what do you think about using a known donor who has donated before?

Hi everyone,

We have a known donor who has donated before. When we first had contact with him some 9 months ago now we talked it through and came to the decision that it would not affect us too much as long as we keep our child educated and for them to know what can happen if they were to meet their half brother or sister. I guess the question always comes up no matter what.We are 100% happy with our choice of donor and he told us he has donated to a few other couples and so we thought that maybe there was about 10 other kids out there. However, I have been chatting to somebody who told me she has used our donor before and is willing to in the future (next year) and she was concerned about the growing number of children from the one donor and she is talking about numbers like 20 to 30. I was quite surprised to say the least and had a lengthy conversation with Selena about it. We came to the conclusion that it wouldn't change anything in the way we would raise our child. It has raised some issues in our minds but we have decided to trust our donor on this one since he has been so genuine from the start. What do you all think? Is there any other way we could handle this? We really want to stick with this donor.

I can totally understand how you are feeling Lea -as I have mentioned before we had a known donor who we trusted, but then things went sour when he changed, or maybe we just came to know him a bit better. :o

The issue of multiple donor children came up then too, and realistically we had no way of knowing exactly how many there currently were, other than trusting what he was telling us, let alone how many potential children there may be in the future. We discussed it and came up with a rationale that providing there is education of our children then they will be a bit protected in a way, of what might happen if they were to meet a half sibling. This donors idea was to get all the mums to meet like a clan for a picnic a few times a year, which if there were 5 mums wouldn't stress me out, but 50 or more becomes a bit weird.

I think that realistically everyone has the potential to have unknown siblings - not that i am implying in any way that everyone does, it is just more magnified in our smaller community where couples are dependent on only a few donors to achieve success.

Just for the record we have now opted for donor sperm through a clinic - the risk of multiple siblings still exists, but there is no risk of interference from the donor, which we potentially faced with the donor we had chosen earlier.

Good luck ;)

I know there was an article about a man who had donated to about 30 lesbian couples in Adelaide and there was some concern about it. However, the families all knew who the donor was and would apparently make this known to the children (at the right time). I think there is more of an issue if the donor is unidentified and you don't know how many other times he has donated. In the older sperm bank scenarios donors could donate multiple times and they wouldn't know how many times their donations had been used or how many babies had been successfully conceived. IMO this is a more worrying scenario as there is much more of an unknown element.

I think if you know the donor and you are aware of his history of donations and you are transparent about this with any children then I think you are doing the most that you can do.

Thanks for your reassurance and help ladies. We have spent lots of time discussing the issues that might come up and have also thought about the many other children who are fathered by random one night stands and are probably more at risk than our child will be as we will have involvement with our donor from day dot. Nurse27 I think I know of the donor who has over 50 families and wants them to band together and I agree its a bit weird. He approached us by email numerous occasions, I dont know how he even got our email but he is constantly recruiting I know. Our donor is nothing of that sort, he has given us the perogative to the amount of contact we wish for the child to have with him and is respectful of everyones privacy. I am not so worried about the issue as I was the other day. Selena is not worried either. It will be very open and well known in our house in how our little one has come about so it shouldn't be an issue. I think it is just stress at the last minute in whether we have made the right decision, nothing will ever be perfect thats just life. Anyway, thanks again for your thoughts ladies.

Cheers,

Leanne