How to Navigate Picking an Egg Donor
My husband and I are currently at the stage of our fatherhood journey where we are picking an egg donor, and it is proving to be more challenging than we had anticipated.
I wanted to take this opportunity to share how we have approached this process, and hopefully provide other gay, bi, queer men or couples insight and help for their own journeys.
As referenced in my first personal article on our journey (https://www.babymoonfamily.com/original-articles/beginning-surrogay-journey or https://medium.com/@babymoonfamily/the-beginning-of-our-surrogacy-journey-d5beb833a23b), my husband and I are working with Hatch (https://www.hatch.us/), an agency in California who also has one of the largest egg donor databases in the country. We have also opted for the ‘piece of mind’ program, which means that we are not geographically restricted in terms of where our egg donor resides, as the transport costs of her coming to the clinic in LA are covered by the program.
I am pointing out the size of the egg donor database and logistics of the medical evaluation and retrieval as these are other potential considerations for other intended dads.
Also, I want to mention that for many fathers-to-be, they may have a female sibling or a close female friend who has generously offered to provide their eggs. For sisters who are able to help, this has the benefit of providing the child with a more similar genetic makeup to the couple, but it does have the downside that only one of the fathers can contribute their sperm. However, this was not a consideration for my husband and me as we only have brothers. Also, we do not have any close female friends who we felt comfortable approaching for donation.
So, after we had the unique experience of providing our sperm samples at the clinic, which you can read more about in a previous article I wrote (https://www.babymoonfamily.com/original-articles/clinic-masturbation or https://medium.com/@babymoonfamily/masturbating-in-a-clinic-as-a-queer-dad-to-be-44e81dbf7b25), we then had an appointment with a psychologist to discuss how we were approaching the egg donor search.
This is a part of the process that I would recommend for any intended dads. While our agency facilitated this as a requirement, I feel it was extremely useful for us to talk with a psychologist about what we were looking for in an egg donor and why. Even though we had talked about it as a couple several times before this, I feel like hearing my husband explain his thought process to the psychologist made it even more clear what he values and is prioritizing in the search.
From that discussion, we came up with a list of essential characteristics for our egg donor:
No history of mental health. I have significant mental health issues in my family, and I myself have struggled with mild depressed mood and anxiety throughout my life. My husband has ADHD. For these reasons, we didn’t want to compound the genetic impact of mental health for our child with an egg donor who also carries any of these characteristics.
Younger than 30. It’s a fact of science that younger eggs are more viable and less likely to lead to genetic malformations. Given that we want to have as many viable embryos to choose from and will be splitting the egg donation to be fertilized by each of our sperm, the number and health of the eggs is critical.
Partial Hispanic background. My husband is half Mexican, and having this connection to Hispanic background is important for us to share with our children.
‘Passionate’ about something. This is the most challenging aspect to define, by far. Essentially, we do not care about her SAT scores, Ivy League university acceptance, or other metrics of ‘success’ that are actually more indicative of one’s socioeconomic status than actual passion in life. We would like her to really care about something. It could be art, reading, movies, sports, her family, her culture, or even just the ambition to have a better life for herself. Vague, but really this is the ‘je ne sais quoi’ that we want in order to know that she is the right ‘fit’ for us.
With this list in hand, we then embarked on searching through the donor database. The best way to describe these databases is like a Facebook profile from the mid-2000s. Remember the time when we had static Facebook profiles with only a few profile pictures, no wall of posts or activity, and some demographic and ‘about me’ sections? Well, that is essentially what the donor profiles are, but also with a detailed medical history about them and their family, often going back at least two generations.
This makes it fairly easy to filter for things like age, height, ethnicity, location, but less easy to filter for things like ‘passion.’
Don’t get me wrong, the pictures are great and a key component of the search for any couple. Many donors also put up pictures of themselves as babies and children, so you can get a sense as to how they have developed. Also, if they have their own children, they will include those as well. However, the number of pictures can be limiting in that sometimes there are only about five and other times they are all of the same time (i.e. graduation) so you don’t get a sense as to how they look in different settings. Also, I’m a video person, and the profiles do not include any videos. We did look at other databases before deciding on Hatch that did have videos, and this is something that you can ask the agency to provide, if the donors are willing.
While it’s not too challenging to navigate the medical and psychological histories for the donors and their families, the personal aspects are more difficult to tease apart. The prompts ask the donors questions like ‘What is your favorite book/movie/sport/food?’ These questions are more the ‘small talk’ of getting to know a person. Other prompts like ‘What are you most proud of?’ or ‘What is your message to intended parents?’ can provide a bit more depth into their personality and character.
One aspect of our search that has been an important factor is that we have always gone through the database together. We have mirrored a laptop to our TV and made a discussion and review of it as a couple. I know some intended dads do it separately and see who they select individually, but we didn’t want to make it seem like we were advocating for each of our donors. While this has been a good approach, we have gone through the database with our selected filters several times now, and there have been some new challenges:
It’s hard to say ‘No.’ Some donors just have too little information or pictures to get a sense of them. However, we don’t want to overload the agency or the donors with additional questions, but we also don’t want to ‘miss’ one simply because the profile is a little thin.
How long should a short-list be? We don’t want to just select one donor, as there could be reasons that she is not a match for us genetically or otherwise. However, how many should we choose, and how do we rank them?
How will we know if they are a good choice? The process feels a bit like internet dating, but without the final step of meeting in person and knowing if there is a ‘spark.’ So, what will we feel when we know we want to proceed with a donor?
This last question is the one that we have continued to sit with at this time, giving ourselves a week or so to reflect. This contemplation has led us on the path of worrying less about the first two points by asking the agency for more information on donors. More pictures, videos to get a sense of their voice and mannerisms, and more questions to highlight their personality and passions are all things we will take back to the agency, for any and all donors that we are even remotely interested in.
This is the recommendation that I have for every intended father who is at this stage in the journey: Ask more questions. You may start with a list of requirements or characteristics, and this is a good start. However, ask for more and whatever you need to be sure of your selection. This is an important decision, and one that you should feel confident about. Don’t rush. Take your time. Make sure you have all the information you want to make an informed and exciting choice.
This is also the first part of the IVF and surrogacy process that is ‘outside’ the control of you as dad(s)-to-be. Researching and choosing a clinic and agency and getting sperm, genetics, and medical testing done are all about the fathers, but selecting an egg donor is the first of many stages that involve other people. However, so much of the process for gay, bi, queer men is about relinquishing control and having trust. That’s why it’s important to get all the questions answered and to feel confident and comfortable to allow the journey to continue. And, equally important, to enjoy the process.
Helping to enjoy and be present and happy through the journey of becoming a dad through IVF and surrogacy is what BabyMoon Family is all about. I will continue to keep you posted on our personal journey as we progress, and I am happy to answer any questions you have via email at bryan@babymoonfamily.com.