@gabfodi123 My wife and I have one kid, (she gave birth) and another on the way (I’m pregnant). Same donor so our kids will have a genetic link. We’re in England.
We did a ton of research before starting, largely because there is no clear guidance available from the NHS or clinics or charities (Stonewall’s guidance on getting pregnant as two women has not been updated since 2009 and the law has changed multiple times since then). So may as well pass on some of what we found out.
Not sure if the situation is different in Scotland, so do check as it may well be.
- If you and your partner are married or in a civil partnership and you go through an HFEA registered fertility clinic you’ll both be the legal parents of the child at birth.
- If you and your partner aren’t married / civilly partnered and you go through an HFEA registered clinic, you can both be the legal parents of the child at birth, but you will have to sign a lot of consent forms before every round of IUI or IVF.
- If you don’t use a clinic, and either get sperm of the internet and do it at home or use a friend and do it at home, then I think whichever one of you didn’t give birth may have to adopt the child or similar but it’s worth checking this out. It may be different if you are married etc. We didn’t consider this route so didn’t research all the ins and outs.
- if you’re using a sperm bank the majority of the banks / sperm seem to be either in the US, Denmark or the UK. They all operate according to their countries laws in terms of how much info they release about the donors. US banks give you the most info, for some donors you can get things like IQ scores, adult pictures, personality tests etc. but they aren’t quite as tightly regulated. The Danish ones give you quite a lot of info once you create a login, usually baby pictures, details of their job, interests, appearance and family health and background. No adult pictures. They are really well regulated. UK banks give you much less info and no pictures. They are well regulated.
- If you’re getting your treatment in the UK you have to comply with UK HFEA laws which means only using sperm bank donors that have agreed to be non anonymous (your kid can get access to their profile at 16 and their contact info at 18), and only using donors that have created less than 10 UK families already. If you don’t want to do this, or want to get treatment abroad because it’s cheaper you can, but will have to comply with the laws of whatever country you get treatment in. We didn’t consider this, but it would probably be logistically complex, because the timing of treatment needs a sync with your cycle.
- There generally isn’t good availability of donors in the UK, but there is much better in Denmark where donation is seen as more altruistic and similar to organ donation than in the UK where it’s seen as a bit of embarrassing and odd.
- There are way more white donors than non white, so if you are looking for a donor who is black, Asian, Jewish etc you may have more limited options.
- All the banks test donors for diseases, STIs, HIV etc. Plus the donors are screened and regulated so while it’s costly there are definite advantages to using a bank. I think most banks now won’t ship sperm to your home, only to a registered clinic, so you do have to go the expensive route if you use a bank.
- Buying sperm is costly, but the banks do charge different amounts so do your research. Crucially a lot of them also have buy back options, so if you bought say ten units of sperm, and you and your partner used six of them to conceive two kids, but you left the other two units in storage at the original sperm bank, they will usually buy those leftover units back from you for 75% of the cost. HOWEVER, if you ship the sperm to your clinic in the UK they won’t buy it back, so if you want to bulk buy enough sperm to have more than one kid, it’s worth thinking about where you store it.
- The UK has a rule whereby each donor can only be used to create ten families in the UK. So if you’re buying sperm from the UK or abroad, you have to find a donor that had already created less than ten families. You can filter for donors with UK availability when searching online but it does mean there is more competition for donors and good new ones tend to get all their ten slots sold out fairly quickly. So if you go down the speed bank route, do be prepared to keep checking for new donors or ask to be sent alerts.
- The UK has just published a new women’s health strategy which now says that female same sex couples can get six rounds of IUI funded on the NHS, which should takeaway a lot of the cost. You will almost certainly still need to provide / buy your own sperm. I don’t know if this strategy is already being implemented or not. The best thing to do is get an appointment with your GP, (try to find one who will be understanding) and specifically ask them about this, and get yourself into any waiting lists. amp.theguardian.com/society/2022/jul/20/a-giant-step-charities-welcome-plan-to-widen-access-to-ivf-on-nhs
- If you can’t get NHS funded IUI and you want to go through a private clinic BE AWARE that the clinic will insist you have a lot of tests and investigations before they will do any treatment for you. They won’t tell you this (because why would they) but you do not have to get these tests done with your private clinic and pay for them. You can get most of them done on the NHS for free. Just make sure you get your chosen clinic to give you an exact list of what specific kinds of tests you need, and how recent they need to be, then go to your GP and ask for them. It takes a bit of organisation to do this but it can save you up to a grand. Don’t be shy about this, you live in a country with free healthcare, and you have a right to get these tests and your GP has to help you. Once you’re pregnant your clinic may also suggest you do things like early scans and blood tests with them. You can get these but they are totally unnecessary and will cost more. Just ask before every test and procedure and medication they suggest, “do I have to have this, is it optional, what impact will it have on my chances of getting pregnant / on my pregnancy?” Then decide if you want it (and want to pay) or not.
- If you do use a clinic, do your research, costs vary a lot, and ultimately you’re going to get exactly the same medical procedures wherever you go. Some people I know who went with a clinic that spends a lot on advertising and talks a lot about being expert at treating same sex couples and charges more. They didn’t have a great experience and found once they’d started treatment the lovely welcoming marketing people vanished and they felt they were treated bit like cash cows on a production line.
- If you do use a private clinic, don’t pay much attention to their figures - aka how many people they’ve successfully got pregnant. All the clinics treat infertile straight couples as well as fertile and infertile same sex couples and the figures are all mixed in, so for you (unless you also have fertility issues) the stats will be pretty meaningless because they’ll mostly refer to straight couples with fertility issues.
I don’t know much about the options for you if you don’t want to use sperm from a sperm bank, or inseminate at home as we didn’t really consider this. Do read up on it though, as while it’s cheaper, there are some risks to using a donor you find on the internet.
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/pseudo-science-and-fascism-the-dark-side-of-sperm-donation-5zgtrbb2s
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/pseudo-science-and-fascism-the-dark-side-of-sperm-donation-5zgtrbb2s
There are probably good websites and bad websites, and ways to try to screen donors you find this way yourself if you go down this route. Others may be able to help more.
Anyway, I hope this helps. The best thing to do is equip yourself with as much information as possible before deciding what you want to do and can afford. I’d start with a trip to a friendly GP for a chat.