Welcome to Surrogacy Talk with me, your fabulous host and family building expert, Frank Golden. I'll be talking about Surrogacy, IVF and making babies. Hi everyone. Frank Golden here, from Golden Surrogacy. And this is Surrogacy Talk. Before I get started, I would like to kindly ask that you please like and subscribe to Surrogacy Talk on YouTube and anywhere else that you consume your content. Also, don't forget to check out our fantastic blog at goldensurrogacy.com.
Thank you so much for tuning in and for considering Golden Surrogacy your trusted source for surrogacy information. Hi friends. And once again, thank you so much for tuning in. On today's Surrogacy Talk. I am going to be talking about choosing an egg donor. Now, some of you may not know this, but in the United States, according to the CDC, 12% of all IVF cycles involve the help of an egg donor.
Therefore, I would suggest to you that the role of an egg donor in family building cannot be overstated. And how does that impact you in a surrogacy journey? Well, choosing your egg donor is just as important, if not more important than matching with your Surrogate. Now, when creating the family of your dreams, it's important to understand fully how the egg donation process works.
This is going to empower you, give you more knowledge so that you can confidently navigate your surrogacy journey and make choices that are right for your family building hopes and dreams. Now, what I would like to do with you is go through three topics, or what I would say three areas of consideration when choosing an egg donor. The first would be consider the source and I'll explain what that means. Two, what arrangement most suits you for egg donation? And you're probably thinking,
what is that? What is that? What do you mean an arrangement? And I'll explain that as well. And then three, prioritizing your selection criteria. Now the first area of consideration, considering the source, where are you looking for your egg donor. That's important. You have options. Are you looking at a private agency.
So like a surrogacy agency or an egg donation agency that recruits egg donors and that is the sole focus of their business model, or what I typically recommend is look at your IVF clinic and determine if they have an in-house program. Typically, egg donors that you are able to find via your IVF clinic do have a level of prescreening involved.
Therefore, when you're looking at a profile, you can confidently engage with that egg donor knowing that your reproductive endocrinologist has given them the seal of approval that is so important. It saves you a lot of time, and you know that you can confidently make that selection. The second part, or the second area of consideration would be determining what type of arrangement suits your needs the best. And so there are, what is known as a known egg donation, a semi known or an anonymous.
And the the known and the semi known are becoming more popular. I’m not going to dive into those details right now and bore you with all of that. I will link in this video, a longer Surrogacy Talk segment that I have done in the past where I really dive into those details and that's a longer segment. So, tune into that if that interests you.
But essentially those different arrangements do come with varying degrees of communication preferences, where you could be completely anonymous, or you could have specific areas of communication and contact. The third area of consideration would be prioritizing your selection criteria and really thinking about what is important for you in terms of qualities for an egg donor. Examples would include things like health, history, education, and physical attributes.
Now, speaking to my own experience as an Intended Parent, my husband Adam and I, we clearly had those three things in mind-- health, history, education and physical attributes. We wanted to know the health history of the egg donors, current state of her health, as well as her family, in terms of her family members, how old, you know, what was the, the oldest living relative that she had? Ones that had been deceased, what was the cause of death?
Was there cancer in the family, or other genetic disorders that could potentially impact our, our future children? These are very important questions to ask. The second thing is, I mentioned education. there is that entire, topic of discussion, when it comes to education of nature versus nurture. But for us, we wanted to at least find a donor where we shared a common interest, academically speaking.
And then the third physical attributes as, as a potential a new parent, as an Intended Parent embarking upon the surrogacy journey process, you're always wondering, what would an egg donor look like when combined with my genetic material? And then what would that, child look like? What would our offspring potentially look like?
So, while that may not be the most important thing to you, of course, we all just want a healthy baby and to start our lives as parents, the physical attributes of a donor is is always something that comes up, so don't be embarrassed if that is in your top three items for selection criteria, it is completely normal and as I said, that was certainly in our top three when, when I went through my own surrogacy journey with Adam.
At the end of the day, however, you're not just selecting, an egg donor is part of the requirements of going through a surrogacy journey, you are laying the foundation for what your family is going to look like for the family of your dreams. And so each choice that you make is a step in that direction. And so it all goes back to what I said in the beginning.
It's very important for you to understand the entire egg donation process and be able to navigate that part of your journey in the most informed way possible. Also, as I mentioned, I do have a longer Surrogacy Talk segment that I will link in the description box. That one was called Selecting an Egg Donor and I do give a lot more detail and it is a longer segment. Once again, thank you so much.
I hope that you embark on your surrogacy journey now with this more informed knowledge of how to go about choosing an egg donor. Thank you. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you think of any questions or you have any comments, perhaps future content ideas, please do get in touch. I would love to hear from you. I can be contacted at our Instagram handle, which is @golden_surrogacy. And once again, I am Frank Golden reminding all of you that Everyone Deserves a Family.