The Donor; How we chose Baby's genetic background

There are probably as many different ways of chosing a donor as there are donor families. Wifey and I had initially perhaps a bit different stand points. I was worried about denying the child a biological father (though there are many historical examples of things working out despite of this factor, e.g. Jesus Christ). And wifey was worried about having a man in our life that could have any kind of claim on our child.

After discussing back and forth we started going through our circle of friends to see if there was anyone who could fit the bill of being a known donor to our child.

But with a decision like that comes new potential difficulties.

Most of our male friends are straight and have, or will have, families of their own. How would this affect our child? To have a donor who was not really a father to our child, but a father to "his own" children.

Wouldn't this make our child feel left out, different and rejected?

It would also be weird to have a child with your spouse and see a friends features, mannerisms or personality shine through.

The pros of the "friend-donor" is that you know your child's biological origin, there is a reliable source (that you like) and if you would need any genetic/biological information down the road, you can just pick up the phone.

You would also know what (if any) half-siblings your child would have. And would not have to have 30+ unknown half-siblings all over the world, or even a few in your own neighbourhood.

I suppose that is not the end of the world. Before contraception was introduced, most people probably had a bunch of un-known half-siblings all over the place.

Also we would have had the comfort of trying to make a baby (inseminate) in our own bedroom like normal people. And fresh sperm is more viable and easier to concieve with than frozen goods. (In Sweden only University hospitals are allowed to handel frozen semen, so there is no way to do home inseminations with a donor from a sperm bank).

But one of my biggest concern about having a friend as a donor, was that you never know how you are going to react to creating a biological child.
What if the man in question falls in love with the baby and want to be a part of the babys life?
How can you say no to that?
No matter what you agreed, what legal contacts you've signed, who can anticipate what you will feel when you see your biological child in front of you? The heart wants what the heart wants. And I could never refuse our child and our donor a relationship, eventhough it's not what wifey and I would prefer.

Wifey and I made lists of what was important to us in chosing a donor. Extensive background information was vital. Getting to chose ourselves was also important to us. Most people actually chose who the have a child by.
Why should it be any different for us just because the man won't be a father figure in our childs life?

If I can't have a biological baby with the person I'm in love with, atleast I can chose some other genetics. Or atleast a donor who is not allergic and does not have astma (which runs in my family).

But I think the most important thing to me was that the donor seemed to be a kind and caring human being. That was actually more important than him having similar looks to wifey's.

All the donor profiles who described themselves as "arrogant", "wanting to populate the world" or where you genereally could read between the lines some difficulties interacting with other people were a No-Go.

Since I am the one carrying the baby and Baby will have 50% of my genetics, wifey's input about the donor was more important than mine for me.
We eventually ended up chosing a donor we both fancied but that especially wifey felt connected to.
The donor and wifey work in the same field and wifey liked the way he described himself and his outlook on life.
I especially liked the description of him by others, and also the considerate, kind and caring nature he seemed to have in dealing with relationships in his life.


But I must confess, had it been entirely up to me, I might have been tempted to chose one of the donors with obvious music talent.

Still, I am super happy with our choice. I wish the donor would have had the same eye and hair color as wifey. But oh well. Now that Baby exist, I would have it no other way. That would be to change Baby, which would be impossible since I love her exactly as she is.

Other things we considered in chosing a donor was; that the donor had concieved a child earlier (which meant that the stuff was actually working)and high motility in sperm count (more frisky swimmers means better chances to concieve and less attempts which will be cheaper in the long run).

For more information if you want to plan your conception I can recommend this book;



It is a bit tideous to read, a bit new age, and there is an entire section on how to "befriend" the sperm (ok...). And I am a bit upset that a book on 500+ pages on chosing a donor and conception fails to mention the Rh +/- factor.
Still, if you are a control freak there is a lot of good reading about things to consider in chosing a donor.
The Maia clinic is a clinic with high sucess rate in pregnancies for mothers that have a hard time concieving, so I thought all their tips were worth considering, though I didn't use (live up to) all of them.

I also recommend this book for concieving;



It's a book directed at heterosexuals concieving. Still it is very good info about your fertility and your body.
I actually didn't chart according to the book etc. But I still thought it was helpful and interesting.

Well, that was a little about how we chose baby's genetics.

I know a lot of people who have chosen to know as little as possible about the donor and even let the clinic chose for them.
And, as I've said in earlier posts, if you chose to inseminate in Sweden, you get no choice.
The women I talked to who doesn't want to chose says they don't want to see the donor in their child. If for example they know the donor is a fire fighter, they don't want to look at the child seeing fire fighting traits.

I don't really understand the resoning behind that. (Since I work in a field closely related to genetics and as far as I know no fire fighter gene has yet been discovered).

My thinking, if our donor had been a fire fighter, is that the donor is a person who enjoy a physcially challenging profession (and perhaps has a high activity level), has a profession where he will help others and subjects himself to danger. I would not freak out if Baby enjoyed playing with the garden hose, thinking that she was genetically destined to become a fire fighter.

But, to each her own. And I really respect people who think genetics doesn't matter at all.

All I want is the ability to chose what fits your family and not be restricted by society and having to go to another country to get to chose a donor for your baby, if that matters to you. It did to us.