I suppose l would have to ask if it were me looking for donor egg how would l feel. ?? The answer is anonymous. And lm sorry l cant even explain why. I would 100 % hope my husband would support my hearts desire.
To be honest if the clinic have policies the decision has been taken for you. Unless u swop clinics.
My friend used anonymous donor eggs, she said the only think that helped her heal from the pain of ivf was the fact she carried n birthed her baby. Her happy healthy one year old is their world.
I think your hubby leaving it all to you is a bit of a flag. He needs a bit of help.
Can you guys go for ivf counselling, may help you both process choices.
Sorry l donf have much to offer, l noticed no one had replied and thought l should reach out.
I don’t know where you are, but I’m the UK, you don’t get a choice, they have to be non-anonymous. Having said that we had treatment abroad over three years ago and there policy is it is all anonymous. I wanted a baby so much I didn’t care, so my son will not know his sperm donor, except what I have brief on a piece of paper. It’s only now I think about it, that I will have to deal with that when he is older. I do not regret my decision, but I know it will probably be difficult when those questions come.
We are same sex couple, you’d be surprised though how much of an issue the sperm donor was though, as my wife had difficulties with the whole thing. Knowing what I know now, I would have had an identifiable sperm donor, however I doubt that would have happened as I needed higher levels of medication to get pregnant, we had numerous attempts in the UK and they wouldn’t let me go higher back then, hence why we went abroad. I have the most amazing little boy and I would do it over and over again, despite the consequences. I have also thought that with the way DNA is advancing, by the time he is an adult, he will more than likely be able to track down the sperm donor. On a side note, I work with children, as I am a social worker and the worse thing you can do is lie to them, especially about where they come from, it does untold damage. Children are amazing little things, when they know they are loved, they don’t care about DNA, they just need their curiosity to be supported. I have a step father, who came along late in my life, I was raised by my single mother until my teens. As far as I’m concerned he is my father, DNA does not make a dad, 25years of supporting me, loving me and being there for me, made him a dad!!! If DNA did make a father, someone should track down my biological father and tell him that 😂😂
I’m sorry to hear you’re going through this fertility struggle. My husband & I have gone through the same thing due to his fertility problems. He went through different phases over a couple of months period where he didn’t want to choose the donor himself and didn’t want to ever tell the child. He did get himself some counselling and I have to say it was the best thing he could have done. He soon came round to the idea of being more open about it and became more cooperative in the donor search.
Of course the donor has to meet the criteria you want (for us it was similar physical attributes to my husband) but honestly the trying to get pregnant part will soon take over for you and you won’t even be thinking of how to tell the child when it’s older.
We’ve decided it’ll be best to explain to them in more detail once they’re old enough to understand but will probably tell them from a very early age that a really kind person helped us to bring them into this world and paint a pretty picture of the situation and make it feel normal to them straight away.
Our donor was anonymous and we prefer that. We decided against the donor banks that have photos and fine details about the donors as it was just too much and soon became more about the donor rather than our future child. We just look at our sperm donor as a solution to helping us conceive and of course we’re grateful for them but we don’t get too caught up in thinking about him.
You’ll both be raising the child from birth and he/she will develop so many of your husband’s traits because of that - nothing else will really matter.
Good luck and get in touch if you need to chat 🙂 xxx
Thanks so much, I really appreciate it. I don’t think he is ready yet, but I hope he gets there eventually ❤️❤️
Hi lovely it’s a huge journey and personal preference to what you think is best. We had an egg donor but have not told anyone and won’t not even our lg.
We want her not to have to deal with any of it. I am so grateful to our donor but would hate our little one heading of to find the donor in the future. If I’m honest I’m scared that they might have a great connection.
Maybe my thoughts will change as she grows but for now that’s our choices.
Go with your gut instinct and what is best for you both xxx
Yeah it’s one of the toughest decisions we ever went through as a couple. It actually took us over a year and a half to decide on a donor, the decision just became massive for my OH.
We got there in the end and chose an anonymous donor, we went for a donor that we couldn’t see pictures of too as my OH found that very strange.
We also had to change clinics just after we had chosen the first donor (who later withdrew his consent anyway) as the clinic wanted us to choose from one particular sperm bank. We felt so strongly that we wouldn’t be forced to choose a donor who we didn’t want that we just upped and moved clinic.
My advice, do what’s right for you. Move clinics if they aren’t supporting what you want and remember there is no ideal donor (because the perfect sperm would come from your OH and that isn’t possible).
I can understand the struggle with this decision. In our case we needed an egg donor, so it was me that had to come to terms with having my DNA replaced. At first I could not imagine my future child knowing a donor had been involved, I was absolutely terrified at this thought. However, as more time went on, I had some counselling and spent a lot of time researching the subject. I started to think about things less from my perspective, and put myself in the place of my child - eg. 'Would I rather my parents were open and honest with me? Would I sense it if there was some mysterious secret in the family? Would I prefer it if there was some future opportunity to learn about where my DNA came from?' In the end, we tried to make the decisions we thought would leave the most doors open for our little one. We'll let them know a kind person helped us to have them, and as they get older we'll elaborate more as they seem ready. It took a long time for me to let go but I'm at peace with the choices and look forward to meeting him or her in a few more months! I'm sure you and your partner will find what's right for you too xx
I completely agree - I am looking at this from my child’s perspective. I had a pretty traumatic childhood and I wouldn’t want my child to have the same.
