With the ease of the internet of course! Take your time perusing donor profiles, hearing audio clips of their voice, reading over medical and family history, checking out a baby/child photo, sorting them by physical characteristics and/or blood type!
We found several cryobanks to choose from, and were pleased to find out the one we chose was one in good standing according to our physician's standards... You may want to note if doing a little sperm shopping yourself that the Colorado Cryobank did not meet their standards. Sperm is not something you can get "local" as it turns out, correction high quality sperm is not something you can get "local" from a sperm bank.
During all the poking and prodding it was discovered that I am RH- which essentially means...ummm...yeah. I don't know what it means but I know it narrows my options somewhat. If I go with a donor who has a negative blood type I can cut down on the number of shots that will be administered to me... If I go with a donor who is a positive blood type I have to take some kind of shot(more than once) that builds up antibodies or whatever....Wow I am so uneducated when it comes to this stuff!
So we picked our version of what we think is "Mr. Right Genes"! He is A(-) blood type, Caucasian, of Scottish Portuguese-Spanish Decent, 6', 150 lbs, with brown hair, and blue eyes...He has a bachelors degree in Business, likes reading and playing sports, and is in the Army. The staff think well of him and feel he has "movie" quality looks! His voice sounds smooth no hint of "nasal"-ish about it and he sounds intelligent. He has fair skin, not what I was hoping for being fair skinned myself, but I would rather opt for a baby who needs more sunscreen than deal with more shots and the small risk of the RH- thingy rearing its ugly head.
Mr. Right Genes has one more thing going for him, he is less expensive than our other two "likes", when you are looking at prices of $450+ a vial; seeing a price tag of $345 a vial felt like a steal! He also met our requirement for an open donor.
An open donor is a donor willing to be contacted by the child once they reach the age of 18. My girl read a lot of information including Donor Kid letters; of the letters she found none of the kids wanted to replace their parents, they have a dad or a second mom, they just wanted to see where some of their attributes came from. Our child is obviously going to know he/she didn't come into this world in a conventional manner and we have no desire to deny them the right to explore their roots.
Once we had decided on the donor for us, we had to fill out more forms! YAY!! We love forms, especially ones that require a notary! Not to worry our local postal annex notarizes, and they have handy birthday cards and cute flashlights so you can shop while you wait for your turn to sign! We overnighted the paperwork to the bank and the next day My girl placed an order for 8 vials of Mr. Right Genes and I got a cute flashlight for the mini cooper!
Why 8? Well our physician informed us that it may take a few tries so its best to order more than one at a time... How does " a few" end up as the random 8?? Well the bank will store your vials for free for 2 years if you order 8 or more. We figured if we got lucky early on we could store the remainder just in case we want to have a second child. Also, the bank will buy back unused vials that don't leave the facility at half price should we decide to never use them, which we thought 50% back is better than none and we don't have to shop anymore!
No comments:
Post a Comment