Babies Via Egg Donation & The Importance of the Birth Mother

Infertility can occur due to a variety of reasons, one of which is when the woman is not able to produce eggs at all, or the eggs produced are not healthy enough to be conceived into a healthy baby. Medical advancement has brought ahead a number of treatments to tackle matters as serious as this one. For this kind of problems, egg donation is the most feasible line of action. In this process, eggs are donated by a healthy donor and then used by another woman for assisted reproduction, typically with the help of IVF or in vitro fertilization. Sometimes, donated eggs may be used for biomedical research. Babies via Egg Donation A couple having problems in child bearing has to resort to egg donation when the eggs of the woman are not viable enough to bear genetic offspring for her. Many times, it can be used in women who suffer from premature menopause or stop producing eggs due to some other reason. At other times, egg donation comes to rescue of women who have no ovaries by birth or have them damaged due to disease or accident. Others may opt for egg donation when the woman has such genetic disease which may be carried on to her baby. Sometimes, couples try IVF with their own eggs and sperms, only to get a number of unsuccessful cycles, for reasons not known. Trying out another cycle with a donated egg may yield success. In such cases, eggs of a donor are harvested and fertilized in the laboratory using IVF technique. The sperm of the male of the couple is used for this purpose and the embryo so fertilized will be placed in the uterus of the woman. In this way, couples with such medical problems can see the miracle of a baby growing in the woman’s womb, even if it comes from some other woman’s egg. The importance of Birth Mother As the woman bears the baby in her own womb in egg donation, she becomes the mother of the baby. This is quite different from surrogacy or adoption cases, when some other woman carries the baby and gives birth to it, earning the name of birth mother. In case of egg donation, there is a thin line between the terms biological mother and birth mother, because the baby might carry the genetic attributes of both of them. One has provided the egg for making the baby, while the other has carried it for nine months, passing on certain traits to it. This is what the term called epigenetics is all about, which refers to the genetic influences of both the mothers on the baby. rnEgg donation becomes a valuable way to have a baby if everything else fails. The fact is that the donor realizes that she is doing a good job by giving her egg. At the same time, the birth parents need to know that it is their love for the baby which matters more than the fact whether it has been conceived with their egg or not.