#3 The Sperm Donor

Wanna know how much it costs for a vial of sperm?

Whenever I dare to allow my mind to wander to what our child might be like, they are about five years old. I imagine them to be small like Jess, with her complexion and her big brown eyes. They have a mass of unruly dark hair like mine, with full lips and a gap between their two front teeth. 

Daydreams end abruptly with the realisation that Jess and I are biologically incapable of making a baby; something that feels twisted and cruel. The fact that we can’t make something that’s one half of each of us – made up of the DNA of all the things we love about each other – is something I have battled with quietly, never fully making peace with the unfairness of it all. 

I’ve tossed the options around in my head a thousand times. The closest we could get to biologically sharing a child is egg sharing (where one partner carries the other’s baby) – but it’s more expensive. It would’ve taken the journey we’d already started on a detour that would take just that little bit longer. 

Those who know us know that we go at our own accelerated pace. Our motto in life has become “why take it slow when you can really rush it?”. Within three months of our first date (where we got kicked out of Garlic ‘n’ Shots for snogging in a crypt), Jess had moved from London to Margate to live with me. Within six months, we were engaged. We bought a house together a year later, and started the process of trying to have a baby shortly after that. All of this is to say: when we want something – or each other – we find a way to make it work. 

We had made a decision somewhere along the line to opt for an anonymous donor rather than someone we knew, which was a big decision in itself. I think it’s worth saying before I go on that there are other options. Some people use known donors, we chose to use a sperm bank, and I can only write about what I know. 

When we started making moves towards having a baby, I started scanning the banks for a few months but no one caught my eye. I was holding out for a ‘this is The One’ feeling, like searching for a connection on a dating site. It’s hard enough to find a partner online – someone you can leave if it doesn’t work out – but this decision is eternal, and choosing the right one feels monumental. 

When you start trawling the websites, you can start filtering out people based on looks and characteristics. The European Sperm Bank even offers a ‘photo match’ service, where they’ll match your partner’s characteristics to a donor from a photograph like something out of Black Mirror. For us, this didn’t feel right. 

We didn’t want to choose a donor based solely on a list of physical attributes or their job or their family history. We wanted to choose someone who could fill out all the bits that we don’t have (quite literally); someone who had smarts in areas we didn’t, who had a different kind of job and liked different things. We didn’t want someone to emulate us, we wanted someone who could bring things to the table that we don’t have. 

We turned off the filters and read profiles and listened to audio interviews with donors, and then we found The One that felt a little bit different. When he was asked about his interests, he stuttered and just said “erm, I guess hanging out with my friends?” and when asked his favourite thing about the country he lives in he said “free healthcare”. His profile didn’t read like a CV detailing all his achievements and how much he loved tennis like so many others. He said he loves his mum, and his voice had a calm, gentleness about it. 

He has dark hair and brown eyes like Jess and he’s exactly the same height and weight as my brother. He works in engineering, which means he’s probably pretty good at maths. As someone who’s sat and failed her maths GCSE three times, I hope our kid inherits some of that talent.

We found him on a Tuesday night and on the Wednesday morning we had bought £3200 worth of his sperm. We got it shipped to the London Women’s Clinic, where one vial was thawed last week for my egg collection and my eggs were fertilised with Anonymous Donor’s sperm. An alarming thought, but one that feels very right. 

There are a few things you should know about choosing a sperm donor. Firstly, it is UK law that anyone conceived with donor sperm has the right to request non-identifying information from the age of 16, and identifying information at the age of 18. This means that in 18 years time, you could have this person on your doorstep, and they could go on to become a substantial part of your life. 

Secondly, people love to ask questions and feel entitled to know everything about your donor and your decision to choose them. They want to know how you chose them, what they look like and why you went abroad. They will judge you for choosing too many characteristics and ‘designing’ your baby, they will make you feel stupid when you say you picked them based on a feeling.

The last thing is that sperm is really, really expensive. Sperm is an entirely separate cost from treatment, so while you might be shelling out around £4500 for a round of IVF (plus extras like medication which can be up to £1000); you could spend the same again on sperm. We bought four vials at around £800 each, plus a £500 ‘pregnancy slot’ (a UK requirement for European banks) and spent a further £600 on shipping and receiving costs. We pay the London Women’s Clinic around £200 for storage every year (on top of the £350 a year we now pay for embryo storage). We’re hoping four vials will be enough to complete our family. As it stands it might be, but as with anything in this process, you can’t be sure. 

