Embryo Donation and Adoption

Embryo Donation is a method of family building, which combines assisted reproductive technology with adoption, so that instead of adopting a baby, infertile couples adopt an embryo. It is a form of third party reproduction, in which couples give their embryos to another couple after successful IVF. This embryo is transferred to recipient mother’s uterus to facilitate pregnancy.

At Pahlajani Test Tube Baby Center, when we perform IVF, young women often produce many eggs. These can be stored, and we do this by freezing them in liquid nitrogen at -196 degree Celsius. If the parents get pregnant they often agree to donate their embryos to other infertile couples, to help them start families.

Therefore, when you undergo in-vitro fertilization, conceive a child and find yourself left with extra embryos, then you can donate your embryos to couples in need.  Couples often freeze their embryos in case they want to expand their family more someday. But, if they decide not to expand their families further, they can donate the remaining embryos to infertile couples.

Embryo donation can be done anonymously or on an open basis. Occasionally, a "semi-open" arrangement is used in which the parties know family and other information about each other, but their real names and locating information are withheld, in order to provide a layer of privacy protection.

Couples who want to donate embryos have two options: They can go through a fertility clinic or an agency, and the experiences are quite different. Interested recipients undergo physical and psychological screening. If it’s a match, the embryos change hands anonymously.

Embryo donation can be carried out as a service of an individual infertility clinic (where donor and recipient families typically live in the local area and are both patients of the same clinic) or by any of several national organizations. The process described below is typical of an "adoption-agency-based" national program.

Genetic parents entering an embryo adoption program are offered the benefits of selecting the adoptive parents from the agency's pool of prescreened applicants. Embryo ownership is transferred directly from the genetic parents to the adoptive parents. Genetic parents may be updated by the agency when a successful pregnancy is achieved and when a child(ren) is/are born. The genetic parents and adoptive parents may negotiate their own terms for future contact between the families.

Dr Neeraj Pahlajani