Anonymous wrote:I previewed the list of donors at RBA but I found that the list was much smaller than Fairfax donors and few others I looked at. Is RBA popular for success rates?
I am of Asian origin and am looking at Southeastern Asians in particular. Any idea where I could find those?

It's difficult to find Asian donors in this area. You might look at clinics in New York?

I previewed the list of donors at RBA but I found that the list was much smaller than Fairfax donors and few others I looked at. Is RBA popular for success rates?
I am of Asian origin and am looking at Southeastern Asians in particular. Any idea where I could find those?

PGD is not included. I think it's about 6000 more.

I am not the OP but have a related question. Wanted to know if they do CGH/PGD on the donor egg/own sperm embryos before transferring? I have heard that gives a better success rate since only good embryos are transferred. If they do this, what is the cost of 1 DE cycle that we are looking at?

It's worth it to inquire at SGF. They have a team that actively recruits donors, and shared risk is worth every penny you can scrape together. Their selection of donors ebbs and flows, but they also tap into a larger national database (I don't remember which).

They're worth at least talking to. Information is free.

We also used a donor from CFA. I share the PPs concerns about half siblings in the DC area. But it all worked well for us. One donor egg cycle cost around $19,000, in late 2009. You could do a shared cycle (we did not).

+1, RBA, Atlanta.

Cfa is not particularly competitive for donor eggs. I would look elsewhere, particularly rba in Atlanta.

At SG the price of the eggs is rolled into the price of the cycle. My cycle was about the same as a one-off IVF cycle. Med cost is minimal. I think you can do shared risk with frozen also.

Can you give me an idea of the cost from donoreggbankusa? I'd never heard of that option. Thanks!

If you go somewhere that does frozen DE (what I did, now 8 weeks along) you avoid the geographical issue, you have a catalog of donors to look through (donoreggbankusa), you don't need to worry if something goes wrong with your live donor's cycle since eggs already exist, nor do you have to worry about getting cycles synched up. We never considered a live donor as it seemed too much hassle.

Thank you PP. that was extremely helpful.

OP, I can't answer all of your questions but I have kids from DE, and used CFA. We used a CFA donor so our costs were pretty close to what they laid out for us in their paperwork. THere is some fuzziness there because of individual drug protocols, but just for the donor portion (and live and frozen transfers) they billed us what they detailed on their cost sheets.

We used a CFA donor because we were kind of at the end of our rope with the time we had spent and wanted to do whatever we could to expedite things. They do have a small donor pool, but I'm a pretty standard white, northern european mutt so it wasn't hard to find a couple of options that I could live with. YOu do have to give up the idea of finding a donor that will look like you. That was hard for me. But that hurdle would be present no matter what the donor pool.

Here is what I see as the pros/cons of using one of CFA's donors:

Pro -
- known donors. This was HUGE to me. We chose a woman who had donated before and whose cycles had resulted in healthy births.
- known donors in terms of compliance. We had a couple of options to choose from and one of them was well-known to our doctor. The doctor was able to speak about the donor's compliance, and also the health and intelligence of her child that the daughter had come to know. Very reassuring to have some personal knowledge of the individual, given how anonymous the whole process is.
- ability to move quickly. CFA's donors have been tested and vetted - so you don't have to wait and see if the person will be approved as a donor.
- seamlessness of the process. It was pretty easy to move quickly without the hassles of another party re contracts, transfers, timelines, etc...
- possibly more economical than finding eggs through another agency (or trying to find an individual) and having all of those fees be a separate transaction.

Cons:
- more limited selection
- potential discomfort with knowing there are other children in the DC Metro area who are genetically related to yours by virtue of the donor

As I said, I can't really help you with the questions about using an outside agency. I can certainly understand wanting to do that. Perhaps you could be exploring the other donor pools out there to get a sense of your comfort level with the process, your criteria for selection, what the options are like, etc... That might position you to move as quickly as possible if/when you decide to go that route.

Good luck to you. I hope it's a moot issue and your current cycle is the one that brings you a beautiful baby.

We're using a gestational carrier and are working with CFA. We plan on trying one cycle and may then move onto donor eggs. I'm new to the idea of using donor eggs, but did check out CFA's donor list, which was rather limited. They only have a handful of donors. If I have to find my own, but can't afford an agency, what would you recommend I do? Do people do their own searches successfully? Realistically what is this going to cost us? We're paying out of pocket and only have $25,000 reserved for IVF plus donor. Thanks! Yet another hurdle to jump, it seems never ending.