Choosing an egg donor - personality vs appearance

[Anonymous]

For those of you who have chosen an egg donor, how much emphasis did you place on the personality of the donor? (or maybe more accurately - on your perception of the donor’s personality?). Were personality/interests/hobbies a major factor, or were you more focused on physical appearance and/or other factors (age, prior successes, education level)?

[Anonymous]

We looked at the education level and similarity in looks.

[Anonymous]

Couldn't care less about interests and hobbies. Cared about personality (calm v hot-headed, organized v chaotic, etc.) and mental health and substance abuse.

Luckily Dh and I have brown hair of varying shades and blue/grey and brown/hazel eyes so that meant a LOT of people fit our looks.

Our kid has dimples but neither parent does. Turns out my dad has a dimple though. I secretly hoped the kid would have good hair because my frizzy hair has always driven me nuts. Turns out the kid has great hair that they think is "boring." Go figure.

[Anonymous]

I started out looking for donors that maybe could resemble me. As far as personality it was a big factor at first. I didn’t want a donor who was artsy when that wasn’t me at all. I would say I equally looked at those two things. We wound up having to try several donors and by the end I wound up picking someone who didn’t resemble me at all and was very creative.

[Anonymous]

Our criteria, roughly in order of importance:
- proven donor. Prior cycles with good egg numbers and quality, healthy/live birth results, and/or their own children. Also the age of the donor factors in.
- least amount of clinical history in their family tree (heart disease, cancers, mental illness, longevity, etc...)
- could plausibly look related to us. This was the best piece of advice I got (as the mom) - to not look for someone who looked like me (because that won't happen) but to look for someone whose coloring and features could plausibly be a relative.
- openness to being contacted by the kids in the future
- education. We ended up choosing who didn't have the level of education we wanted. However, our doctor knew her and also had met her child and she vehemently assured us we had nothing to worry about in terms of intellectual ability.

We ended up w/ twins. Neither of them looks remotely like me. My son is a clone of his dad and my daughter doesn't look like any of us - so it will be fascinating to see if they ever connect w/ the donor and see a resemblance. My daughter is very much a clone of me in temperament and attitude though.

FWIW, both of my kids are very bright. So I'm glad we didn't get too hung up on the education thing.

Good luck OP!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our criteria, roughly in order of importance:
- proven donor. Prior cycles with good egg numbers and quality, healthy/live birth results, and/or their own children. Also the age of the donor factors in.
- least amount of clinical history in their family tree (heart disease, cancers, mental illness, longevity, etc...)
- could plausibly look related to us. This was the best piece of advice I got (as the mom) - to not look for someone who looked like me (because that won't happen) but to look for someone whose coloring and features could plausibly be a relative.
- openness to being contacted by the kids in the future
- education. We ended up choosing who didn't have the level of education we wanted. However, our doctor knew her and also had met her child and she vehemently assured us we had nothing to worry about in terms of intellectual ability.

We ended up w/ twins. Neither of them looks remotely like me. My son is a clone of his dad and my daughter doesn't look like any of us - so it will be fascinating to see if they ever connect w/ the donor and see a resemblance. My daughter is very much a clone of me in temperament and attitude though.

FWIW, both of my kids are very bright. So I'm glad we didn't get too hung up on the education thing.

Good luck OP!!!

DP. Ditto for me. Donor did not have post secondary education, but my twins are very bright. They also look nothing like me!

[Anonymous]

I did the choosing--I never thought about personality. I looked for appearance, height, education and health history in that order. I chose well. My kid resembles his brother and DH well enough that people comment that they look alike. We used frozen.

[Anonymous]

I went with the closest donor in terms of looks. Wish I had chosen a proven donor, because I didn’t have success.

[Anonymous]

DH insisted on religion! So that became number one priority. RE ended up asking a proven donor who was the "right" religion to donate again. My three kids have turned out to be very intelligent, which I would have tried to find in a donor, have light eyes like mine and seem to have at least some interests/traits (art/music/gymnastics) that I can see from donor's written profile. I do now wish that she was open to contact when they are older. They have always known that we used donor egg, and I have shared her profile with them (they are 18, 16, 16) I never saw a photo--but even tho donor wanted to remain anonymous, there turned out to be enough info that, with the advances in google (and donor putting herself on facebook, etc) that I found her a number of years ago, and know her name and where she lives.

[Anonymous]

We unfortunately were unsuccessful with petit donors who looked like me. So we went for healthy educated proven donor. We have twins now 18. One looks exactly like DH mother, and the other classic look of her genetics; ie looks like us. Genetics is a strong force. The donor had a similar background in career to us and that seems to have translated to them. Both are very smart. Never regretted this choice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DH insisted on religion! So that became number one priority. RE ended up asking a proven donor who was the "right" religion to donate again. My three kids have turned out to be very intelligent, which I would have tried to find in a donor, have light eyes like mine and seem to have at least some interests/traits (art/music/gymnastics) that I can see from donor's written profile. I do now wish that she was open to contact when they are older. They have always known that we used donor egg, and I have shared her profile with them (they are 18, 16, 16) I never saw a photo--but even tho donor wanted to remain anonymous, there turned out to be enough info that, with the advances in google (and donor putting herself on facebook, etc) that I found her a number of years ago, and know her name and where she lives.

What religion are you guys? My guess would be Jewish since religion is supposed to pass down through the mother's line

[Anonymous]

yep. you got it. Tho no rabbi that I know of has ever insisted on a jewish donor!

[Anonymous]

I used frozen eggs. First thing I did was look for a Jewish egg donor - there were none so I gave up on that. (It's true most rabbis say that it is the gestational/birth mother that determines Jewishness but there are some ultra orthodox rabbis that have ruled differently - but that is not my community so not really an issue for me.) Second I screened for appearance. I definitely wanted some similar look to me. However personality was the deciding factor. Education ended up not being weighted as highly (chose a person with vocational school education (but she was top of her class - won awards - per profile and seemed bright). Could have chosen someone with a master's but the person I chose "felt right". It ended up being more of an instinctual/feeling based thing than a purely intellectual exercise of weighting various aspects.