What She Said: The Clinic Paid More For My Eggs Because I’m Light-Skinned

Every week, ThePress spotlights the unfiltered stories of women navigating life, love, identity and everything in between. 

What She Said will give women the mic to speak freely, honestly and openly, without shame, about sex, politics, family, survival, and everything else life throws our way. 

Today’s #WhatSheSaid is a little different. We spoke to two women who donated eggs at the same private clinic in Lagos. Yasmine* (27) is mixed race and light-skinned, and Kemi* (30) is fully Nigerian. Though it was the same procedure and the same hospital, they had two completely different experiences in pay, care, pain, and in what the clinic decided each of their bodies deserved to feel.

Yasmine*: This was around 2023. I was about 24-years-old, living with my best friend somewhere past Sangotedo in Lagos. We could barely afford it, but we were making do. I had a job in Lekki that paid me 50k and expected me to come in every day, so it was very temporary. My parents did not care. They felt like, okay, you’ve finished university, time to stand on your own. For context, I did not come from a poor family. We have always been comfortable, so this felt unfair to me, and I was resentful. I know some people will call me ungrateful. It is what it is. Anyways, this meant more often than not, I didn’t have much. Of course, I had a few other friends who pulled me into modelling gigs here and there, but those were not sustainable and modelling never really interested me. 

My roommate had a job that didn’t pay much, but it was enough to keep us afloat, and she also had people she was seeing who helped fund our lifestyle and survival. I was dating someone too, who helped out often. I was taking courses, trying to find better jobs, just trying to figure myself out while surviving in an economy that was not making it easy.

Kemi*: Mine happened in 2021, I believe? Or early 2022. I had just lost my job, and your girl was really going through it. I had been there nearly four years; I was due for a promotion. But my superior was making advances, and I couldn’t keep putting myself in a compromising position. I knew if I said anything, nobody would believe me, so I left. My family comes from very little, and I was the one sending money home. My mother was sick at the time, and I needed to keep those transfers going, and I couldn’t anymore. Still, I couldn’t stay at the job. It had gotten to a point where I could genuinely see him raping me. 

So, I needed a significant amount of money quickly, and egg donation felt like the most viable option. I spoke to people from my university and people I trusted from my former office who had been through it. I asked a lot of questions before I went anywhere.

Yasmine*: I had strong feelings that were mostly less than positive ones. I’ve always been the type to say that if I got accidentally pregnant, I could never abort. I judge absolutely nobody who does. Genuinely, if you cannot keep it, please do what you have to do and don’t let anyone make you feel a type of way. But for me, it always felt like I couldn’t, and egg donation felt similar. I used to think it was like giving a part of yourself away. It was like giving a child away almost. I know it’s not the same thing, but that’s how it sat with me.

I think part of it comes from the fact that my parents were absent in a lot of ways when I was growing up. So I take the found family I have very seriously: my siblings, my close friends, the people who really show up. The idea of giving something away that could become a life just felt heavy. That’s where I was.

Kemi*: I have never had any strong thoughts or opinions about it. I have always known that in this life you must hustle to survive, and I have never judged another woman’s hustle. I needed the money. That was the main thing. The fact that I was helping a couple have a baby was a good thought alongside it, but the financial need was the driver. I had done my research, I had asked around, I went in with my eyes open.

Yasmine*: My best friend and housemate was already in conversation with them. They had reached out to her, and she was going to speak to the doctor about donating. She asked me to come for moral support; I was just there for her, that was the plan. But when we arrived, they were so warm, so open, so patient. Any question you had, they answered fully; nothing was rushed. And somewhere in that conversation, they started talking to me too, encouraging me to consider it. They said just come for a scan first, just see. So we both had a transvaginal ultrasound right there, and everything checked out. By the end of that visit, I was in.

Kemi*: Through a friend. She told me the clinic was offering more than others I had heard about. Most places were paying less, and these ones were offering one hundred and seventy thousand naira. I was going to be able to send seventy thousand home and keep the rest. That felt like a lifeline. She also mentioned that she had gone through the process and it wasn’t bad. That they were better than other hospitals she had tried. The conversation with the doctors was straightforward. I asked what I needed to ask, they told me the full process, and I said yes. 

