Choosing the ideal egg donor as a gay male: what are the key thins to know?

It’s important to understand what you’re looking for before you start searching for an egg donor. If you’re in a relationship and if so, are you & your partner considering having children with two different sperm sources with the same donor?  If that's the case, then it's important for me as your fertility doctor to make sure we have enough eggs so that we can better ensure that we have a good number healthy embryos for both dads.  If we’re using one sperm source, then we may not need as many eggs to start.

Other things to consider is if you want to have siblings from the same egg source or if you’re very committed to having a male or a female child.  If these are the cases, again it’s better to have a slightly higher producing donor than otherwise. Occasionally we can recruit the egg donor to do a repeat egg retrieval cycle in the future. But… if we wait too long between baby one and baby two, it may be more difficult to re-recruit the donor as she gets older. 

Now, remember, the number of eggs does not always equate to egg quality. Many times we get great quality eggs from medium-producing donors. 

Other key factors are the donor's health, genetics, and family history. It’s important that there are no shared inherited genetic disorders that both the egg and sperm sources carry.  We want the donor herself to be healthy and her family history to be basically healthy. Remember, it's okay if the donor's grandparents have a little bit of blood pressure or diabetes. 

Some decisions that you may make are more personal, such as ethnic background, hair, and eye color. Is she artistic? Or mathematical? What’s her favorite movie or book?  These are going to be decisions that are left up to you.

Another key element of selecting a donor is the decision to use fresh donor eggs or frozen donor eggs. Frozen donor eggs are an economic friendly option potentially, however, with frozen donor eggs, you’re typically only given six or seven eggs per container or per straw.  The frozen donor egg banks often guarantee that you get one blastocyst or one fully mature embryo. Now, if you'd like to have more children of certain biological sex, I typically recommend choosing fresh donor eggs. 

One more thing to consider when choosing fresh versus frozen eggs, and perhaps the most important, is going to be the doctor themselves. The fertility specialist who you work with typically won't be the one doing the stimulation cycle for the frozen donor eggs. Some people feel that this contributes to the egg's embryo quality. Hope this helps!