You are probably here because you are considering becoming a Single Mother by Choice, and good for you!
What an incredible decision you’ve made to take your life and fertility into your own hands! Congratulations! The next biggest decision will be picking the second half of your child’s DNA. It definitely wasn’t an easy decision for me but I’m here to share my story with you and hopefully provide you with a helpful guide to help you select your donor.
Here is my story
My clinic provided me with 2 reputable websites to search for donors, I started browsing back in March 2020 once I had my AMH test done. I would sit down at night with a glass of wine and scroll through profiles and add to favourites. This actually led to too many donors being added to favourites thanks to the wine goggles (LOL!). So I decided to filter through the donor and select my dream traits basically; Caucasian, brown hair, green eyes, and a degree, at the bottom of the search results was the cutest baby picture ever. He had a degree in chemical engineering which drew me in because both my sister and I have science backgrounds, and I’ve always dreamt that my kid would love science like I did! This donor, we will call him Dr. Cooper, went immediately went to the top of the list, but his sperm was not available… I was heart broken, I checked regularly to see if they had anymore in stock but by the 6 month mark I realised I couldn’t just wait on this guy, so it was back to the drawing board with more wine. This time I promised myself to only go through my favourites, and so I did. All the others that I had searched through had blond hair and blue eyes and I managed to select 2 that had sperm available. As I wasn’t ready to proceed financially, this became my evenings, browsing and praying the remaining donors sperm didn’t sell out as well. I broadened my horizons and checked the second website that the clinic suggested and managed to select a couple of donor on there that I loved as well. As time went by I checked once a month or so just to see what was happening, still no sperm from Dr. Cooper, another donor sold out on the second website, leaving me with 3 options. Finally I went through with my bloods in August 2021 and booked a psychology consultation about using donor sperm etc, which was really great and essential before I could actually purchase my sperm. This consult was on Friday, I had such a sense of relief after making it over my first hurdle, I was definitely doing this! So Saturday morning, bright and early, I started looking through sperm donors again and lo and behold! Dr Cooper’s sperm was finally available for purchase, so I immediately added to cart and purchased 3 vials. I secured my payments and the sperm was shipped that same week to my clinic, I had finally secured my dream donor’s sperm.
Some girls host donor selection parties and have their girlfriends help them decide, but I knew from the time I saw my donor’s profile that he was the one I wanted. Maybe because he reminded me of my first love in a way (Is that weird?) but the fact that his sperm became available the day after my appointment sealed the deal for me, it was meant to be! Maybe it’ll be like this for you, maybe you are a bit more analytical about it and need a process to follow, so lets go through some things to know together!
IUI/ IVF/ ART/ ICI Wtf?
There are so many ways that you can purchase your sperm! I asked my clinic for their preference and they preferred unwashed, but unfortunately for them I purchased the IUI vials which already came washed but they didn’t have a problem with that.
IUI Vials
These vials typically consist of approximately 10 million motile sperm, some may be more and some may be less. These vials are typically used for the Inter Uterine Insemination procedure where a higher sperm count is desirable. These vials are washed which means they clean out all the dead sperm cells essentially putting only the motile sperm into your uterus.
ICI Vials
In most cases the ICI or Inter Cervical Insemination vials will be similar to an IUI vial with regards to sperm count etc, the only real difference is these vials come unwashed, these are ideal if you are going to try to knock yourself up at home.
IVF Vials
IVF vials typically contain less sperm than an IUI vial, this is because IVF is done under a more controlled environment ie a petri dish where you can have 10+ eggs hanging out, and the sperm can be placed close to the eggs or even directly in them with ICSI (Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection). One good take away is that if you are going to attempt IUI then stick with an IUI vial, you can use your IUI vials for IVF but it may not be recommended to use IVF vials for IUI.
Get to Know The Donor
I just love this paragraph, it gives you a good idea of the person, their body type and personality before you continue to dive into his details. After that there are the physical features, height, weight, eye colour, skin tone and blood type. Right away you can cross off this donor if some of these physical features are not quite what you are looking for. As a single mom to be I think considering blood type is kind of a big deal, luckily I am O positive which means I am a universal donor, but if you have another blood type it might be a good idea to consider a donor that has a similar blood type to yours OR know that you can donate to that blood type.
Since I live in the Caribbean, skin tone was surprisingly another must have on my list, in most cases I’m sure this won’t be a big deal for everyone. I wanted to know that my kid would be able to tan easily like me when we go out and about on a day or spend the day at the beach.
After all the physical characteristics we get into ethnic backgrounds, occupations and interests etc. I didn’t pay much attention to ethnic background while I was choosing mine but I did enjoy looking at everyone’s occupations and interests. For me the interests played a part in my decision as well, if my donor loved travelling and camping and hiking then I knew we would probably get along really well, and a small part of me hopes those passions come through in my kid. They even go as far as to ask what their favourite pet is… my donor was a cat person but I won’t hold that against him!
All The Downloads!
Honestly, go crazy here! LOL!
I loved listening to my donor talk about getting a chemistry set from his grandmother for his birthday, absolutely loved it. The essay and the staff impressions gave me such a good vibe about him as a person. Someone just genuine and likeable by everyone. Each donor may have a few other download options available so download everything and go through it.
Here are a few options available:
- Staff impressions
- Donor Essay
- Hear the donor audio clips
- Staff impressions audio clip
- Medical Profile
- Genetic Testing
- Childhood Photo
- Silhouette photo
- Full audio interview
- Adult photo
- Personality Type
Genetic Testing
This is another big thing, so download the breakdown of the donor’s genetic testing and go through it slowly. If you have had your own genetic testing then browse through and make sure that both of you are not positive for the same thing. I opted for a donor that had been fully tested, this meant that I didn’t need to go through all the genetic testing myself once he was negative for everything, and I highly recommend going that route!
This is just a short guide, obviously everyone is different and your preferences are different to mine. This is just a guide to show you what is available to you and what you can find out about your donor so you can make a choice on what you prefer!
Good luck and happy donor hunting!