How Many Donor Egg Cycles Does It Take To Have A Baby?

IVF with donor eggs has a much higher success rate than IVF with a patients' own eggs. However, it’s still not 100%. In this article, we will go over the reasons for using donor eggs, how long it takes to use donor eggs, the chances of it working, and why donor egg cycles sometimes fail.

Reasons for egg donation

According to the CDC, a substantial 12% of all IVF cycles in the U.S., over 16,000 a year, involve eggs retrieved from a donor. And donor-egg IVF has the highest success rate of any fertility treatment. 

There are myriad reasons families turn to donor eggs to build their family. For heterosexual couples, the reason is usually due to poor egg quality or quantity, recurrent miscarriages, genetic mutations, or repeated IVF failure.

Read more in Seven Reasons Families Use Donor Eggs

How long does it take to get pregnant with donor eggs?

For someone who has spent a lot of time, effort, and money on failed IVF, you may be eager to move forward with donor eggs and have a baby ASAP. The good news is that the chances of success with donor eggs has more to do with the age of the donor than the age of the mother (or gestational carrier). 

The time to match with a donor can be just days (we have hundreds of pre-qualified donors ready to match with your family). After that, a donor cycle with fresh eggs can take 60-90 days from match to completion of the cycle whereas a donor cycle with frozen eggs can be quicker.

As you can see from the SART data above, the chances of getting pregnant per cycle is much higher with donor eggs and the gap increases with age of the patient. 

Read Dr. Meera Shah’s article Donor Egg Success Rates: a Breakdown.

How many donor eggs do I need?

One 2015 study of 647 frozen donor eggs found that:

• 97.1% survived thawing
• 85.3% of the eggs fertilized
• 59.1% made it to blastocyst
• 84.2% of blastocysts were euploid (genetically normal)

So three donor eggs would yield a little over one genetically normal embryo on average while nine donor eggs would be expected to yield three to four euploid embryos on average. Keep in mind that this will vary depending on a lot of factors other than the egg, including the quality of the sperm and the quality of the clinic.

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Another study found the average number of eggs retrieved from donors aged 25-29 was 18 eggs, and for ages 30-35 was 16 eggs. 

At Cofertility, for those who match with a donor in our fresh egg donation program, the average number of mature eggs a family receives and fertilizes is 12. The number of eggs retrieved varies by patient and cycle, but can be predicted by a donor’s age, AMH, and antral follicle count, all of which will be known to you after the donor’s initial screening. Qualified candidates have an ample ovarian reserve for both their own needs and sharing. Egg share donors also often work closely with a fertility doctor to determine, based on their own medical history, the optimal number of eggs needed for their own future family-building goals. Should it make sense for the donor, they may choose to pursue a second egg-sharing cycle to maximize the chances of success for everyone.

Matching with a donor in our frozen program can provide the opportunity to move forward with your family-building plans faster, as frozen eggs can be fertilized or shipped to your clinic immediately. Donors undergoing frozen cycles complete equally rigorous ovarian reserve testing. While the total number of frozen eggs available will vary based on the donor’s retrieval outcomes, every frozen match is guaranteed to have a minimum of at least 6 frozen eggs.
To learn more about these programs and the differences between them, click here.

Does donor egg IVF work for the first time?

IVF cycles using donor eggs certainly have a higher success rate than using a patient’s own eggs, especially for patients who have had failed cycles or recurrent miscarriages. So while for many families, donor eggs work the first time, for others it does not work on the first try. 

Why do donor egg cycles fail?

It can be very frustrating when a donor egg cycle fails, either due to fertilization, implantation failure, chemical pregnancy, or miscarriage. And unfortunately, most of the time, it’s hard to know exactly why. 

We know that sperm plays a huge role in fertilization and embryo quality, but there’s so much we still don’t know about sperm. Even sperm that passes sperm quality and fragmentation tests with flying colors can be the cause of poor fertilization or even miscarriage.

There could also be implantation failure or miscarriage due to uterine lining issues, endometrial receptivity, or immunological factors. We still don't completely understand implantation, and unfortunately many patients never find out why they miscarried a genetically normal embryo.

Failure could also be due to the quality of the clinic you are working with. We know that IVF success rates vary from clinic to clinic. You can find the success rates of your clinic on the CDC’s SART website – however, keep in mind that some clinics have better success rates because they turn away patients with low chance of success, and other clinics have worse success rates because they work with anyone.

And sometimes, a donor egg cycle can fail simply due to bad luck. Even with improved chances of success with a transfer of a euploid embryo from donor eggs, pregnancy is not a 100% guarantee. 

Cofertility’s Baby Guarantee

When you decide to build your family with donor eggs, you’re forced to contend with a lot of unknowns. You may be asking yourself questions like, “what if she doesn’t pass her screening,” or “what if the cycle doesn’t yield any healthy embryos?” 

These concerns are compounded by the fact that any fertility treatment comes with a hefty price tag. While some agencies require you to pay extra to receive any form of a guarantee, Cofertility’s Baby Guarantee is built into our pricing. We want to help you bring your baby home, and we'll re-match you for free until that happens.

This means that if at any point along your egg donation journey, something out of your control prevents you from bringing your baby home, we'll re-match you for free or we'll offer you a full or partial refund if you do not move forward with another donor.

Read more about our Baby Guarantee.