5 things I learned having a baby with a donor

Or, Everything you always wanted to know about artificial insemination

Editors Note — the author of this article has asked to remain anonymous, so to respect these wishes, we’re publishing this under the 5 Things I Learned admin account.

1 — Trust your gut (or someone else’s)

Handing something over to the rational part of your brain that your subconscious usually deals with can really mess with your mind. The logical brain, quite frankly, just isn’t cut out for some things. Like mating. The process of picking someone to have a baby with — whether you fall in love or, just in lust, accidently during a one-night stand — is for the most part usually left to the gung-ho, emotional, subconscious brain.

Sitting down with a list of names, in which personalities, features, traits and character have all been reduced to a series of tick boxes and sliding scales is quite over-whelming. I got my knickers well and truly in a twist, long before I got anywhere near a clinic cubicle because it’s really difficult to know where to start. What criteria should you judge donors by? What’s important and what’s not? Personality? Cultural background? Ethnicity? Physical traits? And, is any of what is said in these profiles actually true anyway?

I found it an utterly exhausting process. And, after months and months of toing and froing, weighing this against that, my partner and I found ourselves going with someone else’s gut instinct instead. Staff at the clinic write a three or four line impression of each donor based on their initial encounter with them. I am a detailed analyst and over-thinker by both trade and personality but in the end it was these little thin-slices that shaped one of the biggest decisions of my life.

2 — Handwriting is fascinating

It’s rare these days to read hand written script, even less so that penned by a stranger; it’s confined to the odd note or greeting card from hands mostly known and recognised. As part of their profiles however, donors are asked to write a short personal statement and whilst all other responses are typed, this section is hand written.

Graphology has of course long been dismissed as a pseudoscience, but browsing through sixty odd different styles of handwriting I couldn’t help but begin to try and decode personality traits from them. I found myself as interested and fascinated in donors’ handwriting as I was in what they were saying about themselves.

3 — You can’t control everything

Sperm banks have been in existence since the 1950s so the rules and regulations of donor conception are fairly well established. There are regulatory bodies (HFEA, the Human Fertilisation and Embryo Authority in the UK) and legal codes of conduct designed to give all parties involved some element of control over the dynamics of their existing, and future, family units and relationships. Donors, for instance, are known only by pseudonyms in order to ensure that any children can’t make contact until they reach the age of 18.

But the fertility industry, like so many industries, hasn’t yet fully appreciated the hugely disruptive effects of the internet. What nobody tells you when you discuss the ramifications of donor conception (a pre-treatment counseling session is compulsory at many clinics) is that your children will, in all likelihood, now be able to track down their ‘diblings’ long before they are legally able to contact their donor. In fact they only need to be old enough to use Google to do so. Diblings are half siblings from the same donor and, as I have found out from a number of blogs, there will be a good chance that there is an unofficial Facebook group for my donor out there, run by other women who have also used him. (Each donor can help up to 10 families.)

I don’t know for certain as my partner and I have made a pact not to look for now but for all the rules and regulation designed to give structure to this experience, at some point we may well have to deal with 20+ half siblings being introduced to our family unit.

4 — I’m incredibly privileged

For over six months we agonized about which donor to choose from the European Sperm Bank. Creating long lists. Then short lists, longer than our long lists. Tying ourselves in knots weighing up medical histories and cultural backgrounds against personality traits and physical features. As terrifying as the process of choosing felt, I realise now that we were incredibly fortunate, because using a sperm bank isn’t cheap.

I’ve met several ‘fertility tourists’ (like dental tourists who holiday abroad to access cheaper, better dental work) who have travelled back and forth to clinics in and around Europe to reduce treatment costs that would otherwise be incurred here in the UK; I’ve met some women who have donated their eggs to clinics in return for reduced fees; and I’ve met some women along the way for whom using a sperm bank just isn’t even an option, no matter where it is or what discounts are offered; some for whom their only choice has been to put a small ad in a local paper and wait for a stranger to turn up at their doorstep.

I have met women who have taken far greater, gargantuan leaps into the unknown in the pursuit of conception than I have. I am lucky. I have been privileged enough to buy a choice.

5 — People can surprise you

My partner’s mother was born in 1928. She grew up in a very different world to the one that exists today. A world full of social taboos with very different values and expectations. Now, aged 88 she has early onset dementia. She finds modern life confusing and frightening and like many dementia sufferers seeks calm in the past and in bygone eras.

Despite this, she has taken both the coming out of her daughter and the birth of our donor-conceived son, completely in her stride and has been nothing but welcoming and kind-hearted to us all. Behind the confusion and the memory loss, her mind is still amazingly open.