There are many reasons why women who wish to get pregnant go for In Vitro Fertilization but the most common one is egg quality and ovarian reserve. Many women postpone child bearing till they are in their thirties and egg quality begins to become compromised at around age thirty five. This may not always be the case because there are women in their twenties that produce good quality eggs and and have good ovarian reserve yet suffer miscarriages. Usually  these women opt for surrogate services since their eggs are not the problem but the health of their uterus has been compromised in some way and are not able to bear children.

I'm going to talk specifically about women whose eggs are of dubious quality and ovarian reserve is shown to be less than ideal with the comon diagnostic test called the  "clomid challenge" test. In my wife's case there was some tissue recovered after her second miscarriage and the tests revealed Chromosome abnormality in #18 and #23 where there was a trisomy in #23 and that sort of clinched the deal for seriously considering ivf treatment as opposed to trying to get pregnant again naturally.

Even before the second miscarriage when we had so eagerly awaited the ultrasound for the sixth week, our doctor had noted that the fetal heartbeat was 76 beats per minute, much too low for comfort and suggested immediatey to "get on the fast track" and handed us the business card of a doctor that headed an IVF Clinic that specialized in complicated pregnancies and ivf procedures. So it was not that we coulnd't conceive because we obviously could and given the high ivf cost and the complicated at home ivf process the really last place we wanted to be was at an ivf clinic. It was the last resort so to speak and even the thought of a donor egg was something that my wife was having a hard time coming to terms with.

However, back to the clomid test results, our fertility doctor after looking at the results as well as the results of tests done on the tissue from the miscarriage, It was determined that for ivf success rate at the fifty percent mark, a donor egg was really the only sensible option. Assuming that my wife could serve up some reasonable number of eggs (like at least 12 to 15) to be cherry picked, the success rate for the ivf implantation would be pegged at 15% given the results of the tests. So 15% vs 50% became a no brainer. With my wife's age at forty we really needed to maximise our chances while the health of her uterus and her overall state of health was still conducive to child bearing.

IVF cost is a huge issue with prospective parents who need to undergo In Vitro Fertilization with embryo transfer. If you add in the cost of a donor should one be needed the costs will go up by at least $8000 to $10,000 because the donor charges will be at least $8000. There may be other associated costs for the donor especially if this is her first time cycling or her previous screening tests for her last cycle are not recent enough and need to be updated. However, let's just look at a simple breakdown of costs not counting the donor portion as shown below.