In the latest episode of the Donor Egg Mama Podcast, host Adele O’Connor sits down with Dr. Daniel Potter, a renowned reproductive endocrinologist and member of the Donor Nexus Medical Advisory Board, to explore the emotional and medical aspects of donor egg IVF.

Dr. Potter brings decades of experience, compassionate care, and practical insights to help intended parents navigate the complex journey of donor egg IVF. He discusses the moment when patients are informed that donor eggs are their best option, offering advice on how to process these emotions and empowering individuals to make informed decisions that lead to a fulfilling path to parenthood.

In this conversation, Dr. Potter shares invaluable advice on overcoming the challenges of infertility, reassuring listeners that the journey, though difficult, can lead to a deeply rewarding outcome—one filled with love, joy, and a child they couldn’t imagine life without.

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Full Podcast Transcript - Finding Hope with Donor Eggs: Expert Advice from Dr. Daniel Potter

Podcast Introduction: Hello and welcome to the Donor Egg Mama Podcast, the soul-led intended parents considering a donor egg pathway and parents of donor egg conceived children. I'm your host, Adele O'Connor, a qualified fertility coach and proud donor egg mama. I'm just a normal mum that went on an extraordinary journey to conceive. I hope this podcast helps you in some way to break free from emotional overwhelm, face your fears, and find the courage to move forward, and bring that baby that's on your heart into your reality. Let's talk openly about our emotions and all topics donor egg IVF. Thanks for listening. 

 

Adele: So welcome to this week's episode. So far on this podcast, I've had the honor of sharing stories of hope and inspiration from many donor egg IVF patients. And today, I'm really excited to introduce to you my first infertility specialist guest. So doctor Daniel Potter is a highly sought after reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist practicing with HRC Fertility Newport Beach, California, and a Medical Advisor for Donor Nexus egg donation agency also in new Newport Beach.

 

About Dr. Potter: He's the recipient of several awards from the infertility community. The most notable being the Vitals Award, compassionate doctor of the year, and patient's choice award. In addition, he's also named the Inland Empire's best doctor for 2012 by US News and World Report. He's earned top doctor's honors from Los Angeles Magazine for the past 5 years, and he's been named in the top obstetricians and gynecologists in America every year since 2005. Doctor Potter is dedicated to providing his patients with compassionate and personalized care.

His approach to IVF results in maximal pregnancy rates for each individual case. And Doctor. Potter is a graduate of the University of South California for undergraduate and medical school and completed his residency in TRICSS and gynecology at Los Angeles County USC Women's Hospital and REI Fellowship at the University of Texas Health Science Center. So welcome across the time zones from sunny California, US, to the Sunshine Coast of Australia. It's wonderful to have you as a guest on my podcast.

 

Dr. Potter: Well, thank you so much, Adele, for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. 

 

Adele: Thank you. So I have been talking to many women on the donor egg IVF journey, and I'd just like to know about the work that you do assisting women and couples and individuals to build or create their families specifically using donor egg IVF. 

 

Dr. Potter: Donor egg IVF is something that has always been a very important part of my practice. It is a very important part of reproductive medicine. It provides people hope and success where they have, you know, before just had disappointment and failure. It's a really wonderful alternative for patients that need it and want it. Obviously, it's not for everybody, but it really is wonderful. And I'm very proud of the I don't even know how many hundreds of families I've had the honor of helping to create through donor egg. 

 

Adele: Yes. Absolutely wonderful. And you often find that women or couples that, you know, come to you, they've been on a long IVF journey, and then they're at that point in time embarking on another mountain, which is the donor egg IVF journey. So, to have somebody that's known to be compassionate would be really wonderful for you to support them on their journeys.

