We have picked our donor!
This was an interesting process. There is really no other experience to which I can compare it.
We had to first select a sperm bank.
Did you know that there are literally hundreds of sperm banks across the country? Yeah. Me neither. And this process is not like buying a new car where the same inventory exists at multiple locations. Remember no two donors are alike. And each sperm bank has its own unique set of rules and guidelines. Not to mention the cost differential between each place. We were initially against using a local sperm bank as I had this bizarre nightmare of finding out years from now that my child is biologically related to some random dude that went to college with me! Yikes. However, after discussing possible locations with our RE, we decided that our best choice would in fact be the local sperm bank. We made this decision for several reasons. The most important of which is our RE has had no negative experiences with this location. Also, this sperm bank does not require us to fill out a ton of additional paperwork or get unnecessary medical tests completed and because the sperm bank is local the delivery charges are significantly lower. Once we selected a sperm bank we needed to make an even more difficult decision ...
Do we want to use a willing to be known donor (WTBK) or do we want to use an an anonymous donor?
This was the most difficult decision for us. This is a conversation that Kara and I have been having for over a year. We initially were adament on using a WTBK donor. A WTBK donor will allow any offspring conceived through the use of his sperm to contact him after the child has turned 18. I had several concerns about denying my child the opportunity to "know" more about his or her genetic history. I tried on several occasions to put myself in my future child's shoes and try to understand the feelings I would experience had I been conceived with the help of a donor. However, I quickly learned that I would have no idea what sort of feelings that would bring to the surface. So instead, Kara and I realized that as parents we are going to have to make a lot of choices for our child through the years in which we might not know the best choice. You just do your best. So we made the decision to use an anonymous donor. Our main concern is for the well-being of our child. A single donor could potentially have only one or two offspring conceived through the use of his sperm. Or a single donor could have upwards of twenty offspring conceived through the use of his sperm. The statistics are somewhat unknown. Therefore, Kara and I fear that the "human" connection that our child would be hoping to establish with his or her donor would be minimal at best. It isn't even guaranteed that the donor would respond to our child's request for additional contact. Imagine as a donor if you suddenly had 20 "adult children" contacting you for information. We do not want our child to be hurt by unrealistic expectations. We will instead sign our child up for the donor sibling registry in hopes that he or she will be able to eventually reach out to other children conceived through the use of the same donor. We think a relationship with a half sibling would be more beneficial in the long run. We may never know if we made the right decision but we feel that we have made the best decision for the time being.
Our final decision was to select our actual donor.
This surprisingly ended up being a somewhat easy decision. Our initial goal was to select a donor that "closely" resembled the physical characteristics of Kara. In an ideal world, we would like for it to be near impossible for outsiders to identify the biological mom amongst Kara and myself. Because to our child we will both be "mom". The last thing we want is a child with black hair! Whose the momma?? Our second area of concern with the health history of the donor. We understand that it is near impossible to select a donor with a perfect family medical history but we wanted at minimum for a donor to be in stellar health. We took both of these guidelines into consideration and surprisingly found the perfect match in just minutes! Our donor, in near perfect health at the time of donation, has a head full of curly brown hair and a physical stature similar to mine ... that means he is somewhat short! The donor has absolutely beautiful brown eyes and eyelashes that go on for miles. The donor listed his hobbies as woodworking and music. This is Kara! Plus, the donor already has one child which is important because we know that he can get someone pregnant. We were able to receive a current (at the time of donation) photo of our donor which we will one day share with our child.
So that is it. The story of picking a donor in a nutshell.
Mary
No comments:
Post a Comment