We are planning to have a donor sperm back up for my next cycle in case my husbands frozen sperm is not good enough under IMSI.
The bank my clinic recommended had only 12 Caucasian donors! I obviously want the child to look like a mix of me and my husband.
I’ve seen some sperm banks in the USA… can anyone recommend any that were good in your experience? Is it straightforward to ship to U.K. clinic?
Can anyone explain to me what the CMV status means? Also, what type of sperm do we need to purchase if I am doing ivf? There’s seems to be some for IUI and something called ICU?
Just when I thought I knew everything about ivf - a whole new chapter/ can of worms has opened!
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hoping2021
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Hey so I’m a same sex couple no male factor. For our little girl we are so blessed to have our clinic only offered very minimal donors. With little information also.
I needed more.
The European sperm bank was brilliant. It does cost but it is very straight forward and they send the sperm directly to your chosen clinic.
Countless of donors. You get everything including full family backgrounds, health, the donors strong, weak points, a photograph of them as a child, a staff impression, you can choose to listen to the audio recording of the interview.
We felt fully informed. As a lot of the donors you could see had pretty much just turned up and barley any info etc, this was also reflected in the staff impressions etc.
We really felt we could take our time and choose a donor that completely suited us and our family.
For example our donor had a family of his own. He was medical (as our we) and only chose to donate as his best friends were gay and struggled to conceive for years so he wanted to help a family like them. We like him so much we literally bought all of of his 3 donations of sperm. One we used for a failed IUI. Then our ivf. And we have more in storage .
We will always be grateful to our donor. It’s amazing the selfless act of helping others!
Happy to answer any questions if you have them ♥️
Ps IUI is just insemination
CMV Means they screen the donors for any sexual health infections and their status at the time of donation.
Found a link regarding IUI AND ICU explains it better then I can. But you’ll purchase ICU id imagine.
I can say you have to pay for a pregnancy slot on top which basically secures you a slot for this donor in your area so that they can’t send more sperm to others within so many thousands of miles of you.
Hi Anyone mentioning clinics by name, please do so by private message. Also checking for CMV (stands for Cytomegalovirus) is one of the standard blood tests you need to have if you are considering egg donation (either as a recipient or as a donor.) It is a very common virus, similar to rubella/herpes, which the vast majority of people have been exposed to at some point in their lives. It's not dangerous in itself, but it can infect a baby in the womb, because if a woman who is pregnant is infected with CMV for the first time, she has no immunity and the virus can cross the placenta to the baby. In some cases, this can lead to congenital problems for the baby. From what I've understood, clinics use CMV status as a way of beginning to match recipients and donors: a recipient who is positive for CMV herself can have a donor who is positive or negative, whereas a recipient who is negative must have a donor who is also negative. Hope that helps. Diane
Hi Diane sorry I seem to be the only one that’s commented on this post and I’m just checking it’s not re my feedback because I didn’t mention any clinic names at all? xx
I'm flying solo and used a US clinic. Will pm you. I found the process very straight forward. American sperm banks are light years more superior to the UK ones and even the European Sperm Bank. Nevermind "height, age and eye colour", I even had adult pictures alongside screening for hundreds of genetic illnesses as standard, which was important to me, personality profiling and extensive family health. You just never know what gene mutations you may be carrying and if your donor has them too then the baby is at risk. All in all it cost around $1500 for one sample which I used to fertilise all my eggs from one IVF round. The family slot has been mentioned above which ensures that only 10 families in the UK can use that donor so once you find someone you like make sure to snap them up quickly. One last thing; my London IVF clinic had agreements in place with 3 or 4 sperm donor clinics so I could only use one of them. They were not willing to accept any samples from anyone else so worth double checking if your clinic has existing agreements in place. Best of luck.
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IUI or IVF with donor sperm? Advice needed please 
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