Michelle Mobilia, a clinical researcher in Boston, Massachusetts, was contemplating grad school when she saw an episode of Lipstick Jungle that changed her life. “A woman was freezing her eggs, and it hit me: I’m 37, and I want to have children.” Within three months, Mobilia had purchased eight vials of sperm from a bank, an experience she likens to “match.com, because you’re looking for qualities in someone you’d want to date. I used Google for everything.”
Even more surprising is how Mobilia ultimately chose her donor. He met her criteria regarding education and medical history, and he was an open-identity donor, which meant he was willing to be contacted by his sperm-bank offspring when they turned 18 — a fast-growing phenomenon that is putting a new, and human, face on donor insemination (DI). But the clincher for Mobilia was an hour-long audio interview she downloaded from the bank’s Website. “His voice sounded warm and kind,” Mobilia recalls. “I listened to stories about his family, friends, wife, and life experiences. He said he became a donor not for the financial incentive, but to give an amazing gift to an individual or a couple, which was great news after hearing so many guys say flat-out they were doing it for the money. A donor can make up to $100 per sample. It was really moving. During the last minute, I had tears rolling down my face, and I knew this was right for me.”
All these choices can be paralyzing for a strong-minded, selective woman with money to spend and few compromises to make. (Some coveted sperm even have wait lists.) But experts suggest tuning out the bells and whistles. “Instead of trying to have the perfect designer baby, look for a donor who, if you met him and introduced him to your family, they’d feel comfortable with,” says Dr. Charles Sims, medical director of California Cryobank. Mattes, of Single Mothers by Choice, recommends using this filter: “Is he someone I would have happily dated?” And on a practical note, “Has this person had successful pregnancies?” (Yup, that’s in the profiles, too.)
Once a woman finds her dream sperm, there’s still the lengthy insemination process (which can run about $2,500) to consider. And with all those logistics and bills to keep track of, it’s easy to forget that DI is a deeply emotional undertaking. “It’s a big leap of faith to take biological material from someone you don’t know and put it in your body to make a baby,” says Alice Ruby, executive director of the Sperm Bank of California, which was founded in 1982 and pioneered the concept of open-identity donations with its Identity-Release program, started in 1983.
Via: marieclaire.com