The Center for Human Reproduction offers a variety of fertility treatment options for single women who wish to have children. While single women typically require a sperm donor, their fertility treatment options are largely the same as those available to couples. The specific course of treatment depends on each patient’s unique situation, including the type and severity of any infertility issues. For example, a single woman with a normal ovarian reserve, functioning fallopian tubes, and a healthy uterus may only need a cycle of intrauterine insemination (IUI) with donor sperm to conceive.
However, if a patient has diminished ovarian reserve (DOR) or blocked tubes, she may require in vitro fertilization (IVF) with donor sperm. In cases of very low ovarian reserve, both egg and sperm donation may be necessary to achieve pregnancy. CHR experts conduct thorough consultations and diagnostic testing to determine the best course of action for each individual patient. While CHR does not operate as a sperm bank, we collaborate with reputable, FDA-approved sperm banks and can assist patients in selecting donor sperm. Our egg donation program offers a large and diverse pool of donors, helping single women who need egg donations find a suitable match quickly.
While going through IUI or IVF with donor sperm is common among single women who want to start a family, there is another option for single women: embryo adoption. In IVF cycles, sometimes there are "extra embryos" left over after a few of the best-quality embryos are used for fresh embryo transfer. These extra embryos can be used for later frozen embryo transfers if patients want to have more children in the future. However, patients may feel that their family is complete after a successful delivery or two even though they still have extra embryos frozen from their original IVF cycle. In these cases, patients have an option of anonymously donating the extra embryos to other infertility patients.
CHR is one of the few IVF centers that maintain its own embryo adoption/donation program, and usually have a few sets of frozen embryos available for adoption. Over the years, we have helped single women (as well as couples) build their families using our embryo adoption program.
For single women who are not ready to start a family but are worried that their fertile years may be exhausted before they find the right partners, fertility preservation may be an option. There are several methods of fertility preservation. For more information, please visit our fertiliy preservation page.
Single men who wish to have children face more complex challenges than single women, as they require both egg donation and a gestational carrier (surrogate) to carry the pregnancy to term. At the Center for Human Reproduction, single men can benefit from our large and diverse pool of egg donors, allowing them to be quickly matched with a donor who closely fits their preferences. During an egg donation cycle, the donor undergoes ovarian stimulation, and after 2–3 weeks, mature eggs are retrieved. These eggs are then fertilized with the patient's sperm in the lab and transferred to the gestational carrier’s uterus.
While CHR does not provide gestational carrier services directly, we have established relationships with reputable agencies and can connect patients to them. Given the legal complexities of surrogacy, we strongly recommend that patients seek independent legal counsel. In some cases, male infertility factors, such as low sperm count, poor sperm morphology, or poor motility, may affect the ability to fertilize eggs. Many of these issues can be addressed using intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), a lab technique that directly injects the best sperm into the egg to promote fertilization. For men with no sperm in the ejaculate (azoospermia), microsurgical techniques can extract sperm directly from the testes for use in fertilizing the donor eggs. Our urology affiliates are specialists in these procedures, ensuring that most men can become biological fathers.
Become a Patient