Donor sperm catalogue

[IndigoBluey]

The fertility clinic I am with has sent me their UK donor sperm catalogue and I have to admit, I’m surprised how small it is. 90% of the donors are non-white ethnicities. I am just curious if this is the norm and to hear of others experiences. I am white so would be looking for a white donor. They have provided the European Sperm Bank link but to be honest had hoped to proceed with a UK donor. Any advice appreciated.

UK donors are harder to come by. Mainly because the UK laws mean that people who donate sperm are unable to receive payment for donating (only expenses such as travel etc) therefore if someone from the UK is donating it’ll be because they’re either very generous, or because they’re under one of the schemes with the fertility clinic where they donate sperm in order to get free/discounted IVF for them and their partner.

There are more of white donors in the European sperm bank, but again this does vary greatly. Eventually I did have to be a little bit flexible as to what I wanted, and for what it’s worth my children look a lot like me anyway!

I found the Californian Cyrobank sperm bank had more selection of donors across all ethnicities.

Thank you, that is helpful to know. I did think the UK bank was more limited but was still very surprised on looking at the catalogue and if I’m honest, that it was sent without any note regarding ethnicity (90% black or Chinese donors) but I now gather they probably cannot comment. Off to look at the Euro bank I go. I had initially been planning on Denmark or Spain for the treatment and this had made me wonder whether to revisit my plan to have IVF in the UK. It take around 6 weeks to have the sperm transferred from the EU to the UK, not a great length of time but wasn’t something I envisaged when opting to undergo IVF here in the UK. Thanks again!

Personally I really struggled with the small number of donors and little personal information from UK banks. For me it was worth it to go with a US bank - I wanted photos of the donor as an adult, and much more information including greater genetic testing and health information.

It does unfortunately mean many donor siblings out there, but it’s a trade off as it’s also meant I’ve more easily got to know some of those donor siblings as my child grows up (as well as made earlier online contact with the donor, though I realise I’m lucky in that regard).

You can only do what you think is best at the time - but more donor choice perhaps makes it more likely that a particular profile will really resonate with you and so could make it easier to explain to your child why you picked that particular donor imo.

I agree, the information that I have is a few lines with the most basic of descriptions. I will check out the US bank too. I’m glad to hear that you have been able to connect with some donor sperm siblings and donor too. I have read that some are against the limited number of donor siblings but I can’t say it is something I feel strongly about either way, at least for the moment, I feel like every day is a learning day with the process. It sounds like you have had a positive experience.

It’s definitely an overwhelming thought that that there could be potentially dozens and dozens of siblings out there (as in the US and other countries afaik, clinics don’t have to declare to a government body like the UK HEFA when a DC child is born- so the sperm banks have no way of tracking potential siblings, they just claim to stop selling from a donor once they have sold to 50, 75 families or whatever their specific policy is).

However as I said the potential upside of importing from other countries is far less secrecy - it’s very hard for DC from UK donors to find out anything much about their donor or donor siblings before they are 18, even now the laws have changed. But research about DC people shows they often want to know information much earlier, sometimes once they understand about genetics; and with international banks this generally seems easier -some even have there own forums for parents to make contact and obviously the more donor siblings out there, the more likely it is that some of them will want contact.

So it’s very much swings and roundabouts unfortunately. But remember you are already doing your potential child a service by choosing a non - anonymous donor from a sperm bank and by having treatment in the UK, as even international donors are restricted to 10 families in this country at least.

I can imagine you won’t want to delay, but I would say this is time dependent as we had the complete opposite. Wanted mixed to reflect our heritage and it took some time to find the right one! Have you looked at the london sperm bank? Our friends ended up using American which does have so much more info as pp said. We went with British in the end and actually both our girls have wound up very like us. It’s very hard to choose though without getting lost in little details which may or may not be relevant!

I think culturally we just don’t have so many donors. I looked at the UK banks and was disappointed. I had same requirements as you.

I used ESB and even there you don’t have much time to ponder as you can miss chances. Although I’m glad I was a bit tardy as my daughter courtesy of ESB Danish sperm is awesome!

That’s my next step, have a browse at ESB. Will also check with clinic if any of the others - American / London - are possible. Seems like such a big decision to make!

If I recall, you can register and browse the California Cyrobank for free yourself. You don’t get quite as much info as you will if you decide to purchase, but it’ll give you a good feel for what’s available.