Lesbian couple here working to conceive with a known donor (“uncle”) who is gay and a friend of ours. We are working with a lawyer to make sure only we are legal parents.

People who have gone through this: did it work out well? How involved is he now that the child is born? Anything you wish you thought about asking him before proceeding? Do you have more than one?

My husband and I are adopting an older kid from foster care through the Barker Foundation's Project Wait No Longer. There's a HUGE need for adoptive parents for these kids -- over 100,000 kids are waiting and ready for adoption from foster care across the nation. Generally, for the program you have to be open to kids 10 and up, but it is very inexpensive and the kids often come with a subsidy from the sending state. If you're set on an infant or toddler, this isn't for you. Of course, the kids come with many unique challenges, but Barker seems to be very well-run and has knowledgeable staff and regular support groups to turn to when hard times/issues arise. Whatever you choose, good luck!!

We used California Cryobank for an anonymous donor who was willing to be contacted when the kid is 18. With most sperm banks, you can buy a bunch of vials and they'll store them for future pregnancies. Foster to adopt or other adoption is really admirable, but it just seemed like more than we could handle. Best wishes, OP!

Married lesbian mom of twins in late elementary school.

Back in the early 2000s we joined a Maybe Baby group with Whitman Walker (Rainbow Families has now taken this over.) It is a group for exploring starting a family. Decided my wife would carry, but she ended up being unable to carry due to medical issues. We used Fairfax Cryobank to get sperm since we didn't have men in our lives that we felt comfortable being a known donor. Took us 9 IUIs to get pregnant (with meds) and we finally had twins.

Kids look amazingly like my wife (we specifically chose a donor with her coloring) and there is no doubt that she is their parent.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:8:54 again - I'll also add that in terms of known vs unknown donor, you need to consider a lot. Do you want your child to one day meet their biological father? Some sperm banks allow contact after the child turns 18. Do you want to have access to medical records or perhaps even medical history that isn't required as part of the anonymous donor process? We definitely did. Do you want your child to have a few, or perhaps a lot, of half siblings out in the world, or is that thought strange to you? We did not.

As the non-bio mom, I've NEVER experienced any sense of jealousy or regret over using our known donor. Our child has a relationship with him and with his parents and siblings. For us, that just means there are more people to love him. But we also chose him because he is very uninterested in ever being a father. My wife and I are his parents. He proudly tells people he has two moms. When our son is old enough, and it will probably be soon, we will tell him that he is here because of our donor. He's already starting to put the pieces together through the relationship with his paternal grandparents.

This is us as well. I'm the bio mom for both kids--my wife doesn't have any interest in being pregnant, etc--but my wife is fully a co-parent, and our donor is more of an "uncle" role. Our kids are 1 & 3, but we're open about his role in how they came about (it's in their baby book). It hasn't really come up in conversation yet, but the idea is to make it a non-issue. I will say that I view using a known donor as high-risk, high-reward choice. There are great potential benefits in your kids knowing exactly where they come from, and we've had some allergy issues crop up where it's been useful to be able to check on our donor's medical history. However, I can envision it going sour if the donor has different views of how he will/won't be "involved" in your kids' lives. I imagine that's why you need both legal documents and a session with a therapist for everyone before fertility clinics will let you proceed with the known donor route.

8:54 back again - yes, we indeed went through social worker meetings and did all the legal paperwork that came with using a known donor and working with a clinic. I will say, though, that I have lesbian friends with kids who did AI with a known donor and have done NONE of these things. I think that's incredibly risky. Before our child was born, we met with a lawyer to get everything in order. My name went on his birth certificate, and six months later (because that's the DC law)I adopted him. One of the qualifications for this known donor was that we knew he never wanted to actively parent our son. His parents have also been incredibly respectful of our family dynamic, and are just so happy that we are allowing them to be a part of his life. It's honestly worked out better than we could have imagined, but our expectations were VERY clear before we set out to do any of this.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:8:54 again - I'll also add that in terms of known vs unknown donor, you need to consider a lot. Do you want your child to one day meet their biological father? Some sperm banks allow contact after the child turns 18. Do you want to have access to medical records or perhaps even medical history that isn't required as part of the anonymous donor process? We definitely did. Do you want your child to have a few, or perhaps a lot, of half siblings out in the world, or is that thought strange to you? We did not.

As the non-bio mom, I've NEVER experienced any sense of jealousy or regret over using our known donor. Our child has a relationship with him and with his parents and siblings. For us, that just means there are more people to love him. But we also chose him because he is very uninterested in ever being a father. My wife and I are his parents. He proudly tells people he has two moms. When our son is old enough, and it will probably be soon, we will tell him that he is here because of our donor. He's already starting to put the pieces together through the relationship with his paternal grandparents.

I favor a known donor for all the reasons you listed. I think that at some point my child will have a natural curiosity about their biological father (as any adopted child would have about their biological parent). I've played around with the idea of having a known donor and making his relationship with the children "father like" but could see how that could get messy. I'm unsure. DW wants an anonymous donor and does NOT like the idea of co-parenting with another (ideally gay) couple.

