Today, December 31, 2011, the last day of an already momentous, blessed year, is DD day. Donor Decision Day. Just moments ago, S and I purchased our donor sperm. The sperm that will be used to help bring our first child into the world.
A year and a half ago, in June 2010, we found this donor at a cryobank and put his profile into our "favorites." There was something about it that felt pretty good. We knew the basic stats of the donor (height, weight, eye color, hair color). And we read his basic medical history and personal essays. We saw the "celebrity look-alike photos" and thought he seemed like a pretty good match for S. And then we stopped searching for a while. I actually forgot that we had even saved any profiles.
I logged in to our cryobank account about a month ago, when we started looking seriously at donors once again. S and I went through many searches, and still, the donor we had selected not only had IUI vials available, but still felt like a really good option. We ordered his full medical history and learned about the health of his family, including his siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. All the information checked out. We were almost ready to make a decision. The only significant dilemma was that he was an open (identity-release) donor; we had been very clear that we only wanted an anonymous donor. So I called the cryobank to ask about our options. There was nothing they or we could do to change the status.
During the past week, we sat with the information, read study after study about the benefits of open versus anonymous donors ("the internet is very biased toward open donors," said S to me in a frustrated text message). We sat and felt and talked and cried. We looked at other donors. S found one other that felt pretty good to him, and it turned out he was an open donor as well. We fought each other and wrestled with the information and the implications. We decided we needed more information. So we purchased a subscription for access to more information about all the donors in the bank - including childhood photos.
When I opened the file containing the single childhood photo of our first-pick donor, my heart jumped. I grinned at my computer screen. I couldn't believe how much the baby picture resembled S. And at the same time, of course I could. The eyes, the mouth, the forehead - all the major features of this donor look stunningly like S. Meanwhile at home, S had pulled out his own baby pictures and was staring at them in shock.
S and I are both people who live our lives and make our decisions by listening to our hearts and our guts. And both of our guts, time and time again, said this was the one. S said he was trusting the universe, that there was a reason the donor about which we felt so strongly happened to be open. He said he wanted to listen to the signs. So we did it. We are now the proud owners of five vials of IUI-ready, identity-release donor sperm.
Let the new year begin.
Showing posts with label Donor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Donor. Show all posts
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
The Cryobank, and Open vs. Anonymous Donor
I called our potential cryobank today to ask some basic questions about storage and shipping, and about a potential donor. We have until December 31st to purchase the vials we'd like to use if we want to get in on the 2011 rates. Because we are nearing the time of our first insemination, this is important to us. We've mostly settled on a donor and still feels good/right to us, and we're about ready to purchase the specimen. The only challenge is that it's an open donor, meaning our child would have the option to try to potentially contact the donor through the cryobank once he/she turns 18. S and I want use an anonymous (closed) donor with no option to contact. I called the cryobank to ask about this concern and what our options might be. The conversation went something like this:
Me: "My partner and I have decided on a donor, but it's an open donor and we were hoping to use an anonymous donor. Is there anything the cryobank can do to change the status or remove the option to contact on our behalf?"
Staff: "Well, it's totally up to you. If you choose not to tell your child how they were conceived, that's up to you."
I was in shock. Implicit in that statement was so much judgement, so much assumption. My mind raced as I struggled to rephrase my question.
Me: "The issue is, we don't want to have the option to contact the donor. Can you convert an open donor to an anonymous donor? Is it possible to just seal the records or something?"
Staff: "Again, that's totally up to you. You can just not share the information about conception with the child."
I was hitting a wall.
Me: "That is not the issue. We are a queer couple, and we do plan to disclose information about conception with our child. The issue is that we do not want to have the option to contact the donor, and would prefer for him to remain anonymous. Are you telling me there is nothing you can do?"
Staff: "No," she said. "We cannot change the status."
I told her I understood, thanked her, and tried to end the conversation. She realized I was put-off and tried to say something "counselor-like." But her comments were still based on judgement, still based on assumptions about who we are and how we will choose to parent our future child(ren). I thanked her again and hung up the phone, shaken and angry. That she assumed choosing an anonymous donor meant we would deceive or lie to the child, or that she was promoting that as an option at all, was just so surprising, irresponsible, and ignorant to me.
