LGBT Parenting
BostonGayGal
member
sperm bank questions
BostonGayGal
member
1) Anyone have any advice on banks? Assuming they have the certifications we are looking for, in your experience are there banks that are hard to work with, easy to work with?
2) Are you buying ahead for potential siblings? I feel like the storage fees are high, but I may just hate this process.
3) How many vials did you buy and have shipped at a time? Do you have any advice on choosing a donor/bank/dealing with this process?
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Re: sperm bank questions
1) We've ordered from New England, California Cryo, and Midwest. I'd recommend any of those. Midwest is less customer-service oriented, but they are also significantly less expensive. Sperm counts were higher than promised at all of them.
2) Not really. we just made sure that any donor we choose had plenty of vials available so that if we decided we wanted sibs, we could order at the time of BFP. We've changed donors many times (up to 4 now) so i'm glad we didnt "stock up" on any.
3) At the beginning we did 3 at a time. All of the docs we saw recommended changing donors after three unsucessful attempts and if we had gotten pg w/ the first or second vial, we could save the extra for sibs.
My advice is to have a back up donor in mind just in case your first doesn't work out.
Blogs: Our Growing Family - CT Working Moms
http://oi62.tinypic.com/2w73hq9.jpg
ETA: I'm wrong above. It took us 5 vials to get pregnant, not 4.
Are you planning on going through AICGB? I *think* they will store extra vials for free, but its been a while since we were there
Blogs: Our Growing Family - CT Working Moms
Yes, AICGB. Free storage would be fabulous. Also, I believe that the first insemination per cycle is $190, is the second insemination the same? For some reason I thought it was less but I am not sure.
http://oi62.tinypic.com/2w73hq9.jpg
ours were all $190 including the months we did 2 per cycle
Blogs: Our Growing Family - CT Working Moms
We went with Pacific Reproductive Services: https://www.pacrepro.com
They are a lesbian owned sperm bank and we had a good, personable experience with them. We dealt with Stacy at the Pasadena California office. They also have a large selection of willing to be known donors if that is important to you.
We did not buy ahead for potential siblings. We will be purchasing soon since we will be starting IVF soon. We did get a letter stating that our donor had stopped donating, but there was a plentiful supply left.
I had 3 vials shipped. I used 2 vials the first cycle (negative) and one vial the next cycle and became pregnant.
Are you doing an at home insemination or at a doctors/midwife?
http://oi62.tinypic.com/2w73hq9.jpg
pretty much this since I think we probably used the same one for the same reasons. But we didn't bank. Once we knew we were having multiples, we knew we were done.
We used California Cryobank. Had a nice experience overall though they are pricey. My partner is African American/Native American. This bank seems to have more diverse donors than most and was one of the only ones where we could find that combinationa.
Didn't order extra because we don't plan to use the same donor (we're switching who will carry and we are different races so we're each picking donors that look like us for the other)
Ordered 3 at a time. We actually did 6 with the same donor and the last one worked
1. we used Fairfax Cyro in VA, they were really easy to work with and had a lot of info online about the donors, so that was nice.
2. we purchased in 3's, so the last donor we got, it worked on the first vial, so we have 2 left. Our clinic is storing them, not sure if for free, but I haven't received a bill yet. We'll probably get a few more if the money comes through.
3. we chose a sperm bank that was further away to reduce any sibilng weirdness, and they have a lot of known donors when the kids are 18, which was our priority.
I think the storage fee is $200 a year but they bill you after the year is complete. That's not really a bad price though. :-)
They do indeed store for free, even if you don't continue to go there for prenatal or regular gyne care.
Also, you may get a surprise using them - they use very vague categories when they code your procedures for insurance..so vague that our insurance company, which does NOT pay for iui's, sent us a refund check for the full amount of the insem, minus our standard copay.
sahm ~ toddler breastfeeder ~ cloth diaperer ~ baby wearer
1) Anyone have any advice on banks? Assuming they have the certifications we are looking for, in your experience are there banks that are hard to work with, easy to work with? We're using California Cryo. They're the only bank that had my partner's unique racial/ethnic match.
2) Are you buying ahead for potential siblings? I feel like the storage fees are high, but I may just hate this process. Because we want 2 kids and the above donor limitation, when we started, we bought 12 vials, got 3 years free and added 2 more years (at a discount) to make it five years total. (Our donor is done and sold out, but we recently bought 2 more vials to replace 2 of the 3 we used.)
3) How many vials did you buy and have shipped at a time? Do you have any advice on choosing a donor/bank/dealing with this process? We bought 12 but only had what we were using each month shipped. Shipping is expensive, so if we move to an RE we may have more sent, but I'm not sure because I don't know about getting it back to CCB and don't want to deal with two storage places, risk of thawing and/or risk of mix-ups (which I read an article about recently).
1) Anyone have any advice on banks? Assuming they have the certifications we are looking for, in your experience are there banks that are hard to work with, easy to work with?
We order from Pacific Redproductive Services out of California and loved them! We are in a different state and they were very easy to work with, especially for shipping on weird days. I really liked everyone I talked to there, they were all very friendly and helpful.
2) Are you buying ahead for potential siblings? I feel like the storage fees are high, but I may just hate this process.
We didn't buy any extra, this is our second and we are done done done.
3) How many vials did you buy and have shipped at a time? Do you have any advice on choosing a donor/bank/dealing with this process?
We bought 3 vials at a time and had all 3 shipped to the doctors office (a fertility clinic) and stored there until we used them. Then when we needed to we bought and had 3 more shipped. We had to change donors in doing it this way, but switching donors seems to have worked out since I ended up prego.
Make sure to check any banks policy on sperm count guarantees. We had one vial that looked borderline after thaw and Pacific Reproductive Services credited me back the cost of the vial with no questions asked. I was surprised about how easy it was and thankful because of the cost.