Sunday, May 5, 2013

Selecting a donor (warning: very long post)

On Friday afternoon, I finally received access to the donor database. I'd been anxiously awaiting this moment, yet once I received the log-in code, I froze. This suddenly felt very serious. And then when I did log in, the rows and rows of childhood photos made me freeze up again. These are actual women, and I was really about to choose one to be the genetic building blocks of my future son or daughter. This is one of those decisions that I will carry the rest of my life, as will my children. I have rarely ever had such a surreal moment in my life.

But my curiosity won out, and eventually I started to look and to read. I suppose I could have delayed it till I could get home and sit down with my husband, but I just couldn't wait. Also, throughout all of this fertility stuff, it's been me driving the process. Although he is 100% on board and wants a child as much as I do, he leaves the major decisions up to me. So I planned to narrow it down to a few choices, and then get his input, rather than just presenting him with a log-in and password (more on this later- it didn't really work out this way in the end, as he did want to scroll through them on his own too).

We'd already talked a bit about our selection criteria. We definitely wanted some physical resemblance. I have dark brown hair and dark brown eyes, but everyone on my mom's side of the family has green or blue eyes. Although I like my eye color, I always wanted green as a child, and B also happens to have green. So as long as we get to pick what we can have in a child (or at least try to- genetics are a funny and not totally predictable thing), we thought it'd be nice to have a dark haired, green eyed kid. A little bit of each of us. For other physical characteristics, I'd like someone with a medium to darker skin tone, like me, and someone at least roughly height-weight proportional. As in, no blondes who are 6 feet tall. More like a 5'3"-5'6" tall person, with medium skin, dark hair, green or brown eyes, somewhere around my weight of 130 pounds.

Beyond the physical, we obviously want someone healthy, with a good family medical history. But this is not too much of an issue, since the egg bank screens their donors so carefully. However, I have been closely touched by a relative (non-blood related) and close friends with serious mental illness, and B's mom has a history of manic-depression and attempted suicide. I also am bothered by my own mild OCD habits (that my father has as well) that I don't want to get into here except to say that I hate them and life would be simpler without, and so I'd rather avoid any history of OCD or anxiety disorders. So of all health conditions, I most want to avoid any mental health issues, especially since there is some on the paternal grandmother side already.

Okay, so that's the physical and health aspects. What else? Well, frankly I don't care that much about what the donor likes to do in her spare time, or her favorite color or food (yes, they really list those). We did want to see some intelligence or ambition, and some family history of education and success. However, this is an area in which I am pretty torn. I do not believe intelligence or ambition is passed on through genes. I think there is some level of inheritance of problems, and some larger aspect of it is affected by the prenatal environment, and there might be some potential aptitude that is in there. We know that drinking and substance use can affect a child in negative ways. Age of the mother's eggs can play a role in certain problems (some of which can be screened for, such as Down's). But test scores and GPA in high school or college? I just think this is probably way more a reflection of the family values and the environment. I cannot imagine that the two of us wouldn't raise a child who loves to read and learn. So I don't put too much stock in this part of the donor profile, though I did look. I looked at overall family achievements and careers, but I didn't make it a big deal.

What I paid more attention to is the free-text responses each donor filled out. First off, many of the profiles in the database did not include very detailed information. These seemed to be the older profiles, though I am not sure what year they switched from the brief profiles to the very in-depth ones for recent additions. The older profiles have really basic info: age, education, what is your life ambition? There is family history, but not very detailed. So although some of these donors had appealing photos (and one even had my religious background which would be great), I decided to discount these immediately. I just want to know more. I want an anonymous donor but I want more info rather than less. Partially for me, and partially because I want to be able to tell a little bit to my future child if they want to know. I personally feel like having some information is a gift I can give my son or daughter. When my child is old enough, I want to share the profile if they care to see it. I especially want them to be able to read the answers to:


  • What is/are your reasons for wanting to donate eggs?
  • If you could pass on a message to the recipient(s) of your eggs, what would that message be?
  • If you could write a message to the child born through your participation as an egg donor for when he/she turns 18 years old, what would you tell him/her?