PP again. Our situation is as far from co-parenting as you can get. DS's bio father has plenty of his own stuff to deal with and has never had a desire to be any type of father or father figure. He's known right now as "Uncle ____" but there are other "uncles" with whom our child is much closer. I would never, ever consider co-parenting with another couple. That's not what we want/wanted at all. But for some folks, I'm sure it works just fine.

For me, as the non-bio mom, I wanted a known donor so that our child's biological father wasn't some all powerful, life giving force that he would always be in awe of yet would never know. We also read a pretty scary news article a few years back about a woman who used an anonymous donor who had some weird health issues that were obscure and not picked up by any of the testing. Her child consequently suffered from some pretty extreme health issues, and she had no way of accessing the donor or any getting any other health information.

Our choice has worked out better than I could have imagined for our family. Sometimes people even say things like "he has your eyes" or "he has your hair" and that feels pretty cool. Because to me, he IS mine - I might not have carried him in my body, but I certainly carried him in my heart.

Funny--I'm the bio-mom PP, and many people have remarked to my wife about the kids looking like her because they share her coloring. We always laugh a bit about it, but it's also pretty neat that it turned out that way.

Anonymous wrote:8:54 again - I'll also add that in terms of known vs unknown donor, you need to consider a lot. Do you want your child to one day meet their biological father? Some sperm banks allow contact after the child turns 18. Do you want to have access to medical records or perhaps even medical history that isn't required as part of the anonymous donor process? We definitely did. Do you want your child to have a few, or perhaps a lot, of half siblings out in the world, or is that thought strange to you? We did not.

As the non-bio mom, I've NEVER experienced any sense of jealousy or regret over using our known donor. Our child has a relationship with him and with his parents and siblings. For us, that just means there are more people to love him. But we also chose him because he is very uninterested in ever being a father. My wife and I are his parents. He proudly tells people he has two moms. When our son is old enough, and it will probably be soon, we will tell him that he is here because of our donor. He's already starting to put the pieces together through the relationship with his paternal grandparents.

This is us as well. I'm the bio mom for both kids--my wife doesn't have any interest in being pregnant, etc--but my wife is fully a co-parent, and our donor is more of an "uncle" role. Our kids are 1 & 3, but we're open about his role in how they came about (it's in their baby book). It hasn't really come up in conversation yet, but the idea is to make it a non-issue. I will say that I view using a known donor as high-risk, high-reward choice. There are great potential benefits in your kids knowing exactly where they come from, and we've had some allergy issues crop up where it's been useful to be able to check on our donor's medical history. However, I can envision it going sour if the donor has different views of how he will/won't be "involved" in your kids' lives. I imagine that's why you need both legal documents and a session with a therapist for everyone before fertility clinics will let you proceed with the known donor route.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:8:54 again - I'll also add that in terms of known vs unknown donor, you need to consider a lot. Do you want your child to one day meet their biological father? Some sperm banks allow contact after the child turns 18. Do you want to have access to medical records or perhaps even medical history that isn't required as part of the anonymous donor process? We definitely did. Do you want your child to have a few, or perhaps a lot, of half siblings out in the world, or is that thought strange to you? We did not.

As the non-bio mom, I've NEVER experienced any sense of jealousy or regret over using our known donor. Our child has a relationship with him and with his parents and siblings. For us, that just means there are more people to love him. But we also chose him because he is very uninterested in ever being a father. My wife and I are his parents. He proudly tells people he has two moms. When our son is old enough, and it will probably be soon, we will tell him that he is here because of our donor. He's already starting to put the pieces together through the relationship with his paternal grandparents.

I favor a known donor for all the reasons you listed. I think that at some point my child will have a natural curiosity about their biological father (as any adopted child would have about their biological parent). I've played around with the idea of having a known donor and making his relationship with the children "father like" but could see how that could get messy. I'm unsure. DW wants an anonymous donor and does NOT like the idea of co-parenting with another (ideally gay) couple.

PP again. Our situation is as far from co-parenting as you can get. DS's bio father has plenty of his own stuff to deal with and has never had a desire to be any type of father or father figure. He's known right now as "Uncle ____" but there are other "uncles" with whom our child is much closer. I would never, ever consider co-parenting with another couple. That's not what we want/wanted at all. But for some folks, I'm sure it works just fine.

For me, as the non-bio mom, I wanted a known donor so that our child's biological father wasn't some all powerful, life giving force that he would always be in awe of yet would never know. We also read a pretty scary news article a few years back about a woman who used an anonymous donor who had some weird health issues that were obscure and not picked up by any of the testing. Her child consequently suffered from some pretty extreme health issues, and she had no way of accessing the donor or any getting any other health information.

Our choice has worked out better than I could have imagined for our family. Sometimes people even say things like "he has your eyes" or "he has your hair" and that feels pretty cool. Because to me, he IS mine - I might not have carried him in my body, but I certainly carried him in my heart.

