You can start or grow your family with help from embryo donation

Sometimes, an IVF cycle creates more embryos than patients need to complete their family. When this happens, it creates the opportunity to help someone else welcome a healthy baby. Texas Fertility Center offers embryo donation as a family-building option. At our New Braunfels infertility center, Susan Hudson MD works with patients who are interested in allowing others to welcome a baby using donor embryos. She also helps intended parents create families using these embryos.

What is embryo donation, and how do you donate your embryos?

When pursuing in vitro fertilization, you can sometimes end up with extra embryos. If you decide that you have completed your family and you have extra embryos, you can choose to donate them. When you do so, you entrust our New Braunfels infertility center with the care and storage of the embryos, which relieves the burden of paying for frozen storage. It also gives these embryos a chance to have a happy life and a loving family.

Once you decide to pursue this option, you only need to complete some legal paperwork. Know that all embryo donations are anonymous, so your privacy will be protected.

How do you conceive using donor embryos?

It is very affordable to conceive using “adopted” or donor embryos. These embryos are available at no cost to the recipient, so you only need to pay the embryo transfer cycle fee.

To conceive using donor embryos, you or your gestational carrier (surrogate) will take medications to help your uterine lining develop. Then, Dr. Hudson will perform an embryo transfer procedure at our New Braunfels infertility center. One of our embryologists will load a thawed embryo into a catheter. Dr. Hudson will then pass the catheter through the vagina and cervix before depositing the donor embryo in the uterus. This is an outpatient procedure that takes just a few minutes.

In addition to the low cost and easy process, there are many other benefits of conceiving with donor embryos.

• Many of the embryos have already undergone preimplantation genetic testing (PGT), so you can learn about the genetic health and sex of each embryo.
• Because the embryos are frozen, you and Dr. Hudson can choose the timing of the embryo transfer.
• With a donor embryo, you can experience pregnancy and childbirth, while also giving an embryo a chance at life.

If you think that embryo donation sounds like a good option for you and your family, contact us for a consultation. We can discuss your options for donating or conceiving with donor embryos.