Guide for Egg Sharing

Do you need IVF? Do you want to help other women with infertility? If you’re aged between 18 and 35, a non-smoker and in good health, you may be able to join our egg-sharing programme.

Benefits of egg-sharing

Egg-sharing helps those who need IVF and women who need donor eggs. If you’re having IVF and you’d like to donate eggs too, your cycle of IVF/ICSI is offered at a subsidised rate of £1,000. This is instead of the compensation egg donors receive, for time and expenses travelling to the IVF clinic.

If you’re not ready for IVF yet but still want to egg-share, you can opt for our egg-sharing and freezing cycle instead.

Our success rates for egg-sharers

At Manchester Fertility our egg-sharing programme has enjoyed great success for both egg-sharers and recipients. Latest results show that the majority of our egg-sharers achieved pregnancy through their IVF cycle.

Criteria for egg-sharers

If you want to join our egg-sharing programme, the same rules apply as if you didn’t need IVF and just wanted to donate eggs. So you will need to fulfil certain criteria with regards to age and medical history. You must:

• Be aged 35 or under
• Be in a normal weight range – i.e. BMI of between 19-29
• Have an Anti-Mullerian Hormone result >12.00 pmol/l
• Have no personal or family history of inheritable disease
• Be willing to undergo screening tests for medical conditions – these are designed to identify any disorders which could be potentially harmful to both the recipient and any baby born from your egg
• Be a non-smoker
• Have no history of previous poor response to ovarian stimulation or more than two failed IVF attempts
• Know (or be able to find out) your medical history and that of your immediate family - children, siblings, parents and grandparents
• Agree to be registered with the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority as a donor
• Be willing to be identified to any resulting children in the future
• Not put yourself at risk of sexually transmitted infections (STIs)
• Not knowingly omit any relevant information which could affect the health of any children born as a result of your donation

What you receive as an egg-sharer

As an egg-sharer with Manchester Fertility, your treatment package is one of the most comprehensive available to maximise your chances of success.

You can choose from either a fresh egg-sharing cycle, where your eggs are fertilised immediately for your own IVF/ICSI treatment, or an egg-sharing and freezing cycle, where your share of your eggs are frozen for you to use at a later date.

Egg-sharing to your partner: Partner/Reciprocal IVF or 'shared motherhood'

If you're in a same-sex relationship you can choose to egg-share to your partner as well as our egg donor programme. It's a popular choice for same-sex couples as it allows both of you to be physically involved in the creation and birth of your baby. 

Fresh egg-sharing cycle: immediate IVF treatment

A fresh egg-sharing cycle where your eggs are fertilised straight away via IVF/ICSI costs £1,000 for your treatment, plus £375 for pre-treatment screening tests and consultation, plus the current HFEA licence fee (payable per cycle).

Your fresh cycle of IVF treatment includes:

• The standard necessary drugs for your IVF/ICSI cycle
• Treatment planning
• Ultrasound/blood monitoring
• Semen preparation
• Ultrasound-guided egg collection
• Insemination of eggs by IVF or ICSI
• Embryo culture including Blastocyst development
• Fresh embryo replacement using EmbryoGlue
• Pregnancy scan
• Follow up consultation 

Egg-sharing & freezing cycle: Delaying your IVF treatment

An egg-sharing and freezing cycle costs £1,000. Your egg-sharing and freezing cycle includes:

• Pre-treatment consultation and all necessary screening tests
• Current HFEA licence fee
• The standard necessary drugs to stimulate your ovaries to produce mature eggs
• Treatment planning
• Ultrasound/blood monitoring
• Ultrasound-guided egg collection
• Freezing of your eggs in our laboratory via vitrification
• One year’s storage at our clinic

When you’re ready to use your eggs in future, you’ll undergo an ICSI cycle using your thawed eggs. This future cycle of treatment carries additional costs – full details of prices and what’s included can be found on our Prices page.

Success rates using your thawed eggs depends on a number of factors, including your age at the time of retrieval, how many eggs survive the freeze-thaw process, how many of your eggs successfully fertilise and how many quality embryos you have for transfer.

Your future cycle of ICSI treatment following an egg-sharing and freezing cycle includes culture of your embryos to Blastocyst stage, and the use of EmbryoGlue, which helps the embryo to adhere to your uterus after transfer.

You can also choose to have your embryos placed in our time-lapse EmbryoScope which helps to ensure only the best embryos are chosen for transfer.

How egg-sharing works

If you’re accepted onto our egg-sharing programme, you then become an official HFEA-registered egg donor. You will be matched to a recipient who needs donor eggs and you will start your own IVF cycle and undergo the necessary ovarian stimulation.

Your mature eggs will be collected in theatre by our team of experienced staff. Depending upon the number retrieved, these are then equally shared between you, for use in your IVF treatment, and the donor programme.

If you’re undergoing a fresh egg-sharing cycle, your share of your eggs are fertilised straight away by your partner’s sperm or donor sperm, with the best quality embryo selected for transfer.

If you’ve chosen an egg-sharing and freezing cycle, your share of your eggs are frozen in our laboratory, preserved for future use.

Egg-sharing timescales

Egg-sharing is carefully timed for you and your recipient, but the initial process if you wish to be an egg-sharer is as follows:

• You complete the eligibility checklist and medical questionnaire.
• Our team reviews your application to see if you meet the criteria.
• If satisfactory you’re booked in for blood tests to check your AMH level.
• If your AMH is suitable you come in for various scans and counselling appointments.
• You then see our consultant with results of your tests; consent forms are also completed. Screening blood tests are also taken at this appointment.
• If all is satisfactory you then go to ‘matching’ – we’ll match you with recipients who are looking for an egg donor just like you.
• You begin your IVF cycle. Both your treatment and that of your recipient is timed so that your eggs are retrieved at the right time for them to be used by your recipient. 

The process of screening you as a potential egg-sharer, and matching a recipient, usually takes up to four weeks, although this may take longer.

Finding out if your eggs are used successfully

As an egg donor you are entitled to find out if any babies have been born from your eggs, the year of their birth and their gender.

Egg-sharing and counselling

All egg-sharers are required to have counselling by our experienced team to discuss the implications of being an egg donor, including the fact that you need to agree to be identifiable to any children born.

Donor-conceived children have the right to access identifying information about you, held on record by the HFEA, when they turn 18 years old if they wish to know who you are.

There are also other important factors to consider, such as how you may feel if the recipient of your eggs goes on to have a baby, yet your own IVF cycle fails.

These are all issues unique to egg-sharing which need to be addressed and talked through, so you fully understand the emotional and physical aspects not only of going through IVF yourself, but donating your eggs to other women.

Motivations of egg-sharing

Remember that egg-sharing means becoming an egg donor, and all that this entails.  It has serious implications now and in the future, including the potential of future contact from a donor-conceived child. These implications mean that egg-sharing isn’t a decision that should be taken lightly, or focused solely on receiving subsidised private IVF.

We’ll ensure you’re given all the information you need to make an informed choice about whether egg-sharing is really right for you.

Read our egg-sharing page for more information, or contact our dedicated Donation Team on 0161 300 2734.