I love to shop. L-U-V it. I am elated that I live three blocks' walk to downtown Union Square to get my shop on whenever I feel the urge. In the past two months, my realm of usual shopping accoutrement began taking a distinct turn. A distinct sperm-turn, if you will. In the beginning, I would only casually cruise donor sites, just checking out catalogues, getting acquainted with the system of buying genes online, cruising profiles, getting my bearings, etc..
A couple of months ago though, I started getting serious. I logged in, started checking 3 to 4 donor sites a week, saving my advanced searches, reading staff's impressions, downloading stuff (ok, it may not seem that serious, but I have commitment issues.) Anyway, getting to the point- I am looking to find a Filipino donor. Chefy's 8yr old son by her ex-wife was from a full Filipino donor, and I want our little one to also be a 50/50 reflection of us, as well as her/his older bro. I would go to the ex to get the donor details, but we don't exactly have what you might call a "friendly" relationship. We are cordial and nice (especially when it comes to the PooMan), but asking her the details of the donor they used for PooMan is out of the realm of possibility.
Sooo...in my search of Filipino donors online, I have found a total of 4 full-blooded Pinoy (at CA Cryo.bank.) Apparently not much of a popular ethnicity as far as donating sperm goes. I'm a *little* annoyed that I have such limited choice options, but will deal. What I really curious about is if anyone else out there has run into this situation, especially concerning donors of a specific ethnicity. I would love to get some feedback on this, as I don't have anyone in my Re.al life to talk to this about.....
12 years ago
I know someone IRL about to start using a full philipino donor from CalCryo.... I wonder if y'all will have "diblings".
ReplyDeleteSpeedy is half-Korean/half Polish jew. Finding a donor to match the description is out of the question, but we did find some reasonably close in the broader asian-caucasian realm. We are going to use her first pick-- from her initial ttc attempt that she still has on ice-- a half Japanese, half Swedish guy who has the intellectual pedigree that she thinks is very important (though I keep telling her that graduate degrees are not conferred genetically.) If he doesn't work, we have a 2nd choice half Korean, half multi-whitemix on deck. But Donor #2 has no past pregnancies, so I am a little leery of using his appropriately pedigreed but indeterminately potent jizz. We'll give him a few shots at my aging ovaries and then reassess.
My RE is isistent that CC is the only place to deal with because "you know what you're getting." in terms of the quality and preparation.
Wow - it is really interesting to read about your selection process (aka "shopping"), because in Australia sperm donation is much more regulated. Well... unknown sperm donation is essentially only possible via hospitals or clinics, whereas known sperm donation is pretty much unregulated - if you can find someone who wants to donate, you can go for it, but it can be a little tricky organisationally. And either way, it is illegal to pay for sperm donations.
ReplyDeleteI felt very strongly about having a known donor, as I felt that if I was that child, I'd probably want to know who he was and be very curious to meet him. And we also liked the idea of having a chance to get to know him and satisfy ourselves that he was a decent person. My partner is lebanese, so we were also hoping for someone with vaguely similar heritage.
First off, we asked my partner's brother, but he wasn't comfortable with the idea. And we didn't really feel comfortable asking any of our gay male friends (well - the couple we did ask weren't ready at the time we were asking). So we ended up having a hunt on an australian donor registry website which has since been shut down - not sure why. It was really kind of like a personals website - lots of profiles, and if you pay a fee, you can access their contact details.
There were no lebanese guys listed - the closest were some southern european guys and a columbian-american guy who sounded lovely. We ended up contacting the latter - and were really lucky in that we got on really well, and had a very similar picture for what we wanted. He was happy to have an uncle-type role - ie family, but not a parent. And the whole TTC process has taken so long (3 years!) that we've really gotten to know him and count him as a good friend over that time.
Now that I'm pregnant, I'm really glad that we know the donor, as I'm so curious about what the baby will look like and what kind of little person this will be.
Anyway, that is my 2c worth. All the best with your selection process!
Hanen, thanks for those cents. I've always known that my donor wouldn't be. It's great to hear that your search for an ethnically-appropriate KD has worked out-congrats! I'm more on the "less (and when I mean "less" I mean nada) is more wavelength. Thanks Keely for the sage and very grounded advice. I do wonder with only cuatro Pinoy how very many diblings PooMan and our future one has/will have. I don't think I'm far along enough to be there quite yet (as she pours herself a glass of vino.) So far to go.....
ReplyDeleteIt must be incredibly hard to find a donor when you already have a child that you want to be represented in your baby to be! When we first started TTC, we used a VERY small sperm bank (as in only 12 donors total) and we just learned to deal with the fact that we had a very limited selection. I wish I had some advice to offer. Do any of the 4 donors you've found look appealing?
ReplyDeleteYeah, you know...one of them seems very promising. I know it seems careless to say this, but I'm really not that picky. As long as the donor is intelligent and reasonably attractive, I'm fine. I think genetics play a part in the person my child will become, but I put more of my money on his or her upbringing and environment. I lean more towards the nurture side of that age-old debate.
ReplyDeleteI missed this post but I'm catching up now!
ReplyDeleteWe had the choice of only 3 banks and only "Canadian Compliant" were available to ship across the border (cutting down our options a lot). Add to that being CMV- which was a real pain.
We ended up going through 4 donors to get our BFP. In the beginning EVERYTHING was a big deal. Towards the end buying enough sperm for a potential sibling and ensuring there were no medical issues became paramount since our donors kept selling out.
Looking at donors early or getting attached to a specific donor is dangerous. My advice would be to rank the 4 donors you have access to and identify which you would NOT use and work around that. Also, if you want to buy enough for siblings you'll want to do some research to see how popular the donor is. For example, check the DSR and see what the earliest date a sibling has appeared and how many siblings are listed. You can always ask the bank if he is "still in the program" or see if you can get them to say if he is "popular". Selling out was a BIG problem for us... it was heartbreaking and it happened 3x!!
I'm Keely's friend who chose a Pinoy donor! Can't believe it took me this long to find your blog. You're right that those darn Filippino men aren't too big on giving up their stuff to help us lezzies out. The wife's mom was pretty keen on us using one of the guys in her family (weird), but we instead chose one of the lucky California Cryobank four (the only one that's ID release, which was important to me), and we'll be giving it a go sometime in the next couple of months. This guy evidently has played a part in at least one successful pregnancy according to CC, but my thinking is the same as yours - there are probably plenty of "diplings" out there. Strangely enough, none of them have registered on the most popular donor sibling website (the CC number uses for this guy evidently used to belong to a Norwegian fellow, who has produced his own litter, evidently - but no one has signed up to the DS site using the same donor number who describes their donor as Filipino). I've never thought of myself as particularly territorial, but when I called CC to make the purchase, the woman I talked to told me that someone else had called earlier about this guy - I was actually tempted to buy out every one of his vials after that, but we'd have to take out a second mortgage on our home. Now I've got a pretty relaxed attitude about it - genes are important, but heck, Filipinos are a pretty crazy genetic mix anyway, and we're flexible with shopping around the rest of Asia or even going Mexican (the skin and hair color, and often eye shape is very similar to Pinoy) if this guy doesn't work out. Anyway, best of luck on choosing your donor - I know it's harrowing for some people (although, I found the process strangely easy due to the lack of selection).
ReplyDeleteYup. We found one--ONE! willing-to-be-known Chinese donor who was CMV negative at cali cryo. ONE.
ReplyDeleteHope y'all are having a blast in Paris and eating a lot of unpasteurized cheese.