How did you decide about sperm?

[ErikaLeigh]

Me and AA are going to be starting to choose what we want to do about sperm and our process.

We are still a few years off from it, but it's a lot to think about.

We have a plan to use a known donor, who will be in the child's life but not as anything more than his uncle.

We plan to use AA's half brother. Does this seem odd?

I mean we want to use him so that the child is related to me and her and her mother will see it as her grandchild and not deal with all that.




SOOOO --- how did you all decide this?

[lexbeach]

It's not that unusual to use one partner's brother to inseminate the other partner. As long as all parties are willing, I think it's a great plan. There can be more legal considerations to think about when you're using a family member for the donation, though. I know a few couples who used a friend as a known donor and things went bad. They didn't lose their kids or anything horrible like that, but they did lose their friend. It's one thing to have that happen with a friend, but it's a totally different story if it happens with a family member.

I would have loved to use dw's brother's sperm to get me pregnant, but dw wasn't interested. I don't think he would have said yes anyway.

We ended up deciding to use an annonymous donor because it seemed like the easiest, least legally complicated choice. But I do feel a small amount of guilt about the fact that it will be hard (if not impossible) for my kids to find their donor if they one day decide that they want to. I think when it works out well, using a known donor is probably the best route to go. It's just so hard to predict when it will work out well. Among my friends who have used KDs, it seems to go perfectly smoothly about 50% of the time.

We didn't know any potential KDs, and the choice to use a bank was easy for us to make. Some people would never feel comfortable using sperm from a bank, but it wasn't an issue for us. We chose our donor by first matching dw's physical charateristics and then reading through all the essays and information until we found a guy who felt right. Of course, I think we made the right choice, since we wouldn't have our three sons without our donor!

HTH!

Lex

[gamitzer]

We chose to use an open donor, which means that when the kid is 18, they can find out more information about the donor and get the most updated contact information the bank has. The guy we picked is similar to me in many ways, and we had a really good feeling about him. He also has an excellent medical history, which was the most important aspect when we chose him from a small list of donors we picked out.

Some people really want a known donor, but that was never something I wanted. I didn't want to deal with the legal issues or have to include anyone else in parenting choices. I also wouldn't trust someone else to release custody after hearing some horror stories from friends and acquaintances.

I wouldn't worry too much about your MIL seeing the kid as her grandchild. Or more specifically, I wouldn't choose a known donor solely for that reason. You have to do what you think it best and not worry about what other people are going to think. In my case, my mom is so excited to be a grandma that she hasn't even thought twice about the kid's biology. And who can resist an adorable baby?

[CynicalStar]

I've heard several extremely positive stories about known donors (and yes, sometimes relatives were the donor). Most families have gone the uninvolved "uncle" route. Two have evolved into a complete co-parenting situation - one family has joint "custody" and the other family just bought a home together (two moms, a dad, an uncle and a baby). But there is one couple that is involved in a legal nightmare that has not resolved in over 2 years.

We opted for an anonymous donor - our child is ours and only ours. It would kill me to look at MY son and see physical characteristics of someone we knew. And knowing my MIL, the "uncle" would be called the "dad," and that just would NOT work for us. Even so, DP gets very upset when the donor is called the "father."

[Lingmom]

Anonymous donor worked well for us too. What was important to us was the DNA, not the guy himself.

[lemurmommies]

We used a known donor who is an extremely close family friend and has expressed being a donor for DP even before DP and I knew each other. When it was time for us to start a family, we simple approached him to make sure that it was still something he wanted to do. And, it was!

As soon as our DS is able to understand, we are going to explain to him that our donor helped us "make" him, because we couldn't do it by ourselves. We refer to our donor and his parter as uncles to DS. We give them regular updates, and maintain a blog so that they and the rest of our family can be kept up to date on DS's life.

Our situation has worked out very well, and we plan on using the same known donor when we TTC again late this year or early next. We have also offered to act as surrogates should our donor and his partner wish to have a biological child to raise somewhere down the road, although for the moment they are more interested in adoption.

[Starlight_rose]

My partner and I used a known donor. He is my best friend's boyfriend. We have joked for years about him being a donor and then a few months ago we asked both of them if it was something they were serious about. They both agreed and said they were flattered we approached them. They will be known to the child as auntie & uncle. We actually have a picture of auntie reading a story to the spermies right after insemination. It's sooo cute.

We thought about using T's brother as a donor. We decide to take a different route simply because we are moving soon and will be too far away for their comfort. We knew if we were to ask them it would probably be more of a co-parenting situation than just an uncle.

[ErikaLeigh]

thanks for all of your replies!

I think that we are considering her brother still, but we wanted it because of the relation.

i'm excited!