Sperm donor - what can you pick?

[oldnorsesaga]

I have been considering IUI treatment for a while now, but was wondering what can you influence about sperm donor. If you're had experience, did you pick donor semen, how did that process go.
My main concern is - can you influence whether or not donor will be picked among certain race. And can you influence or pick other thing that influence phenotypes?
Also, because red hair is consider genetic anomaly, does that mean none of donors can be redheads?

I had ivf with donor sperm. DH infertile. It was matched to his eye colour, hair colour and blood group.
So you probably can choose basic attributes like that. HTH

thank you

15 years ago. The nurse picked by matching to mine and my current dcs hair/eye colour. I was then given the 1 page info sheet you get to say yes or no.

There are definitely donors with red hair, in answer to that bit of your question.

I would discuss with the clinic you’re thinking of getting treatment at because it kind of depends. If you get sperm from the UK everything will be anonymous but you can be reasonably certain of the attributes. The clinic I went to had their own sperm bank and also if you preferred accepted sperm from 4 other banks - 2 in London, Cryos the European one, and one in California. The ones in the US you can see profiles and pictures of some donors, sort, learn more about them etc. You can buy the sperm and get it shipped to the clinic.

In the end I chose to get my sperm through the clinic’s service. Choosing “the dad” felt too overwhelming so I just decided to kind of leave it to fate!

If you do it that way, they call you and ask you some basic questions about what match you want. For me, I really like my eyes, so I’d done a lot of research in order to maximise the chances of passing them on.

Then you wait for a match which sometimes takes 3 months. In my case, if the clinic can’t find anyone (with my very specific eyes request 😅) they then purchase from the same overseas banks, although it’s managed in the same way so you don’t see photos.

DS is now almost 10 months old and he definitely has my eyes… and they even look better on him!!