I’m Thinking About Donating Eggs. What Are The Risks And When Would Be A Good Time To Do It?

After having a baby it’s going to take your body a while to get back to normal as far as hormones go and since donating eggs requires hormone treatments, I would give it a while. I would wait at least a year.
Donating eggs requires lots of time on the donors part between the physical and psychological testing, the hormone treatments and doctor visits, and the egg aspiration procedure. Having your eggs extracted may involve moderate cramping and nausea. They will have medications handy to help with the symptoms. Also, they will send you home with antibiotics as a precaution. In about two weeks, you will go back for a follow up to make sure all is well.
They take out several eggs at once, and no, it shouldn’t effect future pregnancies. Women are born with hundreds of thousands of eggs, so donating a few dozen (assuming you donate more than once) will not impede fertility.
Ideally, egg donation places are looking for young women. Preferably 19-23 years of age. These women, especially those with ethnicities in high demand, are paid a premium for their eggs (actually, it’s illegal to pay for body parts, so they label it as paying for their “time”) which can be several thousand dollars and up. Not so premium age (women in mid to late 20s and not of an ethnic demand) are paid a standard of about $5000 a cycle. And if you manage to get pregnant during a session, you get nothing. I don’t think they consider donors outside of their 20s.
You should research this further to decide if it something that you want to do. Make sure you work with a reputable company, as I’m sure there’s fraud in this business too.
Good luck!

I was actually looking into this recently. You have to be injected with fertility drugs because they take a lot of eggs. So if you don’t like shots, this may be painful. I read that after your eggs are taken you may have some cramping. It’s a very involved process, so I’d wait about a year after you deliver. Most places pay 5000+. It’s not easy! You have tons of medical work and a psychological exam.

I think you have to get injections, they usually do them in the leg, so I’m sure that hurts. They do this so your body releases several eggs at once, and all of the eggs you release will be harvested. I’m not sure how much it pays but I heard it’s pretty good. I don’t think it has many side effects as far as the harvesting of the eggs, but some people do have side-effects from the hormone shots. I think they also ask you to refrain from sex between the time they are trying to get your body to release more eggs and when they harvest them.

The egg donation process is the exact same as the one you would go through to do an IVF cycle, which I have done twice. It is pretty simple and painless.
You usually take some sort of drug to suppress your ovaries for a few weeks (like birth control pills of lupron). This calms you ovaries and makes sure that several follicles will develop instead of just one lead follicle (as usually happens in nature). You then do anywhere from 7-14 days of stimulating drugs (like Gonal-F) which is a shot you can give yourself in the belly. It is a thin needle, and the only side effect I ever had was stinging fo a minute or two at the injection site.
You will probably feel your ovaries begin to swell up after a few days on the stims, and it may get uncomfortable. If you are young, you may get ovarian hyperstimulation, which can cause abdominal swelling, nausea, difficulty breathing, and more serious conditions if you are not monitored. I had a mild case of OHSS once (had 33 eggs retrieved) and it was uncomfortable and yucky, but not painful.
The egg retrieval (ER) is done under twilight sedation, and a large needle attached to an ultrasound probe is used to aspirate the eggs. My sedation was very light, as I could remember all of the details of the ER, and even though I was all there, it was just more uncomfortable than painful. Plus, it was over very quickly.
I think the average egg donor fee is about $5,000, and they will take as many eggs as you make. The average number of eggs is between 6-15, but I have seen donors make as many as 60!!!
A good time to do it is when you are all healed up from birth, and after your hormones have regulated. Also, you need to have ceased breastfeeding by that point, as the medications would not be good for your baby.
As far as I have ever heard, egg donation will have no effect on your future fertility. The only situation I can imagine is if you are working with an incompetent doctor who somehow injures your ovary while doing the retrieval, so like any type of surgery, be sure you doctor is skilled and well-respected.
I think egg donation is a wonderful gift, too, and as long as you can handle the idea of a little you walking around out there without your knowledge, I would say go for it! Good luck!