About me and my website

Infertility what a harsh sounding word this is, and heart breaking when you dream of having a family

I started this website as I needed to find an egg donor and whilst going through the process I found how hard the journey was.

After several years of coming to terms emotionally and mentally with the fact that I needed an Egg Donor Angel and not finding the “one” I started to look at women in the street, at the traffic lights, at the shops…. as potential Egg Donor Angels. 

The revelation for me was that lots of women would consider helping if they knew that they were needed and could help.

There’s a misconception out there that most women in their 40’s can still have children naturally or with some IVF… and yes there are some women who can and do fall pregnant naturally in their late 30’s and in their 40’s but sadly it’s rare.  Most women that do fall pregnant at this age have either already had children, have fantastic fertility and/or have been going through IVF.
Most IVF clinics have a graph they show with the percentage of women that fall pregnant naturally and after the age of 35, it starts to fall rapidly, if you haven’t seen this ask them if they have something similar.
When you start this journey, people will tell you “oh such and such fell pregnant at 40 something” or “don’t worry it will happen, just relax”..  It’s also very hard when high-profile people seem to achieve pregnancy easily in their 40’s with no mention of IVF or using an Egg Donor Angel, they may have been lucky enough to have achieved a natural pregnancy, or a pregnancy via IVF, maybe using embryo’s they had in the freezer or potentially via an Egg Donor Angel.

Sadly, there are many women in their 30’s and their 40’s going through the heartbreaking and emotional rollercoaster ride of IVF.

Many not just for the reasons widely communicated such as careers and selfishness, many because they couldn’t, shouldn’t or just didn’t as they thought they had time or didn’t find “the one” till later in life or are on their 2nd marriage/significant relationship and maybe their first didn’t want children or couldn’t have children… sometimes there’s judgment on “older” women using IVF and having children, but its their decision they have a right to make it’s not up to anyone to judge or criticise.

But there are also lots of women in their 20’s and 30’s that need and are using IVF and/or and Egg Donor Angels to fulfil their dream of a family.

Infertility is a huge problem these days due to many reasons including; cancer, premature menopause, endometriosis, genetic disorders, reoccurring miscarriages, turners syndrome, ovarian failure, high FSH, no ovaries or poor responding ovaries and PCOS  just to name a few.

I am not a Dr or have any medical qualifications, but I am someone who has been and is on this journey and I want to help others have a less bumpy ride, be more informed and hopefully achieve their dream of a family.  What I talk about here is my knowledge of IVF, Egg Donation, Sperm Donation, Embryo Donation and Surrogacy via my Doctors, my IVF clinic/s, regulatory bodies, my friends that have travelled this road and my own journey.

When we got told we needed an Egg Donor, we tried to find our own Egg Donor Angel through local paper advertising, Facebook, friends, acquaintances and family and realised just how hard it was.  We had some wonderful offers but things like age, emotional balance, health and motivation made us think long and hard and in the end choose not to accept their generosity in their own best interests at the time.

What we found is that there are up to 4 year waiting lists in Australia for Egg Donors, that many people offer but many can not help and over 50% will change their mind for various reasons, understandably. This website is to help donors and recipients connect and find each other quickly and easily and start the process.  On this website, either donor or recipients can place ads and either can reply to their ads.  Every week, more and more donors are placing their own ads on here and/or replying to recipients ads.

It’s a very emotional, difficult yet wonderful decision to offer and become an Egg Donor Angel and the whole process needs to be understood and discussed by all before it’s put into action.

