Donor eggs - education level of donors

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our donor wasn’t poor or uneducated. She came from a family of doctors.

Well something went off course for her then...she didn’t donate as an act of charity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our donor wasn’t poor or uneducated. She came from a family of doctors.

Well something went off course for her then...she didn’t donate as an act of charity.

DP Unless you are that donor you can't speak for her. Just because you are cynical doesn't meant there aren't women out there willing to carry and donate so someone can become a parent.

[Anonymous]

I think that many well educated and comfortable women would donate their eggs or even carry a baby for close family or a very dear friend. Very few would be motivated by pure altruism to do this for strangers. A few would, but not many. In the UK they only allow altruistic donation and there aren’t many donors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've looked at SGF's bank and Donor Egg USA, and there are very few donors (maybe 15%) who have completed a 4-year degree. This is regardless of race/ethnicity. Do you find this to be the case with other egg banks?

Op

I think if you want a baby you should be open to non college women's eggs. Just because you dont go to college doesnt make you stupid.

I agree with this.

Even with non 4 yr college graduate donors you can get a sense of potentially intelligence reading between the lines. i.e. a donor with a 3.8 GPA who reports being very bright and having the ability to skip a grade in elementary school, top of vocational school class winning awards versus donor with 3.3 high school GPA who reported having tutors to help with school. (These are actual examples of donors I looked at). You get some sense from writing style/ability although that can be due to education - i.e. vocational school graduate does write differently than donor with Master's degree. Of course people can lie but still I think you can get a sense.

Donating because of knowing someone with infertility and wanting to help others was the second most common reason I saw after financial so I do think some are somewhat more altruistically motivated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our donor wasn’t poor or uneducated. She came from a family of doctors.

Was she your sister?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think that many well educated and comfortable women would donate their eggs or even carry a baby for close family or a very dear friend. Very few would be motivated by pure altruism to do this for strangers. A few would, but not many. In the UK they only allow altruistic donation and there aren’t many donors.

Our donor was from the UK, but we looked at many who had good intentions. There are fewer UK donors bc they can’t be anonymous. And there may be more limitations on how much money they can receive. I don’t think that for egg donors the receipt of money means they aren’t charitable. It’s a time consuming process and can be really uncomfortable. Much different than sperm donation. Ethical clinics and agencies try to screen out people who are only in it for money. It doesn’t always work, but they aren’t trying to take advantage of desperate people. Some donors aren’t planning to have kids, but want to help others, some work in the area so know a lot about it, some have connections to people who struggled with infertility. There are lots of reasons. I think it’s fine if getting a bit of extra money for the effort is what puts them over the edge to say yes. I agree with the above that few would want to go through the process if they weren’t getting any compensation.

And as far as I can tell - pretty much all of ART in the US is for the wealthy. I guess egg donation is a step up in cost from basic IVF, but it’s all pretty crazy

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m going to do that DCUM thing where you don’t answer the question the OP asks, so I will apologize up front. I used donor egg. Education mattered a lot to me, both because I didn’t want my child to struggle in school and because I wanted my child to have interests similar to me. I love books and school and museums. I went to Yale. I tried to pick an educated donor. My daughter is nothing like me. She’s still little, so who knows who she will become, but I don’t think books and school and museums will be her thing. I think it will be sports and... I don’t know. Whatever else goes along with that? AND THAT’S COMPLETELY OK. I love her more than life itself, and I’m so excited to be along on this ride with her.

So I get it. You need to go through your process. Or at least I did. But if you can take any assurance from an Internet stranger, know that whatever genes your donor gives you will be the right genes for your kid. Because your kid is your kid, and you will love him or her perfectly exactly the way he or she is.

Best wishes!

This gives me a lot of peace of mind. I can't stop doing IVF because DE seems so stressful and unappealing. I just can't let go of using my own eggs, but after 7 failed rounds and 4 pregnancies with no baby I know the writing is on the wall. Thank you for posting this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because anyone with more resources isn’t going to get shots up with hormones to get paid to donate eggs, especially if they want their own kids one day.

THIS

You get what you can get OP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our donor wasn’t poor or uneducated. She came from a family of doctors.

Well something went off course for her then...she didn’t donate as an act of charity.