The truth is, we are a heteroqueer couple. And as such, our experience resembles that of an infertile heterosexual couple more than it does that of a same-sex couple. While we are proud queer folks who are out within our community and most of our lives, and we will be out to our children and raise them with love and honesty and with a fierce, loving queer family, we at the same time live in the world being perceived ("passing") as a straight couple. We live with that privilege, we mostly relate to each other and to the world in straight, gender-conforming roles. Our reality is different than that of a same-sex couple or a single parent where it is a given that to conceive a child there had to be another party involved. In those family contexts, choosing an open or known donor may make sense.
Within our family structure, S will be the father of the baby, and I will be the mother. S has expressed that to know there is a donor out there in the world with whom we and our child might someday have contact is at best, uncomfortable, and wost, very threatening. As a trans man, his experience includes a desire to be able to produce sperm and conceive his child biologically. To not have the capacity to do so is a profound struggle for him, and in many ways mirrors the experience of an infertile heterosexual cisgender man. While I can't represent the depth of his thoughts and feelings about this myself, I had decided early on in this process that because I will be the biological parent of this child, S has the full right to examine his range of emotions and make a decision about the donor that feels right for him.
We have given this decision a lot of thought. We have researched, we have read, we have talked with folks in a support group at the LGBT center. And yes, we decided that we would be more comfortable with an anonymous donor. We will continue to examine this decision with our whole hearts. We are committed to honesty with ourselves, and honesty with our child, however challenging the journey may be.
Me: "My partner and I have decided on a donor, but it's an open donor and we were hoping to use an anonymous donor. Is there anything the cryobank can do to change the status or remove the option to contact on our behalf?"
Staff: "Well, it's totally up to you. If you choose not to tell your child how they were conceived, that's up to you."
I was in shock. Implicit in that statement was so much judgement, so much assumption. My mind raced as I struggled to rephrase my question.
Me: "The issue is, we don't want to have the option to contact the donor. Can you convert an open donor to an anonymous donor? Is it possible to just seal the records or something?"
Staff: "Again, that's totally up to you. You can just not share the information about conception with the child."
I was hitting a wall.
Me: "That is not the issue. We are a queer couple, and we do plan to disclose information about conception with our child. The issue is that we do not want to have the option to contact the donor, and would prefer for him to remain anonymous. Are you telling me there is nothing you can do?"
Staff: "No," she said. "We cannot change the status."
I told her I understood, thanked her, and tried to end the conversation. She realized I was put-off and tried to say something "counselor-like." But her comments were still based on judgement, still based on assumptions about who we are and how we will choose to parent our future child(ren). I thanked her again and hung up the phone, shaken and angry. That she assumed choosing an anonymous donor meant we would deceive or lie to the child, or that she was promoting that as an option at all, was just so surprising, irresponsible, and ignorant to me.
The truth is, we are a heteroqueer couple. And as such, our experience resembles that of an infertile heterosexual couple more than it does that of a same-sex couple. While we are proud queer folks who are out within our community and most of our lives, and we will be out to our children and raise them with love and honesty and with a fierce, loving queer family, we at the same time live in the world being perceived ("passing") as a straight couple. We live with that privilege, we mostly relate to each other and to the world in straight, gender-conforming roles. Our reality is different than that of a same-sex couple or a single parent where it is a given that to conceive a child there had to be another party involved. In those family contexts, choosing an open or known donor may make sense.
Within our family structure, S will be the father of the baby, and I will be the mother. S has expressed that to know there is a donor out there in the world with whom we and our child might someday have contact is at best, uncomfortable, and wost, very threatening. As a trans man, his experience includes a desire to be able to produce sperm and conceive his child biologically. To not have the capacity to do so is a profound struggle for him, and in many ways mirrors the experience of an infertile heterosexual cisgender man. While I can't represent the depth of his thoughts and feelings about this myself, I had decided early on in this process that because I will be the biological parent of this child, S has the full right to examine his range of emotions and make a decision about the donor that feels right for him.
We have given this decision a lot of thought. We have researched, we have read, we have talked with folks in a support group at the LGBT center. And yes, we decided that we would be more comfortable with an anonymous donor. We will continue to examine this decision with our whole hearts. We are committed to honesty with ourselves, and honesty with our child, however challenging the journey may be.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
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.
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.
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