Using donor eggs

Donor eggs are eggs that have been collected and donated from one person to use in another person’s fertility treatment. If you can’t get pregnant using your own eggs, you might use donor eggs as part of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment. These eggs can be fertilised with sperm from your partner or a sperm donor.

A baby born from donor eggs will have genetic material from the egg donor. But as the egg recipient, you will carry the baby during pregnancy and give birth. You’ll also be the legal parent. 

Egg donors can be someone you know – such as a friend or family member or we can find a donor for you from our donor programme. 

Egg donation is a remarkable act of generosity that someone might do for all sorts of reasons. Some people also decide to share their eggs if they are already going through IVF treatment themselves. Take a look at our page about being an egg donor.

You may benefit from using donor eggs if you:*

• Are producing too few or poor-quality eggs
• Are no longer producing eggs – either due to age-related infertility, early menopause or medical treatments such as chemotherapy
• Have been unsuccessful using fertility drugs or IVF with your own eggs
• Have had several recurrent miscarriages
• Have a high risk of passing on a serious inherited disorder if you were to use your own eggs
• Same sex male couples or single males creating embryos for surrogacy

Our egg donation team screens a constant flow of new egg donors and sharers each month. As soon as you register on our waiting list as a potential egg recipient, we’ll start working to find a match for you. 

We always try to match the donor and recipient’s physical characteristics as closely as possible, although we can’t guarantee the results. Our bank of stored, frozen eggs means we currently have no waiting list for most ethnicities.

If you decline a match, don’t worry, there’s no penalty. And for those who decide a UK donation isn’t right for them, we also liaise with several leading overseas clinics.

You can choose to use your own donor too. Many people prefer to use either a family member or friend, or a one-to-one donation. We have streamlined our process so that people with their own donors can start treatment as soon as possible.

We also work with Grace which is a private donor recruitment company.

Unless your donor is someone you know, you won’t meet them, and they’ll remain anonymous. However, there are some details about your donor that we can share with you. You can ask for this information at any point in the process. This may include their:***

• Age
• BMI
• Ethnicity
• Skin tone
• Eye colour
• Hair colour
• Height
• Whether they have any children of their own
• Hobbies
• Educational background
• Profession
• Relevant medical history and allergies

Sometimes, your donor may leave a personal description about themselves, and a ‘goodwill’ message for any potential children. You’ll be able to access this at any point too.

As well as the details above, children born as a result of sperm, egg or embryo donation are able to access information that identifies their donor when they reach the age of 18. This includes their name and last known address.***

This information is held one the Human Fertilisation and Embryo Authority (HFEA) central register. It will be your child’s choice whether to access this information when they reach 18.