Long before my wife and I decided it was time to start trying to conceive our son, we knew we’d have some important choices to make for him: First of all, how we’d get our hands on the other half of his genetic makeup and who would be providing it. What did we want in a donor? Did we want to know him? Should we buy from a local sperm bank? Should our donor be Jewish, like we are? There are so many ways to make a family in this eclectic age. We know people who have created their families with male friends, who have used an anonymous donor, or whose donor is a family member of one of the partners. We know two couples who are raising children together—four parents instead of the traditional two. At the outset, we were open to all the options.
We chose a middle ground: an ID disclosure donor, someone who has no parental involvement but who knows that our little one can look him up when they reach their 21st birthday.
At first we considered working with a known donor—someone we’re acquainted with who would take a role in our child’s life. Close friends recommended that we read And Baby Makes More, a wonderful collection of personal essays by folks who have created families using known donors. Even though we decided to go another way, it was helpful to understand what this looks and feels like in practice as we talked about our vision for our family’s eventual shape. In the end, although we know that this route is absolutely the right way to go for many folks, we couldn’t think of anyone in our lives that we’d want to journey into parenthood with in this way.
We also talked about an anonymous donor, but we nixed that pretty quickly. The more we discussed it, the more we were certain that we didn’t want to make that choice for our child. If they want to look up their biological father one day, we want them to have that option. Sperm from anonymous donors is less expensive, so this was also a financial choice. We decided that, for us, having that option open was worth the extra cost.
We chose a middle ground: an ID disclosure donor, someone who has no parental involvement but who knows that our little one can look him up when they reach their 21st birthday.
Once we’d chosen a bank, choosing the donor himself was actually pretty fun and surprisingly easy. My wife and I were very much on the same page about what we were looking for: someone very healthy with an artistic bent who looks like a combination of both of us. We perused profiles, laughing at our unexpected preferences. For one, it turns out that my wife really doesn’t like chin dimples. Eventually, we paid the extra fee to see baby pictures of and listen to an interview with the donor we had in mind. We snuggled on the couch and hit play, listening to a friendly voice answering questions about himself, his hobbies, his work. Once the interview was over, we smiled at each other because we both knew. This was the guy.
That’s when it began to get complicated.
The year I tried to get pregnant was a complicated year in our family story, the culmination of my mother-in-law’s long illness and her eventual passing. We spent the year flying back and forth to Israel, where our families live, barely holding our heads above the waters of grief that threatened to pull us under. For roughly every three weeks in New York, we spent a month in Israel.
We sat there, on our kitchen floor—helpless, lost in frustration and sadness and anger at ourselves and the whole damn system.
Throughout this patchwork life, we tried to follow through with the next steps, but each one seemed to take forever. We had ourselves tested for genetic disorders and cross-tested the donor with our results. This alone cost hundreds of dollars and took months: First, waiting for our results. Then, waiting for the donor to come in for a blood sample and sending it in for testing. The bank we worked with, while peopled with friendly, informative staff, happened to be overworked and understaffed at the time—ironically, our donor coordinator was on maternity leave. As a result, our donor’s tests got mixed up and he had to have blood drawn twice.
When using frozen sperm, one only has a window of about 12 hours in a monthly cycle that is useful for insemination. Even then, the chances of getting pregnant are pretty abysmal.
Every time the process got tangled, it cost us a cycle. And so the ovulation tests piled up in the garbage, useless while the logistics and costs of buying sperm swirled around us, a whirlpool of infuriating bureaucracy.
Once, upon returning from Israel, we discovered that someone had bought all the available sperm for our donor—the one we’d painstakingly chosen and then paid hundreds of dollars to have tested. It was just gone. The receptionist at the bank was very apologetic, but it wasn’t her fault. We hadn’t bought the vials. They were fair game.
This meant we had to wait months for the next vials to become available. We made the receptionist swear to call us the minute they were ready. She promised, then wished us a good day.
When we got off the phone, I started sobbing. My wife held me, crying as well. We sat there, on our kitchen floor—helpless, lost in frustration and sadness and anger at ourselves and the whole damn system.
Fortunately, the months in question were busy. Both of us freelancers, we suddenly had a flurry of work come in all at once. This, along with two more trips to Israel and a trip to Montenegro, helped three months pass in a blur of exhaustion.
In hindsight I can see that as we mulled over our choices and faced the challenges that kept coming our way, we were actually preparing to be a family.
The new vials eventually became available on the day of one of our flights, and the receptionist called us up, true to her word. I ended up buying nearly $10,000 worth of DNA on my phone from the backseat of a car as we headed out of town.
That fall the stars finally aligned. I ovulated on time, the sperm arrived early (in a huge royal blue tank with the words SPERM DONOR in block letters on the side), and everything was ready. We tried. And I got pregnant.
In hindsight I can see that as we mulled over our choices and faced the challenges that kept coming our way, we were actually preparing to be a family. Like a weird nesting-by-fire. What we learned and the strength we developed both now inform who we are as a family. We know that our baby’s health comes first, and that he has autonomy over his genetic background. We know that life will bring us hurdles—impossible-seeming ones at times—but that we are resilient. We know that even if the decisions we need to make for his well-being (like waiting forever for the results of the genetic testing) are trying, we are able to make them without qualms. Because our baby is the most amazing, miraculous gift we’ve ever received. Worth every tough moment, every tear, every broken heart. He is a wonder. And it’s wondrous that we were able to make him together.
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