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Jun 02, 2023

I Donated My Eggs for Money, But the Experience Gave Me So Much More

By Alaina Demopoulos For some reason, I was determined to be the hottest girl in the egg donation waiting room. I dressed for every appointment in my stay-at-home girlfriend finest: high-rise leggings

By Alaina Demopoulos

For some reason, I was determined to be the hottest girl in the egg donation waiting room. I dressed for every appointment in my stay-at-home girlfriend finest: high-rise leggings I bought on a deep discount that once cost $200, a mesh sports bra, a just-wrinkled-enough button-up top. I wanted to look like I was heading to a middle-of-the-day Pilates class. I was cosplaying as rich, even though that was not the case — at all.

In fact, I found myself schlepping to NYU Langone every other day, and injecting fertility hormones straight into my belly, precisely because I don't have a trust fund. Sure, in part, I decided to donate eggs because I believe everyone should get a fair shake at building a family if they want, and I understand infertility can be a debilitating experience for people who dream of having a baby. I knew it was a gift. I also knew I was broke, and could really use the cash I'd receive for coughing up my caviar.

Maybe you've read essays or news stories about people using the 10 grand or so you get from selling eggs to afford their college tuition or marrying the love of their lives, or going on a dream vacation. My reasons were, in my opinion, less admirable: I had rent to pay, and my savings had dried up after a very regrettable post-lockdown party phase. I was also hoping to get back into therapy, but in case you haven't heard, mental health care is damn expensive. I'd favored my beer fund over my out-of-network shrink during the worst of my months-long bender, and I needed to pad my bank account before I could see one again. So when a targeted ad kindly informed me that I could earn more than what I make in three months in exchange for my eggs, I decided to take New York University up on its offer.

Even after I'd decided I wanted to go through with donation, it wasn't exactly a done deal. I first had to express my interest and dedication in a questionnaire that took about 40 minutes to fill out online and covered everything from my educational background, to any history of drug use, plus my favorite films, books, and music. Then I was required to submit more photos than I've ever put on all my dating apps combined, including a few baby shots, too. These photos would be shown to prospective parents, who use the snapshots to make a decision about whose genetic material they want to bring into the world. I was also asked to submit three words I'd used to describe myself, which I thought was very cute and added to the senior yearbook feel of it all. I chose "curious, compassionate, and funny." (I felt like a total hack, because who calls themselves funny?) I hoped that would be enough for NYU to accept my application — and a few weeks later, I learned that it was.

"A good candidate is someone who is altruistic and interested in helping others," says Timothy Hickman, MD, a board-certified reproductive endocrinologist practicing in Houston, Texas, and the president of the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology. Obviously, though, it's about more than just being a really nice person.

Dr. Hickman adds that candidates "[need to] fit all of the criteria that we're looking for, which would be someone that is healthy, that has a good egg supply, that has no family history of [inheritable genetic disorders]," such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, or muscular dystrophy.

When my initial application was approved, I went into the facility for a blood screening, where a nurse politely told me I had "juicy veins." That had to be a good sign. Then came an ultrasound, during which the physician's assistant plunged a wand inside my vaginal canal, poking around to take a look at my ovaries. After that, I finally met with a psychologist, who kept asking me what I meant when I said I had "the normal amount" of anxiety.

This is all to say: it's not easy to sell your eggs. Ridiculous things like your Body Mass Index (BMI), which is based on questionable-at-best science, can disqualify you, as there are concerns that the hormones you take during donation do not work as well on "higher" or "lower" BMIs. You'll be disqualified if you've had an STI or gotten a tattoo recently, because there is the chance of passing on an infectious disease. (What "recently" means varies by clinic; I've had both experiences in my lifetime, just not in the past year).

Once NYU told me they would happily take my eggs, they put my photos in what's essentially a book of women — which I hoped to never have to see — where potential donors can pick who they'd like to take genetic material from. It can take up to a month to wait for your name to be called, but mine came up pretty quickly: after a little more than a week, a nurse called and said that they'd like to start the process. But first, I had to go off of the pill. In case anyone doesn't know how this works, birth control pills prevent the ovaries from releasing eggs each month, which basically cockblocks any attempted egg retrieval. So, I was to stop taking contraception for the first time in a decade, and after that I would begin injecting fertility hormones into my body, which would encourage it to produce a ton of eggs.

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This also meant that I'd have to give up vaginal sex for about a month and a half. Even if I used condoms or the (less advisable) pull-out method, the chances of an accidental pregnancy were too high. If I wanted to donate eggs, I'd have to be OK with giving up p-in-v action for a bit. But I have other holes, and my boyfriend has other, uh, organs. So while we weren't thrilled with this part of the process, we understood that it wouldn't leave us entirely celibate, either.

Most egg donors are between the ages of 20 and 29 — SART recommends that donors should not be "women whose age is sufficiently advanced so that their fertility potential is impaired significantly" (which, OK, but, ouch). At the geriatric age of 27, I was on the older end of the spectrum. Most of the women I saw donating were college-age, around 21.

I found it kind of cute that the NYU nurses handed me thousands of dollars worth of hormones in a large paper bag, gave me a little demo, and then sent me on my dumb merry way, assuring me that I'd "figure it out." I have never injected anything into my body on my own, and have a slight fear of needles. But for the next ten or so days, every night at 5 p.m., I'd inject two drugs into my stomach: one that stimulates ovary follicle growth, and another that prevents premature ovulation. I've seen friends who've been public with their IVF journeys enlist their partners to cutely and gently plunge the syringes into their skin, and everyone encouraged me to make my own boyfriend stick me with the hormones. But then I remembered the one time I fought him off as if he were a feral coyote when he lovingly offered to administer my eye drops, so I figured it was best for me to do this by myself.

