As much as I want to move forward with donor insemination, I am holding back. I'm allowing Husband time to grow to the idea and to take somewhat of a lead or at least make the first move. This is a big decision and I don't want him to ever feel bad about doing this. Once the deed is done, it's a little too late. If he is at all uncomfortable with this, we won't do it. Period. So, I hadn't done any searching until Husband came home from work with a post-it note. The note listed his 5 requirements of a donor: Blue eyes, Brown Hair, White, Greater than 6' tall, and less than 200 pounds. Without saying it out loud, this was his way of telling me that we're really doing this.
I've never had the privilege of online dating, but I would suspect that searching for a donor baby daddy is not all that different. Basically, we want a donor that has similar features and attributes as my husband. But, is it so wrong that we can look for a few "extra" qualities that he doesn't have? For example, 20/20 vision would be awesome. And if the donor has a high GPA and a college or master's degree? Well, why not a professional athlete that likes body building? And, I can tell you that husband hasn't been under 200 pounds in years! Those qualities in a donor can't hurt, can they?!
So, I went to the website and registered as a user. I can search for donors for free (at Level I) based upon basic criteria, but if I want more detail, I have to purchase a donor information subscription. I can pay $145 for 90 days of Level II access. That gets me a childhood picture and an extended profile. If I want even more personality tests, facial feature reports, and conversations with the donor, I have to pay $250 of Level III access. If I get pregnant, I can pay the subscription fee (if I haven't already) to get a Donor Keepsake Packet.
For now, I'm going Level I only. At first, DH wanted to see pictures, but after realizing that can't really help too much, we decided to wait to get that info. There are 427 total donors on the website. I plugged in the criteria one by one. We want tall kids, so the 6 foot height criteria dropped the donor count to 172. Blue Eye color dropped it down to 44. Brown Hair color and Caucasion ethnicity dropped it down to 25. I also could filter by blood type, hair texture, education level, religion, ancestry, and even celebrity look-a-likes!
Some people prefer a certain blood type, too - especially those that are keeping the donation a secret from everyone, including the future child. This is so if the child ever does the blood-typing exercise in science class, they won't accidentally find out that their father could not possibly be their biological father. In our situation, we know we will be open and honest about this with those close to us - and especially with the child (of course, how this will be communicated is yet to be determined). But anyway, I decided to start with the 25 donors, and ignore the blood type as a factor in our decision.
After a few hours of browsing and playing with the filters, I narrowed it down to my 6 "favorites". I'm surprised at how young these guys are. Most, if not all, are younger than me. They were all born in the mid to late 1980's. Also, their profiles are often filled out more than 2 years ago. Among my initial favorites, I picked out a lawyer with a "strong jaw line", a baseball playing Mark Wahlberg look-a-like, a Catholic with a 29 ACT score, and a guy that likes fruit smoothies and wants to start a farm in Hawaii! How to choose?
As an important decision as this may be, it took husband all of 20 minutes to make a decision from the six I chose. I was shocked as I was expecting the analysis paralysis that I had experienced. His quick decision was the "Smiling Athlete", the baseball playing (semi-pro) Mark Wahlberg look-a-like. He liked the physical attributes, the "athlete" quality, and that the donor is described as laid back with a joking attitude. I don't disagree, so #13521, you're it!
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