Couple desperate for baby advertise for gift of eggs

Post News   25 October, 2003

A local couple are advertising for an egg donor so they can have a baby and complete their family.

The couple, who wanted to be identified only as Christine and Robert, said placing the ad in the POST searching for an egg donor was a last resort.

Christine, in her 40s, said she had had five years of unsuccessful fertility treatment and several miscarriages.

"Because I'm a professional person, some people have thought I have chosen not to have children because I'm busy," she said.

"But that's not the case at all."

She said she had found her perfect partner, her husband, too late.

The couple's advertisement is in this week's classified section, under the "health" heading.

"This is a last resort for us," Christine said.

"Because we're over 40, we're too old to adopt.

"I've been on IVF, but basically my eggs are too old for my eggs to do anything."

Christine said she had been told a few years ago that she might have to come to grips with having an egg donor, and had spent years thinking about it.

However, according to staff at the Hollywood Fertility Clinic, egg donors are few and far between.

A nurse at the clinic said while there were a lot of inquiries, not many people went through with donating their eggs to people they did not know.

One nurse said: "The people who do this are amazing.

"They are often volunteers who are out there donating blood and helping others already."

The nurse said women were well informed about the whole process before they decided to go ahead.

Women had to be under 35, healthy and already have children, and the process included a formal selection and screening process and having an IVF menstrual cycle, including drug stimulation and egg collection.

There are strict rules about how long each process takes, depending on whether the donor and recipient know each other.