I had that thought mostly during my teenage years and very early twenties. At this time, I had been through enough that I was a bit, should I say, swayable? And I was with my friend who I had done everything with. My friend who has always been there for me. I felt comfortable. They told me I would be helping a couple who had been trying really, really hard to have kids and that the ‘eggs are there, I am not using them anyway’. I thought really hard, and what mostly sold it was clinging to what I know was the manipulative point that I would be helping a couple out; I was on the precipice of deciding to be child-free and the money. I really needed the money. 

Genuinely, no. I really didn’t care. That wasn’t my thought process at all. I was thinking about the money at the end and the pain I was enduring for it. I was thinking, “It’ll all be worth it in the end”. You will not understand. I have seen suffering in this life. This was nothing. 

What She Said: They Made Me Drink the Water Used to Wash My Husband’s Dead Body

Yasmine*: They said full Nigerians get paid one hundred and seventy thousand naira. While mixed-race and white donors get four hundred and fifty thousand. Some people have negotiated more. When I asked why, they said, you know, mixed-race and white eggs are rare here. If you go there, black eggs will be more expensive.

I hate discrimination of any and every kind. I see the privilege that comes with looking the way I look in Nigeria, and it is something I am very conscious of. So this disgusted me. It irritated me to my bones. But I also had nothing. No money, no job. And they were offering me almost three times what they were offering fully Nigerian women for the same procedure on the same body. So as much as it annoyed me, I took what was being offered. I needed it.

Kemi*: They told me one hundred and seventy thousand, and I said okay. They were offering more than most other places I had heard about, so it felt like the right choice. I didn’t ask many questions about the number. I just needed it to work.

Yasmine*: So after the transvaginal ultrasound confirmed everything was fine with my follicles, they explained what the next two weeks would look like. The stimulation phase is basically you injecting yourself daily with hormones that tell your ovaries to produce more eggs than they naturally would in a cycle. Normally your body matures one egg per month. The injections push your ovaries to mature multiple eggs at once, which is what makes retrieval possible and also why you feel so rough by the end of it.

They gave us a Gonal-F pen each; it looks exactly like an EpiPen. You click a tiny disposable needle tip onto the end, dial the dose, inject it into the fatty part of your belly, and remove and throw the tip away after. That’s it. They also gave us a tracker sheet to log each injection so we wouldn’t lose count or miss a day. We only needed to come back to the clinic after five to seven days for monitoring appointments, transvaginal ultrasounds to check how the follicles were developing, and to adjust the dosage if needed. They covered transportation to and from those visits.

For most of the two weeks, I barely felt the injections. The needle is genuinely tiny. I remember the first time being absolutely terrified, looking at it from every angle, and then I put it in and thought, oh. That was nothing. I was alternating sides of my belly each day so it never got too sore in one spot. I had maybe two or three clinic visits the entire stimulation phase. It was very manageable for most of it.

Then about thirty-six hours before retrieval, they give you what they call a trigger shot, an hCG injection that tells your body the eggs are ready and triggers the final maturation. That’s when the real discomfort kicks in because your ovaries are now full and heavy with multiple mature follicles. After that, it’s just waiting for retrieval day.

Kemi*: Mine was nothing like that. I had to go into the clinic every single day for the full two weeks, and getting there wasn’t cheap. I was calculating transport costs against what I had saved and what I could still afford to lose before the payment came through. It was tight, but I made it work because I had no choice.

The injections were done by the nurses, not by me at home. It was regular needles, the kind they use to draw blood or give you a drip. Definitely much bigger than what Yasmine is describing. They were painful, not unbearable but consistently uncomfortable, and that felt unnecessary, but it’s needles, so of course. And the nurses were efficient, fast and got it done. But the coldness is what I remember most. Nobody was outwardly rude, but I could feel it: that energy of I don’t particularly want you here; let me just get through this. It was like I was a task to complete rather than a person to treat. You could feel it in the room among the other women too. We were all just moving through the same thing together, quietly, with the same indifference pointed at all of us. Nobody checked in, nobody asked how you were doing beyond the clinical minimum. You came, you got your injection, you left.

