Choosing an Unknown Donor
It is admittedly an odd situation to find yourself shopping for your baby's father online (on sperm bank websites, not dating services). Some women find it a highly unsettling part of the process. Others find themselves obsessing over the details of what their child would be like if they picked this particular donor, or that one. Still others make it a kind of "Dating Game" entertainment with friends - should we pick this guy, or that one? Some, the more pragmatic among us, don't give it much thought and simply choose quickly on the basis of a few prerequisites about medical history or ethnicity.
Once we decide we're done, for a time, trying to find the "right" partner, it is easy to instead get bogged down in choosing the "right" sperm.
Our panel of doctors point out a few practical considerations:
- In addition to the standard tests provided by the sperm bank, if you are a carrier of certain genetic diseases that make it important to understand what the biological father's genes might be, consider testing the sperm for those genetic issues as well;
- Be aware of your own blood type in order to help guide sperm choices. For example, Rh-negative blood should mix with Rh-negative sperm. If the donor is Rh-negative and you are Rh-positive, you will need injections to avoid developing antibodies against your child's blood cells;
- Although it's not related to the donor, this is a good time to point out that while you're looking into medical histories, be sure you confirm that you are immune to chicken pox and rubella, which can be "devastating to the developing fetus," according to Dr. Kim. Vaccines are available if you are not immune.
The amazing thing that has happened in the industry, thanks largely to Choice Moms and the lesbian community who now make up roughly half the industry's clientele, is that we are able to learn far more about our potential donors than we used to.
(Sometimes too much, as has been the case for anonymous donors tracked down by offspring and/or their families.) Women only 10 years ago didn't have nearly as much information at their disposal when selecting a donor as women do now. And women outside of the United States have a significantly less robust information-gathering system in place to share insights about the available donors.
As the U.S. industry began catering to more women who fully intend to tell their children about being donor conceived - compared to married couples who often decide not to tell their child that Dad is not the biological sperm provider - it gradually began building its repertoire of resources to give women more insight into the men who provide the seed.
Some of this is simply to help women make a decision about which donor to use (one advantage to not having a spouse who is generally much less interested in perceiving the donor as a person). And some of it is so that the mother can someday tell her child more about the donor than height, hair and eye color.
Many U.S. sperm banks offer online search engines that allow you to select criteria to narrow down their catalog of donors.
A one-stop shopping source for the roughly 1,500 sperm donors in any given month is SpermCenter.com, which was founded by a Choice Mom who got frustrated at having to look at each individual website for information about its donors.
Note that sperm banks ship on a regular basis to any doctor, so don't feel you must limit yourself to donors at a bank in your geographic area. In fact, you might not want a donor who has lived and donated in your area, or one who might have been picked by many families in your vicinity.
Decide on the traits that are not negotiable:
- Perhaps a donor that looks like someone in your family, or shares your ethnic or religious background;
- An open-identity donor, who agrees to be contacted if the child is interested after the age of 18;
- A particular education level;
- Interests and abilities in certain occupations, hobbies, skills;
- Many women make selections based on height and hair color.
Once you've narrowed the list to certain characteristics, use the bank's short profiles and other free information to learn more about those donors.
With your top choices in hand, you might be ready to purchase additional information. Most sperm banks have resources that you can buy individually or as part of a package or subscription deal. Prices will vary considerably among banks, and each bank will offer different information. Some have baby photos, or even adult photos of the donor. Others offer audio interviews, personality test results, staff impressions.
Nearly all have long profiles, which gives you comprehensive medical and genetic histories of the donor and his family.
It will be important to ask your doctor whether you should get a washed or unwashed sample, for IUI or ICI, since not all donors are available in both.
Boiling your favorites down to as many as three top choices, in rank order, can be a good thing, as not every donor has vials released from the six-month quarantine when you are ready to purchase.
It is also a good consideration, if you are sentimentally attached to a donor to think about how many vials you might be willing to purchase and store (at your clinic, in some cases, or with the bank at a fee) for multiple cycles, or for future siblings.
