She likes to think of it as helping another woman become a mother.

"I'm a mother myself and I couldn't really imagine never being one," said the 24-year-old egg donor at Xytex Corp. in Augusta. "So for somebody to want a child and not be able to have one, that's what brought me to it. Because I love being a mom. And I wouldn't want anybody to not be able to experience that."

The donor spoke on condition of anonymity because not everyone in her family knows what she is doing and she is worried about how they might react. Since the program began 18 months ago at Xytex, demand has far outstripped the ability of the 50 women who have signed up as anonymous egg donors, said the director of Xytex Ovations, Renee Koon.

"There are so many women who go into premature ovarian failure at a young age. They're so desperate to have children, and this is really their last resort," Mrs. Koon said. "When they get to this point, they have done everything they can do to get pregnant. They're just so excited at the prospects of being a parent. And without the donors, there would be no chance for them to experience it."

Nationally, the women who use donated eggs to try to get pregnant through assisted reproduction have increased from 8 percent in 1995 to 11 percent in 2002, the most current year available, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology. More than 13,000 egg-donation procedures were performed in 2002, and about half were successful, said Dr. Eric Surrey, the president of the society and the medical director of the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine near Denver.

"Egg donation has become more readily available in the last five to six years, and our techniques have improved so much with these high pregnancy rates," Dr. Surrey said.

Though it is based in Augusta, Xytex works with about 30 clinics nationwide and 90 percent of its eggs go to couples out of state, Mrs. Koon said.

The Augusta donor, who works as a respiratory therapist, already has donated to couples in Chicago and Washington, D.C., in the past year and will begin preparations this week to donate to a couple in Orlando, Fla. That means four to six weeks of medication to time her cycle and then hormonal drugs to stimulate her ovaries to produce 12 or more eggs. The donor then goes to the recipients' clinic to deliver the eggs and is out of town for four to seven days, Mrs. Koon said. The Augusta donor said she likes that.

"It's like a mini vacation," she said. "It's neat because you may get to go somewhere that you've never been before. Both places I'd never been to and wanted to go. And you do have a little downtime while you're there. You can't go jump on a roller coaster but you can sightsee and go places you want to go."

The recipients cover all the expenses and the donor is compensated $5,000 per donation. The women are carefully screened to make sure the money is not the main motivating factor, Mrs. Koon said.

"If we see that seems to be the main motivation, they are disqualified from the program," she said.

"It's not something that you take lightly and say, 'Oh I'm going to make a quick buck.' You don't do that."

The donor said: "Everything is timed. So if you're not really into it and you forget a drug, you're done."

There was a problem for a while with some egg donor programs offering exorbitant payment, prompting the American Society for Reproductive Medicine to issue ethical guidelines. About 60 percent of the programs, including Xytex, have agreed to follow those rules, Dr. Surrey said.

"It would be foolish to say that donors are purely altruistic ..." Dr. Surrey said, except for cases in which people donate to a relative. "And I think this is going to help, but it's hard to eliminate the problem entirely."

The Augusta donor, however, said she sometimes finds herself in the middle of the routine - with weekly clinic visits, carefully timed drugs, ultrasounds and blood tests - wondering whether it is worth it.

"But at the end of it," she said, "you realize you've done something good for somebody."

Reach Tom Corwin at (706) 823-3213 or tom.corwin@augustachronicle.com.