So, this is one way I immediately narrowed down the profiles. Other ways: I initially limited it to green eyed donors. Of the seven currently available, a few had older profiles so I didn't look at those. A couple were really, really blond. Nope, not a good match. Hmm. Then, as I kept scrolling down the list, the last picture caught my eye. It looked a lot like my own childhood photos, actually: a little girl with shiny dark hair in a ponytail, and a similar face shape to mine. I quickly read her profile and discovered she doesn't identify as strictly Caucasian, but as mixed (she has Native American and Hispanic mixed with Irish heritage). This appealed to me, as B and I both speak Spanish and have spent time in the country which her grandmother comes from, and I'm often taken for Latina, especially when I was younger. As I read her profile, I was not turned off the way I had been for several of the others I had already read. She has an excellent family health history, she is young, but she has some fun quirks about her and seems to just be a really happy person. She also happens to have won beauty contests as a child, which is silly, but kinda nice. She does not test well or do very well in school, but not terrible either, and she is in college. Her family is not particularly educated, but  she has a strong passion for something else, which helps mitigate the grades/test scores. And I liked her simple but sincere answers to the three questions above.

I wrote down her donor number as a definite possibility, and then I looked at blue eyed donors.  Too many of them were blonde, or just didn't appeal to me in their profiles. Again, I was looking for something about them to catch my eye, especially in the answers to the three questions I listed above. Some sort of passion or dedication to something in their lives, and a maturity about why their were donating their genetic material to another woman or family.

So, next I started on the much longer list of brown eyed donors and hazel eyed donors. One photo really jumped out at me in the hazel list. I read more about her, and was immediately drawn in. Although she does not have the green eyes I initially wanted, and is 8 years older than the first donor, she seemed like a really cool person in her profile. Very mature, and very interesting. She has a 4 year college degree, a good job, and wants to get a master's. Her family has education and advanced degrees. She does not plan to have children of her own, as she recently married a man who already has some. She has similar interests as us, and I liked the answers to the three questions. A few drawbacks, though: her older age than donor #1 (which doubles the risks of certain things such as Down's), one of her brothers does have an anxiety/panic disorder, she doesn't have my ideal eye color, and she doesn't look nearly as much like me as donor #1. But, as a person, I think I liked her a bit more.

I jotted down a few other profile numbers, and later, at home, B and I sat down together with the database. I showed him these two donors and he thought they were both totally adorable in their photos (which they both really, really are). He agreed me with me about the relative positives and negatives of each. He also wanted to look for himself, and he scrolled through for a bit, and we read several more profiles together. No one really could compete with our two favorites, though.

On the whole, I am slightly leaning towards donor #1, and he is slightly favoring donor #2. We went out with friends shortly after this (whom I am not telling yet or maybe at all), and my mind kept coming back to our donors. The next morning, yesterday, I thought more and more on it, and then read an internet friend's blog where she mentions that donors can be claimed really quickly. I decided that we really like both of our options, and after discussing it with B, we went ahead and submitted them using the online form, with #1 being our top choice. The next step is that sometime on Monday the egg bank will contact me to confirm whether our donors are indeed still available (not having been nabbed by someone else already- please no!), and we send back the signed forms if one of them is still available and we are still interested. We also have a required consult with a genetic counselor scheduled for Wednesday, though I may try to bump it up to Tuesday (there is one issue with donor #1, but luckily B is not a carrier so it should not be a problem but we want to talk about it just in case he should be re-tested).

So, about 24 hours after getting access, we picked our top two donors! It all does seem fast, and I have questioned whether we should slow down. B feels strongly that there is no reason to. We have been struggling with infertility for two and a half years, watching our friends get pregnant one after another, and feeling that it will never be us. Donor egg changes this completely. We're ready. We like the two donors, and I would feel comfortable with either one. I have grieved not having my own genetic child, but for me, the most important thing is to have a child. We're ready, and I feel good about our choice. This is the most peace I have felt in a long time.

1 comment:

  1. Wow! So fast! How awesome is that. You just know---you saw your matches, and you just knew. I don't think you are going too quickly. I think it really does work like that. Any samples I've looked through at other clinics, I immediately gravitate toward 1 or 2. Interesting, isn't it?

    I'm so glad you would be happy with either choice. Yay!

    And that you have found peace.

    Thank you for posting something so detailed and thoughtful---it helps me tremendously.

    ReplyDelete