The kind act of a few eggs do­nat­ed, re­stored joy and cre­at­ed thou­sands of “bounc­ing ba­bies,” for women who oth­er­wise would have al­most lost hope try­ing to get preg­nant.

Be­cause she want­ed to give this gift, 34-year-old Ge­nee­sha Per­sad-John­son de­cid­ed to be­come an egg donor five years ago. The hap­pi­ly mar­ried moth­er of one­said her mind was made up af­ter she saw a pop up ad from T&T IVF and Fer­til­i­ty Cen­tre on her Face­book page ask­ing for egg and sperm donors.

“I was a new mom at the time, still new enough to be sniff­ing my daugh­ter Sky­lar, at every op­por­tu­ni­ty and get­ting all teary-eyed just think­ing about how much I loved her. I fig­ured if I could help a cou­ple achieve their ba­by-mak­ing dreams and feel this kind of love, why wouldn’t I? So I called them and start­ed the process,” Per­sad-John­son said.

There was not a doubt in her mind about do­ing it.

“I had done my re­search and knew what the process en­tailed. It al­so helped a whole lot that the staff at Trinidad IVF was very help­ful, pa­tient, sup­port­ive and knowl­edge­able. They made sure I was com­fort­able every step of the way and an­swered any ques­tions I had with­out hes­i­ta­tion,” she said.

So com­fort­able was Per­sad-John­son with the process that she was a donor twice with the full sup­port of her hus­band Ker­wyn and fam­i­ly who knew and un­der­stood her thoughts and feel­ings on the sub­ject.

Asked what she be­lieved peo­ple should know about egg do­na­tion that might in­crease the num­ber of donors, the Ch­agua­nas na­tive said: “I don’t think it’s for every­one. It does re­quire you to de­tach from the idea that some­one could be out there with your child. But once the eggs are do­nat­ed, they’re not yours any­more.

“I didn’t mind that at all. I wasn’t plan­ning to use the eggs. I’m per­fect­ly okay with hav­ing one child. I saw an op­por­tu­ni­ty to help an­oth­er cou­ple con­ceive and know the joys of preg­nan­cy and par­ent­hood. It’s not the eas­i­est process—there are dai­ly med­ica­tions, and nee­dles in­volved—but it is com­plete­ly worth it. I think if the idea ap­peals to some­one at all, they should check it out. Make a call. Send an email. You may or may not go through with it, but it’s def­i­nite­ly worth look­ing in­to.”

Ac­cord­ing to the T&T IVF and Fer­til­i­ty Cen­tre, there are many women who have no hope of preg­nan­cy with­out do­nat­ed eggs.

Med­ical di­rec­tor at the cen­tre Cather­ine Minto-Bain said such women may have lost their eggs due to surgery, en­vi­ron­men­tal prob­lems, ge­net­ic caus­es, nat­ur­al age­ing or to treat­ment for can­cer.

“Pre­ma­ture fail­ure of the ovaries, where the pe­ri­ods stop ear­ly and there are no eggs left can be dev­as­tat­ing and it can oc­cur as ear­ly as the teenage years,” she ex­plained.

Minto-Bain said in oth­er cas­es, women may car­ry an in­her­i­ta­ble ge­net­ic dis­or­der that they do not want to pass on to their chil­dren.

What­ev­er the com­pli­ca­tion, she as­sures the gift of egg do­na­tion can make pre­cious lit­tle mir­a­cles pos­si­ble.

Dur­ing In­fer­til­i­ty Aware­ness Week, which was ob­served from April 21 to 27, the T&T IVF and Fer­til­i­ty Cen­tre took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to high­light egg do­na­tion and its im­por­tant role in re­duc­ing in­fer­til­i­ty.

The egg do­na­tion process in­volves sev­er­al rou­tine tests in which strict guide­lines must be ad­hered to. Im­por­tant con­sid­er­a­tions are the donor’s age, per­son­al and fam­i­ly med­ical back­ground and STI sta­tus. They must al­so be a non-smok­er for at least three months and free from se­vere en­dometrio­sis, among oth­er spec­i­fi­ca­tions.

Do­nat­ing eggs is not painful and do not in­volve any surgery.

Minto-Bain ex­plained that the first step of the same day pro­ce­dure in­volves grow­ing some eggs by hav­ing a dai­ly in­jec­tion for eight-12 days pri­or and ul­tra­sound scans every three to four days. When eggs are well grown, they are col­lect­ed by a gen­tle pro­ce­dure in­volv­ing a nee­dle pass­ing through the vagi­nal wall in­to the ovary. This process takes 30 min­utes or less and is done un­der se­da­tion. About two weeks lat­er, the donor’s men­stru­al cy­cle will re­turn.

Though the gift of help­ing to cre­ate a life is worth much more than any amount of mon­ey, Minto-Bain said a donor is al­so paid $8,000 per do­na­tion. She was al­so quick to point out that the iden­ti­ties of re­cip­i­ents are not re­vealed to donors and like­wise, donors re­main anony­mous to re­cip­i­ents.

“We keep safe­ly pro­tect­ed records on all peo­ple do­nat­ing and re­ceiv­ing eggs. At all times these records will be kept con­fi­den­tial and anony­mous. In the fu­ture should any child born as a re­sult of egg do­na­tion, ask for iden­ti­fy­ing in­for­ma­tion this will not be giv­en, how­ev­er, we will be able to con­firm or de­ny any po­ten­tial ge­net­ic re­la­tion­ship to a part­ner,” Minto-Bain said.