Donor questions

[Coco99]

Hello everyone !!

Well we are in the final steps of chosing our donor and I have a few questions for all of you... if you would like to share !

We are chosing an unknown donor thru a sperm bank.... if you also went this route...

What bank did you use ? We are planing of using Xytex...

How did you chose your donor ? What characteristics were most important ? Did you match your partner ? Did you pick one willing to be known later in life ? Did you by all the fancy schmancy photo spans etc. ?

Are you in contact with other parents who used the same donor as you did ? would you be interested to be ?

Thanks !!

Coco
xx

[Hulahoop]

Hi!

This was the exciting part for me!

We are using Pacific Reproductive Services.

At first, we narrowed the list to all the willing to be known white guys who fit our height/weight window, and who mentioned music somewhere in their profile. from that list, picked ones that seemedinteresting and had characteristics like my partner. from those 5 or so, we asked PRS to do a photo matching based on my partner. That wasn't really a big deal for us--especially my partner--but we needed some way to weed down!

we used our first choice for two months. he seemed like the male version of my partner, in some ways.

We used our second choice for the next two months. he didn't seem much like my partner, but everything about him was still good.

last month, in desperation, i called them and just asked which donors had the best sperm counts, and we picked the white one. we gave up the formerly "non-negotiable" music requirement. Not sure if we would've necessarily picked him right away without the sperm count info, but he fit our basic parameters.

so for us, it went from dream guy to guy who will just hopefully get the job done!

good luck!

[JennM1021]

Hi Coco! We are using PRS also...and I agree with Hulahoop...chosing our donor was really exciting! To us...it was hard to pinpoint one characteristic that was most important. Everything seemed to be a big deal to us. Probably most important to us was selecting a donor that seemed sucessful as far as education and career. Then...of course...physical characteristics that we thought would blend well with mine.

So...we took our time...narrowed it down to 3 that fit EVERYTHING we were looking for...and yes...we paid for all the bells and whistles. We did get the near 15 page long profile that was available from PRS...and that was really really helpful. We knew right away who our #1 choice would be! Actually...we had them ranked initially...and switched it all around after viewing the long profiles. There is a lot of info you can get from them that we found really helpful. Then...what sealed the deal was the baby pictures that were available! PRS had two pics of this donor...and he actually appeared to be more like 3-4 years old in them. Way too cute!!!

Anyway...good luck with your search! Take your time...and don't be afraid to be a little picky!

[msjodi]

We used Pacific Reproductive Services as well. We chose based on some really basic characteristics, like height and slight resemblence to my partner. I guess you could say we just went on instinct. Like, who sounds like someone I'd like to have coffee with?

We switched our first choice after 3 unseccessful IUI's. The second time around we went with someone who was shorter than we would have liked, but his characteristics just sounded "right." He is a willing-to-be-known donor. Dp was kind of uncomfortable with that for personal reasons, but I felt pretty strongly about it. We had it narrowed down to two, and they both happened to have baby pics, so we ordered them both and chose on who was cutest.

Got pregnant on the 1st try with him and I'm almost 6 months along now!

[JennM1021]

I forgot that point...willing-to-be-known was a really important factor for us too. It really was never an issue with us...we both agreed that's the route we wanted to go from the start. We just wanted to have that as an OPTION for our child. It's completely up to them if they want to search that out when they are old enough. But...we didn't want to have any regrets down the road by not giving them that choice.

[Chancita]

Our donor choice

Hello,
I was very overwhelmed when we were trying to pick a donor.

My partner and I are physically very dissimilar - I am fair and she is darker, so we wanted a donor that resembled her. I was concerned that I didn't want to have blond/blue kids and have people bother her because they didn't "look like hers". We looked for an ethnicity match first, but couldn't find one. So, then we switched to brown/brown and looked at all different ethnicities. Our donor strongly resembles my partner and most people assume that she had the kids herself. Xytex provided us with child and adult pictures of our donor, which I thought was a more reliable way to match them than a stranger doing it- we were lucky to have that option at xytex.

ID release was important to us and was a main criteria.

I think at last pick, we had narrowed it down to 5 donors. We used xytex, so once we knew that we were using that bank, we paid for a membership and looked at all the profiles. One attractive thing about our donor was that he specifically mentioned comfortability with lesbians using his sperm for conception. There were lots of donors that seemed anti-gay.

We were fortunate to conceive quickly both times, so we didn't have a back up donor and didn't have to select one.

