What Are the Potential Disadvantages of Using Donor Eggs?

Deciding whether to use donor eggs carries both financial and emotional weight, so it is natural to want a full understanding of the drawbacks before you become invested in this path. Below are seven potential disadvantages of using donor eggs, what the current research shows, and the questions and concerns we hear most.

What are the disadvantages of using donor eggs?

1. Will the child share my genetics?

No, the child will not inherit your DNA unless your egg donor is a relative of yours. What you do keep is everything else about carrying a baby: the pregnancy itself, the delivery, and a measurable influence on how the child's genes are expressed through epigenetics.

It helps to name both sides of the trade-off. What you give up is the genetic link between you and your child, since the egg comes from your donor and your own DNA is not passed on, and for most intended parents that loss is significant. What you keep is the pregnancy, the birth, breastfeeding if you want it, and every year of parenting that follows, which for many families turns out to be the larger share of what they were reaching for. Victoria Niño, who conceived both of her children through donor eggs, described weighing it this way:

“Donor eggs had a high probability of working and also allowed me a chance to be pregnant, breastfeed and have a biological connection to my child. I desperately wanted these things. I wanted to be pregnant. I wanted to be a mom.”

It also tends to recede, and there is reasonable evidence behind that. Research comparing families at the child's twelfth birthday found parent-child relationships in donor-conceived families to be as strong as in families who conceived without a donor, and parents in those studies consistently described the genetic question as far less significant than they had expected. If you want to read more on bonding and attachment, we cover it separately.

"Becoming a mother is not about what you give up, it's about all that you gain. Becoming a mother the hard way just means you gain that much more."

-Victoria Niño, mother via donor eggs

2. Does using donor eggs raise pregnancy risks?

Yes, and the difference shows up almost entirely in blood pressure rather than across the board. A 2026 individual participant data meta-analysis in Human Reproduction Update pooled 2,747 donor egg pregnancies against 4,699 IVF or ICSI pregnancies and 33,323 naturally conceived pregnancies across 16 cohorts. It found about 2.4 times the odds of preeclampsia (adjusted OR 2.39, 95% CI 1.94 to 2.94, with no heterogeneity across cohorts and high certainty of evidence) and roughly 2.9 times the odds of hypertensive complications overall, and the difference held whether donor egg pregnancies were compared with IVF or with natural conception¹.

That figure reads differently with some context around it. Preeclampsia affects roughly 1 in 25 pregnancies in the United States⁶, so an increase of that size still describes a complication that most donor egg pregnancies do not develop. It is also a condition obstetricians already screen for routinely, which means the single most useful thing you can do is tell your OB early that the pregnancy is donor-conceived, so blood pressure monitoring and preeclampsia screening are planned from the start rather than added later.

3. How long does it take, and does it always work?

Nationally, 46.6% of transfers of frozen donor egg embryos led to a live birth in 2023.² Donor eggs raise the odds substantially for most patients using them, however they still leave more than one transfer as a likely path.

Frozen donor eggs move quicker, typically taking about 4-6 weeks, because screening, stimulation and retrieval have already happened. A fresh matching cycle takes 4-6 months but you receive all viable egg retrieved, which is what makes future genetic siblings possible. It helps to see the donor egg IVF process laid out step by step before you commit to either route.

Across our frozen egg bank from 2012 through 2025, 90.7% of eggs survived warming, 83.1% of surviving eggs fertilized with ICSI, 81.1% of patients obtained at least one blastocyst and 60.5% obtained two or more.⁷ You can see the full set on our success rates page.

4. Does insurance cover donor egg IVF?

Twenty-five states have some form of infertility insurance law and fifteen mandate IVF coverage, but only a handful write donor gametes into the mandate itself. Delaware requires coverage for IVF using donor eggs, sperm or embryos, New Jersey requires coverage for IVF using donor eggs while expressly excluding a donor's nonmedical costs, and New Hampshire goes furthest, covering treatments associated with the procurement of donor eggs, sperm and embryos.⁵

Our own financial breakdown is public: frozen egg bank cohorts run $19,500 to $29,500 for six eggs, fresh matching starts at $29,600, and the donor embryo program is $9,400.⁷ Fertility clinic fees, medications and monitoring are billed separately by your clinic, so ask any program you talk to what its number does and does not include before you compare two of them.

If cost is the obstacle, start with three things: your clinic's financial counselor, fertility lending, and IVF grants.

5. What is the emotional impact of using donor eggs?

The emotional weight is significant, and for most intended parents it lands hardest in the first few months. Alongside the genetic grief above, there is decision fatigue, the strain of a medical process with dates you do not control, and the question of who in your life you tell. Couples often arrive at acceptance on different timelines, which is its own kind of pressure.

A few things help here more than anything else we recommend. Counselors who specialize in third-party reproduction handle exactly this, and unlike general therapy they already know the terrain, so you spend less time explaining your situation and more time working through it. Reading stories from other intended parents tends to help for the same reason, and donor egg support groups put you in contact with people at every stage, including parents on the far side of it. At Donor Nexus, one case manager stays with you from your first call through your transfer, so you are not re-explaining your situation to a new person at every step.

6. How hard is it to choose an egg donor?

It is harder than most people expect, largely because there is no objectively correct answer. You are weighing physical characteristics, medical and family history, education, personality, and often ethnicity, and no single profile will rank first on all of them.

