Bank Limits

JoySeattle · January 2013

I know we've discussed this in the past, but a recent post and some new info made me wonder about different banks and how everyone feels about their bank's limit and or donor-sibling numbers.

Do you know your bank's donor limit? Is this or is there a hypothetical number that would make you uncomfortable? Do you know how many offspring your donor has? Do you plan to have contact with them at any point?

JoySeattle · January 2013

Our bank has a family limit (10 I believe). Since I'm pregnant, I was able to join the private donor sibling registry and found out that our donor currently has 17 offspring, not include those that haven't been reported or our own that hasn't been born. I knew he had 5+ pregnancies, and 17 isn't a large as the 100+ of some donors, but I was surprised (not upset though).

I guess the hypothetical number that would make me uncomfortable would be over 30, but that's just a random number (3 kids each for 10 families). Since our donor is sold out, it's unlikely to increase that much but theoretically could I guess. I'm not sure about having contact with them at any point. We haven't talked about it recently, but back when we picked our donor, C was not really that comfortable with the idea of knowing much more about him than medical info (she didn't want to hear the audio recording). We're glad our donor is ID-release, and I'd be fine with an older kid (teenager) doing research and reaching out, but I don't think we'll be doing any meet-ups with other donor-sib families in the early years.

mollykelley · January 2013

Hi Joy, I saw your reply to my previous post and I appreciate that you corrected me. They way I worded it wasn't accurate.

The bank I use limits recipient families to 10. And they did explain that this is self reported, so cannot be guaranteed. The last time I called I mentioned my miscarriage and they wanted to record that and my failed IUI cycles too. I doubt many people report all that. When I purchased the sperm there was one pending pregnancy and now it is a live birth.

They do have the option for sibling reserves but only after a live birth.

mollykelley · January 2013

There isn't a number in my head, but I do find the whole thing a bit weird. I wonder if donor will have a future spouse that will be bothered by having multiple 18 year olds contact him in a short time frame.

I wish I knew our donor because he sounds amazing. Like my wife he served in Peace Corps and has travelled around the world and speaks multiple languages. He wrote beautiful things in his essay that made me admire him. I don't have a need to know other siblings but I think it would be interesting.

Maybe in 20 years they will be able to make sperm from female DNA or artificial eggs from male DNA. They have done it in mice! But for now this is what we have. I've just decided to try to have peace with the process and will love whatever child I get to raise with my wife!

ball.and.chain · January 2013

JoySeattle:
Our bank has a family limit (10 I believe).

Joy, you used CCB, right? We do too and I originally thought the family limit was 10, but recently was looking to confirm that and found this statement that they "limit the total number of family units to 20-30 worldwide."

https://www.cryobank.com/Why-Use-Us/Selecting-a-Sperm-Bank/#selecting10

I preferred 10. Tongue Tied

JoySeattle · January 2013

ball.and.chain - thanks for clarifying. I knew there was something about it, which was why I said "I believe" Wink I still think they try to keep it to 10 in the U.S. though.

I went back and looked at the registry and our donor has 10 U.S.-based families (spaced out all over, only 1 other child in WA) and 1 international family. It looks like one family has 4 kids (two sets of twins) and four others have two each. That's actually a bit better than I had realized.

ball.and.chain · January 2013

JoySeattle:
ball.and.chain - thanks for clarifying. I knew there was something about it, which was why I said "I believe" I still think they try to keep it to 10 in the U.S. though.

I hope so!

JoySeattle · January 2013

I'm pretty sure they do because or donor was "retired" before he ran out (remaining only available to families who had a pregnancy). If we hadn't already had our family tomorrow vials stored we'd have been out of luck. We'll most likely be family 11 to report a birth, but that's because we waited 3 years to get pregnant.

2MamazInSeattle · January 2013

We talked about this and really, really wanted to use the Sperm Bank of California because they do have a firm 10 family limit. Alas, we couldn't find a donor from their smallish pool and ended up with using the big gun CCB as well. Our donor was new to CCB and had "less than 5 pregnancies" but the person there stressed he had only come on board in July of this year (we purchased in October). So no offspring could have been born yet at this point.