And often when I'm talking to women on the donor egg journey, they talk about that moment in time when their fertility specialists informed them that using a donor egg was the best option for them to create or complete their family. And they can often recall that moment in time with detail. It's a memory that sticks, as it often becomes a turning point in their life. And they can clearly recall the emotions that come up for them. For some, it's shock. For some, it's anger, worry, and for others, absolute relief that there is a way forward. Can you tell me from your perspective what it's like for you when you get to that point in an individual or couple's journey and you have to deliver the news that using a donor egg is the only way forward for them? 

 

Dr. Potter: Yeah, Adele. It's always, first of all, it's a very emotional and difficult moment. Obviously, there are some patients that come in and have already, you know, come to this conclusion to some degree on their own. 

But especially in younger patients where it's unexpected, it's very difficult. And I would say that all the emotions that you described are very accurate. And look at this and approach it like it's almost like a mourning, grieving type of process. And you get those same reactions. And I would say a very common first reaction is disbelief, which is if you go through all that and anger and bargaining and all the different stages.

And what I tell patients because especially patients that are very reluctant is that the most important thing that we're gonna do here in the beginning stages of your fertility evaluation with us is we're gonna find out what the truth is and we're gonna present it to you. And we're gonna present you with all your treatment options and with the most realistic probabilities for success with each of those options that we can we can provide based on available technology here in 2024. And you're gonna use the truth to make decisions about your life and about this very important issue. 

 

And part of considering, donor egg, I think it really needs to start with going to a donor agency website and actually registering and looking at some profiles and kicking the tires a little bit. And with a lot of patients that are reluctant to consider egg donation, it helps to humanize the process somewhat. It doesn't seem as weird or as scary.  

Something else that's also very helpful for patients that are considering it is having resources available, like your podcast, and other things where they can talk to or listen to or interact with other women who have done it. Because I have heard stories from patients that are, let's say, in their late forties. And earlier on in their forties, we're told they needed egg donation and just wouldn't even consider it, they were so angry about being told that this was how it was gonna be with them, that they would just forget the whole thing. And then they encounter somebody that's their age, and they're, like, in their late forties that has a small baby.

And they're, like, how did you do this? And they're, like, egg donation. And you see that and the joy and everything. And and so for some of those patients, they expressed regret that they didn't look into it and at least consider. And I think that information can only help us knowing that as much of the truth as possible is gonna help us make good decisions and decisions that we're not gonna regret at some point in the future.

 

Adele: Absolutely. Yeah. I agree with what you're saying. And it's I guess it's just been a interesting journey with donor egg because people do feel that sense of shame around their body not working. It’s the one thing that we think we can do in life is have children. It's that kind of basic human right. And when it doesn't happen and you've been on a long IVF journey, we can feel that sense of shame. And then to have to use an egg from somebody else, it's historically been something that people don't talk about. And exactly what you say when we start to open up and talk about it and people can hear other people's journeys, it just makes it gives people confidence and it helps them to feel brave enough to take those steps and move forward.

And, yeah, it's been a wonderful thing. And I guess it's perhaps been something that celebrities have done for many years and, but never particularly spoken about how they're pregnant at 50 or how they've got a child, you know, in their late forties. And and now it's becoming much more open to everybody. And I really feel like in the last, for me, it was 8 years ago, and I couldn't really find much information about it. And I feel feeling like recently in the last 3, 4 years, it's becoming a lot more open, which is wonderful for people that are starting their journey now and want to find resources and information and just gain that confidence to move forward.

 

Dr. Potter: Yeah. And a perspective that I would like to share with your viewers and listeners practicing in private practice for 26 years, I think it is now, is that the infertility journey is so anxiety provoking because of the uncertainty. It's a very emotional issue. It's very expensive. It's a perfect recipe for anxiety really.  

