Kristin Revere and Jayme Bess discuss the options for embryo donation for families and the benefits for donors in this informative episode.
Hello, hello! This is Kristin Revere with Ask the Doulas, and I am thrilled to chat with Jayme Bess today about embryo donation. Jayme is the founder and CEO of Acts of Kindness Embryo Donation. Acts of Kindness is a team of compassionate women who help intended parents start or grow their family through embryo donation. They embrace all family types and offer a comprehensive range of options including non-identified anonymous, semi-open, and open donor recipient relationships. Their dedication to inclusivity drives them to provide resources tailored to each individual’s unique needs, ensuring that everyone receives the support they deserve.
Above all, Acts of Kindness is focused on offering hope and opportunity to all and to give each embryo the chance at life it deserves.
Welcome, Jayme!
Thank you! Pleasure to be here this morning.
I would love to hear more about how you personally became passionate about embryo donation.
A few years ago, I was working as a financial counselor for another fertility group, and we just decided that donor conception was really expensive, so we decided to offer an in-house program at a cheaper rate, and this is how we started embryo adoption was through donation. We just offered it as a cheaper cost. So over the years, the need for that program just grew because it was a more affordable option for everybody, and from there, we just decided earlier this year to break off from that company and start our own. That’s kind of where we are today. We’ve refocused, and we’ve decided to offer different options and focus more on those who have gone through IVF procedures in the past and had embryos left over that are looking for a recipient family to donate their embryos to us and for us to find recipients for those.
It’s so beautiful, and as I mentioned to you in a prior conversation, I had a doula client years back who went through that process of donating her embryos, and I was fascinated by that. She spent a lot of time finding the perfect match for donation, so I love that there is a service that helps connect families and that you made it easier because it took her so long to be able to donate her embryos.
Yes, private matching can be very difficult because there’s a lot of steps involved and it’s a very intricate process, especially with several of the different REI labs and different clinics. They all have different stipulations on what they will accept and won’t accept, so just having a service out there that provides that support is invaluable for these people.
Absolutely. As far as the work you do, you serve anyone, anywhere, correct?
Correct. So we are trying to branch out and go global. We’re actually working on one case now that’s being shipped to Iran, so that’s pretty big for us.
That’s huge.
Yes, and we’ve dealt with one in Canada so far. We’re just looking to expand our services and really open this up to anybody who’s looking for a more affordable option to grow their family.
Can you give us a range, when you say affordable, about what that would look like financially for a family?
Yes. We don’t actually charge for the embryos themselves. We don’t sell embryos. We just have an exclusive package that’s a flat fee for our services and the transfer of ownership paperwork in our package is $7,000.
That is affordable.
It is, and then if you stick with our partner clinic, which is in St. Louis, Missouri, they’re only $3,000. So for a total of $10,000, you can go ahead and get your matching with your embryos and have the FET treatment. That’s usually about a third of what IVF costs.
Exactly. I am familiar with those costs for IVF, and that is big savings. So as far as the length of time a family would have to donate, do you have any tips on that? How many years would an embryo be able to be good for, as far as matching?
We’ve had embryos older than 20 years that have been donated to us, and as long as the embryology team at the accepting clinic knows how to thaw the slow freeze methods and is able to use them, these embryos can go as far back as needed.
Fascinating.
Exactly, so they’re all frozen at about day five, day six, day seven; sometimes a day three. And they just don’t develop past that, so when they unthaw, it’s just like they’re fresh.
Beautiful.
Yes.
You mentioned IVF and different family planning methods. What does your typical family look like? Have they tried IVF and that wasn’t successful, or looked into adoption? I would love to hear more about what you’re seeing as far as your clientele.
You know, it honestly really varies. We see a lot of different aspects of life. We see them all the way from, hey, we’re a young couple who’s tried IUIs who just can’t afford IVF so we’re going to start here. Genetics just don’t matter to us. We’ve seen some who have done IVF nine times and it’s just every time, their egg quality is not good or it just doesn’t inseminate or for some reason they’re all abnormal; egg quality factors. They come to us for that. We’ve also seen women who are older who were career driven and just didn’t preserve their oocytes in time who want to come back and now have a child in life. So it’s just all different ranges. LGBTQ+, we cater to them as well. We’re friendly, so that’s another great family building option for them, as well.
Yeah, I saw you pride yourselves on being inclusive. That is fantastic. As far as the process goes, what would the average length of time be for a family from beginning to work with you to the process of being matched and beginning the journey to conception?
It honestly can go pretty quickly. The way our program works is when we get a donation in, we actually bring those embryos on site to our clinic. So the embryos are all ready to go, ready to match, as soon as we find a recipient. We house everything online in our online database. That’s available to all our recipients for free. What they do is they go in and they look at the donor profiles, and if they want to match with one, they just hit “Reserve Now.” At that point, we’ll look at the donation preferences just to make sure it’s a good match for everybody, and if the match looks like it matches everything up, then we’ll go ahead and complete the adoption, basically. So it can go as quickly as 24 to 48 hours for them to match and have the adoption completely completed, and then they can either come for the FET, which normally takes about 30 to 45 days to set up, or they can have it shipped off site which may take one to two weeks. Within 30 days, they can match and have their treatment done.
