If you want to become an egg donor, you probably have a lot of questions. While women looking for eggs are wondering how to find an egg donor, you’re thinking about whether anything in your medical history disqualifies you from being a donor, or if birth control can interfere with donating eggs.

Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Almost every donor has questions about the process, and the most common questions are lifestyle ones. The biggest lifestyle question—can egg donors have sex?

The Risks of Having Sex as an Egg Donor

The short answer for anyone who might want to have sex as an egg donor is “no.” The long version, though, is “yes, you might be able to have sex while you’re an egg donor—but it’s a bad idea.” In order to understand why it might be a bad idea, you have to understand what happens when you become an egg donor.

Once a woman has been approved to donate eggs and is matched with a donation family, she must take daily injections of a hormone stimulant. The stimulant has several effects, but the main one is increased fertility. This means that anyone having sex while taking the hormone stimulant has a very high chance of getting pregnant—and a higher chance of having multiple pregnancies.

Even if you don’t become pregnant, sexual intercourse has other risks. If your partner has any kind of sexually transmitted disease, it may be passed on to you. This could seriously disrupt the egg donation cycle.

Treatments like those used to make egg donors more fertile can also cause your ovaries to enlarge, and enlarged ovaries are more likely to get twisted, especially when doing activities that require jumping or bouncing (which is not how everyone has sex, but it is possible!). In addition to being very painful, a twisted ovary or torsion, is a serious medical condition and one that needs immediate medical attention.

Is Abstinence the Only Way?

In some rare cases, doctors will say that egg donors can have sex, so long as it’s protected sex. However, even protected sex might fail. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Protection:

• Withdrawing has a 22% failure rate.
• Condoms have a 20% failure rate.
• IUDs are your best bet, with less than one percent chance—but any hormonal IUDs need to be removed before the egg donation process can begin.

Overall, your best bet is to follow your doctor’s advice. They have the necessary expertise and experience to make sure your egg donation process goes smoothly. The time you are taking the hormone medications and retrieval is only 14-18 days so not a very long time, especially when the reward is so great for your Intended Parents and you.

Contact The Donor Solution

If you’re interested in becoming an egg donor, contact The Donor Solution at (713) 827-0301 or send us a message. Our staff can answer any questions you have about the process. Don’t delay—contact us to see if you can help fulfill some potential parents’ dreams.