These include some of the following facts

  • Egg Donors do not get paid in Australia unlike other countries.  ALL medical costs are covered by the recipient/s.  Only “reasonable” out-of-pocket expenses are covered such as travel, parking, babysitting, time off work when employed and rostered to work at the time of the appointments.
  • The Egg Donor Angels details are registered and if the child is not aware of their biological parent or in contact via their parents, they can find out when they turn 18 years old via the registry.
  • Once the eggs are retrieved from the Egg Donor and using the recipient’s husbands sperm or a Sperm Donor, the embryos are now legally that couples.  There is no legal obligations for the Egg Donor Angel or commitments going forwards.
  • The recipient has the embryos implanted into her uterus and carries the baby.
  • To be an Egg Donor Angel you need to commit to some time over a 2-3 week period where you can do blood tests, ultrasounds, take medications and be mindful that you could be somewhat uncomfortable with the medications as they are hormones, yes that’s right! and the objective is to produce quite a few eggs for the recipient.  Prior to starting the actual Egg Donor cycle you will need to commit some time to initial appointments with the IVF clinic to start the process, appointments to do bloods and an ultrasound.  All Egg Donors and their partners must attend one counselling session with the clinics counsellor, the recipient/s will also do a counselling session and then both the donor, the donors partner (if applicable) and the recipient/s will do a counselling session together.

“This website is to help couples like us find their Egg Donor Angel and start their wonderful journey to being a family”

If you want to help, go to our Become an Egg Donor Angel page for more information or click here to advertise.

If you are looking for an Egg Donor Angel, click here to advertise or browse our ads here.

I have worked on this full time for free as it’s my love and my passion and now with our boys Liam and Owen I still put in many hours a day and week .  To date I have spent thousands of dollars to set up this website, paid for advertising and promotion for this important cause so that hopefully I can find you your Egg Donor Angel.  I’m pretty easy to get in touch with either on email, Facebook or phone and for the most part I will get back to you quickly. But please keep in mind I put in hours and hours of my own time to update and manage this website, the Facebook groups and the Facebook page all for free.  Sometimes I am busy with our personal stuff and with our boys but I will get back to you as soon as I can.  I don’t work a paid job as this has now become my job, just without the pay 🙂  But if you would like to contribute to the running of this website, Facebook groups and pages, help me promote this wonderful cause and create more awareness, I have now included a donate button on most pages on here as well as my account details for a direct debit.

My goal is to gain more and more awareness for the need for not only Egg Donor Angels, but Embyro Donor Angels, Sperm Donor Angels and Surrogates and hopefully through this increased awareness more donors and surrogates will come forward.  Over the past years, we too have gone through our own Egg Donor Angel journey as well as breast cancer and major complications… this knocked us around emotionally, physically and financially…. so we do understand and empathise with you on this emotional rollercoaster.

After losing our 11 embyro’s where my cousin was my egg donor angel as they didn’t survive the freeze, a wonderful friend offered but sadly we weren’t successful, we then started to advertise for another Egg Donor Angel but we felt we couldn’t take an egg donor away from another recipient and we’d heard all the fabulous successes from going overseas so we started to investigate that option.  We felt we were running out of time as well and that finding an egg donor here in Australia can take a few weeks but it can also take months and sometimes years.  We looked at both Greece and South Africa and decided upon South Africa and from the first initial email we were there in 10 weeks doing our cycle with our wonderful egg donor (little Helper as she calls herself).  The clinics overseas in places like Greece, South Africa and Czechoslovakia are excellent and the costs are reasonable and in some respects comparable to doing IVF here.  Our cycle including; the donors cycle, her compensation towards her costs of about $850AUD, my embryo transfer, Dr’s appointments and correspondence, all medications for all of us and the freezing of embryo’s for a year was around $9,000AUD.  In many countries they choose your egg donor for you but in South Africa you can look at Egg Donors online and choose one that you feel a connection with and if important to you, looks similar to you.  Egg Donors in South Africa are anonymous and you only get photos of them as a child but you also get a very comprehensive profile on the egg donor including paternal and maternal history, handwriting and much much more.  The Egg Donor clinics in South Africa charge around $1,500AUD for the service but that includes them screening and creating the profile of the donors and liaising with you in regard to them and working with the clinic.  Also some of the clinics offer a guarantee if your donor doesn’t produce any eggs, they will give you eggs from their egg bank, which is a nice back up plan.