And you'll see I like to use analogies a lot. It I feel like a good analogy is, like, being on one side of a big valley and you're up on a mountain and you're looking at the other side and there's another mountain and that's where you're trying to go. And the valley is covered in fog and there's various pathways. And when you're going through the infertility journey, you really don't know where that path you're going down ends. You don't know if it's gonna make it to the other side. And most of the patients that get to egg donation, it seems like most of them, have struggled with getting pregnant with their own eggs, have tried multiple different treatments and failed, have spent a lot of money, have just had disappointment after disappointment to the point where they're anxious about whether they're ever gonna even be parents.

And once you know your path and with egg donation, I wish it was a 100%, but it's the cumulative pregnancy rate for a traditional egg donor cycle. It's probably very close to that or it was in the nineties for sure. It's like a burden coming off your shoulders that you've been carrying out with you where you're not sure if this is gonna happen, how it's gonna happen, what it's gonna look like. And all of a sudden it's, here's a path that gets you where you want to be – which is to be a mother. And for many patients that are incapable of using their own eggs, they've been imagining being a mother since they were a small child.

And they had a certain vision of what that might look like. I'm sure it's a little different for everybody. But it almost surely wasn't this that we're about to go through. And that's unsettling for patients and it requires a lot of sensitivity when you're dealing with people that are reckoning with such a profound discovery that while this thing that they thought was gonna go this way their whole life is actually you're going this way. So that's always difficult. 

But something else that I will share with the listeners and viewers is that if if you are somebody who feels that if you were to get to the end of your life and you never experienced motherhood and you're gonna feel that you didn't really live the life that you wanted to live, that you will have regrets. There is a solution. There's egg donation. There's embryo donation. And whatever part isn't working, we can substitute it out with something else. So we can use a gestational carrier in some cases or what have you. There's adoption, but there is a path to parenthood. There is a path to parenthood for women that need an egg donor. 

And that baby that they envisioned, one of the things that what I was gonna share here is that the child that we're gonna create through this process would not have occurred or existed had anything else in the past gone any differently. And because a lot of times with patients there is regret, thinking “maybe I should've started trying earlier. Maybe I should've done this. Maybe I should have done that.” There's a lot of self-doubt and people beat themselves up about it.

And what I will tell you, and you've experienced this firsthand, is that once that baby arrives, if you could go back in time and change everything so that you had success with your own eggs back in the, you know, old days, you wouldn't do it because this is your child. This is your destiny. This person that's here, that's the way it was supposed to turn out. It's not what you expected. It's not what you wanted or thought you wanted. But oftentimes in life, you end up getting something that you didn't think you wanted and it actually is what you needed all along. 

And just over the last 26 years, I've just seen this over and over again. And just the amount of joy and love and actual human beings are walking the earth that wouldn't otherwise be here and whatever great things hopefully they have in store for the world. I just think it's a wonderful thing. It's just very very exciting and for a lot of people, very happy, wonderful experience.

 

Adele: Yeah. I love what you've shared there. You're absolutely spot on. And I think the only regret, I've spoken to, you know, many women who've been on the donor egg IVF journey, and the only regret is that they didn't do it sooner. And that was my regret as well because I took about 2 years to decide to get my head around it as well. So, yeah, that is generally the only regret that people have is, I wish I did it sooner. I wish I just moved forward. And even though I felt fearful, I just took those steps to keep moving forward. Because as you say, once that baby's in your arms, it's just absolute joy. 

And, some people fear bonding, but that bonding started, as you say, when you started to, you know, dream about that baby throughout your journey. It's a beautiful thing. 

 

Dr. Potter: And just biologically, we are programmed. The survival of our species depends on the mother forming a bond with that child.

And women are afraid that maybe they won't love the child as much. That there's something about genetics that makes you more have more affinity to the child or something. And it isn't like that at all. It really is biologically imprinted in into us and you will fall in love. And you see this in couples who have, through different circumstances, had a young baby that they had to look after for even a couple weeks. And it's really hard for them. I mean, because it's biology. It's just evolution. There's a lot of things behind it.

