Asking friends
I tried to ask friends to see if they would be interested in helping me out – resounding NOs across the board. Their refusals really made me reconsider our friendships and whether they were something I wanted to continue, these people had called themselves my best friends and said that they wanted me to be happy, and yet here they were denying me something that came so easily to them. It angered me more because I knew that I had slept with one of them, at least, without protection before, and because I knew that they would go on to sleep with other women without protection. When it was unplanned it seemed that they didn't care.
So this option, while it did not work for me, is an option for many people as there's no telling what they will say.
Going via a clinic and a sperm bank.
Then I began to research clinics instead and the prices associated with them. IVF was my only real option, I thought, as IUI incurred the same costs in this situation. In the UK there are many fertility clinics around, and many, if not all of them, offer something called Egg Sharing. This is a programme that allows you, as a donor, to get free IVF treatment, but it does not include donor sperm, so while the costs are significantly less they aren't cheap. You get one go.
The costs of donor sperm are not cheap if you buy if from a bank, the London Sperm Bank charges £999 per vial, and other foreign clinics, like Cryos (the biggest Danish bank out there) will charge just a little less, but clinics in the UK will only use sperm from non-anonymous donors, so that significantly reduces your options. If you are going to buy from Cryos for home insemination then you will need to buy more than one vial and be very sure about your ovulation dates, and the costs do mount up.
All of these things in mind I went ahead and contacted a clinic – CARE Fertility – for the egg sharing programme, however, they ummed and aahed, and took my age and history as a point against me, not to mention their counsellor was incredibly rude to me. Their unwillingness to actually start proceedings due to them believing that my understanding of the situation was limited made up my mind for me and I decided not to go ahead with them. Their poor treatment of me is why I have chosen to disclose their name. This may not happen to you with them, and likely will not happen in other clinics – I did have some nice interactions with other clinics in the UK. Sadly this is unavailable in the USA at present save for in a few clinics, Shady Grove Fertility, and Cooper Institute – at the time of writing I am unaware of any other clinics offering it, but that could change.
So I was left back where I was before. Square one.
The Internet
This was very much an option I was afraid to take, I didn't want to get sperm of the internet like this, from someone I didn't really know, because I was scared of the people I might find. And I was right to be. I came across a lot of horrible people, many people insisting they would only offer their help if "natural insemination" was the way forward - which means fucking. Men were signing up to websites and forums to get laid, and I wasn't about that life. So I kept looking.
I found (my mother found*) a website called www.coparents.com. And this was where I found success, though I also found a lot of disgusting people – there was one whose profile ended with "ride my big horsey and i'll put my baby makers into your lady garden" vom.
It is a paid website, which is kind of a good thing. It means that you're very unlikely find good looking fuckboys because they'll just hook up on tinder. You will find ugly older men who are trying to get laid and have no other option. I paid for three months and had success finding my donor in those three months. At first I was obviously more interested in those that I found to be really good looking, but that didn't work well (as stated above – they're mostly all fuckboys and you're unlikely to find any), so in the end I went for somebody that matched the traits I had in mind which, outside of height, are below.
It takes time, however, to find somebody trustworthy, and reliable, somebody within a reasonable distance, and in this case you must be very proactive. You must ask for recent STI results, you must be very firm about going the ARTIFICIAL insemination route (even if you are willing to do natural, don't tell them that until after you feel you can trust them), you must see ID, you must meet them more than once to be able to judge their character properly, and they must return contact swiftly.
Many of the men on the site wish to be anonymous and have no involvement, which is fine, and many are reluctant to share their real names and thus show you their ID, and in this case I would suggest you find a middleman to do this for you. I asked my friend to step in to look at his documents and report back to me – under the understanding that she would not tell me his real name, or address, etc. This is incredibly important, you want to know that the person you are dealing with is the person they say they are, and that they are giving you correct STI results.
Your health and safety is paramount.
At home insemination is legal in the UK. You do not need to register with HFEA. You can use an anonymous donor if you're doing an at-home insemination.
If you are using a "known donor" they will, technically, be the legal father, if you are unmarried.
At home insemination is legal in the UK. You do not need to register with HFEA. You can use an anonymous donor if you're doing an at-home insemination.
If you are using a "known donor" they will, technically, be the legal father, if you are unmarried.
So now you're well on the search for a donor and you're wondering What Is Artificial Insemination, and how does it work? Well, you're in luck.
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