The problem is, it’s my partner that will have his DNA replaced and he is the one that doesn’t want to say anything....he also refuses counselling.
As he has left it all to me, I will be picking a non-anonymous donor I think.
I saw you went to Cyprus? Can you PM the name of the clinic? I can’t go to Greece with a non-anonymous donor and now I am stuck and have to find a new clinic...so stressful!
There is a lot of research about this, spanning 40+ years. It is definitely better for the child to have openness and honesty about donor identity. I am Canadian, and having an open ID (child can connect after 18 if desired) unknown donor was strongly recommended by all med/psych professionals. Best of luck!
No, an anonymous donor with “open access ID”. It just means kiddo can track him down when they turn 18 if they so choose. It was definitely pounded into me that honesty about “where they come from” is critical as they grow up. There are negative outcomes (mental health, addiction, suicide rates) associated with being a donor kid, but most of those relate to dishonesty/disconnection around identity. If you do some googling you should be able to find lots of research. Kiddo’s dad is male FTR.
It might be a terminology thing because I’m Canadian. Here we have three options: known donor (friend/family member), unknown donor with open access ID, and unknown donor anonymous (no option of ever identifying).
Ah ok, great - yes thanks. That is the same thing as non-anonymous donor in the UK
Are you doing IVF as a single parent or as a couple? Just curious how you coped with the “other half” as mine can’t cope with the idea of a donor at all...
For my first, now 3 years old, I had a partner. I’m now 4 hrs away from an egg retrieval as a single parent. Ex did not have any real issues w use of a donor, having a child was his priority and he had a good therapist. I would say to get your SO into therapy. This is not something you can solve for him, he needs to take responsibility for his emotional well-being here. Already, you will face some challenges because of it (cycle monitoring is a pain in the ass) and you don’t need the additional stress of managing his ego/emotions/insecurities. You can be supportive without solving all his problems. Like I said, I’m single now, haha, got sick of dealing with men who want free therapy from me 🙃.
Choosing the donor was actually the most fun part of the experience back then. It can feel very empowering, especially compared to this process which I would not describe as empowering generally.
I completely relate to this...so glad you got there in the end and have a lovely son! 😊 xx
We are using a known donor as back up in our cycles (my husband has NOA). When thinking this through, we decided we had to think about this from the future child's perspective. I believe it's incredibly unfair to prioritise your own emotional comfort over the future child's wellbeing and ability to understand who they are and where their genetic material comes from. It also stores up massive potential problems for the future - many children who haven't been told find out on their own, from dna tests, due to medical eventually, or even just from having a sense of something being different or from not looking like one parent. Basically if you use a donor you can't control all these variables, and honesty is absolutely the best policy. There is now a massive amount of research that confirms this, including studies of children who were told and knew they could contact their donor at some point, who tend to be as happy and thriving as any child, and those from whom secrets were kept, or who were unable to contact a donor, who have much higher rates of depression and problematic relationships with their parents. If you want to find out more the Donor Conception Network is a great resource, as is a University of Cambridge research centre and its related publications (cfr.cam.ac.uk/directory/Sus.... The Donor Sibling Registry has a lot of perspectives from donor conceived people you can read through. Basically there's a really, really good reason it's illegal to have non-anonymous donation in the UK, and this is based on research and experience so I believe shouldn't be discounted just because it makes one of the parents uncomfortable. These are natural feelings but they should be worked through in therapy, not used to determine the trajectory of a child's life who cannot advocate for themselves at the point of the decision being made.
Hi anna i am a single mum to a 9week baby girl and i whent to Greece and i used a spam doner and he signed the rights away when he handing his sample over. My little girl will niver know him or be able to find him but i will niver keep it from hur or lie to hur and i will tell hur that's what I wanted to. If i was you i would make the right decision for both of you but haveing the opshon to look for a man that its your dad but was never there for you might be hard but at least you have give the child a chance to decide for them self what to do about it when older. you don't have to have the same DNA to be a mum or dad its about how is there for you and rasing you and helping you grow in life. I wish you all the best x
We did chose non-anonymous (although we haven't yet had to use it) but that is because I know from my own experience that not knowing your dad but knowing that they are alive can be pretty awful for a child though sometimes a fantasy father figure is better than the real thing!!! You can only go with your best guess, you don't yet know your future child and how they might feel about things so you must go with your gut. If you feel non-anonymous is the way and your husband doesn't then you need to talk it through ALOT before moving forward. It's not a straightforward choice but they way I thought about it was going with anonymous would be easier for us, but non-anonymous would be better for our child as they get to chose whether they want contact or not.
Just a point of view but I would be the last to judge if you went the other way!
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