A couple of things make it more manageable. The first is deciding, in writing and before you open a single profile, which two or three criteria are non-negotiable for you, since once those are settled everything else on a profile becomes a preference rather than another decision to agonize over. The second is working with a program that has already done the medical, genetic, and psychological screening, so the profiles you are comparing have all cleared the same bar. Our guide to choosing an egg donor walks through the criteria in order.

7. How do you tell your child and your family?

The short answer is to start early and keep it ordinary, rather than saving it for one significant conversation later on. The ASRM Ethics Committee strongly encourages telling donor-conceived people how they were conceived³, and it is blunt about the reason the old approach no longer holds: with consumer DNA testing as widespread as it is, no program can guarantee that a donor's identity stays private.

The research on the exact right age is mixed. A systematic review in Human Reproduction found the evidence on disclosure timing inconclusive⁴, with some studies showing a modest benefit to telling before age seven and others showing no difference. What we see in practice is that families who fold it into normal, age-appropriate conversation from the first few years never face a single big reveal, because the child cannot remember a time before knowing. Our post on talking to your child about donor conception has language you can borrow at each age.

Do people change their minds about donor eggs over time?

Frequently, yes, and it is one of the more common patterns we see. Patients who arrive certain that donor eggs are not for them often return after six months to a year of thinking it through, and the second conversation sounds nothing like the first. Nothing about the medicine changes in that window, so what accounts for the shift is usually that the loss has had time to settle into something they can live alongside.

Read next: Victoria's second baby via frozen donor eggs

Though using a donor egg might be a loss of one dream, it also can be the beginning of another with the embrace of a proven technology that has created thousands of babies and happy parents for over four decades.

- Dr. Daniel Potter, reproductive endocrinologist

Frequently asked questions

Is a child conceived with donor eggs genetically related to the mother who carries the pregnancy?

Not genetically, unless the donor is a relative. The birth mother provides the uterine environment and influences gene expression through epigenetics, but the child inherits DNA from the egg donor and the sperm source.

Are donor egg pregnancies higher risk?

The difference that shows up most consistently is in blood pressure. A 2026 individual participant data meta-analysis found about 2.4 times the odds of preeclampsia in donor egg pregnancies compared with IVF and naturally conceived pregnancies. Most donor egg pregnancies do not develop it, and it is screened for routinely, so tell your obstetrician early that the pregnancy is donor-conceived.

How much do donor eggs cost?

At Donor Nexus, a six-egg frozen cohort is $19,500 to $29,500, fresh matching starts at $29,600 and the donor embryo program is $9,400. Fertility clinic fees and medications are billed separately.  

How many transfers does donor egg IVF usually take?

National live birth rates per recipient cycle start sit near 38%, so a second or third transfer is common rather than a sign something has gone wrong.

Can you still miscarry with donor eggs?

Yes, though the odds are considerably better than they are for a patient using her own eggs at the same age. The eggs come from a screened donor in her twenties or early thirties, so fewer embryos carry the chromosomal errors behind most early losses, and miscarriage rates in donor cycles do not climb with the recipient's age the way they do in autologous IVF. A national analysis of 48,679 donor oocyte transfer cycles published in Fertility and Sterility found miscarriage in 14.3% of clinical pregnancies from fresh embryos created with fresh donor eggs, and in 18.5% of those from frozen embryos created with frozen donor eggs.⁸

Does my age still affect miscarriage risk if the eggs are not mine?

Egg age carries the chromosomal part of the risk, which is why donor egg outcomes hold steady for recipients well into their forties. The rest of the picture is still yours, since uterine anatomy, thyroid function, blood sugar control, clotting disorders and blood pressure all influence whether a pregnancy continues, and those are the things your clinic evaluates and treats before a transfer is scheduled.

Are frozen donor eggs more likely to end in miscarriage than fresh ones?

Slightly, and only in one of the two transfer scenarios. In that same national dataset, clinical pregnancies from fresh embryo transfers carried an 18% higher relative risk of miscarriage when the eggs had been frozen rather than fresh, at an adjusted relative risk of 1.18 with a 95% confidence interval of 1.04 to 1.32. Among frozen embryo transfers the difference was not statistically significant, at an adjusted relative risk of 1.07 with a 95% confidence interval of 0.99 to 1.15.⁸ Because that gap is narrow, cost, timing and donor availability usually weigh more heavily on the decision than this number does.

Why would a miscarriage happen when the embryo came from a young donor?

Donor screening lowers the chance of a chromosomal problem without removing it, and many losses in donor cycles trace back to something other than the embryo. Uterine polyps or fibroids, a thin or scarred lining, untreated thyroid disease, infection and clotting or immune conditions all turn up in workups after a donor egg loss, so most clinics order a full evaluation before scheduling another transfer rather than repeating the same protocol.

Keep reading

Should I use donor eggs? How to know when it is time → Will I regret using donor eggs? One mother answers → Grieving the genetic child I imagined →

Sources

1. van Bentem K. et al. The risk for the development of hypertensive complications in oocyte donation pregnancy: a systematic review and individual participant data meta-analysis (DONOR IPD). Human Reproduction Update, 2026.
2. Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology. National Summary Report, 2023 reporting year.
3. Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Interests, obligations, and rights in gamete and embryo donation.
4. Pennings G. Disclosure of donor conception, age of disclosure and the well-being of donor offspring. Human Reproduction, 2017.
5. RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association. Insurance Coverage by State.
6. March of Dimes. Preeclampsia.
7. Donor Nexus. Success Rates and Donor Egg Costs, figures current as of September 2026.
8. Braun C.B. et al. Trends and outcomes of fresh and frozen donor oocyte cycles in the United States. Fertility and Sterility, 2024.