We are registered with the donor sibling registry. We have been in contact with three other parents with children with the same donor and have met one woman and her son. That part has been an interesting experience so far. The woman we have met is het and the other two are lesbian. The decision to register on DSR and be in contact with other families probably has sparked more discussion in my house than the original donor selection.

[osker]

Hi!
When we chose a donor we pretty much looked at physical characteristics and didn't care much at all about the rest of it. The absolute most important thing to us was no history of stomach or colon cancer since we've each had multiple family members die from those diseases. After that we chose height, eye color and hair color to what we thought would work the best for me to carry some of our kids and my wife to carry some of them. Our sperm bank is small and the known donor thing wasn't so much of an option. It wasn't that important to us either.

Good luck!

[frog]

This is our third donor. We didn't request photos or anything for any of them. It's not really a big deal to us. YMMV, of course.

We're using Xytex, now.

[pranava]

We started out at Pacific Reproductive Services. ID release donors were our top priority. We tried 3 times with a very cute donor. That got too expensive, so we said "Oh well, we tried" and switched to the super cheap anonymous donors at Midwest Sperm Bank. I asked to see the profiles for the top 4 most fertile guys they had. We just want this to work at this point. We chose the one who said if the child had any questions, he'd be glad to answer them. He is anonymous so it may be difficult to find him, but we felt like he may register with Donor Sibling registry someday

[lexbeach]

What bank did you use? We used California Cryobank.

How did you chose your donor ? What characteristics were most important ? Did you match your partner ? We matched my partner (white, blonde hair, blue eyes--really exciting, lol). Then we read through all the essays and picked which one we liked best. We liked the artsier guys. Our donor is a musician. We had lots of people read the profiles and give their vote. We eliminated anyone who we thought was lying (i.e. the donor who was head of his frat. house but hadn't had *any* drinks in the last couple of years).

Did you pick one willing to be known later in life ? Did you by all the fancy schmancy photo spans etc. ? Our donor is not willing to be known. We DID specifically pick a donor who had already had pregnancies reported. Our donor also had very good sperm numbers. We didn't buy any of the extra stuff (other than the long profile . . . the short profile was free) until after our babies were born (we have the baby photo and the audio interview).

Are you in contact with other parents who used the same donor as you did ? would you be interested to be ? Yes, we have found 11 other families who used our donor (with 22 children total), and we share photos, emails, holiday cards with them. We have met two of the families in real life and hope to have a big reunion someday. 8 of the other families are two-mom families, and the other three are single moms by choice (I don't know if they're straight or gay).

HTH!

Lex

[solejean]

We went with California Cryobank. Our first focus was finding a donor to match my DP - she's a latina. That really narrowed our choices down because there are not that many out there. I think we had maybe three to pick from. Plus I wanted CMV negative since I'm negative and didn't want to risk anything. After that we ordered the whole shebang to look for health issues - we wanted to avoid anyone with a history of diabetes or breast cancer. Luckily we found our #1 choice fit the bill - except for being a little on the short side - 5'8" and my DP is 6'. Oh and I also asked about his rating on the "good looks" scale... They don't tell you they have it, but CCB ranks each donor on a scale of 1 - 10. Our guy was a 6 which we figured would be fine and his baby picture was very cute. Plus his numbers were fantastic.

[Jes'sBeth]

We based our choice on medical history (we've got some issues in both of our families) and availability (which is limited now after the assisted reproductive technologies act came into effect in Canada)

We wanted to use the same donor as with our first daughter than my wife carried but it wasn't an option. We narrowed it down to 3, one of those wasn't available. We tried with the 1 vial of our original donor (the donor of our 1st) and didn't get lucky. Then we tried 4 times with our top choice and switched to our 2nd choice after that because we didn't seem to be getting anywhere. I got pregnant the first time after the donor switch.

We can't get much in the way of extras so don't have them. We are registered at donor sibling registry but have no matches yet.

[liz2d2]

What bank did you use ? We used PRS.
How did you chose your donor ? Race was the #1 thing. When we started buying sperm, there was 1 donor in the entire country who was Chinese, and met the rest of our criteria.
What characteristics were most important ? For me, this was being on the thin side. I've always struggled with my weight so I did not want to pass that struggle onto our child.
Did you match your partner ? Yep, she's Chinese so we wanted a donor who reflected that.
Did you pick one willing to be known later in life ? That was also key to me. I'm adopted and feel strongly about my child being able to get some answers. FWIW, we know more about our donor than I know about my birthfather, even after meeting him once.
Did you by all the fancy schmancy photo spans etc. ? Yep.

