CMV status and new donor selection

A&DHarter

Sooo, my wife and I had our original consultion with our REI doc on Feb 21st, at the time, no one mentioned anything about the importance of CMV status. Meanwhile, we have spent the last month looking through donors, not realizing that the CMV status is a big deal. Basically it turns out that I am negative and all of the donors that we selected were postive. I was instructed by our REI team that we will have to choose another donor. Has anyone else had this new dropped on them last minute? I found it to be very frustrating and I wished I would have just known about the importance of it from the get go.

Anyway, we selected another donor today. We have chosen 4991 which was originally one our top pics anyway. Anyone else using this donor?

Takiyah

I had the same issue with CMV Status. My choices were very slim and I was not happy until I saw donor 4991. I just purchased and will receive the IUI next week.

A&DHarter

Oh gosh, glad to know that I wasn't the only one but you are exactly right..it was slim pickings. This donor was actually one of our top picks initially and then we ended up excluding him because he was 5'11" and we wanted 6 ft or taller. I know it is menial in the grand scheme of things but there are so many options that you have to weed out some type of way. I am completely satisfied with this pick though. He is handsome, seems smart, has personality and he has nurses in his family (I am a nurse). Best of luck! Please keep me updated!

Takiyah

I thought the same thing about his height!! LOL, What made me comfortable is his siblings are 6'3. In my family size varies among siblings. We either get the height from our parents or grandparents. I got mine from my grandparents because I am taller than my parents. So we can hope....

Sheryl

I had a similar experience. I had been saving donor profiles to my favorites folder, and eventually noticed the CMV thing. So, I figured there was some importance to it since it's called so prominently under the profiles. I did read some of the threads and did a google research on what it is. So, from what I've read it's pretty important. In fact, one of the articles I read suggests it could cause "mental retardation" in the offspring if the recipient is CMV negative and the donor is CMV positive. There's a small chance the recipient could get the virus from the donor and pass it onto the offspring. So, to answer your question, my DR never discussed it with me, she didn't even test me for it because Cryobanks aren't FDA required to test their donors for it. However, since I brought it up and because Fairfax tests their donor, they decided to test me. Given full disclosure, my doctor will not do the procedure on me if my donor CMV status doesn't match my own. That being said I had to pick a new donor.

What I learned from this process: spend some time learning from the experiences of others in these threads, to ask questions (to all) and to fully test myself in the interest of my future child.

Good luck!