Donor Profiles

S and I will need to make a decision about a donor sometime during the next few weeks.  I just spent some time on two different cryobank websites checking out potential candidates.  And I can't help feeling a bit creeped out by the whole thing.  We really only need sperm for technical reasons.  It's so weird to read donor profiles, learn about the people from whom the sperm comes, read about their family medical histories and "ambitions."

Most donors are clearly a bunch of twenty-something college guys trying to make a quick buck. Which is fine.  Some of them even say that in a straightforward way.  But most attempt to sound profound and interesting (" I feel I am a very loving, intelligent and accepting/sociable person, and I'm sure any child that comes from my sperm will share those qualities") and the cryobanks' offer "staff impressions" ("he looks atheltic and seems to lead a healthy lifestyle, so I think he would be a good donor"), all of which are just hilarious.  It can't possibly be the case that every donor is a "mister nice guy" and has a totally supportive bio family, plays five sports and speaks three languages fluently.  Not every donor can be strong, hard-working, charming and charismatic. The donor profiles certainly make it seem so, but ultimately, they are are filled with assumptions, generalizations, and even racism ("relative to his ethnic origin, the cryobank reclassified his complexion as FAIR" and "this donor is a real latin lover.")  I'm maintaining a wary stance on how much we can really ever know - or want to know - about any given donor.

All we want is a healthy, nice-seeming donor who physically resembles S.  Cryobank A provides free links to Google images of celebrities whom the donor supposedly resembles.  This has been helpful; at least in my imagination, our baby will not only look like S, but will also grow up to be an Oscar-winning actor or world-famous soccer player.  Sweet.

Cryobank B offers actual adult and baby photos of the donors (multiple, in fact) which is even weirder to me than just reading profiles.  I don't want to see the donors as people.  I'm not trying to date them, I don't want to have a picture of them in my mind, and once we have a baby, I certainly don't want to be able to go back and look at their photos and make comparisons.  No way.  For me, the more distance we can have from the donor, the better. 

S is going to be the father of our child.  He is going to raise the child and be the most loving, patient, caring, thoughtful, eccentric, awesome parent he can be.  The person I love and who will protect and nurture our baby already has an ideal profile. The sperm is just a means to an end.