By Dr. Joshua Kapfhamer
If you’re in your 40s or early 50s and are hoping to grow your family, you’re part of a very fast-growing group. In the United States in 2023, for the first time in history, there were more births to women over 40 than to teenagers, which is a milestone that reflects long-awaited progress in reducing teen pregnancies and the remarkable medical advancements that now help lead to healthy pregnancies later in life.1
Still, many women in this age group discover that getting pregnant with their own eggs has become a challenging process. This is simply how biology works. According to data from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), both the quality and quantity of your eggs significantly decline with age, and by 40, only a small percentage of remaining eggs are considered genetically normal and viable.2
This is where donor eggs can be life-changing. Donor eggs, which are those eggs retrieved from carefully screened women in their 20s or early 30s, can give women of more advanced reproductive ages, or women with primary ovarian insufficienct (premature menopause) a much higher chance of achieving a healthy pregnancy. Most women who turn to donor eggs do so because their own eggs can no longer reliably lead to a successful outcome.
Why Age Makes Donor Eggs Such an Important Option
As you get older, it’s important to remember that your eggs age right along with you. This is a completely natural process, but it has some very real and significant effects on your fertility. Every woman is born with all of the eggs that she will ever have, and over time, both the number and quality of eggs decline.
A simple way to imagine this is to think of your eggs like all of the cells in the rest of your body. After many years of working hard, they don’t repair themselves as easily as they once did, and they’re more likely to make errors when they divide. These “errors,” or chromosomal abnormalities, are one of the main reasons that pregnancy often becomes much harder with age.3
Donor eggs are one method that can help bypass this challenge entirely. Donors are usually in their 20s or early 30s and undergo very thorough medical, genetic, and psychological screening processes. Their eggs are much more likely to be healthy, which means that they are more likely to develop into embryos capable of resulting in a successful pregnancy and delivery. Donor eggs can significantly increase IVF success rates for older women and women with ovarian insufficiency, because the outcome of this depends far more on the age of the egg than the age of the woman that is carrying the pregnancy.4
And here’s the most encouraging part – even if your own eggs are no longer viable, your uterus can often still support a healthy pregnancy. Donor eggs give many women in their 40s and beyond a renewed sense of hope, along with an evidence-supported opportunity to experience pregnancy, birth, and parenthood later in life.
How Donor Eggs Can Make Parenthood Possible at More Advanced Reproductive Ages
If you’re considering whether donor eggs might be the right choice for you, it can be very helpful to understand exactly why this option can be beneficial for women in their 40s and beyond.
1. Higher Success Rates and Healthier Embryos
As mentioned above, one of the greatest advantages of using donor eggs is the dramatic boost in success rates that they can provide. Donor eggs usually come from younger women that have been carefully selected for their overall health and reassuring medical and/or reproductive history. These donors go through extensive medical, genetic, and psychological screening, which helps ensure that their eggs are likely to be healthy and capable of developing into high-quality embryos.
Because of this, the embryos that are created from donor eggs tend to implant more successfully and develop more predictably.5 IVF that is done with donor-eggs consistently results in higher live-birth rates than IVF using a woman’s own eggs in her 40s or 50s. For many women in this age range, donor eggs can provide them with an option for pregnancy that may otherwise be out of reach.
2. Lower Risk of Genetic Abnormalities
As eggs age, they’re more likely to develop chromosomal errors. These errors can prevent an embryo from developing normally, which can make it much more difficult to get pregnant and can increase the risk of miscarriage. Donor eggs help bypass this by using younger eggs with a much lower chance of chromosome abnormalities.6
3. Opportunity for Connection Through Pregnancy
Even though the baby won’t carry your genetic material, the entire experience of pregnancy is still deeply biological. Your body nurtures the embryo, shapes the environment that your baby grows in, and influences how certain genes are expressed. This is known as epigenetics, and it shows that your body plays a very active and important role in your child’s development.7 Many women say that carrying the pregnancy, feeling the baby grow and move about, and giving birth creates a very powerful bond – one that feels as if they had used their own eggs.
