We wanted to work something out with a known donor. But after talking to the only man we knew and wanted to ask, it became clear that arrangement wouldn’t work. He wanted to be “dad” and we wanted him to be “uncle.” Later, a friend took us to a party to meet some guys she knew and thought we could ask. But I discovered there isn’t enough alcohol in the world to make me feel comfortable asking a complete stranger for his sperm. So the next day we looked into sperm banks and started the process of using an unknown donor. Our son is now a year old and we have no regrets about our choice to use an unknown donor.

I would really like to use a known donor or friend. I think that kids naturally are curious about where they come from, and I would like to be able to connect the kid’s inception to a real person that s/he can have a relationship with. I like the idea of calling that person Uncle.

Originally, I thought it would be neat if my future wife had a brother and then I could inseminate with her brother and she could inseminate with mine. Although it sounded knee-jerk icky at first, I thought it would be a cool way of tying things up genetically (and having some insurance in case we’re some place where parent is defined solely as the genetic donor). Alas, however, while I have found a wonderful woman, she is an only child!

We first thought about using a KD (a friend of ours). He didn’t work out in the end. Then I really wanted to use my partner’s brother so the child would biologically be related to both of us. My partner tried but was never able to move past the idea of injecting her brother’s sperm into her wife. We settled on a Donor ID donor from a sperm bank. We got pregnant the first time through IVF but are miscarrying. We will try agian as soon as we get the doctors approval.

we tried to use sperm from a known donor, but he wasn’t in the area and shipping was difficult. we thought about co-parenting with a gay couple, but for some reason, it just didn’t feel right and our ideals on co-parenting were not aligned.

we didn’t want to co-parent. and clearly they did. we decided against it. we asked some close friends, but they were against donating and had issues with what their relationship with the child would be.

in the end, the donor issues were too messy, and we found ourselves a bank, which pretty much removed a huge element of stress from the entire process. with that, a few months later we were pregnant with our daughter and we are back trying again with the same donor. it’s stress free and we don’t have to worry about the human aspect of using a known donor. right now, i think we made the best choice for us. i hope that our children understand.

We thought at first that we’d use a sperm bank but I had a really hard time with that, mostly I think because I was adopted and having little to no connection to a birth parent sounded scary to me, that I’d have to watch my child have some of the same pain I did, and I didn’t want that. So we held out for a known donor. Bel, my partner, asked everyone we knew, and even people we didn’t know, if they’d like to give us some sperm, but the men in our lives were very possessive and so it took us many years. Finally, one of our best friends offered her husband’s sperm, and we were in business. It took us two months of trying and 9 months and now I’m due tomorrow and it feels like such an amazing miracle that it’s actually happening. I feel so lucky. The donor family has a little boy and we’ve talked a lot about how our baby already has a brother and I love that for her, so much family everywhere.

We’re currently in the process of trying to get pregnant using ID release frozen. I’ve always wanted to be pregnant, give birth, and breastfeed, so although we both are interested in adoption we decided to try this first. I hope it works!

My wife-to-be (getting married July 4th) has a 6 year old from her first marriage to a man. We are considering trying to have another child next year. She isn’t so sure she wants to have another one, since her first pregnancy wasn’t easy. She is convinced that I will carrry the child if we decide to have one, but I’m not sure. I’ve always been against that, but now I’m considering it. I know we both want more kids, so if we decide I’m to carry, I’d prefer to use a anon donor. Or if that doesn’t work, we’d love to adopt.

I’m in an interracial (she’s black; I’m white) relationship and neither of us is ideally positioned to bring a pregnancy to term, so we never really considered surrogacy. We’re trying to do a special needs adoption from foster care, preferably an older black or black-multiracial boy. We may also end up temporarily parenting a relative of my partner’s while that girl’s mom is working to regain custody. We never went into this wanting a baby, but at only 30 I’ve been surprised how strongly I’ve been drawn to parenting teens. We’ve had two in our home for shortish stays and it’s wonderful to have a child who has a personality and can tell us what’s going on! So I may miss out on a huge chunk of standard parenting, but I think what we do will ultimately be rewarding for us too.

I think we’re the odd people out here.

We never even considered going with a known donor. My partner and I agreed very early on in the baby-discussion phase that we didn’t want a “third party” floating aroung out there. Since I’m a lawyer, I’ve seen innumerable times how complicated and even downright nasty straight parenting is when a separation or divorce occurs. And that’s a situation where the roles are better legally defined. There was no way on earth that my partner and I wanted a cumbersome, nebulous “third wheel” involved. Clean & simple.

Very recently a friend of mine and her partner went through a protracted and extremely costly custody battle with their known donor. There’s no end in sight and, like or not, they’re all saddled with each other to one degree or another. Known donor situations are great, until they aren’t.

So we went with frozen sperm of an unknown donor and have two marvelous children as a result. Just give me the sperm, man.

We decided to use a sperm bank with donor sperm insemination. It just didn’t work out to use a known donor for too many reasons. We will be making our first real attempts to conceive this summer.