Choosing a Donor

[EJ1989]

I am going through the process of picking a donor for IUI, I am doing it alone so it's solely my decision which I am struggling with.

How do you pick a donor? How important is genetics?

I feel like I'm dismissing lots of donors because they have things in their family history as do I!

The pool is pretty slim as UK donors are few and far between, I think I may of found one but they have similarities to my life... depression being a big one, is that something that would put you off?

I don't know if I'm being too cautious?

Everyone has different things that are most important to them - mine was a couple of physical characteristics, followed by reasons for donating (and also preferably no stated pet allergies in the donor in case that is hereditary - as I really love cats!). Everything else I was generally very flexible on - blood type, other allergies, short/long sightedness, hobbies/interests, nationality, job, education etc...

Imo most donors will have pretty good health as they are often relatively young (as well as having many genetic issues tested for), so I didn't worry about that too much - but everyone will have health issues in their extended families. When I was looking at donors if the information was available I did generally prefer dissimilar things to my own family - ie. his family had heart problems, alcoholism, high blood pressure and strokes, mine had dementia, depression and breast and other cancers. But obviously no donor will be a perfect match!

However that is when you have more choice of donors (if you were looking internationally too like me). There are so few UK donors at that moment that if you are only considering those, I would guess you might have to be much more flexible. Depression is a really difficult one - clinical depression could perhaps have a hereditary element (not proven I think) but lots of people suffer from "situational" depression (job loss, bad breakup, death in the family etc). You might have to trust your instincts ...

Thank you, I did choose someone in America which fell through and there are a couple of options in Denmark but I'd rather use from the UK if I can. I've not completely dismissed other countries.

Think you're right, I'm jus going to have to pick one and go with it lol

I am both rhesus negative and cmv negative so my pool was even smaller, my clinic uses xytex in america and I had 5 to choose from so just went with one that had looks that I would look for in a mate and his general interests.

Yes, I also chose one from Xytex in the end - as because of the extreme donor shortage at the time I couldn't find one available in the UK with my physical characteristics (even though I'm Rhesus pos and CMV pos). I was lucky enough to find one in the US who had a nice reason for donating, and I've convinced myself that the benefit of the adult and child photos outweighs that there will likely be a lot more diblings out there (than with a UK donor).

Hi OP, i have recently purchased donor sperm for my ivf treatment, as i am in a same-sex relationship.

It was not an easy choice. We looked at Xytex, the European Sperm Bank, Sellmers Diers, Semovo, Brighton Fertility and we ultimately chose a donor from the London Sperm Bank.

We got a bit overwhelmed with the information provided by banks outside the UK and realised there would always be a reason to reject a donor.

I am CMV negative so that limited the number of donors available. I then filtered it down to a caucasian donor and eye/hair colour to match either myself or my partner. I was sent 3 options and from there we basically went with the pen sketch we liked best.

The donor had the usual screening and genetic tests done but we don't have details on extended family. It is something we wouldn't think about if we could conceive naturally, so we did not let it weigh on this decision.

We ultimately thought that we wanted a donor with a good message to show our future child. Having a UK donor also makes contact easier if the child decides to contact the donor one day and we wanted that to be an option if they chose it. Finally, we prefer the idea of a 10 family limit like we have in the UK vs hundreds of potential half siblings abroad.

We basically tried to see our choice from the future child's perspective and that was quite helpful.

2 others things to bear in mind:

Some UK sperm banks do export abroad as well (when I checked my clinic said London Sperm bank did but Semovo didn't at that time) - so if you are worried about numbers of donor siblings you need to ask whether your chosen UK bank does. As far as I know there will always be a max of ten families in the UK whether you use a UK sperm bank or a international one but with the larger banks who export around the world there will obviously likely be more siblings.

Also large international sperm banks often test for many more genetic issues than UK ones (for example I know Xytex now checks for about 380 genetic conditions compared to the 4 or so the UK ones typically do). This may be a good thing but it also means that statistically most donors will come up as carriers for a condition. So you then have to decide if you will have genetic testing for that condition to make sure you aren't also a carrier or be prepared to sign a waiver.

Just extra complications to think about !

hi @EJ1989 - also have a think about whether you want to know about previous pregnancies/births. We chose a donor with previous births as we knew it meant he could successfully father children.

We picked from xytex too - it was a bonus for us that we could buy photos that our daughter can have when/if she wants them, and the level of detail was amazing.

That said, we started out with a long wish list and soon realised how unrealistic that was! In the end, good health and medical history, good genetics, previous pregnancies, and some shared interests were what we went with!

Thanks everyone, it's so overwhelming trying to pick but there have been some great points raised which has definitely helped!

Now to make that decision....😁

Why are you only sticking with the U.K.? My wife and I used the European sperm. I carried so we picked genetics similar to my wife as an initial filter such as hair, eye colour etc. I then filtered by height, I’m 5’10” so I didn’t want a short child so filtered out donors that were 6ft or more and then we read all the bio, read the letters they write, compared their lifestyle to ours and listened to their voice whilst they read the letter. We both had a gut feeling about the same one then we compared their baby pictures and both agreed the one we had the feeling about was the one for us. Conceived first go with insemination and have a beautiful daughter xx

European sperm bank*

Realised my last post should have said 280 conditions not 380 - quite a difference, doh!

We didn’t really choose as we didn’t want to have a very clear picture of the person. We asked for hair and eye colours the same as ours so that people wouldn’t think we weren’t related to our children (happens to a friend) and gave a minimum and maximum height. We asked for a donor with a degree, one previous pregnancy and plenty of samples for our second child. The clinic showed us one file and we agreed. No photos but the clinic staff had met the donor and I think he must have looked like me. One child is my clone and the other looks exactly like my sister in law. We never think about the donor at all.

Hi there,

I don't think you're being too cautious, it's only reasonable to try to provide the best you can to your future child. Note down what is important to you and then search for someone that meets the criteria.

I am sorry if I am being a bit harsh, but honestly, I think this is one of the pros of the situation. I am 39yo and just starting my IVF journey, so one of the pros is that I can actually choose the best characteristics I can.

Hello OP ! It's a slightly older thread so you've probably already decided but in case you haven't...

Like a pp mentioned, everyone has different criteria more or less important to them.
For me health conditions weren't taken into account at all. I assumed that the sperm bank had already filtered out unsuitable donors and didn't look further.
I didn't look at education level as I know a lot of intelligent people who didn't pursue a degree for so many reasons. It is not an indicator of intelligence.
I didn't look at previous pregnancies as that is not an indicator of whether my IUIs would be successful.

The criteria I did look at were :

• hair and eye colour (I wanted a child who looks like me, within reason)

• donor baby photos

• questionnaire filled by the donor - I wanted to feel some sort of connection to them.

• voice sample

• open ID so the child can meet the donor when they turn 18 (I appreciate everyone has a different position on this but personally I considered it a fundamental right of my child to know their biological origins).

The one I ended up picking was the only one I truly liked out of over a hundred profiles that I looked at.

I loved the baby photo (he looked so adorably stubborn !)
I liked his sense of humour in some of his answers to the questionnaire - similar to mine.
I liked that he had lots of interests in common with me - I felt like we'd be friends if we met.
He had blue eyes and brown hair like me.
I didn't like nor dislike his voice so that wasn't much of a factor.

The only thing I didn't like was that he's quite tall and I'm average height but that was pretty inconsequential compared to all the pros.

It was important thing for me to get a good feeling in general of the donor and I'd have kept looking until I found a donor I truly liked.