Choosing an Egg Donor (ED)

Choosing an Egg Donor (or ED for short) was an almost comical experience and probably one of the hardest choices we had other than deciding to be parents in the first place.  Seriously, there is a lot of pressure when presented with facts that you know is going to attribute to creating a life that is going to have characteristics that you and that new life are going to have to live with forever.  You want your kids to be beautiful, smart, healthy, tall, not to tall, personable, serious, determined, funny, great nose, great hair.  Do you want your kids to be smarter than you, a different skin color, do they need to be your self-image?

So many choices!

I still remember that first moment when we were presented with Egg Donor profiles.  We were given a username and password that opened a portal full of potential donors that fit our criteria and us theirs.  Once you unlock that door and start imagining your future children / family at this level I feel that you have reached the no turning back moment.  In a traditional pregnancy creation event you don’t have to think near as hard and I think most men think with a different brain.  Here you are thinking about family health history, SAT scores, athletic or musical ability, mental stability, and a million other criteria that most men never ask the women they impregnate either intentionally or by accident.  For many of us this is our one chance to get it right.

We both looked at profiles and talked about them a bit and then decided to narrow it down we should both go through them and then just talk about the ones we mutually didn’t rule out.  We agreed to only look at proven anonymous donors.  Proven donors are donors who have either donated successfully or already have had children of their own using their own eggs.  The process went way easier than expected as we both only kept a few (out of many) and surprisingly we both kept some of the same few.  We ultimately decided on a girl that was cute, smart, and seemed like the most genuinely sweet girl from her profile.  So, first time around we went with personality.

Our first time around didn’t work out.  Our Egg Donor didn’t respond well to the medication protocol and the Dr. told us we were basically out of luck and weren’t going to have many, if any, usable eggs.  We felt horrible for her and sorry for ourselves.

We were now anxious and feeling worried.  The agency, Family Source Consultants, was great in keeping us calm and working with us to re-match with a new ED.  This time we decided to go with a young and unproven donor.  She was stunning, smart, tall family, athletic, and had a clean family health history.  We scheduled for a fresh cycle with our surrogate and crossed our fingers and toes.  The retrieval went fantastic and she produced some awesome grade A eggs.  They fertilized great and we were ready for transfer and the timing for a fresh transfer worked out great.

Our choice must have been the perfect one because there is nothing we would change about our children.  Their characteristics that drive us the craziest are the ones they inherited from our genes.  Everything in the DNA pool mixed well because we don’t have any known defects and they are both cute as can be and smart.  We also got pregnant first try with twins.  Have fun picking your Egg Donor.  It’s a big first step in building your family.