4. More Predictable Family Planning
Another major benefit of using donor eggs is the predictability that these eggs can offer. A single donor cycle often creates multiple embryos, some of which can be frozen for future use. This means you may have the opportunity to grow your family over time using frozen embryo transfers (FETs) without repeating a full IVF cycle.8
Understanding What to Expect When Using Donor Eggs Later in Life
Before moving forward with donor eggs, there are some important things to consider. Most risks are not connected to the donor eggs themselves, but to the age and overall health of the person who will be carrying the pregnancy. This is exactly why clinics schedule a thorough medical consultation before treatment begins in order to make sure that your body is fully prepared and will remain safe throughout the pregnancy.
1. Health Risks Associated With Pregnancy at Advanced Ages
As women get older, certain pregnancy-related risks will naturally increase. These can include conditions such as high blood pressure (hypertension), gestational diabetes, issues with the placenta, and a higher chance of needing a C-section. These risks don’t come from the donor egg, they come from the physical demands of pregnancy on the body.9
2. Emotional and Psychological Considerations
Choosing donor eggs can often bring up certain mixed feelings and questions about genetics, identity, connection, and what it means to become a parent in this way. These feelings are completely normal, and many women find a great deal of reassurance in knowing that pregnancy itself creates a deep biological and emotional connection.10
3. Financial Considerations
IVF with donor eggs can be expensive. The costs for this process include the donor’s medical care, screening, retrieval, and all of the IVF procedures. However, one financial advantage is that donor cycles often produce multiple embryos, which can be frozen and used in the future, reducing the need for another full IVF cycle later if you hope to grow your family as time goes on.
4. Legal and Ethical Considerations
There are also some legal steps that are involved in using donor eggs, but your clinic and legal team will work with you and help guide you through them. These include things like donor consent, whether the donation is anonymous or directed (known), what information you may receive about the donor, and what rights you have as the legal parent. All of these are specifically designed to protect everyone involved and ensure complete transparency from the very beginning.
Making the Choice That Feels Right for You
Choosing to use donor eggs is a very personal decision, but for many women, it can provide a hopeful and medically viable path to building a family. Donor eggs provide much higher success rates, healthier embryos, and also give you the meaningful experience of carrying and nurturing a pregnancy from the very beginning. While there are some risks to consider, most of them relate to your own health and age (not the donor eggs themselves) and these are carefully reviewed with you during your medical consultation. Fortunately, you don’t have to deal with any of this on your own. Partnering with a fertility specialist can help you fully understand all of your options and can help you create a plan that is both safe and empowering, and fully grounded in the latest available science.
References:
- More older women becoming first-time moms amid U.S. fertility rate declines. TODAY.com 072. Published March 19, 2025. ↩︎
- Testing and interpreting measures of ovarian reserve: a committee opinion (2020) – practice guidance. American Society for Reproductive Medicine | ASRM. ↩︎
- Moghadam ARE, Moghadam MT, Hemadi M, Saki G. Oocyte quality and aging. JBRA. January 2021. doi:10.5935/1518-0557.20210026 ↩︎
- Bruckamp L, Lazzari E. Shifting the reproductive window: The contribution of ART and egg donation to fertility rates in the UK. Population Studies. October 2025:1-13. doi:10.1080/00324728.2025.2561595 ↩︎
- Coates A, Bankowski BJ, Kung A, Griffin DK, Munne S. Differences in pregnancy outcomes in donor egg frozen embryo transfer (FET) cycles following preimplantation genetic screening (PGS): a single center retrospective study. Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics. 2016;34(1):71-78. doi:10.1007/s10815-016-0832-z ↩︎
- A new tool for understanding chromosome abnormalities in the eggs of older women. Yale News. Published November 3, 2025. ↩︎
- Epigenetics, health, and disease. Genomics and Your Health. CDC. Published January 31, 2025. ↩︎
- Robin FK, Andrade GM, Bos-Mikich A, Frantz N, Zocche D a. A, Leal SMC. Donor oocyte cycle characteristics and outcomes: factors potentially linked with successful endings. JBRA. 2022;27(2):185-190. doi:10.5935/1518-0557.20220046 ↩︎
- Neuroscience News. Older motherhood linked to higher birth risks, especially after 45. Neuroscience News. Published June 24, 2025. ↩︎
- Mft SFDGPhD. The seismic identity shift of egg donation blends grief, gratitude, and love. Psychology Today. Published April 17, 2025. ↩︎