Anonymous wrote:8:54 again - I'll also add that in terms of known vs unknown donor, you need to consider a lot. Do you want your child to one day meet their biological father? Some sperm banks allow contact after the child turns 18. Do you want to have access to medical records or perhaps even medical history that isn't required as part of the anonymous donor process? We definitely did. Do you want your child to have a few, or perhaps a lot, of half siblings out in the world, or is that thought strange to you? We did not.

As the non-bio mom, I've NEVER experienced any sense of jealousy or regret over using our known donor. Our child has a relationship with him and with his parents and siblings. For us, that just means there are more people to love him. But we also chose him because he is very uninterested in ever being a father. My wife and I are his parents. He proudly tells people he has two moms. When our son is old enough, and it will probably be soon, we will tell him that he is here because of our donor. He's already starting to put the pieces together through the relationship with his paternal grandparents.

I favor a known donor for all the reasons you listed. I think that at some point my child will have a natural curiosity about their biological father (as any adopted child would have about their biological parent). I've played around with the idea of having a known donor and making his relationship with the children "father like" but could see how that could get messy. I'm unsure. DW wants an anonymous donor and does NOT like the idea of co-parenting with another (ideally gay) couple.

8:54 again - I'll also add that in terms of known vs unknown donor, you need to consider a lot. Do you want your child to one day meet their biological father? Some sperm banks allow contact after the child turns 18. Do you want to have access to medical records or perhaps even medical history that isn't required as part of the anonymous donor process? We definitely did. Do you want your child to have a few, or perhaps a lot, of half siblings out in the world, or is that thought strange to you? We did not.

As the non-bio mom, I've NEVER experienced any sense of jealousy or regret over using our known donor. Our child has a relationship with him and with his parents and siblings. For us, that just means there are more people to love him. But we also chose him because he is very uninterested in ever being a father. My wife and I are his parents. He proudly tells people he has two moms. When our son is old enough, and it will probably be soon, we will tell him that he is here because of our donor. He's already starting to put the pieces together through the relationship with his paternal grandparents.

DW and I got married in 2008 (legally in 2009) and started trying for a baby around 2011. It took years of discussion, but we finally decided that we would use a known donor (in our case, her college friend). We had a lot of specific criteria for our donor, so there weren't a whole lot of people to choose from. This decision alone impacted a lot in our journey (like being required to have all of us meet with a social worker when we started working with Shady Grove). We started doing AI at home at first while also going through the process of having him bank his sperm (that takes a while because it had to sit in quarantine for 6 months before we could use it). When AI didn't work after about 6-8 months, we moved on to IUI at Shady Grove. DW and I both have huge regrets about wasting so much sperm on IUIs because none of them worked. In 2012 DW was accepted into a clinical trial out of NYC that researched mini vs traditional IVF. She was selected for mini and we ended up with one embryo who is now our 3.5 y/o son. When DS was around 15 months, we went to Shady Grove and decided to do the shared risk program. This was before our insurance benefits kicked in - now we have full IVF coverage except for sperm storage. DW got pregnant during the first cycle, but we lost that baby at 17 weeks due to T21. What has followed has been a long and painful road - many more IVF cycles, two miscarriages, two failed transfers. We are planning to use our last IVF attempt through insurance, then doing a couple of frozen transfer paying OOP before calling it quits. We have started talking about fostering, but aren't quite ready to give up on having another biological child after all that we've been through (it's funny, because you'd think the opposite would be true). We know many lesbian couples for whom this journey has been immensely easier - I often feel we are the anomaly, actually. We have lesbian friends in North Carolina who are fostering - I think it took them around a year to prepare for this, but they're currently fostering a 6 month old and a 5 year old. We are also friends with a gay couple who adopted their son - that process also took them around a year.

Rainbow Families might be a good resource for you, OP, if not now, than in the future. Best of luck to you both. I would also recommend Michelle Zavos when you're ready for a lawyer. We used her for my second parent adoption of our son.

Do you have any queer parent friends? It can be really helpful to have people to talk to in real life. There are also a bunch of facebook groups for couples at all stages of trying to conceive, foster, and adopt.

My (now ex) partner and I used Shady Grove and Fairfax. For us, fostering seemed to have to high a possibility of heartbreak, adopting same and also really expensive. We didn't have any strong known donor prospects (if I were to go that route, I would want both parents and the donor to do at least one session with a family counselor or social worker to know that we all had the same expectations). We wanted a willing to be known donor, but then the donor we actually agreed on is anonymous. Our child does have some bio half sibs on the sibling donor registry, but we have yet to reach out to those families. I got pregnant with my second iui (3, monitored Clomid cycle with a trigger shot).

Good luck, it's a very stressful process.

My SO and I are talking about starting a family within the next few years, and we wanted to explore all our options. We've considered adoption, specifically fostering to adopt. We also both want to experience pregnancy but don't know how to go about that (known donor vs. unknown donor debates).

TIA.