Yasmine*: The last three or four days were rough. My belly was already sore from the repeated injections, and the bloating or what felt like it, was 10 times worse. It wasn’t normal bloating; it was like my stomach was on fire from the inside and heavy. I could barely walk properly. Any bump in the car, any sudden movement was agony. I couldn’t bend. I felt constantly like I wanted to vomit. I called the doctor, and she answered, talked me through it, reassured me it was normal and that it would be over soon. That helped.

Kemi*: I had all the same symptoms, but I didn’t call anyone. I just handled it and went about looking for money still. I did call my friend because this was the first time I had gone through this. I needed to be sure the pain was normal. It was deeply uncomfortable. By retrieval day, you are already at your worst. Your body is in so much pain, you’re bloated in a way that makes every movement difficult, and you can barely think straight. You just want it to be over.

Yasmine*: I lay almost upside down, my knees bent and ankles strapped down to the bed, uncomfortably wide open, and they asked the standard questions: do you drink, do you smoke, do you do hard drugs, and while they were talking they injected the cannula they had put in earlier with I guess anaesthesia because I was just gone. I don’t remember anything from the procedure itself. There’s some foggy memory of feeling like something was being pulled out of me, but it’s barely there. 

I woke up to discomfort and real pain. It was difficult to walk; there was a deep, sharp pain in my belly. My friend was there, and she helped me get ready to leave. They had given me painkillers while I was still under, so I woke up to the tail end of that wearing off. But the procedure itself, I mostly felt nothing. I was completely under.

Kemi*: Before they even started, the nurse tried to put the cannula in my hand, and she missed. Over and over again. Kept stabbing the same hand trying to find the vein. I was already in so much discomfort and now this. By the time she got it in, I was exhausted before the procedure had even begun.

Then I was supposed to be sedated, but I am guessing they didn’t use as much as they should have, or I just needed more because I was lying there and I was aware. I could talk, and I could feel everything that was happening to me, but I couldn’t move or I was too sluggish to move. 

I saw the big needle before it went in. I felt it go in. I felt them working, pulling, the entire thing. Even when they were cleaning me beforehand, it was so rough, like sandpaper. But the worst was the needle and the extraction, over and over, each time they went back in for another egg. It was so painful. I kept saying so. I kept telling them it was hurting, that I could feel it, that they needed to stop.

They didn’t stop until they were done.

Yasmine*: I was unconscious. I didn’t know anything was wrong until much later.

Kemi*: Nothing. They just kept going.

Kemi*: Nothing. They just kept going.

Yasmine*: When you reached out, and we started talking. From the pricing, I already knew something wasn’t right. There was also something else: they mentioned that if you refer a surrogate to the clinic, you get two thousand dollars. That was already strange to me. But when you described what happened to Kemi during retrieval, that’s when I understood that we hadn’t just been paid differently. We had been treated differently in the most fundamental way possible. What happened to her during that retrieval should not have happened to anyone.

Kemi*: I’m the type of person who talks to people. Even in that recovery room, there was a woman who was alone and clearly uncomfortable, and I just offered to help. We started talking the way you do when you’re both in a situation like that. And I asked her what she was receiving. That was the first time I heard a number that wasn’t my number. She told me, and I just thought, oh. Oh.

I’ve spoken to others since. Fully Nigerian women who went through the same clinic and mixed-race women who did as well. The experience is consistent. The coldness, the daily visits and the retrieval for full Nigerians and mostly warmth, tiny needles and Gonal-F pens they get to take home for days for the mixed-race women. 

Yasmine*: I want them to understand that this isn’t abstract. This is a clinic in Lagos making decisions about how much pain a woman’s body deserves to feel based on how she looks. It is happening right now, and the fact that I benefited from it makes me sick.

Kemi*: I’m just telling you what’s going down. I thought it was important that someone know. This is what’s happening. Now you know.

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