@Newsenmum sorry for the delay, just seen your question!
There are lots of different ways… some people undergo ivf at a clinic and choose a donor via a sperm bank- this is what we were encouraged to do by our clinic. They felt this was a good route because everything is done according to strict protocols (donors undergo a lot of testing and their sperm will need to be of a good quality to be accepted, so the success rates will be higher, which is preferable for the clinic in terms of their success rate stats etc). The donor will have signed paperwork to ensure everything is set up properly from a legal standpoint (the intended parents are both legal parents and go on the birth certificate, so their legal ties to the child will be protected by law etc) and the donor will undergo things like virology testing to ensure they do not have any sexually transmitted infections before their sperm donation is accepted.
We didn’t choose that route so I’m not sure of all the specifics but I know people who have and they said they are given access to potential donor’s basic profiles (physical features like height, eye colour etc, as well as a bit of info about them eg if they are sporty, their hobbies, their level of education etc, sometimes why they chose to donate).
I guess people make various decisions based on the different information available on these profiles. The information is limited and you have no direct contact with the donor. They donate their sperm and the sperm is frozen and stored in a sperm bank, then the sperm can be advertised and bought by couples undergoing ivf. I’ve no idea about time frames, I don’t know if the sperm will have been donated a month prior to someone buying it or many years prior. But it definitely felt to me like you were choosing the sperm rather than the donor. Though I don’t know if others would agree (a friend said that their sperm donor had left a note on their profile along the lines of him being motivated to donate after seeing a loved one struggle with infertility and he had wanted to do something to help others in a similar position). This made them feel connected to their donor in some ways.
Maybe there are rules about how long the sperm can be frozen, I’m not sure. I know there are rules about how many times a man can donate, so sometimes people who intend to have more than one child, will buy several donations from the same donor, in order that they have the chance to conceive more than once with the same donor sperm, so that their children are genetically siblings, with the same biological father.
We decided we wanted a known donor. So our process was quite different.
We chose our donor based on our relationship with him, rather than the quality of his sperm. It was important to us that he would be someone connected to our family, who would be a known entity. We wanted our child to know him, know who he is and be able to ask any questions they want to, at any time, and for us to be able to provide answers.
I think counselling is offered to anyone using donor eggs or sperm but we were offered a lot due to them being a known donor.
We had long conversations about it before attending the clinic. We each had individual therapy (including our donor’s long term partner). Our donor took a year to decide if he felt sure about donating his sperm.
Our donor is my wife’s oldest friend (friends since they were toddlers). He is also gay and in a long term relationship with his partner.
All of us had long dinners, hypothesising. What if something happened to me or my wife? What if we divorced? What if we wanted to move abroad? How would the process affect our donor’s own relationship? How would it affect the long and treasured friendship between him and my wife? How would all our families feel? What would we all be known as? Would his parents be grandparents? How would we manage the complex layers of unpredictable and organic human feelings that evolve? What are our roles in the life of the child we are hoping to bring into the world? What would we do if something unexpected happened? Were we all on the same page? How do we ensure the best interests of the child always come first in any decision making? Etc etc.
We agreed that honesty and good communication was key. We set expectations together. My wife and I wanted to start a family and we wanted it to be a two-parent family. We didn’t want a co-parenting set up. Our donor didn’t want to have parental responsibility but does care about our child- his biological child, their well-being and wanted to make sure they were not going to represent an ‘absent father’ figure.
Because they are one of my wife’s closest friends, we naturally see them as part of our day to day lives. They also come to birthdays and we make an effort to see his family too. Having a known donor means that whilst our child makes two Mother’s Day cards at nursery, they also make a card for their biological father on Father’s Day too.
It’s because of that relationship that we chose him and asked him.
Despite many attempts we couldn’t conceive a second time via his sperm donation, so his partner became our second donor and I am currently pregnant with our second child, following all the same principles.
This choice has enabled us to have really thorough medical histories for our children. So that was part of the decision too.
There’s so much to consider, I’ve probably missed quite a lot but that’s the beginning of how we chose.
Feel free to ask any specifics :)