grieving DH's sperm and some questions...

amcastord · September 2013

Any DS users out there that went through this? I've been VERY on board with our plan to move forward to DS until last night. The overwhelming feeling that we're picking the wrong donor (on multiple levels) and grieving the fact that I'll never bring a child into this world that was created with the man I love more than anyone on this earth and then what if he changes his mind when it's too late?

Anyone go through these feelings, or any similar? How did you work through it?

Couple other questions regarding picking out a donor specifically:

What was your primary match based on? childhood looks, blood type, hair/eye color, personality?

On a scale of 1-10 how concerned with whether the donor resembled your DH?

Were you honest with people if it came up...or have you kept it 100% private?

Thanks in advance...all of this just hit me so hard last night. It wasn't pretty at my house. Thank goodness DH worked late, I think it would've made him feel bad if he'd witnessed my outburst.

orangemell2012 · September 2013

This is a hard issue! With female issues they can be treated, with this male issue there are NO options. It's hard to deal with this as a couple and it is a big loss process.

We choose a donor based on a few important physical characteristics, educational background, medical history and obviously availability.

A few friends and family know a lot of the details but they won't know everything. We know we are only doing another one or two IUI's before this journey is done for us so we do really hope this works but it's incredibly stressful.

Good luck!

amcastord · September 2013

oh wow, @orangemell2012...looks like from your siggy, you're in the 2ww? Hope this is it for you and this works out well!!

Which donor company did you use, if you don't mind me asking?

liz4paws · September 2013

As far as the grieving process goes, YES I definitely can say we went through this, even though we aren't using DS (we are using DEmbryo.) It's kind of like a death in a way. The physical features that you had pictured since you were married fade away into this unknown world. I think for me, focusing on the aspects of our future children that had nothing to do with genes (presents being opened on Christmas morning, bedtime stories with a toddler snuggled on our laps, soapy mohawks in the bathtub, etc) it helped ease the feelings I had about the losses I felt. Love makes a family, I know it sounds cliché, but it's true.

I think I accepted it earlier than DH did, but one of the biggest turning points for him was when we went in for our psychological "screening" (which was more of an information session than anything!) She helped open our eyes about a lot of things, and helped us uncover things that were on our mind. Once they were discussed, things did get easier.

But you're 100% right - this is a grieving period. You can't try to speed it up, it's good to acknowledge it and feel it and know it will get easier. Loads of women on here will tell you it's a path you will not only accept, but possibly even embrace. Good luck *hugs* It's not easy, but it does get easier!

2MamazInSeattle · September 2013

First, I'm sorry you're going through this but hopeful it's just part of the process of getting you to a take-home baby!

Second, I'm in a different spot as my wife is a, well, wife. So as a same-sex couple we long ago let go of the notion of making a baby together, however, we ended up having to use donor eggs too...so our baby won't be related to either of us.

Because egg donors are harder to come by, we weren't crazy picky and then used the sperm donor to round out some of our wants. We aimed for personality and getting someone whose childhood pix looked appealing to us. We are both brown hair and brown eyed girls, so we avoided blue eyes and blonde hair (our egg donor was green eyes, light brown hair).

Everyone assumes we are using donor sperm, but we've been pretty open about using donor eggs too. To Liz's point, we came to a place of embracing it as its an equalizer...our future LO is no more mine than hers, and in the end we really are happy about that.

best of luck!

Lacyj67 · September 2013

Liz said it perfectly.
My situation is a little different I was a poor responder to our three ivfs and we decided to move forward with donor eggs. It's great talking about it and deciding that's what were going to do but the emotions that surface when the donor is picked and its actually all happening is a little hard. I just transferred two of our embryos yesterday and it was emotional for me. Now I'm come to the fact that im so excited and love these little embryos like there mine but..... The DNA issue is not weird anymore. They will be my flesh and blood and pick up on my personality traits because I'm the one teaching them how to be silly and sing out loud and be creative. So now all the fears I had in the beginning have slipped away and it's pure excitement! Good luck!

poohniki · September 2013

I don't know if this helps at all, but I focused on why I married my husband. It wasn't about his looks that I thought would make him a good father, and being a good father was one of my main reasons for marrying him. It was the way he talked to people, showed respect, and loved his family more than anything. It inspired me to look for the good in my own family (which is harder than it sounds for some members). I am not blood related to my husband, but he has mad such an amazing impact on my life, imagine the impact he would have on someone when he is there their entire life. As for grieving, it's hard for me because it was either donor egg or donor sperm given our rare circumstances. I feel guilty all the time that I went to pursue DS because I wasn't ready to grieve my own biological child. DH thought this option made the most sense because financially, it was much much cheaper, and my age may start to be a factor in a year or two. DH is ok with it, so I don't talk about it, but I know this conversation will happen with the therapist in a private session.

