Women can do all sorts of things to keep their youthful looks - from great skin care routines to different surgical procedures. Unfortunately, it's not so easy to halt the ageing process inside your body.
Women mature and develop in ways that can't necessarily be controlled on the inside - and this is why it can become more challenging to conceive naturally after the age of 35.
Colleen Oates from egg donation agency Baby Miracles explains that the older a woman becomes, the more the quality of her eggs deteriorates.
Many women who dream of having children go through great emotional upheaval when they discover they cannot conceive naturally. But luckily, medical advances have provided various options to assist those struggling with fertility issues - and egg donation is one of them.
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Egg donation is a process whereby one female donates her eggs to another who is unable to produce healthy eggs or who has secondary infertility, which is when a woman can't get pregnant or carry a baby to term after having previously given birth.
"One of the most common reasons a woman needs donor eggs is that she can't produce her own eggs. Her eggs aren't of good quality," Colleen says.
"She might go through menopause early and stop producing her own eggs - this happens to some women who are as young as 20. Maybe she's had cancer and her eggs have been destroyed by chemotherapy or radiation. Or she has a hereditary disease that she doesn't want to risk passing on to her own children. Or she's had no luck in conceiving the normal way, trying for years to fall pregnant, now her eggs are ‘too old’ or ‘not good enough’ to enable her to fall pregnant."
Colleen knows the hardships of struggling to conceive all too well.
"At the age of 31, I was told that I'd never have my own child. I set out on my IVF journey. My daughter Jade was conceived on my second IVF attempt, which happened to be the first attempt in South Africa using the transvaginal method [with the aid of an ultrasound probe] instead of having the eggs retrieved through a laparoscope.
"Jade was the first baby to be conceived by this method in South Africa in 1988. After our success, this way became the standard approach in IVF."
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Whatever the reason may be for unhealthy eggs, this is where donors are needed. As a donor, you could be the miracle in someone's life.
Requirements to qualify as an egg donor vary from clinic to clinic
The most common are:
- You need to be a female between the ages of 20 and 30
- You need to be healthy, as this will affect your hormones
- You should have a normal body weight for your height
- You need to be a non-smoker, not use drugs of any kind, and not drink too much alcohol
- You also need to be mentally and emotionally well.
Recipients can list certain requirements and therefore need choices. Even though the donor will always be anonymous to the recipient, they do go through a file with their information. This information will include the physical attributes of the donor as well as some details about their personality.
"Many recipients want donors who remind them of themselves," Colleen says.
After a donor has passed several tests and gone through the necessary consultations, the journey begins.
After the eggs have been extracted from the donor, the eggs and sperm will be placed into an incubator, and once an embryo has formed, they will be ready for transfer.
Only one or two embryos will be placed into the recipient, and the rest will be frozen. The frozen eggs can be used if the first attempt is unsuccessful, to save the recipient from having to go through the process again. It's a time-consuming process that's emotionally taxing and very expensive - it can cost up to R100 000.
Although the procedure is not guaranteed, it does at least give a woman a chance of giving birth.
