What Makes A Good Egg Donor Agency

When you’ve made the important decision to start or expand your family through egg donation, the next vital step you need to take is to select a reputable egg donation agency.

A great egg donation agency is a bit like a doctor with a great bedside manner. An understanding best friend who is always willing to listen and an attentive councillor, who can guide you through challenging times all rolled into one! Infertility is a tough, lonely place – you need all the help you can get, to keep your sanity and your sense of humour in tact.

Not only will a good agency provide you with a large database of wonderful and carefully pre-screened egg donors to choose from, but it will ensure that you receive excellent service from them as well as from the fertility clinic where you will be treated, every step of the way. This means that there will be constant interaction and intervention between the agency, the fertility clinic and the egg donor, and that you will be kept well informed at all times during the process.

An egg donor program that is managed and facilitated by a really good egg donation agency, will help donor recipients to better understand the process, answer any and all questions with patience and clarity. This will save prospective recipients from the trouble of having to wade through and trying to comprehend any medical or legal issues that they would like to clarify.

In South Africa, egg donor agencies are primarily located in the major cities such as Cape Town, Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban. In some instances, donor agencies have donors who are willing to travel to other cities to participate in the program.

When choosing a donor agency, prospective donor egg recipients need to explore important criteria such as the agency’s reputation, its affordability, efficiency, availability of egg donors, professionalism, the period of time it has been in existence, its association with top fertility clinics in the area and the quality of its service.

Another aspect that makes an egg donation agency excellent is its commitment to continuously expand and keep fresh its database of profiled egg donors by recruiting new donors. A great agency will also offer immediate feedback to any queries pertaining to egg donation fertility treatment.

A good egg donor agency doesn’t over promise and under-deliver. A good egg donor agency makes sure that all their donors that are listed as available, ARE available and meet the prescribed criteria. A good egg donor agency knows that by the time a recipient couple has reached the point of egg donation, they are tired, heartbroken and financially and emotionally depleted.

A good egg donor agency does their utmost to ensure that this is the last chapter of the journey that ends with the words “….and they all lived happily ever after”.

Contact Details for Nurture Egg Donor Program

Contact Person: Tertia Albertyn
Contact Number Local: 0824418639
Contact Number International: (+27824418639)
Website: www.nurture.co.za

Nurture Green...

The very name of our company, Nurture, embodies caring, caretaking and cherishing. We proudly live up to our name, not only in the myriad of ways that we care about the well-being of our clients, but also in the proactive steps we take to extend that same kindness to the environment.

Although Nurture is a small company, consisting of only six women, we strive to make an enormous difference in the world. That is why we also endeavour to be as eco-conscious as possible.

Being ‘green’ is the new black nowadays, but our eco-conscious efforts are not about trying to be trendy or politically correct. It turns out the issue hits close to all of our hearts. In recent years, various studies conducted by researchers around the world have come to the disturbing conclusion that a range of environmental toxins, including traffic pollution, are responsible for an increase in male infertility.

In an effort to minimise our own carbon footprint, all of us at Nurture work from home. Apart from the obvious perks this entail – such as being able to spend more precious time with our families and not having to deal with maddening traffic jams du

ring a daily commute – it also means that we are polluting less, since minimal driving translates into less harmful carbon fumes being released. Not to mention less personal fuming due to road rage! Those are just as harmful to everyone’s general health and well-being.

By telecommuting, we also save money on fuel (score!) and we save paper (and by extension, trees) too, since we handle most of our correspondence online. All of our donor applications, consent forms , recipient applications and agreements, and proof of payment notifications are conveniently done online. We print documents only when absolutely necessary, such as when a recipient requests a fully signed agreement, in which case the document is printed, signed and scanned, before once again being sent back as an online attachment.

By doing our part, we hope to preserve the planet for all of our and your children – present and future.

Contact Details for Nurture Egg Donor Program

Contact Person: Tertia AlbertynContact Number Local: 0824418639
Contact Number International: (+27824418639)
Website: www.nurture.co.za

A Nurture Egg Donor's story...

My experience as a Nurture Egg Donor…

I am one of the lucky ones… my husband and I conceived easily and I had 2 healthy, full-term pregnancies. I have been blessed with 2 beautiful, precious, extremely active boys. Many of my friends have not been as lucky, I have watched over the years as many of them struggled to fall pregnant and keep pregnancies. I have watched them go through IVF and even surrogacy and have always said to my husband ‘ I wish there was more I could do to help’.

A few months ago, I went to a fundraising talk for a school in our area and the speaker happened to talk on her experience with surrogacy. I was blown away! Tertia and Kim from the Nurture Egg Donor programme also spoke and presented the egg donation process. They mentioned that they only accepted donors until they were 33. My birthday was a few months away and I was nearing the deadline! I discussed it with my husband and friends and decided that this was something I really wanted to do. I felt like I could finally help someone, even if it was not a close friend, and I knew that if I did not do it now, I would miss the opportunity.

I contacted Nurture, filled in the application form and so the process began. I met with Melany, who explained the entire procedure to me. She answered all my questions and dealt with all of my concerns. She also detailed the risks involved are and exactly what I would be committing to. I have spoken at length about my decision with friends and family. A lot of the questions that were posed to me, were ones that my husband and I discussed prior to making the decision to donate. We were obviously concerned about the hormones I would be injecting, about the actual retrieval procedure, and about the fact that in 20 years time, one of our sons could meet and potentially like a young lady who has half of their genetic make-up!!! My husband is a doctor and after getting all the information from Melany regarding the hormones and actual procedure, he was very comfortable that it was low-risk and well-managed.

I got a phone call to say that my profile had been selected and then received a letter (via Melany) from my recipient. It was the most genuine, heartfelt, grateful letter I have ever received and after reading it and learning more about my recipient and her journey, I knew that I had made the right decision! I had to go for blood tests and a scan at the Cape Fertility Clinic. Dr Heylen and his staff were wonderful – very honest and professional and approachable. I felt extremely comfortable.

I know that a lot of people have found it difficult to understand that my need to help someone actually overrides the 10 days of hormone treatment and the fear of a procedure. The anaesthetic is very light one and I was home the same day. I really feel that 12 days of my life is a small sacrifice to make, to give someone else such a life-changing gift! I can find out (if the recipient couple will allow) the sex of the baby when it is born. This will allow me to discuss things easier with my sons. Once they are old enough to understand, I will have the conversation with them and explain to them, what I chose to do and why.

I have had the reactions I was expecting, like; ‘That is amazing, so selfless, what an awesome thing to do.’ I have also had some that I was not expecting; ‘You are mad! What if the kid comes looking for you in 18 years time?’ The way I look at it is that this is not ‘my’ child, I am not the Mother, I am merely giving potential…. I really feel that the recipient will carry the child and that the baby will be hers completely. I have also been asked; ‘wow, are you getting paid a fat sum of money for doing that?’ and have shut those people up, by explaining that I am not selling my eggs to some market! The money that I am being paid is for my time, travel costs and effort, which I have decided to donate to an NGO that has an awesome Mothers Programme. I want this to be a selfless act, with absolutely no financial gain!

I begin with the injections tomorrow and the retrieval date is booked for 12 days time. So, I will write after that to fill you all in on how that goes! I will certainly do everything I can and can only pray that this works for the recipient couple!!! I have found that it helps when I feel anxious, to put myself in their shoes…. They have far more at stake and put in perspective, I have nothing to be scared of and am inspired by their faith and perseverance. So far the experience has been a very positive, humbling one!!!

TBC….