- I've donated eggs to six families.
- Some of them stay in touch, others don't — but all have my information in case they ever need me.
- Donating eggs taught me a lot about myself and about fertility in general.
The first time I heard of egg donation I was 18 and learned of it as a means of avoiding student-loan debt. The details relayed to me were inaccurate and murky, so I moved on.
At 23 I was living in San Francisco, running a small business and barely scraping by. The idea resurfaced while I was browsing Craigslist, a hobby of mine at the time. I saw a few ads and dug deeper. I got to know various egg-donation coordinators' websites but remained skeptical.
Then I grabbed lunch with a former professor of mine and learned of the impact that receiving donated eggs had made on her life after struggling with fertility. She now had beautiful, healthy twins. That sealed the deal. I went back to San Francisco and began researching my options.
I wanted the families to have options for our relationship
The year was 2012, and I already had several friends who'd found out through sites like 23andMe or family gossip that they were adopted or had come into this world through a donor. I saw how this disrupted their relationships with their family and put a deep crack in their foundational understanding of who they were and their ability to trust others. I'm not a parent, but I firmly believe that children are people who deserve respect, and honesty is a demonstration of respect.
I wanted families receiving my eggs to have the option to be in contact with me. It's completely fine if they never want to be in touch, but I wanted them to be able to have my contact information in case they or their children ever needed anything.
All six families I've donated eggs to have chosen to receive that information, and a few keep in touch. A few check my LinkedIn profile on occasion, and we never speak of it. All of these options are totally fine with me.
What I learned from the donation process
What I learned from donating eggs has genuinely helped me in everyday life. I very quickly had to get over my deep hatred of blood draws, and I no longer faint at the sight of a needle.
And while you may think that 20 years of PMS would have taught me that feelings are impermanent, it was the process of pumping myself full of hormones several times that ingrained this lesson in my head.
Donating eggs and recovering after the surgery taught me to be more gentle with myself and to pay close attention to what my body is telling me.
One perk of donating is that you get genetic and fertility testing for free. But also know that there's a restriction on how many times you can donate — this is in place partly to prevent accidental incest among the people created from donated eggs.
More importantly, I've learned what a delicate subject fertility is for so many people. The more people find out I've donated eggs, the more I learn about what others go through. While there's still some misinformation and stigma, seeing more people discuss fertility openly has made me feel relieved and hopeful.
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