I have never experienced a couple where they didn't just love and fully accept the child. And those of us who are parents know that being a parent has very little to do with being biologically related to the child. It has to do with being there and putting in the time and doing the work, I guess, you could call it, but just being a parent.

And there are plenty of people who are parents that are not biologically related to their children, and there are plenty of people that are biologically related to children that are not parents. So that's what I would say to them. 

 

Adele: Yeah, that's right. Especially in our modern times, families are made in so many different ways and, yeah, it's just, it's a wonderful option because, if you're lucky enough to carry your child as well, if you're able to do that, then you get that experience of pregnancy also.

And obviously, you've got the potentially got the genetics from your, partner, if you have a partner. A really awesome family building option if you can't use your own eggs.
 

Dr. Potter: And we have other groups like gay men that have a 100% incidence of requiring egg donation.

But for them, they're so much more accepting of just because there's no there's never been an alternative. If they have been thinking about having a child, they've always known that it's gonna involve some some other people besides them. So it's a little bit different process for them. Still a wonderful alternative, obviously, for them.

But just in terms of a lot of the issues that we're talking about, particularly today, a little more specific towards women. 

*Note: The second half of the episode focuses on autoimmune conditions related to poor reproductive outcomes. 

 

Adele: Absolutely. Thank you for bringing that up. And I just wanted to ask you a little bit more about the, sort of, the medical side of it in terms of, I've been supporting women emotionally, obviously, through the ups and downs of the IVF journey, but I'm noticing that when women are suspected of having autoimmune issues, their journey becomes very tricky, even using donor eggs. And I've seen women who are able to get that positive pregnancy test, but sadly, the pregnancy doesn't continue. It's a chemical pregnancy.

And I've seen and heard of this happening across multiple rounds of, of donor egg IVF. Can you tell me, give me any insights around why it doesn't work and perhaps autoimmune hasn't played out in their life in general, but it's showing up on the fertility journey. Do you have any insights to share around that?

 

Dr. Potter: Yeah. So when you're talking about autoimmunity, there's some people that have autoimmune diseases that know it. And, obviously, and they're in this category too. But there are other patients that really don't have any particular autoimmune disease. They just have recurrent pregnancy loss. And so, typically, in my practice, if someone has 2, or really even just 1, you euploid, meaning the pregnancy has the correct number of chromosomes, pregnancy losses. And so that could be determined either by transferring a euploid embryo via in vitro fertilization, or it could be accomplished by doing genetic testing on the products of conception after a miscarriage. 

But one of the things when you do have a miscarriage that's very important is to it's really helpful and it's the only way you're gonna learn anything from that unfortunate event is to find out whether that was a normal pregnancy that was being lost. Because if it was a normal pregnancy being lost, that's not normal. If it was an abnormal pregnancy being lost, that's what your body is supposed to do. Your body is supposed to, you know, reject this abnormal pregnancy because it doesn't have the right number of chromosomes and you're not going to have a baby from it. Somehow the body was able to get rid of those pregnancies. 

But when you have a normal pregnancy and particularly even 2 losses where you don't know the status, because usually people will come in if they've already had their loss before they see me. But with even just one euploid loss, I really will work patients up because it's just something that if you suspect it, you should probably take a look at it and make sure that it's not there. And, but there there's a lot of complexity with this particular thing. And there really are really 2 parts to it 

There's autoimmunity, which we're talking about here. Which typically has to do with your body attacking itself. And it could be any tissue in your body that's, being attacked. And then sometimes the thyroid's being attacked. Sometimes something else being attacked.

But the result of that is that your immune system makes antibodies to whatever it is it's attacking. And the ones that typically seem to be involved in poor reproductive outcomes are antibodies to phospholipids, antiphospholipid antibodies. And these are the things that are contained in cell membranes. It's the presenting part of a pregnancy. 

