Guest post: "We chose a donor online and ordered sperm in my lunch break"

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How do you choose half of your child's genetic heritage?

You fall in love. The thought rises to your mind unbidden: "You will be such a good father". There are months spent wondering whether your baby will have his eyes. In the best case scenario you know and love your child's genetics.

Of course it's not always like that.

In my case, I procrastinated for three weeks and then, following an impatient email from the fertility clinic and a rushed Skype conversation, chose a donor from a catalogue online and ordered sperm during my lunch break.

We know a lot about him. We have his medical profile and that of his parents and siblings. We know his hobbies, that his favourite animal is a golden retriever, that he struggled with alcoholism in his youth. We have a photograph taken when our donor was roughly the same age as our twins are now and the resemblance is striking. We have a tape recording of his voice, a letter in which he commands his offspring's parents to "cherish them" and wishes the children the best.

Following our experience, I was surprised to read this week that the UK's national sperm bank was keen to "kick the foreign banks out of business". The case was made that the UK system would be 'kinder' to those conceived using donor sperm because it limited the number of families created by each donor. How altruistic of them.

I don't know anybody who went to Denmark in order to conceive a child. I, and the other families I know, bought the sperm from overseas but shipped it here for treatment.

Our children were conceived using sperm imported from the European Sperm Bank (ESB). Sperm met egg during IVF at a London clinic - the fact that we had fertility treatment in a UK-based clinic meaning that the sperm that we purchased from the Denmark-based ESB was of the more expensive 'UK-compliant' variety. UK-compliant sperm is subject to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Association's 10-family rule and from a non-anonymous donor. Our children will, if they desire, be given their genetic father's name, passport number and last known address if they request it once they are over 18. For our slot among the donor's ten families we paid €1000 Euros to the HFEA. To the clinic, we paid €100 for three months of access to their donor catalogue. We also paid €370 for our sample of sperm and €300 to have it shipped to our London clinic. We funded our IVF privately.

So how do you choose half of your child's genetic heritage? We made an account with every sperm bank our clinic recommended. Of the clinic that we used, only 68 donors were UK-compliant. Of those, 23 tested negative for Cytomegalovirus antibodies, like me. We stared at 23 infant photographs, read 23 medical profiles, considered 23 donor letters about their hopes for their offspring, and we made our choice.

Would it have made a difference to us if there were a functioning clinic in the UK? No. Like every parent we want the best for our children. The brightest future. The best genetics. When making a baby becomes analytical rather than emotive, you start to wonder whether it mightn't be kinder to choose somebody who might counteract your own height of five-foot-nothing. Whose 'science brain' might give your child a hope of passing maths. You shop around for 'the best'.

Ultimately we chose somebody older, with the maturity to commit to adult children potentially turning up on his doorstep in eighteen years' time. Somebody who wrote us a beautiful letter. Somebody who seemed kind.

Laura Witjens, chief of the UK National Sperm Bank, has said Danish banks are recruiting donors by appealing to male vanity. As a keen future surrogate I can attest to the fact that one can think that one is fantastic enough at baby-making for it to be a shame not to lend a helping hand, whilst still wishing the best for the potential parents and child. I don't believe narcissism is the driving force behind sperm donation - I think that, if anything, donation rates are higher in Denmark because students are supplementing their income by donating. Does it matter to us? No. My children may one day meet the man who helped to conceive them but he will never be their father. It would be naïve to expect his part in their conception to be driven by pure altruism.

For us, we would have considered sperm from a UK sperm clinic but it wouldn't have eliminated the other options; even the Danish sperm banks don't have enough subjects on their books to do that.

Your arrangement sounds great Rhetorican. You've done everything you can to enable your children to have a framework for well being etc.

I just think it is arrogant of people using donor banks to assume
They will
Know their children's
Own minds. There is a reason why there are big anti-anon donor movements in America and Australia. It is arrogant to assume none of their voices matter, due to a woman desperately wanting a child and using this route.

How do you know no child prefers two mums or two dads London?

Have you asked them? All of them?

C'mon, this is about your beliefs, which you are entitled to hold, but don't try and make it about 'all' children.

But that's not what you stated London.
You said "Children with loving involved Dads (as all in my family and 90% of those I have known are) have much better outcomes, form better long term relationships themselves and have higher self esteem.
Dads are very important. Say what you like, but no child prefers to mums or two dads, especially if they are the opposite sex child".
Which quite frankly is bullshit.
This is not fact. It's not even opinion. It's made up in your head bigotry.
You really should do your research before coming out with this stuff.