As I've told you before I wanted DH to have the option not to tell, so all of those played into my decision. Education level didn't matter to me- I know a lot of really smart people who dropped out of college or never went. I aimed for overall features to be similar physically, but really lucked out finding a potential clone for DH.

You are so strong to be asking help here- I know how hard it is. I know when I asked for help, everyone gave really good advice.

orangemell2012 · September 2013

We used Cryobank, they have locations in MN and CA, it is best to find one near you. It saves a lot of money on shipping.

amcastord · September 2013

Well, we have a vial on "courtesy hold" at Fairfax. Big step for me, since last night I was a basket case.

Thanks for all the help!!

Km672 · September 2013

I wish I could tell you that it was easy, but this was really hard for us. We tried DS with my eggs 3x (2 IUIs and 1 IVF) before this cycle of both DE and DS. (We are using the same sperm donor that we used for all of the cycles with my eggs)

We used xytec and I could not be happier with them.

But although I am incredibly grateful to both of our donors for giving us the most amazing gift, the possibility of having a family of our own, I also take a step back to remember a few things.

The donors will not be their parents. We will be their parents. Most importantly, we wanted healthy donors. Our children will have their genes and we want to do everything we can to give them a clean medical genetic history. My H and I picked our donors based on their medical histories, appearances, ethnicities, their openness to identity releases and the likelihood we would be successful with their eggs (young female donor) and sperm (very proven male donor).

We have been open with our immediate family and our closest friends. We plan on being open with our children.

Just to share something hilarious that I hope you get a laugh out from... I just ordered 2 vials of the same donor's sperm for this cycle and faxed all the paperwork to our clinic, ect. I printed the donors profile to put aside for our future child, if it works. I screamed outloud when I saw something I had never noticed before... Our donor has a shoe size of 15!!!!!!!!!! I freaked out and showed my husband and was panicked and didn't know if I should cancel the whole thing when my husband laughed at me and told me it was fine and we couldnt believe we had never noticed this!!! Then he said 'I didn't realize Big Foot was our sperm donor!!'

Hope I made you smile! Hang in there-

amcastord · September 2013

Km672 said:
I wish I could tell you that it was easy, but this was really hard for us. We tried DS with my eggs 3x (2 IUIs and 1 IVF) before this cycle of both DE and DS. (We are using the same sperm donor that we used for all of the cycles with my eggs)

We used xytec and I could not be happier with them.

But although I am incredibly grateful to both of our donors for giving us the most amazing gift, the possibility of having a family of our own, I also take a step back to remember a few things.

The donors will not be their parents. We will be their parents. Most importantly, we wanted healthy donors. Our children will have their genes and we want to do everything we can to give them a clean medical genetic history. My H and I picked our donors based on their medical histories, appearances, ethnicities, their openness to identity releases and the likelihood we would be successful with their eggs (young female donor) and sperm (very proven male donor).

We have been open with our immediate family and our closest friends. We plan on being open with our children.

Just to share something hilarious that I hope you get a laugh out from... I just ordered 2 vials of the same donor's sperm for this cycle and faxed all the paperwork to our clinic, ect. I printed the donors profile to put aside for our future child, if it works. I screamed outloud when I saw something I had never noticed before... Our donor has a shoe size of 15!!!!!!!!!! I freaked out and showed my husband and was panicked and didn't know if I should cancel the whole thing when my husband laughed at me and told me it was fine and we couldnt believe we had never noticed this!!! Then he said 'I didn't realize Big Foot was our sperm donor!!'

Hope I made you smile! Hang in there-

Awe...that definitely made me smile! You two sound a lot like my DH and me! We laugh at things like that!

Tha is for sharing your story, I'm so grateful for all the experiences on here and so glad you all are willing to share!

singingirl96 · September 2013

Using DS was not an easy decision, that is for sure. DH had the hardest time with it. His family was highly against it, which made the process even harder. It took us almost to years to be ok with the decision, but we're so glad we did. Our son is the light of our lives! He is just such a blessing and we're so glad he's here. The thought does cross our minds from time to time, that he's not biologically both of ours... but then that thought goes away just as fast as it came. I wouldn't change it for the world.

DH is a great father, and he is so wonderful at it. I'm so glad to be able to raise a child with him.

We're in the process of going for number 2... wish us luck

we have 3 embryos left.

We used Fairfax Cryo.

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