Over time we actually chose three donors. The first was to be used only as a backup for the two full ivf / icsi cycles in case the urologist could not retrieve usable sperm from me.
The second who I do not recall too many facts about was used for the bulk of the DI cycles which obviously all failed. Funny that I don't recall his facts now. I do recall authorizing the destruction of the remaining vials when we were sure we wanted the third.
Picking a donor is like a combo of looking through the personals (or now like on line dating) mixed with the knowledge that you can now improve the gene pool. Meaning picking attributes better than what I have.
The main items on our checklist for the donor were that the donor have the same religious background as me, same race, same blood type and perhaps have a ancestral background similiar to mine. The donor we chose had all of these but unfortunately had as many health issues in his family as my own. So there went the idea of improving the gene pool. My wife liked that he was / is well accomplished education wise. The donor bank we purchased this donor's vials from actually classified him as a premium donor resulting in added cost of $30 per vial.
The bank we used was Fairfax in Virginia and now they even offer non scientific analysis of the donors facial composition. Meaning did the folks on staff think the guy was cute or hot. When we dealt with them in addition to on line downloadable bios (the basic stats, health, family, generalk thoughts etc) we bought a CD of his voice. Only recently did we request a copy of a picture of the donor as a baby. They actually sent a pic of him as a toddler which explained the color tint of my son's hair which did not jive exactly with the donor's bio.
We actually dealt with both major outfits California Cryo and Fairfax. Both very professionakl and both very thorough in their approaches at least in our experience.
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