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(text on screen): Fertility Authority. Your Most Trusted Source
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Ask the Experts
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How do I choose between several egg donors?
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Mary Fusillo, RN, BSN, MS, The Donor Solution: Once you have your four or five; maybe even six donor candidates,
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I would kind of rank them.
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And a lot of couples like to each take their donors and each rank them secretly from each other, so, like, maybe the wife
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likes number 125 and 327, and the husband likes two or three different ones. Then kind of compare and contrast their lists.
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What is most important?
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In the end, I do believe that it's very important for the wife to be the person that makes the final decision.
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So many times, I have couples, and the woman comes to me and says, "Well, I really like this donor
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but my husband really likes this one because, you know, she's very tall and he wants a team of basketball players."
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Well, but let's look at her mother. Let's look at the other genetic traits.
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I believe that women need to make the final decision on who's gonna be their stand-in.
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Once they've narrowed it down, I think it's very important to talk to the agency, find out, hey, when are these donors available?
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Which is going to be the most convenient for me?
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And sometimes your first choice may end up being not the one that you really; is best for you. Maybe second or third choice.
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And realizing that you could have two or three choices and they could all be equally good.
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Once you've done that, then, it's more important to talk to the agency.
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Make sure that you know exactly when the donor's going to be available, especially with young working women.
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They have very tight schedules.
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I ask people to be really realistic about their expectations for a donor.
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So, someone who has a clinic that requires them to have a donor to be there for seven or 10 days
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really needs to pick a donor that's local to that clinic.
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If the clinic doesn't require that and they only need to come for an initial visit and a retrieval
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and the monitoring can be done in the donor's hometown, then, you know, kind of, it's whoever you really are happy with.
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Once you've gotten that, make sure that everyone knows the dates. Because invariably the recipient will say,
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"Well, my husband and I are planning on going on this cruise before we have our baby, and it's scheduled for these weeks."
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Well, those are the weeks that the donor has available, because she's going to be taking midterms or she's studying for the LSAT.
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So, that part needs to be really put in writing: What are the dates that are definitely "cannot do it." What can we do?
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After that, you make sure that the donor is accepted by your clinic.
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We like to pre-screen our donors so that they have the ability to be immediately starting.
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They're not waiting to have fertility testing and then you turn it over to the donor coordinator and are a backup to the couple.
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(text on screen): Fertility Authority. Your Most Trusted Source
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