Are you in contact with other parents who used the same donor as you did ? No.

would you be interested to be ? Before she was born, I thought we'd totally want to do this but at the moment I'm not seeking it out.

[Scalpel]

We used fairfax because they had a huge selection and ended up with getting pregnant with our 3rd vial using our number one and only choice. I was a bit creeped out mentally knowing that some donors had 21 plus children.We chose a very athletic/smart new to the program donor. We are both german or part german, she has blue eyes and blonde hair where I have brown hair colored blonde with blue eyes so the donor was a perfect match for us. As far as being a known donor that wasnt even in our thinking process. My dp and I are the parents and this is how the family came to be. If our child has questions we have all the backround that was available to us but we didnt want a open donor situation involved in our lives. We have a child photo of the donor and CD questionaire the donor made. I have no desire to contact or seek out other children from this donor. I feel that just because my child and other children are genetically linked to me doesn't mean we should search for them to form a family type bond. If this is a desire my child later has then of course that avenue will be explored.

[pleasantlyfurious]

We are using California Cryobank and are struggling with these questions.

My partner and I did individual searches in their donor database and chose 4-5 "favorites" each. One donor turned up on both our lists, and it seemed like a sign.

Our hesitation to jumping is that my partner is caucasian and I am latina and this donor is of mixed race. Neither one of us took race in consideration when making our lists, but we are aware of the complex set of issues we would face raising a child from a different race than our own, so we are giving this donor careful consideration. The post on Donors and Race was VERY helpful to me and echoes much of the conversations we have been having here in our home.

We each had different characteristics that we based our searches on - I focused on Ethnicity (mexican) and favorite foods (weird, I know) and my partner focused on height and areas of study. We both paid close attention to the essays and open answer questions.

We did not try to match my partner - after a quick search didn't turn up any Ukranian Orthodox donors, we abandoned that effort in favor of someone we might connect with in real life.

Our short list has two open donors and six non-open donors. The one that was on both our lists is not open.

I'm determined not to over-analyze this process, so we have pretty much sworn off the "add-ons" - (but after the comment on the long profiles, I may just have to bend the rules!) I'm already creeped out enough by feeling like I'm dabbling in eugenics.

I will absolutely register my baby in the sibling registry offered by the sperm bank.

[lanamommyphd07]

What bank did you use ? Fairfax's partner CLI.
How did you chose your donor ? What characteristics were most important ?Needed IUI, then height, coloring, similar ancestry, previous pregnancies. Then temperament. I didn't want the "high-end" phd stuff and IQ business, since I know a lot of PhDs and can honestly tell you it's more about tenacity than smarts....
Did you match your partner ? single mom, so matched me.
Did you pick one willing to be known later in life ? noooooo. That was actually something I chose on purpose--wanted the anonymous type. But alas, we know who he is now since he's been in contact via the registry. Thank goodness no problems though. He's just willing to swap pics and answer questions.
Did you by all the fancy schmancy photo spans etc. Yes, but only after becoming pregnant--wanted all the extras for dd.
Are you in contact with other parents who used the same donor as you did ? Yes, and I'm so glad! The other mammas seem to be a lot like me, and dd will have this whole extra "family" full of kids who are a lot like her. It's quite fun to have the occasional newby pop on there.

[cookie70]

honesty

So I wonder the "right answer" or truth....but here goes the truth. We used frozen donor sperm from ohsu pick only one! It was all based on how I looked and am! Then after that and reading we "knew" that we needed fresh sperm if we wanted it sooner than later. I had a friend that said "why don't you just put an ad on craigslist". Well we had million responses in no time! We stated what we wanted age, ht, w, int, etc. and we just knew the one! WOW THE responses but we picked #2 >>>>> Our first attempt after 3 frozen and BOOM pregnant now 6 weeks and have a heart beat! Now we paid him "WELL" and had our attorney draw up papers and had all test! But end the end no matter what it was worth it! We have a little one on the way, and a wonderful man that will be whatever we want and need from him! So whatever that is worth that is what worked for us!

[saltinesgirl]

Did you pick already?

We picked Midwest Sperm Bank for a variety of reasons.
1. They don't charge to look at the profiles. We had to buy profiles from other banks only to find that they had a characteristic that we didn't 'click' on.

2. The vial prices were $200. Other places were much much more.

3. They rarely ship to Seattle. We didn't have to worry about picking the same donor as the couple down the street.

4. When we called, either they answered or called right back.

We picked our particularly donor because he sounded like my brother - same likes, dislikes, hobbies, etc...