Buying sperm from a UK sperm bank would have been a more affordable option. We chose to buy sperm from abroad because there was more choice. The London Sperm Bank, partnered with our clinic, have a good selection but I have a totally irrational worry that lesbian friends of ours will end up choosing the same donor. I don’t want to spend every kid’s party scanning children for similarities from the sidelines.

For now, our future child is in the freezer at the London Women’s Clinic, with a few of it’s could-be siblings. I don’t think I’ll ever make peace with the fact that two women who love each other can’t make a baby together, but I feel content knowing that it will be brought up by mothers who have been rewarded after living through the pain of wanting and the grief of not having. 

Our kid might not have Jess’s kind eyes or her dancer’s ankles; but I hope that they’ll inherit her laugh by listening to it everyday. I hope that they will be as compassionate and gentle as she is, as hilarious and as loyal; because she will be their mother and those are things that don’t need DNA to flourish. 

AMA: Would you go straight to IVF if you could do it all over again?

I would like to preface this by saying (again) that I am not a fertility expert by any stretch of the imagination. This is my experience. 

I’ve been asked this question a lot since I started talking about fertility treatment, and TLDR; yes. We were recommended to start by having IUI by our fertility consultant. At the time, the severity of my PCOS wasn’t clear because I show so few symptoms thanks to a hefty daily dose of Metformin. 

Something no one really tells you when you start having fertility treatment is that there are so many outcomes other than a positive or negative pregnancy test. When we went for the baseline scan (a transvaginal scan on day 1-3 of your period), we were given a rough timeline of how things would look. I would start injecting a stimulant that night, and an ovulation suppressant every morning. I would come in for another scan on day 5, then every other day until one or two follicles were big enough, then I’d be sent to London for insemination. 

This didn’t happen. On day 5 it became clear I wasn’t responding to medication, so they upped my dose, and on day 7, 9, 11, 13 and 15 nothing had happened and it was too late. There wasn’t a dominant follicle (one above 14mm) and my uterine lining had started to deteriorate. I was devastated, because I didn’t know that there was any risk of it not working. 

I wish I hadn’t given it another go and that we’d moved straight to IVF, but we didn’t and the same thing happened again. 

IUI has a success rate of around 20% for stimulated cycles at my age (almost 30), and costs around £1200 a go, plus one vial of donor sperm at around £800 and all the medication and other stuff like HEFA fees and blood tests. That’s about £2500 and one precious vial of expensive sperm for a 20% chance. 

IVF’s success rates vary widely depending on your age. For us, it sits over 55% and it cost us about £5500, including  sperm and medication. For one vial of sperm, we’ve created multiple embryos that can be transferred for £1700 a pop. We might not have to have IVF again. 

Of course, people get pregnant from IUI the first time. I thought that might be me! It wasn’t. IVF has worked (so far) for us. If we could do it all over again, we would’ve gone straight to IVF. There are less variables at play, a higher success rate and in my opinion, it can end up cheaper in the long run if you’re doing it privately.

Got a question? Ask me anything! I want for Open Arms to become a source of support, information and guidance for anyone considering starting a family, but particularly those in LGBTQI+ relationships and those going solo. Please message me on Instagram or email me if there’s anything you’d like to ask. There’s no question too big, too small or too silly! If there’s a question I can’t answer, I’ll find someone who can and report back. 

The Reading List

This is the part where I include things that I’ve found helpful, interesting or inspiring this week. 

Baby God: how DNA testing uncovered a shocking web of fertility fraud

I probably shouldn’t read or share things like this but here I am, sharing it with you having read it. I read this fascinating piece about a fertility consultant who fathered dozens of children fraudulently in his fertility clinic, only to have been found out because of the current fad for DNA testing. I’ll watch the documentary and report back next week. 

Scotland's IVF treatment is the 'gold standard'

Here’s my chance to be catty again (sorry about last week, Emma Roberts). Here’s a piece about how Scotland sets the ‘gold standard’ for fertility treatment in the the UK but fails to mention same-sex couples – the fastest growing demographic seeking to access fertility treatment. 

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Disclaimer

I’m not a doctor! I’m not a fertility consultant! I’m just writing about my own experience. I’m happy to guide you in the right direction, but you must know that I’m wrong a lot of the time. As with anything you find on the internet, it’s imperative that you do your own research.