And so antibodies are made when the immune system encounters something and it basically well, if it hasn't seen it before, it's gonna make a new antibody to whatever that is. And it could make an antibody to a combination of, like, your phospholipids and something else. And so now you have this antibody that's floating around. And the way that works is that the antibody that's floating around most likely is interfering in the ability to prevent blood clotting between the placenta and the uterus. So the baby attaches to the wall of the uterus.

It burrows into the uterus. It breaks little blood vessels, and then it contains this bleeding with the placenta, and forms little pools of blood called lacunae. And then it drops little like, roots from a plant into these blood pools and that's how it exchanges oxygen and gets gets rid of CO2 and gets nutrients and gets rid of waste. And so that blood is relatively static. It's not really moving very much. 

And so when blood is not moving very much, it wants to clot. And the placenta makes a protein called annexin 5 and that's a putative factor that may or may not be the actual one that's involved in this, but that's a pretty good candidate at this point. And the job of that protein is to reduce clotting, and to to make it so the clotting cascade isn't initiated. And the antibodies that might get made the way this would work is it would basically interact with either an annexin 5 or whatever the factor is.

The complex of that with the phospholipid membrane or with the protein itself, but it changes the configuration so it doesn't work properly. Because basically, the job of that protein is to cover little charged areas that might initiate the clotting cascade. So the treatment for that type of immune problem. And so there are tests that can be done to look for the antibodies, that might cause this. The treatment is a blood thinner.

And aspirin is a blood thinner, that's commonly used. And then typically, Lovenox, what we call, prophylactic dose, would be used. So that's not a full anticoagulating dose of the medication, but it's enough to shift the equilibrium of the clotting system just a little bit towards don't clot. And it, you know, hopefully, is enough to prevent that clotting to occur. If that blood clots, then the placenta is no longer able to transfer nutrients and oxygen and the baby will die. 

So that's one type. And so here's what some of the problems are with this. And I know as much about this is probably just about anybody. There are people that just do research and things like that in it. But in terms of just clinical stuff, I've been doing this a long time and this has been a particular area of interest for me. And so what I can tell you is that we really don't know a lot about it. And a good example is the testing we have for the antibodies for autoimmunity. There are a handful of antibodies that we've identified that we suspect are associated with poor reproductive outcomes, and we can certainly test a woman for all of those. But there are literally millions of antibodies in our bloodstream probably, certainly hundreds of thousands. 

Most of which, we really haven't probably identified yet. And just because you don't have one of the ones we know about, doesn't mean you don't have one of the ones we don't know about. And so with where that leads us is that if we're suspecting if someone has recurrent pregnancy loss and they have euploid losses, etc, is that we're gonna go ahead and just empirically treat this patient with Lovenox to just to address this issue even if the test is negative, unfortunately, because the negative test isn't really ruling anything out for sure. That's a good example of how we just really don't know. 

So the other type of immunity that we need to be concerned about is alloimmunity. And so alloimmunity is the type of immunity that would prevent me from, say, taking a strip of my son’s skin and sewing it onto myself. My body would see that and it would attack it and kill it because it would immediately recognize that it's not me. And so, on ourselves, we have little markers that are unique to us that identify us and allow our immune system to identify self. And so every single pregnancy in the history, every single child that's been born in the history of our species is so different from the woman carrying it. 

If her immune system were able to see that baby, it would attack it and kill it. And so obviously, again, the evolution in our species, survival is dependent upon that not happening. And so there are a variety of mechanisms involved that will help prevent that recognition. And so one of the things that the placenta does is it really doesn't express any of these markers on the part that's facing the mother. So it's not as recognizable for that reason.

One part of the immune system is gonna go around and it basically checks things. And it checks IDs like on a cell or something. And if it's not you, it kills it. And so the pregnancy just doesn't show anything. So that stuff just goes right on by. There's another part of the immune system that checks ID basically. You could think of it that way.

And if they don't find anything, they kill you. And those are natural killer cells. And so that's the part of the alloimmune system that would potentially be attacking a normal pregnancy.

