Share your donor "Must Haves"

Fairfax Cryobank

What physical feature or personality trait was a must have to consider a donor during your selection process?

Maybe your partner has green eyes that you hope the donor will pass on. Or perhaps you found a donor that has a sense of humor like your family. It will be fun to hear how others decided on a donor.

forceps40

Our only physical trait was height. Both my husband and I are tall and wanted to be sure that our child had the best chance to also be tall. Once we narrowed down the field to a few that we thought we really liked, we got the baby pictures and the audio interviews. In the end, the interview determined it for us. We like the way the donor sounded, the answers he gave, and the personality we got to know through the interview.

Elliotts03

We wanted our baby to look as much like my partner as possible. We narrowed down the apperance must haves to be: hair color, eye color and weight. We also wanted the personality traits to match. The make or break was the baby picture. I dont think we would have chose the donor without a good baby picture. After we saw they had a baby picture that went with what we were looking for we bought everything we could on the donor. The more we saw, the more we knew how right that donor was for us.

dahozho

My most important priority was attempting to screen for health issues. I have some of my own, and I didn't want to "double up" on any issues the donor was honest about in their family health inventories. (If the donor doesn't disclose known family health issues, what a problem that could turn out to be!!) Donors who had multi-generational incidents of breast cancer, for instance. Donors who had family histories including alcoholism or other mental disturbances. Eye color, height, race, academic interest, etc. was just not as important as a 'clean' health history-- to me.

It turns out that my son's donor is tall (as I am), and from much of the same ethnic background. My son has a great sense of humor, is/will be fairly tall, is very communicative (in two languages), and is an involved, easy-going child. I hope he will be better at maths than I. If I could, I would have another child from the donor I chose.

ladymacb29

We looked for someone who was from the same ethnic background... My husband's a red head and we couldn't find any on here, so ethnic background looked like the next best fit. Then,since my husband's more of the creative side, we looked for someone who liked art or music...

Believe3

We found a donor with the same ethnic background as my husband, along with the same blood type, eye color, & hair color also. Our donor is very tall. DH and I are both short, though have all different heights in our family, so it doesn't bother us. We have joked around that our child will be taller than us at the age of 10...LOL. We also like our donor's description. He sounds like my husband's personality and has close interests. Health history was really important and finding nothing significant was a blessing. The baby picture helped some.

aunt_freya

We were looking for intelligence, humor, and decent looks. We found, through the childhood photos available, a donor who looked very similar to my BIL when he was the same age. We liked his personal essay and the answers to his questions. We initially wanted ID consent, but we compromised on that when it took more attempts to get pregnant than anticipated!

allineedisonegoodegg

Photos should be complimentary at no charge. IP's have so many obstacles to overcome, this would make life simpler

Ivette

I'm trying to decide on a donor, it's been so hard. My husband wants the donor to look like him, but there are only a few hispanics and none hispanics with green eyes. Any suggestions?

ladymacb29

Ivette wrote:

I'm trying to decide on a donor, it's been so hard. My husband wants the donor to look like him, but there are only a few hispanics and none hispanics with green eyes. Any suggestions?

What color are your eyes? if they're brown, go for a Hispanic donor with brown eyes - the eye color for each of you could have a recessive gene in there or, at a minimum, would take after your eye color.

Catca

I looked for many of the same things others have said they looked for and I also thought about lifestyle. For example, my household has several pets in it so I looked for a donor with no history of allergies who also mentioned he had pets himself so it would be less likely my child would be allergic. I also looked closely at family health histories. I wanted a donor with a family that tended to live to a nice happy old age. :-)

wonderwoman

THis is going to sound funny, but we are looking for people who are honest on their forms. It is refreshing to see "real people". NO ONE has a perfect family medical history.

Anne72

My criteria were (in order of importance:
CMV negative (I am, so this was a must)
6ft or taller - my whole family is tall and I wanted to maximise chances that my baby will be as well
Good medical history - I eliminated certain conditions based on my own family's history
Coloring similar to mine - light skin, blue or green eyes, red/blonde or light brown hair

heart

MUST HAVE BLUE EYES (LIKE THE REST OF MY FAMILY) THIS IS MY ONLY PHYSICAL EXTERNAL MUST HAVE
MUST BE AN OPEN ID.
MUST NOT HAVE SERIOUS HEALTH ISSUES RUNNING IN THE FAMILY...