Home insemination with an online donor

[Peonies123]

Hello,
my partner and I are considering using Pride Angels or Co-parenting style platforms for sperm donation (AI) and then go through with home insemination.
We initially wanted to use a fertility clinic but the prices are absolutely not affordable.

We are a bit apprenhensive about some points and were wondering if anyone has had a similar experience or know where/who to turn to for more info

• the donor being able to claim parental rights over the child
• how to pick the donor
• understanding why the donor wants to make the donation and is on the platform in the first place
• making sure the donor is well intentioned and not "weird" (for lack of a better description)
• anything else you have done that has helped along the process

Thank you!!

I personally wouldn’t feel comfortable with this, my mind is over active but I would wonder why they weren’t donating to a regulated clinic. You can order sperm from clinics direct to your house for self insemination. You can even purchase the kits. I don’t know what your budget is but we paid about £3k for a full round of medicated IUI with the sperm included, might be worth saving for?

are you a same sex couple? Are you married? When we had our girls, we could both be legal parents if we were either married, or had gone through a clinic together and both gone through the consent process. Probably worth considering that too if you are 2 women.

Thank you so much for sharing your journey.
We are two women and getting married in start of next year and will start our parenting journey right after that.
From what I understood it is illegal to get sperm from a clinic delivered to your house in the UK? Which clinics allow to do that? as that would definetly be the preferred option!

How many rounds of IUI did you have to do as 3k is affordable, it just feels like we would need to do 4-6 rounds min to realistcally get pregnant. Even if I do get that to a certain point it is all odds and luck.

We have also looked into IVF but it is looking like 7-10K for just one round. We could scrape that together but would not be able to afford more than one round.

We are basically trying to consider all affordable and safe options to grow our family :)

Hey, no worries at all. I couldn’t even name any, I just know my wife had tried this option years before we met. I’ll breakdown our journey with as much as I can remember about cost:

IUI (wife carried, was 36 at the time but great fertility) 1 round at approx £3k that worked first time and resulted in our eldest daughter

IUI (me for our second, was 32 at the time with average fertility for my age) X2 that failed, approx £5,000 (bought 2 strands of sperm first time so didn’t incur this cost again)

IVF (me, 33 at the time) approx £9,000. 7 embryos and our second daughter is from our first and only transfer with the other 6 on ice.

You are right though, a lot does rely on luck. Have you both had your fertility checked? If not I would 100% recommend that to know what your most likely chance of success would be and then be able to cost it. I think it’s also good to be in with a clinic who can then give you an estimation tailored to your own fertility. I think our full fertility tests cost about £450 each.

where are you based? If south I would 100% recommend our clinic.

All that being said - we do have friends who got pregnant first time with at home IUI from an online donor. He went around their house to provide a sample and luckily it all worked out, I would just be so nervous in this case. I believe they send him updates on their son now & again.

Basically, all the reasons you list are the reasons why you really need to use a clinic and do this properly. There is no way around it and this is why it's a bad idea to go ahead with it.

Clinics are expensive, yes, but they do things properly.

There's nothing more important than your child and if you are bringing a human into this world, with all of the responsibility that entails. you really must find the money to do it in the right way.

Please take it from someone who has a donor conceived child and has been through this journey - I do understand everything involved, from costs to emotions.

It's not easy, but what is harder is the potential fallout of all the issues on your list, and there is simply no fail safe way to do it on the cheap.

From what I understood it is illegal to get sperm from a clinic delivered to your house in the UK? Which clinics allow to do that? as that would definetly be the preferred option!

No clinics allow it in the UK, it's illegal and there are good reasons for that.

@Peonies123 Have you looked into this but abroad? So much cheaper. High standards and could be tagged onto a nice little break! Just a thought. I think the UK is so extortionate and often not that well organized.

Hi, I agree with the posters above that choosing a donor online is risky. Even if someone appears healthy, they may carry genetic conditions they don't know about, or there may be a family history that isn't obvious.
I once read an interview with an egg donor who described the screening process at her clinic. Out of around 100 applicants, only about 10 were eventually accepted. She mentioned that the clinic asked detailed questions about her extended family, including relatives she knew very little about.
I also agree that treatment abroad can be much more affordable. If you don't have any complex fertility issues, clinics in the Czech Republic can be an excellent option.
If you're wondering what questions to ask about a donor, this article includes a helpful list:
https://fertilityroad.com/treatment-options-abroad/beyond-the-bbc-headlines-north-cyprus-ivf-clinics/
I hope this helps a little. Wishing you the very best of luck on your journey.

@flippap IVF treatment is not available for same sex couples in the Czech Republic.

It used to be possible to have sperm delivered at home in the UK but hasn't been legal for some years now.

@Peonies123 it's worth checking if you might be entitled to any NHS treatment, although criteria vary.

Many clinics offer IVF where one woman's egg is used and the other carries - in Spain this was called ROPA although sperm donation is anonymous in Spain so that might be a factor.

I wouldn't recommend using an online donor, you have no idea if anything he says is true or of any illnesses he may carry, physical or mental. It could be very complicated for the child having no legal framework.

I know finance can be an issue, many treatments offer finance plans and personally I used a lot of zero interest credit cards.