And so efforts would be made, first of all, to test the relative activity level of the natural killer cell systems, and that's done with some sort of advanced testing, where they look at baseline activity level. And sometimes that's high. But what you see often is that it's the baseline level is normal, but when you provoke the cells, they have a kind of a hyper response. And then we can look to see what types of, compounds might reduce that activity, and this is all in vitro in the laboratory. 

And so we're assuming that it also is occurring in site in the person, as well. Anyway, the alloimmune system, the natural killer cells, need to be relatively deactivated, you know, for the pregnancy not to get recognized. And pregnancy does that by secreting a lot of progesterone, which reduces natural killer cell activity. And when we're treating patients that have recurrent pregnancy loss, injectable progesterone is part of that process because not only does it provide progesterone to support the pregnancy, but there's probably some small immunosuppressive effect that it's having that might also be important. 

So what we would do for that typically, what we do is we use something called intralipids. And so this is an IV treatment that is composed of basically a bunch of essential fatty acids that we normally wouldn't get in our diet. And it's typically used with IV feeding, But it also seems to reduce natural killer cell activity. It certainly does in vitro – in the laboratory. So we can activate the natural killer cells and then reduce their activation with that. And so that's also something that we would typically do. And unfortunately, it's the same thing where that test isn't really that great in terms of if it's positive, I believe it. If it's negative, it's maybe it would be positive next week or next month if the immune system is relatively active.

And when I am looking at treatment where I do not have prospective, randomized, double blind clinical trials or any really decent scientific data, I consider, first of all, is there a scientific basis on some level for me thinking that this might be and in both cases, Lovenox and the intralipids, I can say there is. The other thing is that it needs to be relatively harmless. If I'm gonna give somebody something where I don't have great scientific data that I'm really helping them, I better make sure I'm not hurting them. So both of these treatments are, the way where they're administered, are pretty harmless.

Even on the the prophylactic dose of Lovenox, if I needed to, if I had to do surgery on someone taking it, I could do it and they're, you know, they're not gonna bleed out. And then the final thing is it has to be relatively cheap. 

And so all these treatments are meet those criteria. And so that's how I approach it as a first level. If we were to have a euploid loss in spite of all these interventions, at that point, I would recommend that the patient see a reproductive immunologist. And reproductive immunologists are few and far between. It's like a unicorn to find one.

Literally over the last 8 years, we've had over my career a few people. You get someone you depend on them and literally, 2 of the guys have died. And then there's nobody to take their place. It's been a challenge, but I recommend that they see a reproductive immunologist. They're gonna probably repeat a lot of the same test we did.

But there's another level of treatment, which also lacks good scientific data, but it involves using things that are either expensive and or have risk. And so those items would be high dose prednisone, which is something that can be prescribed, and then intravenous immunoglobulin, or IVIG as it's called. And so, there's no real scientific vigor between behind those either. But for example, high dose prednisone in rare cases can cause aseptic necrosis of the hip, for example. Intravenous immunoglobulin is made from the pooled serum of over a 100 different a blood donors.

And while they're very good at getting all the viral particles out of that stuff, there are these other things that are smaller than that. They're called prions that that cause mild cow disease, etc. And so I don't really know what the risk is in terms of how to counsel a patient. And in terms of putting the patient in a position where they could understand the risk and do it and understand what the perceived benefit might be, and make an informed decision.

I think it requires someone that's an expert in that particular area that's administering these medications all the time to really talk to them about what it is. Maybe these immunologists will say, I've been giving high dose prednisone my whole career. I've never had one case of it. I don't know. It's not what I'm doing, but if there's ever someone that can do something better or offer better information to the patient, I think it's important to do that.

But the initial approach that we take, fortunately, is successful most all the time. 

 

Adele: I really appreciate that in-depth insight.

 

Dr. Potter: Probably too much for some of the people out there. Sorry about that if I got too deep in my buzz there.

