Poor egg quality with donor eggs?

Hello, this is our story. I’ve done two egg donation treatments because I’m a poor responder… The first time we had only 11 donor eggs, and we went for an ICSI procedure with my husband’s sperm. Surprisingly, we got only 2 grade B embryos and 8 grade C embryos (one of them didn’t fertilize). No sperm problem was detected when we underwent ICSI with my eggs. The problem was we only had 2 eggs, and both were of grade C. Doctor said it was because of my age, so we don’t understand what happened. At the end, I got 2 grade B embryos, and the unused embryos were frozen. I didn’t get pregnant, so I got 2 embryos defrosted and transferred, but with no luck again. They say we give the remaining embryos (the frozen ones) a last chance, but unfortunately if that doesn’t work, we’ll need to use another donor. Is this change related to poor quality donor eggs? I though donors are previously screened so that their eggs are of an exceptional quality…. I don’t know if we should look for another clinic, find another donor or whatever…

Dear angela,

It is possible that your egg donor didn’t follow the stimulation protocol as she should, and therefore the quality of her eggs is not as expected, but we cannot be sure if this is the real cause or any other.

Egg donors are young and healthy women who enjoy good health, have a good ovarian reserva, and produce good quality eggs. For this to be checked, they are previously strictly screened. In spite of that, due to unknown reasons, they may not provide the anticipated results.

It is also possible that the problem is related to the sperms, are not to the eggs. Or maybe it is a problem related to endometrial receptivity. Trying with another donor is not a bad idea, maybe this way you can achieve better outcomes. If not, my advice is that your partner undergoes further fertility tests to check whether some sperm pathology is still undetected.

Best of luck