Like anything you need to do your due diligence and I recommend you look here first for your Egg Donor Angel but give yourselves a time frame that is reasonable and then consider your other options.

I know that this journey is expensive and keep in mind you can also consider accessing your superannuation to pay for your IVF, click here for more information.

So our journey… we were able to announce on our wedding day to our amazing and wonderful family and friends that we were pregnant at 12 weeks and late February 2016 we had our little boy Liam  and we are soooo much in love with him.  We didn’t have any embryo’s left in the freezer so we ended up doing another cycle with our egg donor and we had some snow babies waiting for us to go again for a sibling for Liam but sadly we had a miscarriage and a negative.

Our donor was recommended not to do another cycle as she had not responded well so we had to find another egg donor.

We finally did and with another trip to Cape Town fell pregnant with Owen and had a rollercoaster of a pregnancy including a massive bleed at 6 weeks, told to do a D&C as they thought we’d miscarried.  We said no we want more bloods/HCG levels and an ultrasound.  Finally days later we did an ultrasound where everyone held their breath and finally we heard his heartbeat, Owen had survived.  I then had really high blood pressure and at 32 weeks was hospitalised and one week later was rushed to do a C section as Owen’s heart kept stopping. Six weeks early he was tiny and spent almost 3 weeks in the NICU.  We have 6 embryo’s left in Cape Town but no plans to do another cycle as much as we’d love to.   I have been diagnosed with a rare auto immune disease called Scleroderma which I’ve probably had for a long time but breast cancer and the significant treatment and a textured implant accelerated this disease.

That’s the short version of our story… I’m always happy to chat pending life and the boys 🙂

If you haven’t guessed already :), I am soooo very passionate about this cause and am happy to chat and answer questions, so please do contact me via email; diannej@eggdonorangels.com.au, message or phone….  xox

I’m more than happy to chat about our journey and offer support, you can email me diannej@eggdonorangels.com.au or PM me on Facebook xoxox

Make sure you also like us on Facebook and join our Facebook groups; a safe place for donors and recipients to chat and offer support through this journey:

Egg Donor Angels Facebook Support Group – This group is a general support group but is mainly made up of people from Australia and New Zealand looking for their Egg Donor Angel or wanting to be an Egg Donor Angel, however we have people from all over the world in this group.  It’s a safe place to chat and offer support, no advertising or promotion is allowed within this group.  Also please do not approach potential Egg Donors within the group unless initiated by the Egg Donor as this group is meant to be a safe place to chat and offer support only xox.

Egg Donor Angels Australia Facebook Support Group – This group is for people from the Australia looking for their Egg Donor Angel or wanting to be an Egg Donor Angel. It’s a safe place to chat and offer support, no advertising or promotion is allowed within this group.  Also please do not approach potential Egg Donors within the group unless initiated by the Egg Donor as this group is meant to be a safe place to chat and offer support only xox.

Egg Donor Angels US Facebook Support Group  – This group is for people from the US looking for their Egg Donor Angel or wanting to be an Egg Donor Angel. It’s a safe place to chat and offer support, no advertising or promotion is allowed within this group.  Also please do not approach potential Egg Donors within the group unless initiated by the Egg Donor as this group is meant to be a safe place to chat and offer support only xox.

Egg Donor Angels UK Facebook Support Group. – This group is for people from the UK looking for their Egg Donor Angel or wanting to be an Egg Donor Angel xox. It’s a safe place to chat and offer support, no advertising or promotion is allowed within this group.  Also please do not approach potential Egg Donors within the group unless initiated by the Egg Donor as this group is meant to be a safe place to chat and offer support only xox.

Egg Donor Angels NZ Facebook Support Group – This group is for people from NZ looking for their Egg Donor Angel or wanting to be an Egg Donor Angel xox. It’s a safe place to chat and offer support, no advertising or promotion is allowed within this group.  Also please do not approach potential Egg Donors within the group unless initiated by the Egg Donor as this group is meant to be a safe place to chat and offer support only xox.

