Donor UK process

[Hope202418]

Hi all,

I am 35 years old single and in the early process of looking at becoming a Mum via sperm donor (UK licenced clinic). Ideally I would love to be in a relationship but as time goes on I realise as I want to be a Mum, it would potentially be a risk rushing to have a baby with the wrong man who I need to know would be a good Dad.

Earlier this year I did get pregnant (please not judgement here). The 'Dad' who I conceived with just after 'one time' soon became threatening abusive and pretty much made it obvious that he would make my life hell. After careful thinking I terminated that pregnancy, which if I am honest I do have some regrets, but I didn't want ties to a man for life who manipulated me into termination and really made what should have been a happy early pregnancy - traumatic. I did what I thought was right for a baby at the time. The pregnancy was also a mistake as I was using contraceptive which failed and this is not a man I would have chosen to be in my life long term.

6 months has gone by and I have been through therapy and get my life back on track after the trauma. I want to be a mum which may seem crazy to hear given I terminated a pregnancy. However I realise it is not easy to meet a decent man and I am more than ready to be a Mum alone. I have my own home, a good job, plenty of savings, family support.

Since the pregnancy I found out that I am deficient in vitamin b12 which has now been rectified with 3 monthly jabs which I understand is important for babies health. When pregnant my vitamin b12 was barely non existant.

I also had fertility tests which show a AMH of 30.1 PMOL and 5.7 FSH, everything was good in my report aside from B12. From my research I can see that potentially I would be a good candidate for IUI insemination and given I got pregnant so easily after one time, I am hopeful I would get pregnant within 6 months.

My questions now are:

• Any recomendations for sperm donor clinics UK
• How long does process roughly take from first app to 'insemination'

In general any advice or help would be much appreciated.

Please no judgement also for my termination. I have seeked therapy now and more than mentally ready.

Thanks

Hi @Hope202418 ! Congrats on starting the journey and I'm sorry that you had to go through the painful process with your previous pregnancy.

I don't have sperm donor info but we have gone down the donor egg route due to my age and are with the London egg bank - the process from registration to purchasing the eggs was fairly quick - I think this part would depend on your criteria in terms of a donor - have you thought about that? You'll be able to access information such as hair and eye colour, ethnicity, hobbies, things like that, so the time it takes to find someone might depend on those (more availability of certain ethnicities etc).

It took another couple of months before we did our first transfer, but if you're doing an IUI, it will depend on whether it's medicated or not—from cycle day 1, you'd be having the insemination around your normal ovulation day, but again, that might be dependent on how regular your cycles are and if they want to run any tests first.

I would say if you can choose a donor fairly quickly and have the funds ready for the whole thing ready to go, you could be looking at 2 months minimum before the IUI.

Hope that helps! I'm sure there will be others with more direct info on sperm rather than egg donors!

I used a clinic in Manchester (Manchester Fertility) and they were great. It was about four months between my first appointment and my first IUI (I had four IUIs before switching to ICSI). I think it could have happened a bit quicker if I'd wanted it to. My daughter is almost six. I'm happy to answer any questions here or by pm.

The time it will take will depend slightly on your clinic - there will be a some legal forms to fill in and you will need to have a mandatory counselling appointment first (because of using donor gametes), as well as lots of mandatory blood tests (like STD screening, hormone levels etc but hopefully they will be able to reuse your AMH and FSH tests so take those with you) and do your baseline scan before you can get properly started . When they have received those results, you will then have to decide with your clinic whether to do a medicated or natural cycle - but generally it should only be a couple of months or so for private patients, assuming you can find a donor you like during that time.

Tips - find a clinic that’s close to home as you will be travelling back and forth for scans a lot. Also consider upfront how many “goes” you are willing/can afford to do for IUI, before potentially considering moving on to IVF. IUI is brilliant if you get lucky (because it’s cheaper and less invasive so it’s often a starting point for SMBC) - but it’s also less likely statistically to work than IVF, so you may need to budget for multiple attempts (3 to 6 is average I think).

Each clinic has specific sperm banks that they will work with - so it’s difficult to recommend banks until you decide what clinic you are using. You may want to ask what international sperm banks your clinic works with too, as there can be a bit of a shortage of sperm donors in this country - it does mean more potential donor siblings internationally for your DC but there are benefits like more donor choice, adult and/or child pictures of the donors and greater genetic screening of donors too (things that you don’t typically get in the UK). Good luck!