Choosing the man who was going to be biologically related to our future children was an incredibly important and potentially life-changing decision. I say potentially life-changing because we cannot predict the future or whether or not our future children will want to meet their biological father some day*. Who knows what that hypothetical day might bring to all our lives.
The process for choosing our donor was a long one, and started long before we actually began our journey to parenthood. We knew long ago that we both wanted to try to conceive and fall pregnant, but it was clear that “G” would be the first. On that note, we wanted to choose a donor that would be suitable for both of us, so that when I did start trying, our children would be biological siblings.
When we arrived in Berlin in 2014 and started planning for a family, we wanted to find a fertility clinic that had a doctor who spoke both English and German. We had done a little research online, but eventually landed on the Praxis für Fertilität. We were impressed by the founding doctor, and were happy with the reviews we read online. At the beginning of this process, we were quite naive, and when we had our initial meeting with our fertility doctor, he mentioned quite a lot of things that had to be done. You can read about this meeting and the outcome here.
We were incredibly lucky to find out that our fertility doctor actually founded the Berliner Samenbank, a sperm bank that is situated in the same building as our fertility clinic. This made the process a little easier, although limited us in terms of donor options.
“G” had to go through a number of medical tests and we had to fill in some paperwork
before the sperm bank could give us suitable donors. During this process, we listed what our ‘perfect’ donor should look like. Ideally, he should have brown hair, brown eyes, be of similar height to us, and be of a certain build. Initially, we tried to find a donor that was similar to how I looked, but actually, the limited physical attributes we were able to list suited how we both look. Unfortunately there was no possibility of seeing baby photos or any photos of potential donors, but at the end of the day, we just wanted our future children to be healthy. This is something the Berliner Samenbank assured us during this process.
After the testing and paperwork, we received a number of potential donors that were suitable. We received information about their eye colour, hair colour, height, weight, body type, nationality, job and hobbies, in addition to some medical information such as blood type, etc. We chose our donor based on these qualities, but ultimately decided on someone who was willing to donate their sperm and give “G” and I the gift of life. We are so grateful that this human being decided to donate so that we could conceive a child. If there was the possibility of personally thanking him in some way, “G” and I would not hesitate to do so, but of course this isn’t the case. So for now, we’d just like to publicly thank him here. Thank you.
*In Germany, once our future children are 18 years old, they are entitled to find out information about the identity of their biological parent.
Motherhood Warrior 