I was an egg donor. I went to an Ivy League school. Middle class upbringing. I liked the idea of helping people create a family. Also the money was a big help in grad school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m going to do that DCUM thing where you don’t answer the question the OP asks, so I will apologize up front. I used donor egg. Education mattered a lot to me, both because I didn’t want my child to struggle in school and because I wanted my child to have interests similar to me. I love books and school and museums. I went to Yale. I tried to pick an educated donor. My daughter is nothing like me. She’s still little, so who knows who she will become, but I don’t think books and school and museums will be her thing. I think it will be sports and... I don’t know. Whatever else goes along with that? AND THAT’S COMPLETELY OK. I love her more than life itself, and I’m so excited to be along on this ride with her.

So I get it. You need to go through your process. Or at least I did. But if you can take any assurance from an Internet stranger, know that whatever genes your donor gives you will be the right genes for your kid. Because your kid is your kid, and you will love him or her perfectly exactly the way he or she is.

Best wishes!

This gives me a lot of peace of mind. I can't stop doing IVF because DE seems so stressful and unappealing. I just can't let go of using my own eggs, but after 7 failed rounds and 4 pregnancies with no baby I know the writing is on the wall. Thank you for posting this.

You’re not ready for donor egg until you’re ready. But once you do it, it it works, you get a baby. And you’re a mom. And you get to raise her and experience her whole life with her. And honestly none of that gene stuff really matters once you’re dealing with spit up and sleeping through the night and tantrums and Paw Patrol and screen time limits and best friends. It feels so important when you’re in the fertility stage and then it gets less and less important (or at least it has to me) as your child gets older. Because you’re just sharing life together.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m going to do that DCUM thing where you don’t answer the question the OP asks, so I will apologize up front. I used donor egg. Education mattered a lot to me, both because I didn’t want my child to struggle in school and because I wanted my child to have interests similar to me. I love books and school and museums. I went to Yale. I tried to pick an educated donor. My daughter is nothing like me. She’s still little, so who knows who she will become, but I don’t think books and school and museums will be her thing. I think it will be sports and... I don’t know. Whatever else goes along with that? AND THAT’S COMPLETELY OK. I love her more than life itself, and I’m so excited to be along on this ride with her.

So I get it. You need to go through your process. Or at least I did. But if you can take any assurance from an Internet stranger, know that whatever genes your donor gives you will be the right genes for your kid. Because your kid is your kid, and you will love him or her perfectly exactly the way he or she is.

Best wishes!

This gives me a lot of peace of mind. I can't stop doing IVF because DE seems so stressful and unappealing. I just can't let go of using my own eggs, but after 7 failed rounds and 4 pregnancies with no baby I know the writing is on the wall. Thank you for posting this.

Also, I’m so sorry for your losses. I’m the PP with a daughter from donor egg. I don’t care about my daughter’s genes but I do still care about the trauma of all those IVFs. I just don’t think about it and have moved on, but sometimes friends who are doing IVF will want to talk about it or friends will want me to talk to a friend of theirs who is going through infertility. I think they assume I’d be fine with that because I got my baby go it’s all good now. The horrible things I experienced (the losses, the heartbreaks, the ups and downs) didn’t go away. They stopped mattering so much as long as I just don’t think about them! But that was real trauma. I have heard other women say that having the baby was healing for them, so your mileage may vary. But I guess I’m saying both that what you’re experiencing now is awful and real and I’m sorry. And that the pain of the losses might not go away when you get your take home baby, so maybe factor that in when you’re deciding how many more losses you can tolerate.

[Anonymous]

When my doctor said do anonymous DE I was just shocked. We had tried so hard and had so many failures. The idea was just ... incomprehensible to me.
But we wanted a child and so we did it. Fast forward 20+ years. I really couldn’t have better children from our donor. Both are very calm and smart. They are loving young adults who finished college at top 10 schools and now are professionals. The donor was educated. I don’t know why she did it but we are very grateful to her. It’s a path to parenthood. It worked for us.

[Anonymous]

PP I had friends who did long term infertility. It took about 2 years for the pain to subside. Also very busy with the baby.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Women who are college educated have less financial incentive to go through the unpleasant process of egg donation.

Look - If egg donation were a thing when I was in college, I would have totally done it. The financial incentive is huge for a student - in college or not. I was at a very selective school on partial scholarship and I still could have used the money. Tuition is expensive and I did not come from money. I was working 2 part time jobs to help cover the costs. I would have gladly been compensated for donating my eggs instead.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because anyone with more resources isn’t going to get shots up with hormones to get paid to donate eggs, especially if they want their own kids one day.

THIS

You get what you can get OP

I pursued it but was excluded for a medical reason. I'm highly educated and, for what it's worth, had very high test scores with little prep. My interest was mostly vanity, thinking, if it were me, test scores/education would mean a lot.