I think you've all got an agenda .. There is so much evidence on involved dads improving children's outcomes and self esteem eg this

www.education.com/reference/article/Ref_Hidden_Benefits/

No agenda.
You aren't comparing like for like.
Those studies are comparing involved and uninvolved fathers. Not hetero and same sex families.

I look at the hundreds of threads posted on the relationship board here by women whose children have absent or uninvolved fathers or worse. You are drawing a false dichotomy between happily partnered heterosexual couples who remain together in a loving and financially stable relationship vs single ones. There are many, many shades in between.

And actually your initial post was that donor conceived children would be hugely damaged no matter what the status of their parents. I assumed you meant within the context of any relationship. The largest group of people using donor eggs/sperm are heterosexual couples.

So you've gone from saying that all donor conceived children will be hugely psychologically damaged to saying that all children deserve fathers.

I'm getting slightly confused!

IMO it's not about having "an involved father" but it is about the ability to make links with your heritage. It is naive in the extreme to think that you can pop to the sperm bank, order a sample of sperm from a catalogue, and that the child will forever be aware that their parent/s wanted them so badly that they did this thing, and that the donor wanted so badly to help an infertile person to have a baby that they selflessly donated sperm/eggs in order to make it happen, and hence the much-wanted baby was born.

That talk is the stuff of fairytales, that would work when the child is five, but as they get older, and the reality of what sperm/egg donation becomes apparent they will wonder about the person they are biologically related to. And not just that person, all the other children he/she may have created in the process.

And they will read posts on sites like this one and others where people talk of sperm/egg donation as just a cell they gave away, not a part of them at all, and they will realise that to the donor they were a meaningless cell. and nothing more.

And the egg/sperm donor may have children of his/her own, and they may have their own feelings about the multiple half siblings they have out there.

I do agree that there is more to a sibling relationship than biology, but the fact is that people do wonder about where they have come from, and their links to other family members etc.

In twenty years time programmes like long lost families and the like will be searching for the sperm donors of children who were conceived from a sperm bank, or through donated eggs, rather than the stories of adopted children who were given up in tragic circumstances.

i am a single mother by choice (also hate that phrase as it certainly wasn't my first choice!)

However I do think positive male role models are important and 2 loving parents of whatever gender are better than 1 however hard I try to make up for it.

BUT not all children are lucky enough to have 2 loving parents no matter how they are made or how they are brought up and at least my son does not have the pain of having lost a parent or one who has left him.

My Ds knows about his conception and always has done. As i used a Uk donor and my DS will be able to get some details from HFEA once he is 18 and after counselling (though it is anonymous to me - no catalogues here) but there is no expectation of contact - this is mainly about genetic history and sibling tracking.

it is a good arrangement, and I am glad (for all the downsides) that we did it this way; but this shouldn't be taken as in any sense a judgement on people who did it differently - our arrangement carries considerable risks, not least that the children's relationship to me as their non-biological parent is not secure. If anything happened to my partner, there is no guarantee that the children would stay with me, although one would hope that a court would choose me (and their rooted lives in home, school, community) over their father who lives in a different country and does not want to parent them. But it keeps me awake at night sometimes

I am soon to become the grandmother to a child conceived with IUI donor sperm, yes chosen from a catalogue.
All I can say is that the day I received a phone call from my son (healthy loving wonderful son) that he was for no explainable reason TOTALLY infertile with a condition called azoospermia I cried and cried and cried.

It was unfair that I would never be a grandmother was my first thought, later I felt it unfair to his wife as well. My son seemed okay with the outcome.
Eventually they tried and on the third attempt they are now expecting.
Infertility affects men as well not just women.
In Canada it is illegal to be paid for sperm donation so the stereotype of students paying their way through school seems unlikely, the donors have to commit to several months of medical testing. After reading the criteria on the health Canada web site it doesn't appear to be for the faint of heart.
I am very grateful for the technology which has allowed this to happen, not pleased with the cost but that's another story. Adoption in this country seems to be a huge scam (too few babies available and the couples who apply are too afraid any negative comments about the system will look negatively towards their application).

Well quite, this assumption that egg and sperm donation is some sort of baby bank for career women and gay couples... I know one gay couple who have received donor sperm and around 8 hetero couples who have had some sort of assistance with conception - although not all of that would be donation, to be fair.

