As our next appointments are Friday for me and Monday for Anai, we have been doing a little bit of lazing around. We discovered that we have access to Guatemalan Netflix and that it is far superior to Canadian Netflix. So as Anai's grandparents went into the city, we stayed in at their up-the-mountain house and did a whole lot of nothing. Which was awesome.
We did get one big thing done: we chose a donor.
A lot of people ask all sorts of questions when we tell them we are going to be using a donor. What will you be looking for? What attributes do you want? Will it be anonymous? Etcetera. The long story short for us, is we really don't care.
That might sound weird, but ultimately, we aren't into a "designer" choice. We have looked at donor profiles online before, and there is a huge variety of things that people seem interested in looking for. Many sperm banks even have options of purchasing the donor's baby picture, or buying an essay, or a sample of their voice; the list goes on. I suppose people may want to give those things to their children as a momento? But the reality is that it is coming from a company who is attempting to make money. You don't know if the essay, or the picture or even the voicenote is really what they say it is. Ultimately, if you choose an anonymous donor, you or your children won't be able to know who the donor is.
That being said, the clinic here in Guatemala certainly didn't give us many options--at least if we wanted to choose a local donor, which we did. There was no option to pay more money for an "Open I.D." donor (someone who donated and was willing to meet the child when they are older). The only choice was an anonymous donor. I felt a little relieved at that, because it was something that I wasn't sure of. Making that choice, to choose to have an anonymous donor, was something that I struggled with morally. I read some websites/forums from people who were donor-conceived, or who had used donors, and a reoccurring theme was sadness at not being able to find their paternal/maternal donor.
I do understand that not all people would feel that way, and it definitely doesn't mean our children will feel that way. But while I would prefer an anonymous donor for a lot of reasons, I still felt like I was taking away an option for my own personal reasons. I don't want to share my children with anyone (other than Anai of course) and that probably is a very selfish reason for wanting anonymous donors. So when this clinic didn't have an "open I.D" option--I was relieved that the decision was out of my hands. I don't know what would have happened if they had the option, I only know that this is what is available for us.
Since we need donor material for at least six tries, it also complicated the choice for a donor. We need six samples because even though we hope it works first time, if Anai were to get pregnant and not myself, for the second go around we would need the same donor for try number two, and so on. So the clinic gave us a small folder with donor profiles and told us to pick one we wanted, call them and they would tell us if there was six samples.
When I say small folder, I mean...very small. There were only four donor profiles to choose from. This was because we needed samples very soon (Friday) and their process for recruitment of donors included a six month quarantine period for any sample. The clinic runs their own sperm bank, but they have only been using this process since 2013, so it limited the number of samples that are available now, this week, immediately.
There was also an option to buy from a California sperm bank and have it shipped, but not only did it cost an extra $1000 US, it wasn't what we wanted. We wanted a Guatemalan donor, even if we were doing this in Canada, as we want that connection to Guatemala itself. We want that heritage for our children, so that when the tooth rat comes instead of a tooth fairy, it can be a part of their sense of self. (Ok, ok, tooth mouse, I don't think it's actually a rat. But even so, it's super cute.)
So here it is, the choice of a (hopeful) lifetime:
All we really know is the very basics. Eye colour, hair colour, height, weight. And that he apparently likes music, and is a university student. Or was at the time. I think that there could be a lot of ethical issues with how you choose, or why you choose, but really, when we think of it, we want to have kids. To do so, we need to choose a donor. I was happy it wasn't some sort of weird gambit where you fight it out with oh this one has a better education, but this one is taller. I liked that we chose what we did because we want a connection to Guatemala. Not because we want a certain ethnicity of a child, or with a certain hair colour, or eye colour. Because Anai was born here, and we want to embrace and love that culture, and we want our children to love it and know it.
I hope that we can bring them here often, and that they can see it the way we do right now. As a place that started a lot of things for our family. Anai's family is here, and without that, I wouldn't have met her. We're using a clinic here, and without it, we wouldn't be on this journey to having kids. I want our children to know that ultimately they were wanted (more than anything!!) that they're beautiful, and I hope they feel at home here in Guatemala and in Canada, and they get to enjoy the best of both worlds.
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