4. FILL OUT A QUESTIONNAIRE AND GET A MEDICAL EXAM

The questionnaire

The clinic you choose will require you to complete a questionnaire about your height, weight, general medical history, ethnic background, religious heritage, and your interests. You'll also be asked to reveal personal tidbits such as "Are you athletic?" "What's your level of education?" "Is that your real hair or are you a natural blonde?" They may also want to know your reasons for wanting to be an egg donor.

"Hey!" you holler, "can they ask about my ethnicity and religious preferences?" Yep. This isn't a job application -- it's a way to present your anonymous donor profile to a recipient couple who may not want the eggs of a 6 foot tall high school basketball star who went to church summer camp. They might prefer, say, a Chinese-American sculptor or a professional juggler from a double-jointed circus family. This is assisted reproduction, and the goal of many families is to find a donor that matches the family itself as closely as possible.

The exception to this "personal questions" rule is if you are a "Compassionate" donor (though we know that you are a very very nice person, no matter what), which means that you and the recipient know one another and have agreed to the arrangement prior to contacting a fertility specialist. This is often the situation when one sister donates to the other. But even if you're a compassionate donor, you must fit the health, age and weight specifications.

The medical exam

Regardless of whether you are a compassionate or anonymous donor, you must:

  • Get a complete physical examination
  • Get a pelvic exam
  • Get tested for STDs
  • Get blood tests
  • Get at least one psychological consultation
  • Get a full record of your own and your family's medical history
  • Be able to give yourself injections (oh, did we mention the needles? You'll read more about them later.)

The presence of any problems at the time of the exam or in your medical history will make you an extremely unlikely candidate. For instance, if you or anyone in your family now or ever had Tay-Sachs Disease, Sickle-Cell Anemia, or Down's Syndrome, you're guaranteed to be rejected.

If you pass the medical and psychological criteria, you will be asked to sign a Donor Agreement, the doctors will start looking for a donor that matches up to your physical and medical attributes, and the doctors will start to prepare your body to pump out super-strong eggs. Just keep in mind that matching your profile to a potential recipient's can take up to a year.