But I just I think it's important that people understand that in medicine, there's still a lot that we don't know. There's still a lot that we're learning. And in particular, with this area, it's a very difficult area because we really can't do the research that would be necessary to answer these questions because it would involve disrupting pregnancies or, you know, in the United States, we're not allowed to even do this sort of thing on animals, really. And would that even transfer over to humans?

It's a difficult situation and it's frustrating. So we wanna help our patients and we're basically stuck with this. My experience with it over many years has been good. And there is some good research, particularly looking at annexin 5 and different things where they're starting to maybe make some inroads and get some insight into how better to manage these patients. 

Amazing. I really appreciate it because, obviously, using a donor egg, as you say, 90% success rate, like, you you're generally going to have a a really great success rate. Some people, it's first time. Like, I was that lucky person. For others, it might take up to 3 cycles, but I think it's important to talk about and make people aware that there are some people that it does take more cycles and can have more complex cases. And, yeah, they're often the people that are seeking some information. Like, I've been trying, I'm up to my 4th donor egg cycle, and it's still not working.

And that's where I'm really trying to just glean some kind of information for those people. So I really appreciate you talking about autoimmune, and I'm sure even if, you know, some of us aren't so medically trained and understand everything, it will give people clues and a deeper understanding of what might be going on for them. So I really appreciate it. 

 

Dr. Potter: My pleasure. And that's just one aspect of this. And if you can imagine going through all that you need to go through to get to the point where you're using donor egg and you're finally looking across that valley and you see the other side, and then you start it off on your journey, and then you find that you have this other problem that you weren't expecting. That's just devastating. And it's really just bad luck.

That's not very, it's not gonna be super common, I hope. Anybody that has a history that might even suggest recurrent pregnancy loss prior to an egg donor cycle really needs to have it worked up. Because the last thing you wanna do is throw all this beautiful technology and money at this problem. And then have it fail because there was something that we weren't aware of that we should have thought of beforehand. That's that's the worst.

 

Adele: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. And I'm conscious that, time's ticking on, and I obviously could, talk to you for so much longer, but I know you're a very busy man.

So I really appreciate, everything that you've talked about and the information that you've given our listeners. Thank you so much for your time today, Dr. Potter. Thank you. 

 

Dr. Potter: My pleasure. And if it'll be alright, our website at HRC Fertility is called havingbabies.com. And, you can find information about me there. And then, Donor Nexus, which is an egg donor agency that I am on the medical advisory board for, is at donornexus.com. And it's one of the larger egg donor agencies here in the United States. And a couple other little things maybe that might be helpful. 

In terms of egg donor agencies, there are hundreds of them here in the United States. I know in Australia, it's a lot trickier. We get a lot of awesome I have a lot of pretty much almost every day I see someone from Australia. But when you're looking for a donor agency, it's hard.

You can ask your doctor, but there are literally hundreds of them. There is an organization called SEEDS, which is the Society For Ethical Egg Donation at Surrogacy, which Donor Nexus is a charter member of. And this is a group that has gotten together to voluntarily regulate themselves to provide protections to the patients, to the consumer. And so I would say if if you pick someone that's on that list, which is a pretty long list, those are probably if you don't have any other information, that's a great place to start. Anyhow, thank you so much again, Adele for having me, on the show.

Maybe, hopefully, I'll be back at some point in the future, and I thank all your listeners and viewers for, their time and attention.
 

Adele: Thank you so much. And, yes, I would absolutely love to have you back. Lots and lots of questions.

 

Podcast Closing: Well, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. And if you did, it would mean the world to me if you could just give me a 5 star review and let me know your thoughts. And, of course, if you know anyone that would benefit from listening, please share with them. Until next time, remember, you don't have to navigate the dark nights of this journey alone. There's a community of women waiting here to cheerlead you on and support you as we all work together to bring the baby that's on our hearts and in our dreams, earth side and into our arms. See you next week.