Has anyone conceived through sperm donation from a known donor? Any advice?

[Anonymous]

We are a lesbian couple trying to conceive and have a lovely friend who agreed to be the sperm donor. Obviously we will work with a lawyer to iron out everything legally but we’ve also found the medical process really confusing, and it’s hard to get straight answers because my doctor has almost only worked with anonymous sperm donors. It seems like there are about 5 extra hoops and people to go through versus anonymous donor.

Has anyone done this? Do you have recommendations for which clinic or doctor in the area has the most experience?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are a lesbian couple trying to conceive and have a lovely friend who agreed to be the sperm donor. Obviously we will work with a lawyer to iron out everything legally but we’ve also found the medical process really confusing, and it’s hard to get straight answers because my doctor has almost only worked with anonymous sperm donors. It seems like there are about 5 extra hoops and people to go through versus anonymous donor.

Has anyone done this? Do you have recommendations for which clinic or doctor in the area has the most experience?

Are the hoops to do with disease, drug, and genetic testing? Those are probably baked into the process with anonymous donors, by the sperm banks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are a lesbian couple trying to conceive and have a lovely friend who agreed to be the sperm donor. Obviously we will work with a lawyer to iron out everything legally but we’ve also found the medical process really confusing, and it’s hard to get straight answers because my doctor has almost only worked with anonymous sperm donors. It seems like there are about 5 extra hoops and people to go through versus anonymous donor.

Has anyone done this? Do you have recommendations for which clinic or doctor in the area has the most experience?

Are the hoops to do with disease, drug, and genetic testing? Those are probably baked into the process with anonymous donors, by the sperm banks.

Yes, which is confusing because I’m having a hard time figuring out what he can do with our doc and what we have to send him to a cryobank for. We also have to go to counseling — one counseling session as a couple, one session for just him, and one session for the three of us. Each session is ~$300. I’m not against counseling per se but I do find requiring that many sessions invasive :-/

[Anonymous]

Counseling is standard when using donor egg, donor sperm or a gestational carrier.

[Anonymous]

The only difference is the counseling session with all of you together. The individual sessions are standard for all. I did a known donor, but more open, as the person wasn’t a friend or family. We met and have each other’s contact information. The process for the donation is the same. The relationship complicated things on a personal level. So the additional counseling is probably good.

When you talk to the attorney, don’t be surprised if they tell you the law is not well developed and could change. I think knowing the donor and the donor knowing you makes that bit a little scarier, but I don’t think it’s a big risk.

[Anonymous]

Hi OP - we are also a married lesbian couple who, after literally years of discussion, decided to go with a known donor. He is a friend of both of ours, but really closer to my wife - they met in college. There were many reasons why we went this route: we didn't want a bunch of random half siblings out there (no chance of that with this donor - he's gay and will not be donating to anyone else or having kids of his own), we wanted our kids to actually know who their biological father is so there is no mysterious, life-giving being that they'll never meet, and we wanted full access to all of his family health history and medical information. They don't always catch everything even at a very thorough cryobank.

After he did an infectious disease test, we started doing AI at home (he gave us the sperm in a cup and I helped DW from there), and during that time he was also banking sperm at Fairfax Cryobank. There were many fees that we had to pay for testing, storage, etc. I want to say he had a window of time where he was able to come in and bank as much as he could. We also had a few more things we had to go through because he's gay - like his sperm had to sit in quarantine for six months and he had to be tested for infectious diseases again. By that time we set ourselves up to start doing IUIs and working with Shady Grove. They did require that he meet with a social worker, take an extensive personality test, we had to meet with her as a couple, then all three of us met. This part felt the most invasive. After that he was pretty much out of the picture except needing to sign a few things when we switched clinics.

After our two kids were born we also went through a second parent adoption for me, but because the kids were born in DC, we adopted there, so the donor had nothing to do with any of that process and my name went directly on the birth certificate.