That is amazing. And are surrogates involved?
Sometimes, yes. Surrogacy is tricky. Gestational carriers require a lot more testing on the embryos than some of them do have because a lot of these are patient-donated embryos. They were created for sexually intimate partner use, so they did not have the infectious disease testing. Some of these donors don’t want to have that done afterwards, either. They are still FDA compliant; you just have to put the warning on there, you know, it carries the risk that infectious disease can happen from the transfer of these. But some clinics, especially the ones that are dealing with GCs, just won’t accept those.
That makes sense.
That’s kind of the hiccup we have there, but we do get other embryos in that were donor created that have all the testing, so if we’re dealing with a recipient who’s using a GC, we normally tell them to look at those profiles first because we know that those are more widely accepted.
Excellent. What are some common questions that you receive from potential clients?
Usually, it’s how long does this take? What does the embryo grading mean? Will my clinic accept these embryos? How does the process work? They’re all just really fascinated with it because it’s still new.
Right. I’m fascinated! I love learning about all of the options for families.
Definitely. And then the one thing that we did do differently is that we offer all the different types of donation and adoption cases. Most of the agencies just focus on either private matching directed donation cases or they’re anonymous, where we actually offer all three. We offer the closed donation, the semi-open, and the open. So our recipients do find that to be very proactive, and they come to us for that reason because we cater to all the different types.
Yes, it does seem like it’s a rare service. So what does semi-open entail?
Semi-open is basically that we utilize a third party program called ADC Donor Nexxus, and what that is, it houses the donors’ and the recipients’ information as far as their demographics, their stories, their medical history, and it requires that they report back every two years with any changes that they may have. That program also allows them to opt in for secure communication. And in most cases with semi-open, they’ll go in every two years and give updates. Sometimes they’ll send pictures. Once the child turns 18, they’ve agreed to meet up.
That’s so helpful that they’re able to share medical information that could be needed for the child later in life.
Yes, especially if it’s a split recipient, because then you can add both recipients, and every family gets each other’s updates. So if there’s half-siblings out there that are actually true siblings, you can see where they’re at in life, as well.
I love that. And then what would a fully open donor mean?
It’s along the same process, only they just stay in communication more, and they have the option to meet up in person.
And then obviously anonymous makes sense; no information is given?
Right, no contact information is exchanged. However, with us, we do have all the physical characteristics, the genetic history, the medical history of the family, and photos are shared. So they do have a lot of the information. It’s just no contact.
And is that medical information updated over time, or is it just at the time of donation?
Just at the time of donation, unless they opt in to share that, through that platform. But it’s optional with the closed questions.
And another question I have for you, Jayme, as far as the families who are considering their choices and what to do with the remaining embryos, why should a family donate?
So really, you only have a few options when it comes to your embryos and what you’re going to do with them. The most obvious one is to continue storage, which is going to cost you roughly anywhere between $500 to $600 a year to continue storage on those. So if you’re never going to use them, you’re just paying on something you’re not going to ever utilize.
Yeah, that’s expensive.
It is. It can be expensive over time. The other option is to medically discard them. And let’s just be honest, when you medically discard something, you’re putting it in a red plastic trash bag, and you’re just throwing it away.
Right, and for people who are pro-life, for example, that is important to them. That may not be a choice.
It’s hard on your morals, yes, definitely. The other option would be to donate it to medical research. There’s a lot of programs out there that just do not accept them anymore. So that is hard to find. And then the last option, which we’re hoping to bring more light to and make it more widely known, is donation. With donation, you’re actually giving your embryos a chance at life and to be able to thrive.
Right. I didn’t realize that there were as many options. I didn’t even think about the medical research aspect with embryos, but as you mentioned, that’s so limited.
It is. We actually started a new program, a student teaching program, that will accept any abnormal embryos for medical research and for student teaching.
Okay. So what else should our listeners know about this important service that you offer?
Really, that it’s just out there. It exists for anybody who’s looking for a different way to grow their family. We would love to see this more known for people, more accepted. Usually, donor conception is not talked about very often because it just seems kind of bizarre in some ways to people, so we want to break those barriers open and just let them know that this option exists and it’s okay. And we would love for you to check us out and recommend us to anybody that’s looking for this service.
Any other final tips for our listeners, Jayme?
Really, just help one another, you know? Life goes on no matter what happens, and wherever you’re at in this fertility journey, we know that it’s painful, but we’re here to support you in any way that we can. So even if you’re not looking at this for an option and you just need somebody to talk to about where you’re at on your journey, we’re here for you as well.
So how can our listeners find you?
We’re available through our social media and also our website. From there, you can see all of our different resources. We have a Donors page, a Recipients page, and then one that you go to for extra support if you’re looking for extra support on your journey. We’re available on Instagram @aokembryos, as well as TikTok, and then on Facebook at Acts of Kindness Embryo Donation.
Excellent. Well, thank you for offering this service globally now to the world and for the work that you’re doing. It’s so important.
Thank you so much. It was a pleasure sharing with you!
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