We used both an egg and sperm donor. We know our egg donor is local, and honeslty we'd love to meet other families that used her eggs (we know there are two others and likely they are local). We'd love to meet her actually - she is so cool, wrote amazing essays and our coordinator at SRM said "you two would love love love each other!"

For the sperm donor, we definitely will do the sibling registery but unless they lived nearby, I don't know if it'd be worth pursuing. That said, it depends on our kid and what they need to feel complete...and hopefully they'll be able to find it.

If it was me, I'd want to meet all 17 siblings or whatever. My other half, she likely would just go with the flow if someone was nearby, but wouldn't go on a hunt. We'll see what we get! Ideally though, if I could pick, it'd be nice if there was less than 10 others. But that's not happening at CCB...

Good convo! Thanks Joy for kicking it off.

Two*True · January 2013

Our bank has family limits based on geographic region, but I can't recall the specific number right now. When we purchased he had reported pregnancies.

So far I know of two other families (both on a private board) with a total of 3 kids. Theirs plus mine will be 6 kids. Our donor isn't on the DSR, neither are any parents/offspring looking for him.

We have 8 vials of sperm still in storage. Once these babies are born DW and I will talk about what to do with those. I might offer them to the two families that I know of and if they don't want any, I'll likely just destroy the vials. To me that feels like the responsible thing to do.

2moms2b · January 2013

We used a smaller bank CyroLabs out of CA (sister bank to FairFax). The donor we chose had no reported pregnancies when we chose him. He was new to the bank and we purchased from his first donation round. We decided to proceed with him as we had no clue how long it would take us and didn't want to risk him bring retired (well as big of a risk) as we hoped for two children total. We also chose him as he best matched what we wanted.

Our bank has a limit of 10 in the US but they will tell you that they can only limit by what is reported. I called them last week to ask if there have been any reported births yet and they said no. We will most likely be the first reported births from him. I only called as I am not sure I am done after these two but would only want to try again if we used the same donor. I was curious as I want to put a couple more vials on ice.

I personally have no interest in meeting any donor siblings to our boys. When they are older I would never deny them the information if they wanted to pursue it especially since we did not use an ID release donor.

To me it's the last aspect I like to focus on. Finding donor siblings would just reinforce that only one of us is tied biologically tied to our children and would further show that it took more than our love and commitment to each other to create this family. While I know logically we needed the help it's a sensitive subject in our house.

Our views may change on this as our family grows together but for now I really have no interest.

NoelsWifey407 · January 2013

Hi everyone... I just joined here and me and my wife are trying to concieve. I do not know where to start or where to even begin looking for a bank or how everything really works. Does anyone have any advice or anything to share with us?

Two*True · January 2013

NoelsWifey407:
Hi everyone... I just joined here and me and my wife are trying to concieve. I do not know where to start or where to even begin looking for a bank or how everything really works. Does anyone have any advice or anything to share with us?

At the top of the board in the greenish box there is hyperlink to the FAQs list. That has a lot of good information. Other than that, just start threads and ask questions.

chortles · January 2013

We've been really struggling with this as well. The challenge, as noted, is that the pregnancies must be self-reported. And if a mom-to-be drops out of sight, Bank #1 has no idea if they dropped out because they switched to Bank #2, took a pause from TTC, got pregnant, or decided not to conceive. And I think, until Bank #1 hears from a mom-to-be that they =are= pregnant, they continue giving out the vials. Does anyone know if that is true?

One man's specimen yields approximately 10-14 vials. I guess the most "guaranteed X number of family" practice for a sperm bank would be to let only 10 vials go out, and then stop allowing any other vials (excepting for siblings). But that isn't feasible for the patients or the banks (and a good thing - it would be heartbreaking to have women report "no, not again" to the bank to allow release of another vial). But it does mean that that family tracking is probably clumsy and inaccurate, and that's just the reality of working with a sperm bank.

The bigger concern is not about the number of siblings, but traveling concern - that because the banks can't track the siblings clearly, they also can't track genetic conditions and retire donors appropriately. Medical status by and large is self-reported for most banks, so we're all traveling on faith.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a new bank emerge that can guarantee this sort of thing, with accompanying premium pricing I found this article fascinating this week.

https://www.bio-itworld.com/2013/1/4/sperm-bank-acquisition-heralds-genome-screening-virtual-progeny.html

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