Feel free to respond back here if you have other questions! Our kids have a relationship with the donor, but not a weird one (he is NOT fatherly AT ALL). They also have a relationship with his parents, which is really sweet and unexpectedly uncomplicated. Our older son knows his origin story - we told him when he started K. No issues there either.

[Anonymous]

PP from 9:50 here again. And yes, you're right, there are many other hoops - legally, financially, logistically - that you have to jump through using a known donor. But in my opinion, it is worth it in the end for all of the reasons I stated in my previous post. I remember very well going through all of this when we started our journey. It felt very unfair that we had to not only meet with a social worker, but pay OOP nearly $1000 to have this woman weigh in on what was, in my opinion, a very personal decision.

And I would not necessarily recommend Shady Grove - they were okay, but we ended up switching clinics for other reasons. Dr. Abbasi at Columbia Fertility is very LGBT friendly, and in retrospect I wish we had started working with them.

[Anonymous]

We're a lesbian couple who started out wanting to use a known donor and went pretty far down that path. It's easy if you don't need to get an RE involved, but it's a big hassle if you do. We end up consulting with most of the local clinics. Shady Grove was the only one that was going to insist our donor have a psychological evaluation, which we felt was incredibly intrusive and paternalistic. GW and CFA were ok with us just all meeting with a therapist together (which was still obnoxious, but less time and money). All of them did insist on a six-month quarantine for the sperm and banking it through a cryobank. Though I think people sometimes have some success getting around that if they've tried turkey-baster style at home first.

There are super active and informative Facebook groups for queer folks trying to become parents. Queer Parents and Queer Parents Network would be good starting points, and could get you connected to groups specifically focused on TTC and known donor relationships.

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

I'll add that we've had by far the most queer-positive experience with Signey Olson at CFA. The other clinics certainly didn't discriminate against us in any way, but they still gave us the feeling that we didn't really fit in with their usual approach (since our issue was not traditional infertility but lack of sperm) and would do stuff like confuse the two of us a lot.

[Anonymous]

OP here — thanks for the great responses. Wow, we’ve been working with Shady Grove and they did NOT tell us we’d need the psychological screen. Been very unhappy with the lack of transparency and info from them.

To those who replied, did your known donor work through Columbia or did he have to go to a separate cryobank? SG wouldn’t work with him and told us to get everything done through another cryobank.

Also what is RE?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here — thanks for the great responses. Wow, we’ve been working with Shady Grove and they did NOT tell us we’d need the psychological screen. Been very unhappy with the lack of transparency and info from them.

To those who replied, did your known donor work through Columbia or did he have to go to a separate cryobank? SG wouldn’t work with him and told us to get everything done through another cryobank.

Also what is RE?

Reproductive endocrinologist

Both of our kids were conceived with anonymous donors. Our thinking was that it’s hard enough raising kids with 2 parents. We didn’t want a third person in the mix. I couldn’t trust that the known donor wouldn’t change his mind and want to exercise his rights.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP - we are also a married lesbian couple who, after literally years of discussion, decided to go with a known donor. He is a friend of both of ours, but really closer to my wife - they met in college. There were many reasons why we went this route: we didn't want a bunch of random half siblings out there (no chance of that with this donor - he's gay and will not be donating to anyone else or having kids of his own), we wanted our kids to actually know who their biological father is so there is no mysterious, life-giving being that they'll never meet, and we wanted full access to all of his family health history and medical information. They don't always catch everything even at a very thorough cryobank.

After he did an infectious disease test, we started doing AI at home (he gave us the sperm in a cup and I helped DW from there), and during that time he was also banking sperm at Fairfax Cryobank. There were many fees that we had to pay for testing, storage, etc. I want to say he had a window of time where he was able to come in and bank as much as he could. We also had a few more things we had to go through because he's gay - like his sperm had to sit in quarantine for six months and he had to be tested for infectious diseases again. By that time we set ourselves up to start doing IUIs and working with Shady Grove. They did require that he meet with a social worker, take an extensive personality test, we had to meet with her as a couple, then all three of us met. This part felt the most invasive. After that he was pretty much out of the picture except needing to sign a few things when we switched clinics.

