by BevT » Fri Sep 22, 2006 9:15 pm
Hi Karen, sorry it's taken me a couple of days to reply - my computer hadn't flagged up the fact that you had replied so I haven't visited the boards for since Wednesday.
I know it is disappointing for you not to be able to use your sister's egg but I guess they put the ceiling at the age of 36 because after that age one's fertility is substantially reduced together with the risk of maternal age related chromosone abnormalities.
The positive thing about using donor eggs is that the donors are generally in their twenties - therefore young eggs.
We had our tmt at Isida in Kiev (Ukraine). We did visit IM at Barcelona first, but after our initial consultations with both, we decided to go with Isida. Several reasons, they were cheaper (about half the cost of Spain), they only used proven donors, i.e. girls who already had at least one child of their own - so no risk of young students being made infertile through hyper stimulation or other associated risks, there is no waiting list for donors, the hospital is a state of the art maternity and obs & gyny unit and very very clean.
Spain were also reluctant to freeze any embies that you may have left, in fact they seemed reluctant to even try and produce any spares! It seemed that you would need a fresh cycle for each attempt (if the first failed) and at 9,500 euros a go, it was very expensive.
Isida however, charge about 4,000 euros and with the cost of flights and accommodation, I guess we spent maybe about 5,500 euros. We were very lucky that it worked first time for us.
The overseas patient co-ordinator (English speaking) matched me to a 23 yr old girl who fitted my physical characteristics, which I was happy with. Others specify they would like a donor to match their "artistic" side or equal their university educations etc, but for me the physical likeness was important.
If you would like to pm me with your email address, I can introduce you to another group, Conceiving Abroad. It is a smaller group for women that are seeking egg donor tmt abroad and due to unwanted infiltration by journalists you can only join by being invited by the group leader. Hence if you send me your email, I can forward it to May who will set up your membership. It is a great group, with women going not only to the Ukraine for tmt, but also to South African, Crete and Moscow. There is such a huge amount of support and information that others have "filed" on the site, it is bound to help you enormously.
PM me if you would like.
Look forward to hearing from you,
Bev xxx
4
m/c
Precious daughter stillborn @ 32 weeks
2 x IVF with own eggs
Now turning to DE tmt end of May.
BFP 13th June 06
Blessed with beautiful son William born 23rd Jan 07