Donor eggs and those have been successful without seeing the adult pictures

[Anonymous]

Our fertility clinic will not let us see the adult pictures of the donors so as to protect their identity but we can see the baby pictures. I am worried that we might end up picking a donor who might have something we don't have at all in our family like a hooked nose or something. I have some reservations is this normal practice for clinics. I know SG let's you see the donor database even adult pictures. We are very nervous going into this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our fertility clinic will not let us see the adult pictures of the donors so as to protect their identity but we can see the baby pictures. I am worried that we might end up picking a donor who might have something we don't have at all in our family like a hooked nose or something. I have some reservations is this normal practice for clinics. I know SG let's you see the donor database even adult pictures. We are very nervous going into this.

My clinic at Penn medicine in Philadelphia has a range of adult and kid pics of the donors for you to see. My RE said that some of them dont want adult pictures in there mostly bc they are artistic ppl and hope to be famous one day and dont want the hassle. As a 43yo beaten down by life and infertility their optimism made me smile.

I am single, and am using donor sperm as well. I was uncomfortable with a few donors specifically bc there was only 1 toddler pic. I really liked cryobanks that gave you more than one pic. and specifically older elementary pics.

[Anonymous]

My clinic didn't allow adult photos either OP. It was definitely a leap of faith, but the best advice I got was to choose a donor who looks like they could be related to you - not someone who looks LIKE you.

Finding someone who really looks like you is impossible (and no guarantee anyway), so focus on similar coloring, skin tone, hair color, ethnic background, etc.. (if you care about the looks at all).

I'll tell you that I have twins from DE and my son looks incredibly like his father when he was young and my daughter doesn't really look like either of us. But her coloring is similar and she has picked up a ton of my general behaviors and traits. So there are similarities well beyond physical appearance that can be part of the mix.

Good luck.

[Anonymous]

My DE kids don’t look like me at all. They do look a lot like their father though.

[Anonymous]

In every family, even without donor egg/sperm, there is a chance that your kid gets great aunt Bertha's large ears, your materal uncle Sam's red hair, or the height of someone that you've never met but your father says he remembers someone in the family being very tall.

[Anonymous]

My biological kids look nothing like either of us. One has huge ears that stick out. There are no guarantees.

[Anonymous]

VCRM also had the same policy. We went with someone whose baby and childhood pictures resembled my wife's. Our twins are 8 now and one of them definitely looks a lot like my brother-in-law (wife's brother). Enough that even family members have commented that he looks like "Uncle John". And if they look like your family as a child, but not as an adult, you can always comment that (s)he looked a lot more like the family as a child. It's something that happens with biological children, so people accept that and don't question or make any assumptions when it happens.

[Anonymous]

I would feel uncomfortable about not seeing the adult pictures. It’s a really important piece of the puzzle. Are used to Shady Grove so I got to see the adult photos. I would stick out a fertility center that is not Shady Grove but that does share adult photos.

If we’re going to be honest with ourselves, everybody’s identity is going to be revealed as our kids grow up. Nothing will be anonymous with the Normans database at ancestry.com and 23 and me. So my advice is to choose wisely and definitely select from adult photos.

[Anonymous]

Op, both of my children (now teenagers) were conceived with donor sperm. As a lesbian, I have many friends who conceived their kids in the same way, and none of us had photos of the donor at any age. Honestly, being “nervous” about a hook nose was the last thing on my mind. Getting pregnant and having a healthy baby was the most important thing.

There’s really no way you can control what your child will look like, even when you conceive knowing everyone involved. A lot of parenting is about letting go of control. This is the first of many times where you will need to practice this.

Good luck to you.

[Anonymous]

I found a donor who looked and described herself much like me. I picked her because she was very like me. And guess what - my two kids look nothing like her , me, or my husband. Go figure. Like red hair hazel eyes instead of brown/ brown. But you know what? I don’t care. Once your kid gets here it is all fine and they are all yours. And if anyone has any comments I just say “yeah, in my family no one looks alike, that is how it is” and the inquiries usually stop there. It’s all good. OP. Don’t worry so much. DE makes it possible to have a healthy Beautiful child in a situation. Where you otherwise would not have one at all. It is an amazing thing.

[Anonymous]

I used donor sperm and while I thought adult photos would be really important to me, I ended up going with a bank that didn't provide them.

I found as I went through the search process, that I actually didn't want to know or see this person as an adult. I wanted my child to be his or her own person in my mind without constantly thinking back to the donor's adult photos. It's almost as if seeing the adult photos would make this person bigger in the process than they are. I'm incredibly grateful to the donor, but he's also just a part of what makes up my child.

What I did find helpful is a donor that had late elementary or middle school photos. Baby photos just don't tell you much. Also, looking at the donor's family history and descriptions of sibling, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. I have a lot of siblings myself and among us we have multiple hair and eye colors and wildly different personalities. In some ways, you are choosing a family full of DNA, not a single donor.

Like a PP, I opted for someone who didn't look exactly like me, but looked like he belonged in my family. His middle school photos reminded me of my brother. And his family had similar coloring, height and ancestry to my family.

[Anonymous]

I could have written some of the posts above, especially the one about DS looking exactly like DH as a young child and DD having so many of my traits. Our whole family knows about DE and all call DD my “mini me,” including DD who is now a teenager.

We used SG when we could only see baby pictures. We picked our donor based on her health history, general coloring similar to mine, and her answers to the questions about why she was donating. Her answers just made sense to me on some level.

Could not be happier with our DE kids. Love them more than anything in the universe. Even when they drive us nuts

[Anonymous]

Thank you everyone for your insight. I don't think it matters to me anymore how the donor would look any more. We want a healthy baby.

[Anonymous]

Best wishes and good luck!!!