After our two kids were born we also went through a second parent adoption for me, but because the kids were born in DC, we adopted there, so the donor had nothing to do with any of that process and my name went directly on the birth certificate.

Feel free to respond back here if you have other questions! Our kids have a relationship with the donor, but not a weird one (he is NOT fatherly AT ALL). They also have a relationship with his parents, which is really sweet and unexpectedly uncomplicated. Our older son knows his origin story - we told him when he started K. No issues there either.

Why did you have to do a second parent adoption if you are married?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP - we are also a married lesbian couple who, after literally years of discussion, decided to go with a known donor. He is a friend of both of ours, but really closer to my wife - they met in college. There were many reasons why we went this route: we didn't want a bunch of random half siblings out there (no chance of that with this donor - he's gay and will not be donating to anyone else or having kids of his own), we wanted our kids to actually know who their biological father is so there is no mysterious, life-giving being that they'll never meet, and we wanted full access to all of his family health history and medical information. They don't always catch everything even at a very thorough cryobank.

After he did an infectious disease test, we started doing AI at home (he gave us the sperm in a cup and I helped DW from there), and during that time he was also banking sperm at Fairfax Cryobank. There were many fees that we had to pay for testing, storage, etc. I want to say he had a window of time where he was able to come in and bank as much as he could. We also had a few more things we had to go through because he's gay - like his sperm had to sit in quarantine for six months and he had to be tested for infectious diseases again. By that time we set ourselves up to start doing IUIs and working with Shady Grove. They did require that he meet with a social worker, take an extensive personality test, we had to meet with her as a couple, then all three of us met. This part felt the most invasive. After that he was pretty much out of the picture except needing to sign a few things when we switched clinics.

After our two kids were born we also went through a second parent adoption for me, but because the kids were born in DC, we adopted there, so the donor had nothing to do with any of that process and my name went directly on the birth certificate.

Feel free to respond back here if you have other questions! Our kids have a relationship with the donor, but not a weird one (he is NOT fatherly AT ALL). They also have a relationship with his parents, which is really sweet and unexpectedly uncomplicated. Our older son knows his origin story - we told him when he started K. No issues there either.

Why did you have to do a second parent adoption if you are married?

Because the other parent is not legally the parent and if something happens to the biological parent, legally the other parent is a step-parent, not parent. Likewise, if there is a legal divorce or separation, legally the non-biological parent is a step-parent and may not be given equal rights. Much better to do an adoption. Its not very expensive.

We have an open option with birth mom's family. The grandparents are heavily involved and its been wonderful for all of us, especially our child. Child views it as three sets of grandparents and is very comfortable with it and a lot of those questions kids have later on never come up as its been addressed.

[Anonymous]

My lesbian friends conceived twice with sperm from a longtime friend. They didn't get anyone else involved -- he went in one room, came out with the container and my friends went into their room and did the rest. Worked the first time they tried for #1, and then very soon after they started trying for #2.

They have a legal agreement with him, and he is involved in their kids lives -- they're still very young, so I don't think they know he's their "father" yet but I know they plan to explain that to them eventually.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My lesbian friends conceived twice with sperm from a longtime friend. They didn't get anyone else involved -- he went in one room, came out with the container and my friends went into their room and did the rest. Worked the first time they tried for #1, and then very soon after they started trying for #2.

They have a legal agreement with him, and he is involved in their kids lives -- they're still very young, so I don't think they know he's their "father" yet but I know they plan to explain that to them eventually.

This seems legally very tenuous. If he changes his mind and wants custody he would have a very good case even with a signed document. I’ve always heard it’s best to go through a clinic for legal reasons as well as medical