Reciprocal IVF (Shared Motherhood): How It Actually Works

What it is

Reciprocal IVF — also called shared motherhood or shared parenthood — is IVF in which one partner in a same-sex female or other LGBTQIA+ couple provides the eggs and the other carries the pregnancy. The HFEA describes it directly: eggs are collected from one partner and fertilised with donor sperm, and the resulting embryo is transferred into the other partner's womb, who carries the baby and gives birth.

Couples choose it for different reasons. The HFEA notes one common motivation is that both partners wish to take part in conception and pregnancy. There are also clinical reasons: one partner may have better ovarian reserve while the other is better placed to carry, or one may want to avoid stimulation and egg collection while the other would rather not be pregnant.

What the process involves

The HFEA sets out the steps, which follow standard IVF closely. Medication is used to stimulate the ovaries of the partner providing eggs. The eggs are collected under sedation or general anaesthetic in a procedure taking around half an hour, after which you may feel sore or bruised. Donor sperm is taken from storage and thawed, and the eggs are mixed with the sperm with the aim of creating embryos. Between two and five days later, usually one embryo is transferred to the other partner's womb. Any remaining embryos of suitable quality may be frozen and stored for future use.

Two cycles are therefore being coordinated rather than one, which is worth planning around: the partner providing eggs goes through stimulation, monitoring and collection, while the partner carrying goes through preparation of the uterine lining and transfer. Appointments will not be evenly distributed between you.

The HFEA notes that people undergoing reciprocal IVF may be at slightly higher risk of complications during pregnancy than people having IVF with their own eggs. This is worth raising with your clinic and, later, with your maternity team.

Screening: what changed in November 2024

Before the law changed in November 2024, it was a legal requirement for the partner providing eggs in reciprocal IVF to have enhanced screening tests — the same tests as someone donating eggs to a stranger. The law changed to remove that requirement, so clinics are no longer legally required to carry out enhanced screening.

Standard health checks still apply. The HFEA states that couples having reciprocal IVF need the same screening as heterosexual couples having IVF, meaning the partner providing eggs is tested for HIV and hepatitis B and C. A positive result would not necessarily prevent treatment. Additional tests may be needed depending on medical background or travel history.

If you began or were about to begin treatment around that date, your treatment plan may have needed updating, and your clinic is the place to check what applies to you.

Legal parenthood

This is the area where reciprocal IVF surprises people most, because biology and law do not line up in the way many expect.

In the UK, the person who gives birth is always the child's legal mother and legal parent at birth. The HFEA is explicit that this remains the case in reciprocal IVF even though the other partner's eggs were used to create the embryo. The law specifically states that the person who gives birth is the legal mother, with no exception for people who give birth and are not women, such as trans men or non-binary people.

If the person giving birth is married or in a civil partnership, their partner automatically becomes the other legal parent at birth. If you are not married or in a civil partnership, the partner who did not carry the pregnancy is not automatically a legal parent, and you must both consent to this before treatment takes place. In practice that means the HFEA consent forms — the WP form for the person giving birth and the PP form for the partner — completed before the embryo is transferred. They cannot be completed afterwards, and the HFEA records that errors have led to couples going to court after the birth to have legal parenthood declared.

Ask your clinic for copies of both completed forms and keep them somewhere you will find them years later.

Who controls the embryos

The HFEA is unusually direct on this, and it is a point worth discussing before you start rather than after a relationship changes.

The partner whose eggs were used to create the embryos has the final say over what happens to them. She signs the consent forms specifying how long they are stored. She can withdraw consent to storage at any time up to the point the embryos are transferred, or say that she does not want them transferred. The other partner in reciprocal IVF cannot make those decisions — even if she has already given birth to a child using those embryos.

Embryos can only be stored at all if both the egg provider and the sperm provider have given consent, which in this case means the egg-providing partner and the donor arrangement. Storage in the UK is permitted for up to 55 years from first storage, but only if consent is renewed every 10 years; if a clinic cannot contact you, embryos are removed from storage and disposed of. Keeping contact details current is a real obligation, not an administrative nicety.

Success rates: how to read them for this treatment

The HFEA gives a specific instruction here. For reciprocal IVF, look at fresh and frozen IVF cycles for patients the same age as the partner providing the eggs. Age of the egg is what drives the outcome, not the age of the person carrying.

It also repeats the general caution: success rates are a guide, not a prediction, and your individual chance depends on factors specific to your situation, which a clinic can discuss with you. HFEA national figures are published per embryo transferred rather than per cycle started, so a stimulation producing several transferable embryos gives more than one attempt at that percentage.

Cost and funding

There is no straightforward answer on NHS funding, and the HFEA says so: what is available is decided locally and depends on where in the UK you live. Private costs vary from clinic to clinic, and the HFEA recommends speaking to several clinics for an accurate picture of what treatment involves and what it costs. Reciprocal IVF involves donor sperm, and donor sperm has its own costs, waiting times and information rights attached — ask about all three.

Get a fully costed treatment plan in writing before committing, covering stimulation and monitoring for one partner, transfer preparation for the other, donor sperm, freezing and annual storage.