An average healthy 21-year-old woman has approximately 200,000+ eggs. Every month, one egg reaches maturation and is released from the egg follicles into the fallopian tube. Meanwhile, several “immature” eggs are also released, but instead of reaching full maturation, they are absorbed back into the body. In an egg donation cycle, the medications used to stimulate ovulation help to trigger the development of multiple mature eggs at once. These are eggs that would have otherwise been lost as part of the body’s natural ovulation cycle. As such, only the eggs a donor has available for that month are stimulated and retrieved – typically around 20-30 eggs.