I have two children by donor. I think the evidence is that children of single women who used a donor do at least as well on average as children from standard hetero relationships. so London32 is ill-informed. Of course it's hard sometimes and my children don't have some things that their friends with dads have (silly things like a football team to support) and they don't, of course have a dad who loves them and to love back. But our family unit is stable, secure and loving and I do think that this is the heart of parenting and that it matters much less who creates the unit or in what permutations as long as the love and security is in place.

It's absolutely not the case that the children of two mums or two dads love their parents less. What a ridiculous assertion. We have many friends in this family setup and they function exactly like any other family.

I agree that my children won't know half their genetic inheritance until they are 18. And I used a xytex donor which, as satinpillowcase says, means each donor can be used multiple times. Mine has created many families - far more than the limit here in the UK. But I don't think my DCs will be looking for the donor to form a cosy fatherly relationship with. Most DC children are looking for genetic info and family history, not a new home. This comes down to the parents helping the DCs frame the role of the donor which in our case is donor not daddy. And fwiw I'm on a Facebook group with my donors families in the US. It's a bit weird and rather nice!

Oh and my children know I selected the donor from a catalogue. They think absolutely nothing of it. Our lives are so normal to us that I often forget this is not the normal way to create a family. And I try to keep the topic of donor conception on the agenda at home so the children feel comfortable talking about it with friends etc. They find it really boring and don't know why I go on about it!

If only we could get the whole of the fertilization clinics closed down. Apart from the moral aspect of not providing an actual father for your child it's the appalling waste of funds for an over stretched nhs. So many people who are actually ill, many not able to get drugs they need because of the cost, and all the time desperately needed funds wasted of vanity and selfishness. If you cannot concieve, you are not ill. Nothing bad will happen to you. If you are lesbian, I would think you pretty well opted out of the procreation business. I just wanted to get this out for discussion. My daughter is waiting a triple transplant. My grandson just got a £3500 pump to help his type 1 diabetes. These are the people who would actually die without their medical regime. It sickens me to see the demanding arrogance of the western world, demanding to have everything it wants, even when they are diverting funds from those in desperate straights, and even if they are laying up emotional distress for a child further down the road.

I paid for all of my treatment Beatrice . I'm sorry about the health problems your daughter and grandson are experiencing but it's really not because some single women and single sex couples wanted to become parents.

It is sad to hear of the challenges the NHS faces.

But I'm really happy that progress has been made in this area, there are some truly great people that will raise a new generation of caring individuals. It just seems that those people that would make fabulous parents are often faced with infertility.

Most of the treatments my daughter in law received were at her own expense. Here in Canada very little is covered by basic medical coverage (some common blood tests and medications that have alternate uses (metformin for example) but for the most part it is out of pocket. And at a separate clinic that doesn't affect those receiving other forms of care.

I've not seen any negative comments made towards physicians who choose to help infertile couples, if other lines of health care are not their passion closing the fertility clinic down wouldn't necessarily help with research or treatment for those with other conditions. Should cosmetic surgery be banned so the physicians can work on medical wards?

As for the composition of the family unit, I presume it's more about the love and support than the gender of the couple/parent.

Oh please Beatrice. I'm sorry your family is going through a hard time, but none of this is free. Even heterosexual couples (you know, the ones with fathers) have limited numbers of interventions, after that people pay. It's not free.

If you are lesbian, I would think you pretty well opted out of the procreation business.

What...? So because I was born gay I've chosen not to be able to have children. What a ridiculously homophobic statement.

As someone already said, most lesbians still have to pay for their treatment.

Beatrice I'm sorry to hear that you and your family are going through a hard time. I wish you all well.

I have a donor conceived DD who is just absolutely amazing. She knows that she is my dream come true, my absolute priority and that she is loved, so loved by all the family. I am sorry to say I am a real mummy bore and would be described by some here on mumsnet as a mummy martyr. She is doing so well in school and in all her extra curricular activities, she has lots of friends and has great male role models in her life.

She knows how she was conceived and so far it hasn't been an issue. She was conceived outside the UK (where I was living at the time) and regulations are different there. She may never be able to find out who her biological father is and that is hard. I wish I could be able to give her that.

I do have guilt about how she was conceived, I wish it could have been different. I wish I was happily married and that DD had a great father. It didn't work out that way for me though. I still think she has a right to be in existence and that her life, which may not be traditional, is one that is full of love and happiness. I am sure that we will have difficult times ahead and we will face them as a family head on.

DD was conceived at a private clinic with all costs paid by me.