How to Talk to Your Doctor About Working with Cofertility

Maybe you’ve already found your Cofertility egg donor. Or, you know you want to work with us and are in search of the perfect match. This is an exciting time in your family building journey, and you probably feel a broad mix of emotions. Whether you’re eager, relieved, or even a little bit nervous for what happens next(!), now it’s time to get through some logistics related to the fertility clinic.

In general, Cofertility can work with any US-based fertility clinic that reports their results to SART (Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology) and works with a certified lab. Or, if you’re outside of the US, the donor can undergo her retrieval at one of our partner clinics, and have them shipped to your clinic worldwide. 

If you have not yet selected a clinic, we’re happy to suggest one from our network of preferred providers. If you’re already working with a clinic and want to stay with them, we support you continuing to work with your existing care team. 

We recommend that intended parents focus first and foremost on finding your perfect match. Then we can work together to determine the path forward with your clinic. But, to ensure that you feel prepared for all that’s to come, we’ve compiled a list of a few core questions that are important to  ask any clinic you’re considering. Let’s jump in.

“Are you open to overseeing a cycle with a Cofertility egg donor who meets all FDA and ASRM guidelines?”

As it turns out, a small number of clinics have exclusive relationships with specific agencies or egg banks and limit their patients to working with donors from those organizations. Most, however, are open to giving their patients more options and allowing them to work with any agency, provided the donors meet all necessary guidelines and criteria.

If you’re working with a Cofertility egg donor, the donor’s screening, medication, and retrieval protocols will all follow the clinic’s standard processes. From the clinic’s perspective, the only difference between working with a Cofertility donor or another fresh agency donor is that the yield of mature eggs will be split into two lots on the day of the retrieval. One half will be fertilized for your use and the other half will be vitrified for the donor’s future use.    

If you’re working with a clinic that we haven’t done a cycle with before, we’ll set up time with their third party team to walk them through our program and answer any of their questions related to clinic operations, finances, and the like.

Depending on your family-building goals, you may opt to do two cycles with the donor. If this is something you’re thinking about or something that your physician recommends, rest assured that many of our donors are excited about the opportunity to do two cycles and we can work with any clinic to make this happen.

“Can you provide any clinic-specific criteria my egg donor needs to meet?”

Occasionally, fertility clinics will have their own additional criteria (above and beyond what the FDA or ASRM outlines) based on their preferences and/or your own unique circumstances. Some examples of this may include the donor’s:

• Family medical history
• Specific genetic testing results 
• BMI
• AMH
• Mental health criteria
• Lifestyle habits
• Age

You can let your doctor know that all of our donors are pre-qualified by our clinical operations team with support from our medical advisors (who are REIs). Donors must be under 34, have a minimum AMH of 2.0, and meet all FDA and ASRM guidelines.  

“Are you open to the egg donor completing any part of the process outside of your clinic?”

Cofertility’s Split program is nationwide, meaning that you may match with a donor who is not based in the same city as you. All of our donors have discussed this possibility with our team and most have confirmed that they are open to travel.  If your perfect match is unable to travel, we can always find a way to work with a clinic local to her. 

Occasionally, an egg donor may need or request to complete some of her appointments at a fertility clinic near her home. For context, travel can be harder for those donors whose work or school schedules do not support remote work or lots of time off (for instance, if she is a medical resident or a teacher).

Once we know where your match is located, we will work with her and the clinic to ensure we follow their standard processes. However, it can be helpful to understand whether — and for how long — your clinic  requires donors to be in-person so you can plan and budget accordingly. 

For the donor’s initial set of screening appointments, clinics travel policies can vary.  Some fertility clinics would rather have the donor come in person for screening so they can ensure the testing and overall process meets clinic-specific standards or to streamline logistics. On the flipside, some clinics are open to the donor completing this screening locally and then reviewing screening reports from other clinics. In those cases, the clinic will likely want to verify that the clinic where she does her screening has quality outcomes and solid protocols in place.  

When it comes time for the cycle, many clinics are open to having the egg donor complete her initial two to three ultrasound and bloodwork monitoring appointments at a clinic near her. It is more unusual for a clinic to require the donor to be on-site throughout the entire cycle. If she does do the initial appointments at home, she’ll likely need to travel for the last few days of the cycle so she can do her retrieval at your clinic.  

If your clinic’s donor retrieval policies lean more rigid (i.e., they’re going to want the donor there for most of the cycle), we recommend considering the following options upfront: 

• Work with an egg donor who will travel: Travel preferences are one of the main topics of discussion when we connect with each of the women on our egg donor matching platform. While this information is not on her profile, please reach out to our team at support@cofertility.com if you’re interested in a particular donor and we can let you know where she’s based and whether she’s open to travel.  
• Work with a donor who is semi-local: Our egg donors span the entire country, with more and more women added to our platform every week. Working with an egg donor who lives within driving distance of your clinic (e.g. she’s in NYC and you’re in Philadelphia) may mean fewer logistical challenges with your clinic. 
• Work with a clinic near the donor: If your perfect donor match happens to be someone who cannot travel, one way to circumvent this challenge is to actually work with a clinic that’s local to her. We are happy to make a recommendation and ensure that you feel comfortable with your physician and whole care team. In this case, your donor will do all of her screening and monitoring at that clinic. For the retrieval, you can either ship frozen sperm or travel to the clinic to provide a fresh sperm cycle. Then, you can choose to either do the transfer at that clinic or ship those frozen embryos back to your clinic for transfer. Before going this route, we recommend confirming that your clinic will accept embryos made at another clinic/lab (many will provide the clinic with documentation about their lab protocols). Another benefit of this approach is that you don’t have to cover the costs associated with her travel.  

Summing it up

When considering working with Family by Co, it is crucial to be armed with the right questions to ensure that you have a comprehensive understanding of the process and make informed decisions about your family building journey. By asking the right questions, you can gain valuable insights into your clinic’s policies, procedures, and success rates, allowing you to make an informed choice about partnering with a fertility clinic that collaborates with our egg donor program. If you’d like to talk to a member of our team about how our program, click here to book a 1:1 call