Egg Donor Angels Canada Facebook Support Group – This group is for people from Canada looking for their Egg Donor Angel or wanting to be an Egg Donor Angel xox. It’s a safe place to chat and offer support, no advertising or promotion is allowed within this group.  Also please do not approach potential Egg Donors within the group unless initiated by the Egg Donor as this group is meant to be a safe place to chat and offer support only xox.

Egg Donor Angels Recipient Only Support Group – This group is for recipients only. It includes people that are looking for their Egg Donor Angel, have their Egg Donor Angel, are going through the process or have been through the egg donation journey.  It’s a safe place for recipients to chat and offer support. Sorry no donors xox and admin is by recipients only.

Egg Donor Angels Donors Only Support Group – This group is for donors only, a safe place for them to chat and offer support and help through the process.  Admin is donors only, other than myself as this is my “baby” :).

Egg Donor Angels International Donor Options Support Group – this group is for recipients considering going overseas for an egg donor cycle.  It’s a safe place to chat about IVF clinics in countries such as South Africa and Greece and talk to people who have been there.

Egg Donor Angels Parents of Donor Conceived Children Support Group – this group is for parents who have donor conceived children to chat and offer support through the next phase of this journey.

Egg Donor Angels Parents of South African Donor Conceived Children – this group is for parents who have donor conceived children via going to South Africa to chat and offer support through the next phase of this journey.

Egg Donor Angels Single Women Seeking Egg, Sperm and Embryo Donation Support – this group is purely for single women on and/or have been on the IVF and egg/sperm/embryo donation journey to chat and offer support especially around the challenges they face on their own.

** Advertising for a donor is not allowed on the Facebook groups, however you are welcome to tell your story and journey on there.  Also recipients are not allowed to contact donors or private message them unless initiated by the potential donor.  This is to ensure that the groups are a supportive and safe environment for all 🙂

Good Luck with your search for your Egg Donor Angel and please keep me updated xox as many of you already have with your success.  Many recipients and donors have connected through here and have now had their baby, pregnant or in the process of the donor cycle.  I wish you lots of baby dust and send you huge hugs whilst you travel this journey xox

Thank you, every bit helps, I look forward to chatting with you and hopefully helping you fulfilling your dreams xoxox

Account name: Dianne Johnston

BSB: 112-879

Account number: 066 926 009

Thanks so much for spending the time reading this and for coming to our website, I hope you find the information you need, otherwise please contact me.

Take care

Dianne xox

Privacy Policy
You may give me personal information about you, such as your name, your contact email and other contact details on my website. This privacy policy describes how I collect and use your personal information.

On this site, I only collect your information when you place an ad on here through registering your details for the ad.

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The information you give me is absolute safe with us. I will never rent, sell, share or otherwise disclose your personal information to third parties. I might contact you from time to time; regarding your journey, requesting an update, with updates regarding the site, with relevant information to your journey, and/or in regard to services (like Facebook groups, Facebook page and announcement lists) you have followed/joined.

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4 thoughts on “About me and my website”

  1. Hi my name is Joella, I’m looking into donor eggs and IVF overseas just trying to find the best info, so I can make the hopefully right discussion that is best for us

    1. Hi Joella, thanks for your message… join my Facebook group “egg donor angels international donor options” and you can chat to us on there about going overseas and also on there is a pdf document I researched and created that has information on all the countries that many have used xox

  2. Hi Dianne,
    Great work. We have six frozen embryos that we are looking to donate. I just want to be sure they go to the right recipients and would like updates. If that is at all possible.
    Tanya

    1. Hi Tanya, sorry for such a late reply, it’s just little old me running the website, the emails, the Facebook page, the many Facebook groups etc. and our little 13 month old.. lol.. I haven’t had time to date to do the comments to my blog, but I’m just making some time to do it now.. sorry…
      Thanks for offering this amazing gift, are you still looking to donate your embryo’s? If so you can do an ad on my website or I believe there are a couple of recipients currently looking for an embryo donor.. let me know xox

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