by emory

Choosing a sperm donor isn’t like you see on TV—at least, it wasn’t for us. We didn’t go into a clinic, sit in someone’s office, flip through a binder full of photos and biographies.

Instead, the entire process happened online.

As the phrase “choosing a sperm donor” suggests, there are a lot of decisions to make, start to finish. The first choice is which sperm bank to order from. This was, I’d argue, the easiest decision for us to make because we based it on finances.

That’s not to say the decision wasn’t time-consuming. I spent hours one afternoon crafting a spreadsheet to most accurately compare prices. There are several factors that inform the total cost per vial (or straw), which meant that for each bank, I had to bounce around between several webpages to get all the relevant info, including

• vial type (IUI premium, IUI ART, IUI ICSI)

• sperm motility

• shipping (standard 2-day economy, standard overnight, priority overnight, etc.

• storage fees

• account fees

• any discount codes that were available

Donor sperm is expensive, and it isn’t covered by insurance. Jo and I have had to plan and save to prepare for the cost. Even so, we still needed to find the cheapest possible option to make it happen.

Once you land on a bank, you have to start looking through the many donors available.

To say there’s a lot of information on each donor profile is an understatement. It’s sort of like being on a weird dating app. The bank we chose started each profile with a photograph from when the donor was a kid (baby, toddler, child—depends on what the donor submitted), and if you pay extra, you can see an adult photo, too. Then, there’s a bio that sounds like it was written by a matchmaker. Here’s an example of one:

Meet Donor [NUMBER], [ALIAS]! A charismatic and outgoing individual, [ALIAS] is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree in Biological Sciences while working toward his goal of attending medical school. He also works in a hospital setting, gaining valuable experience as he prepares for a future career in healthcare. He consistently brings energy and enthusiasm to those around him. With a strong interest in movies, comics, and popular culture, he enjoys engaging conversations and exploring new ideas. Curious, upbeat, and personable, [ALIAS] approaches life with a positive attitude and a genuine interest in connecting with others. His warm smile, playful sense of humor, driven outlook, and confident demeanor contribute to his natural charm and approachable personality.

And that’s a pretty middle-of-the-road description; I’ve seen some that are over the top.

I used to joke that I’d like to be the copywriter who works on these descriptions, the same way I say I’d love to write the descriptions of the animals at the SPCA. These bios are almost certainly exaggerated—to what extent, I can’t say. But these bios are, at the end of the day, marketing copy. They’re strange to read as someone who knows I’m being sold to. Personally, I don’t get anything out of the bios (other than a laugh); they have no bearing on our decision.

They must be important to someone, though, since they’re the leading information for almost every sperm bank site.

After the photo and bio, there’s a long list of details that are considered “basic” profile info:

• donor type (whether or not you’ll be able to share their identity with your future child)

• birth year

• height

• weight

• blood type

• CMV status

• country of birth

• race

• biological parents’ ancestry

• Jewish ancestry, if any

• occupation

• marital status

• religious affiliation

• parents’ religious affiliations

• eye color

• eye shape

• eye setting

• eyelash length

• eyebrows

• natural hair color

• hair texture

• hair volume

• face shape

• cheekbone setting

• face features (i.e., dimples)

• freckles—and if so, freckle prominence

• ear lobes (whether they’re detached)

• skin complexion

• hand dominancy

• body build type (I had to look up “ectomorph”)

There’s also a genetic test summary (helpful) and a personality assessment (I didn’t look at any). And if you’re thinking, “that’s more information than I could possibly need,” I’ve got bad news for you—there’s so much more.

If you want to upgrade to a premium or premium plus membership with the sperm bank, you can also access:

• details of the donor’s education

• a handwritten letter

• the results of a characteristic questionnaire

• a donor essay

• their health history

• their fertility history

• their family medical history

• an audio interview

• more childhood photos

• adult photos

Now, other sperm banks will give you more or less information sans membership, so that can inform your decision of which bank to use if you care about that stuff. For example, there was one site we’d been looking at that let you read all about the donors’ favorite books and movies, personal heroes, favorite childhood memories, regrets, celebrity look-alikes, and more. We saw one donor on there whose childhood photo resembled Jo as a kid at that age—then, we read on to learn the sperm bank staff thought that as an adult, he looks like “actor and ceramicist Seth Rogen.” If Jo had been AMAB, would he too have grown up to look like Seth Rogen? The world will never know.

The problem with all that info—for me anyway—was that I was getting the ick from details that didn’t have any actual relevance to our conception attempts. But once you read it, you can’t un-read it! A guy lists his favorite book as the Harry Potter series? No thank you. He says his favorite director is Quentin Tarantino? I’ll pass on the foot freak.

For a while, I felt strongly about finding a donor with the closest possible resemblance to Jo. I was looking for people with Polish and Irish ancestry, big heads, and squishy jellies (cheeks).

As you might imagine, this limited our available options.

But Jo said again and again that he didn’t care about whether our donor bore a passing resemblance to him as a child. “Genes are more complicated than that,” he told me. “And have you seen your family? You and your siblings all look so similar, I bet you’ll have the dominant genes.”

I brought it up often, even though I couldn’t figure out why I cared so much. I checked repeatedly whether he was sure he didn’t care.

It felt like something we ought to care about—I suppose because so many other people do. I didn’t care for my own sake; my genes would already be there. Jo was the one who wouldn’t have his genetic material in the mix. I thought he should feel… upset? worried? I’m not sure what I thought—but I kept pushing on the idea for a while.

Eventually, though, I changed my tune. There was no particular reason for it, which is to say, there were several reasons. If our child didn’t look like one or both of us, would we love them any less? Of course not. If Jo was sure he didn’t have strong feelings about it, my insistence wasn’t fair to him—it suggested that I didn’t trust him or his judgment, which wasn’t what I wanted to convey at all. And the donor who looked most like Jo (Seth Rogen Lite) was a more expensive option than some of the alternative we looked at. What was more important? Our future baby possibly looking like Jo, or saving money where we could to help us better provide for said baby?

In the end, we settled on only a few criteria:

• Caucasian, without Jewish ancestry—there are far fewer options for non-white people looking for a donor who shares their race or ethnicity, and there was no reason to take away that option from anyone

• CMV negative—my CMV status is negative, so to eliminate the risk of contracting CMV during the insemination process, it was important to choose a donor who was also negative

• genetic test results—my own results found that I’m a carrier for two autosomal recessive diseases, so we needed to ensure the donor wasn’t a carrier for the same two diseases to ensure that our child doesn’t have any risk of being affected by them

• an active donor with plenty of available vials—I didn’t want to find someone I liked, then during the waiting process find that they ran out of vials

Once we found donors who met those four criteria, we had to send our top four to our clinic for them to vet (Jo can tell you what they were looking for, I’ve got no clue); three of the four were determined to be matches for me.

And the final decision? We just chose whoever we thought had the cutest baby photo. Why not, right?