Jo and I might just be in luck. We are meeting a possible donor on Saturday. Any suggestions or experiences of the first meeting/friendly chat are very welcome.
I'm trying to remember my first meeting with our donor.
I think how you approach the meeting in part probably depends on the type of involvement and relationship you want the child and yourselves to have.
In our case we wanted our donor to be involved but not to be primary parent. So we wanted someone we thought we could have a friendship with. We met in a coffee shop and tried to create a friendly atmosphere and asked him about himself and spent some time trying to create rapport and getting a feel for him as a person. On the business end we also wanted to use the first meeting to begin to explain what type of involvement we wanted from him as a donor/father and how we saw our roles. It was no point going any further if we weren't going to be on the same page. I think we also asked about genetic, medical history etc.
My partner and I did some thinking before hand to clarify what we really wanted and things that we could compromise on if required.
I think it was the second meeting we gently raised the idea of a BT to confirm no STI etc and asked about his safe sex practices. Again we thought this was significant and no going any further if he wasn't prepared to be tested.
I have some friends who ended up asking their donor for a semen analysis. They did this because their first donor ended up having a fertility issue and didn't find it out until 9 months of unsuccessful TTC. We decided not to do this, but if I was to do it all over again with another donor I probably would. I would do it because we've now been TTC for 11 months. Our donor has gone now through a semen analysis as we are on the road to IVF and thankfully all is good. I wouldn't wish a protracted TTC period on anyone let alone because of a choice of donor. Anyhow that just my thoughts for where I'm at.
We've become kind of friends with our donor and I think our friendship will only get stronger. This is the type of relationship we were hoping to have with our donor. We make a point to catch up with him around the insem time for a coffee so I guess we have friendship with a purpose.
Thank you so much for sharing your experience. I think I'm along the same line of thoughts as you were so I am now going to try and not to think too much more about it and just let things happen.
Well that sucks! Didn't even get to meet him. He let me know just then that he is traveling a fair bit this year so he won't be around or possibly healthy enough to do help.
I'm sorry about that. When you are really keen to get started, the process of finding a donor can be quite stressful. It's a journey in itself. I know that some people meet a few possibilities before finding the right match.
I know it's not going to make you feel much better, but at least he didn't let it get further down the path before changing his plans.
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First meeting with a possible donor
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