One of the shots was prepackaged, so all I had to do was inject it into my stomach. The other one consisted of two medications I had to mix together before administering them. The first few times I put the needle inside me, I hesitated right before I plunged it inside of me, which led to a little bit of bleeding (normal) and some aches. I got more confident with each new attempt, though, and it got easier. That didn't mean the pain entirely went away — I became a pin cushion, having to find new places to put a needle every night, and an oval-sized bruise bloomed on my stomach.

Some of the drugs that I injected, plus a syringe, alcohol swabs, and gauze pads.

The nurses told me that the shots could make me feel bloated, cramped, or nauseous — that for most people, it just felt like a bad period. They also told me to not, under any circumstances, work out. Since the medication would make my ovaries swell, any extreme movement might cause them to twist, causing intense pain, nausea, vomiting, and requiring immediate laparoscopic surgery. If it's untreated, it could halt blood flow, and lead to tissue death, which would mean a doctor would have to perform an emergency procedure to remove the ovaries. This is rare but very, very dangerous, so I was told to cool it on the regular yoga and runs I typically turn to calm my mind. With my only positive coping methods out of pocket, I looked forward to a fortnight of being a raging angry lunatic.

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And I sort of was: I turned into an emotional wreck, my only two states of being quickly became either sobbing uncontrollably or ravenously horny. I kept a list of the things I cried about, including the auto-tuned high note in the "Corn Kid" remix song (so melodic), how pretty my best friend looked in an Instagram story (she's so nice and deserves everything), when my trivia team won first place at bar trivia (every problem in the world could be solved if we all just worked together). I also wrote down a list of all the embarrassing things that gave me the NSFW tingles: a video of Bush-era Gavin Rossdale from the Woodstock 99 documentary (the music sucks but he looked good), the tightness of Joe Jonas' pants at a DNCE concert (just right), the mirror's reflection of my own butt (also hot).

My egg donation was not a secret. I love attention, so I talked about it at every opportunity. I have a lot of cynical, pick-up-the-pitchfork friends who love to yell about the evils of capitalism (did you know that it is bad?), and at first we made jokes about me diluting the bloodlines of rich families with my plebeian eggs. I was convinced my genetic material would go to a certain kind of heterosexual upper-class couple who loves to complain about how "unsafe" the subways are. But after spending just about every morning for two weeks in NYU's waiting room (I went in daily, or every other day, to check the progress of how the hormones were working), I realized that wasn't the case.

I'm sure many, if not most, of these families were wealthy — some women came in wearing sneakers that cost half my rent — but not all of them are. Sometimes, when you're not rich and enter rarified spaces, you can see your nervousness reflected on the faces of others like you. The strained smiles, the fussy hair touching, the nail picking — you do that when you're unsure if you belong in a room. I saw one woman trying IVF head to her appointment wearing scrubs, and I overheard her mention that she was a nurse coming straight from an overnight shift. Still, she smiled the entire time. I saw partners who never let go of their wives' hands. I saw the hope in their eyes when they left appointments clutching ultrasounds they maybe never believed they'd get, photos that were destined to be hung on a refrigerator or framed on an office desk.

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I have never longed for motherhood, or even felt particularly comfortable around children. When I was younger, sometimes I'd imagine myself having a child in some sort of vague, far-off future, but never with any real longing — I just thought it was the expected progression of life. There are many reasons why I don't want to be a mother. For one, I enjoy things like the occasional party drug and being able to go poop in my bathroom without a child toddling in, two experiences that I'm aware you can't do as much when taking care of a small, growing human. I also worry about the world a kid would inherit. And while I know that's an existential dilemma generations of parents have had to contend with, shit seems especially gnarly right now.

But if you ever need a little bit of hope along your own journey, I recommend spending time inside a fertility center waiting room. People are gentler there. They don't mind waiting their turn. They treat the people helping them with respect. And despite even years of being told they can't do something they really, really want to do, they keep trying, and they don't give up. If the people who ran our sometimes very stupid little world acted even just a little bit like the people I met while waiting to get an ultrasound wand shoved up my vagina, we'd be in a much better spot than we are presently.

Right before I went under on retrieval day.

After nine nights of hormones, (the whole experience usually takes between 10 and 12 days), I was sent home with a "trigger shot" that would get me ready for my 8 a.m. retrieval appointment. I would be put under anesthesia, so there was the whole song and dance about prohibiting food or drink after midnight before I went in. The retrieval was only about 45 minutes long — and due to the juice they gave me, it basically felt like the best nap of my life. A surgeon took out about 10 eggs, which I've heard is on the smaller end when it comes to how many you can give. Once I was monitored and made sure to be OK, I was officially done and sent home — but not before a nurse handed me a check for my labor. It's the most I've ever been paid, at once, in my entire life.

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So yeah, I donated my eggs for money. We live in a capitalist society (sorry, cynical pitchfork friends), and I want nice, extra, superfluous things like basic mental health care. But my get-rich-sorta-quick scheme was more than just a cash grab: I know I helped people. And I don't say that to pat myself on the back. I say that because it's common for me to believe that I'm one of the worst people who has ever existed. I'll get in a hole and think that everything I've ever done was wrong and disgusting. But now I can remind myself that it's possible for me to do good things. I did a good thing by donating my eggs, and I'll continue to do good things in the future. And maybe if we all just keep trying our best to show up for other people — strangers, even — some kid I helped create, whom I'll never know, will have a future worth living for.

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