IVF, including ovarian stimulation and egg retrieval, and the intended mother or surrogate does the embryo transfer.

In a fresh egg donation cycle, the donor and recipient must have synchronized menstrual cycles. This is accomplished by using a combination of birth control pills and Lupron. When the cycle begins, the medications required for a standard IVF cycle are given to the egg donor, while the intended mother or surrogate takes a combination of estrogen and progesterone to prepare her uterine lining for embryo implantation.

Once the donor’s eggs are mature, they are retrieved using a transvaginal ultrasound-guided method of follicle aspiration. The sperm is provided by either one of the intended parents or a donor, and fertilization takes place in the laboratory.

About Egg Donation Embryo Transfer

Typically the embryo transfer is scheduled 3 or 5 days after the retrieval The intended mother or surrogate continues to take estrogen and progesterone through the end of the first trimester to mimic the hormones produced by the ovary during natural conception. At the end of the first trimester (twelve weeks gestational age, or approximately ten weeks after the embryo transfer), the placenta produces the hormones on its own, and taking estrogen and progesterone is no longer required.

It is also possible for the embryo(s) to be frozen and prepared for transfer at a later date.

About our Shared Donation Program

Our egg donation program is unique because our donors can participate in a shared rather than traditional egg donation.  In our experience, most egg donors produce more eggs than are needed for one recipient. Because of this, in traditional egg donation, many frozen embryos are not needed and discarded. In our program the eggs from each cycle can be secured by a number of intended parents in batches, beginning with a batch size of 6 fresh or frozen eggs.

Dr. Lane consults with intended parents to decide on the size of the package that will help them achieve their fertility goals. Participating in a shared donation cycle is a cost-effective route to using donor eggs and makes this more accessible to a variety of families.

Legal Considerations for Egg Donation

Fertility patients and egg donors may have questions about the legal aspects of egg donation. Who owns the eggs? Can a donor try to reclaim embryos created from donated eggs? Can a donor petition the courts for access to a child resulting from an egg donation? Can a donor be legally required to take responsibility for a child that is born as a result of their donated eggs?

Contracts protecting recipients and recognizing them as parents have consistently been upheld in courts. The rules apply to any eggs retrieved, embryos created using these eggs, and babies born from pregnancies that involve donor eggs.

Confidentiality and Anonymity

In the United States, egg donation can be anonymous, and most intended parents and donors choose that and will never meet. The confidentiality will always be upheld by the egg donation agency and medical clinic. In anonymous egg donation, recipients will have access to medical information and photos as necessary to select a donor, but not any personal information that would help them identify or locate the egg donor. The donor will not have any information about the intended parents.

Patients can also choose to use a donor they know (directed or known donation) in which the intended parents and donor maintain some type of communication during and/or after the donation process, and might include a donor meeting or communicating with the child that resulted from the donor’s eggs.

Contact us

We are here to answer any questions or concerns you may have. If you are ready to begin your journey to parenthood through egg donation or would like to find out more about donating your eggs, please contact us or call or email our egg donation coordinator at (415) 432-7282 and vfanderson@lanefertility.com