Donor Blog

Is Future Fertility Affected? - The Female Biological Clock

During my time contemplating egg donation and asking myself all the questions, one of the biggest in my mind was, "By donating my eggs, will I be giving away my future eggs and hurt my fertility?" I'll bet if you are considering egg donation, the same concern is running through your head.

First off, the official answer I got from my clinic was something along the lines that egg donation has been around for over 30 years now, and so far studies have not shown any correlations between previous egg donors and infertility. Those who have donated eggs successfully have been able to go on to have children of their own later in their lives. That's a nice answer to hear, but I'm more about the facts, so I did some investigating around to find out how this is possible.

I'm sure you've heard of the "woman's biological clock." The answer to our question all has to do with this. To summarize, here are the facts I've gathered:

  • A woman is born with all the eggs she will ever carry in her lifetime. A female fetus will have 6-7 million eggs when she is 20-weeks in-utero. By the time she is born, the infant is already down to a couple million eggs.

  • Once she reaches puberty, she will be down to about 300,000 to 500,000.

  • Every month starting from puberty, 10-30+ follicles begin to ripen and eventually only one will be chosen to grow to maturity and release for ovulation while the rest are discarded and absorbed by your body each month.

  • These eggs will continually be discarded until eventually the good ones run out, which starts pre-menopause in ages 30-50. (Menopause symptoms start on average 10 years after a woman has gone infertile.)

So, when you stimulate your hormones to develop more than one egg, you are only stimulating those extra follicles that would have been discarded that month anyway. You are actually saving those eggs from being tossed away to be put to better use for someone else. No eggs are being stolen from your future supply. This is why your fertility is not harmed by donating.

Lastly, after reading this, I hope you come to understand how you should not wait too long yourself to start having children. It should be every woman's goal to start having children by ages 30-35. If you choose to wait beyond that point and risk going against your natural biological clock, you can't believe it was the egg donations that are making this hard on you later on. Most women don't understand that about their fertility; the clock really is ticking against us sooner than most people realize. Hence, the unfortunate reason there are so many women needing a younger egg donor like you to help them.