How did you pick?

goingitalone

I'm just curious what criteria everyone is using to pick their donor. I'm looking at the donors who have advanced degrees as my number one criteria. Because I'm an accountant I would prefer someone with a different background, so I'm strongly leaning towards someone with a medical background. I would like to have the option of ID release but it's not necessary. What other criteria did you use?

hnwspiller

Honestly, for us...its mostly aesthetics.
The donors that we were using (all African american) are no longer available.

If a donor has a spotty health hx, they get scrapped right away. If they make it past my review of their medical history. Then we dwindle down the list further.
So for us, skin color, height, and hair color come first.
Degree, eyes, and everything else comes second.
Then the last consideration for us (because we are self/cash pay) is $.

Janet

First we picked someone who was CMV negative, then ID options, and Caucasian, ... that REALLY limited our choices. After that I preferred someone with a creative background as I'm an art teacher, my partner is a writer.... and there he was.

Amirasmommy

I'm a single woman with a DD from a previous marriage. The most important thing for me was to try to match physical characteristics to my DD. She is fair with blond hair and blue eyes. I'm an medium toned with brown hair an green eyes. So I almost definitely need a donor with blonde hair and blue eyes. So that's where I looked first. Then I wanted above average intelligence at minimum...which most of these donors have. I also was looking for someone athletic to compensate for my lake there of. But I honestly think most of the child's personality and talent will have little to so with the donor and more to do with the individuality of the child and the environment they are raised in. So most important was physical appearance to match my DD. Good luck!

Mikko77

I knew for years that I wanted to have children. As time went by I ran into a few friends that were going through the process of ICI, IUI, IVF.. etc.. So that is when I started to look at the donor websites and cryobanks. It was so interesting, at the time I didn't really have a preference as long as they had at least a baby pic and some info about their health I was content to search and select. Then about 2 years ago I was blessed with my partner and we both wanted to get married and have kids together so we really started to look seriously ( my clock was ticking ) after we both looked we decided to have the following priorities: ID Options, Lifetime Pictures, skin tone, ancestry, health, and of course cost. So after all things considered we found the donor that worked best for us. I think it's important to look into the backgrounds and cultures researching was important to us because we knew that we would be selecting from donors that had a limited variety of backgrounds. The background of our donor was so interesting we started to pick out names and are even trying to learn the native language. I checked over and over again for months trying to see was there a better donor but none ever surfaced so last week Thursday we selected our donor and purchased. It was a very exciting feeling .. we are so happy and blessed to be able to have a chance at creating life and a family. Good Luck everyone in your process.. Be positive

girley

hi there!
Selection for us was about looks...and waht i mean about that is similar physical features as my husband...he is very tall so we wanted someone who had taller people in his genes...we both have blue eyes so blue eyes were a must! so those two and blood type were major to us...other than that...schooling and all that didnt matter much as most have great education levels and most are very healthy....the child will learn from you and partner so not everyone is born with the smarts or talents..it can all be developed later...we feel confident we chose the right match and hope the child will not look way too different than my husband as the family doesnt know we had to use donor and my husband has very strong genes in his family coming from a Ukraine/Russian background...i searched for this background but the one match we have chosen was German! also first ivf round didnt work but FET did! we have 9 embryos on ice and i am 4 months pregnant...good luck

GeminiJai

This may sound odd but, when I first started looking, I chose donors who had physical appearances, personality traits and backgrounds similar to the men I typically tend to be attracted to (taller than 6', dark hair, light eyes, athletic, artistic, well-educated, good sense of humour, close with family- with Irish/German/Scottish/Welsh decent)... My thought process behind this was that, although I'm single now, I still hold out hope to find a partner in the future and think it would be great if people naturally assumed my child was his/our child, one day, either because of the way he/she looks or acts. In addition to that, medical history was a huge factor- as was reported pregnancies. Later into my search, I decided that ID Options would be a plus but wasn't a deal-breaker.

I saved at least 10-12 donors to my "Favourites" list but, once I looked at them all at a glance, I found that the majority of them were unavailable - which was pretty disheartening. In the end, there were only 4 available- 1 of whom had no reported pregnancies, so he was automatically "disqualified" for me. Once I narrowed it down to 3, I picked my absolute favourite from those and purchased his baby picture. Oddly enough, despite being 6' tall, having brown hair and green eyes- he looks eerily similar to me as a child (I'm 5'3", blonde and green). I later purchased the other 2 donors' baby pictures, as well, which then reassured me that I had made the right decision the first time.

I'm so happy with the donor that I chose and am looking forward to starting the process of IUI in January