Do you know what your Donor looks like?

[Laenae]

I am cycling with RMA of NY. I chose to go outside of RMA to pick a donor as I wanted to see what my donor looked like and RMA does not allow you to view pictures of their donors. Personally, I for one thought it would be a good idea to see my donor's physical attributes and not be told be told by the nurse coordinator that the donor looks like Julia Roberts or Sally Field, Farrah Fawcett, etc. I guess I wanted to see for myself. Obviously, I know that I will not find anyone that will look exactly like me, but I wanted to come somewhere in close proximity and it was equally important that I find someone with my bloodtype.

Have many of you ladies seen pictures of your donors? Were pictures available? Are you glad or sorry you saw the pictures?

Thanks for your responses.

Love,
Laenae

[m(or)]

I do not know what she looks like. I think other people are a better judge of who looks like me than I am. When I was in college, several people mistook me for a woman named Sarah. I met this woman and thought she looked nothing like me. Sarah often had people calling her by my name. So I figured we must have looked quite a bit alike. Our donor had dh's blood type but funny thing, the ended up with mine. Mine is A-, his is A+, entirely possible.
Something else to consider is a donor who looks more like your dh. Your child may look alot more like your dh then, but the others won't suspect a donor that way. Marieke

[BC-KarenS-MI]

We saw a picture of both donors, although both of my kids are from the same donor. I have NO regrets over seeing her & it's not like I see her face every time I look at my kids. For us, the thought of having a donor with H's features never occured to us. We figured he's already contributing, we didn't need someone to look like him. We were fortunate to find a donor who oddly enough, looks almost identical to me!! It was really quite shocking just how much like me she looks!! So, don't think that it's not possible!! If I had a twin, my donor could be her!!! And yes, our donor had my blood type, but I don't have a clue what my kids blood types are.

I don't agree with clinics who don't/won't show a picture of the donor. The saying, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" really holds true. I'm not speaking of beauty per se, but more so the fact that someone can see a resemblance between 2 people, while another person thinks those people look nothing alike, KWIM? We felt that it was OUR right to choose, not the clinics, but that's just us. Not everyone feels that way & that's cool too!

Karen

Since I found my own donor for our donor egg cycle, we actually met her. I am actually very happy that I do know what she looks like. My dd is a dead ringer for her. LOL. For some strange reason, I find it comforting to look in my daughter's face and see both my husband and the donor. But that is just me. I've heard women say they don't want to see the donor's face because they worry they might see that face in their child.

The twins resulted from an anonymous donor couple, so I don't know what either genetic parent looks like. Catie and Ryan do not even look alike, so that doesn't help me either!

Diana

[flicka7]

Yes, we got to see about 5 photos of each candidate. I can't imagine not knowing what the donor looks like!!! As it turned out, we ended up selecting someone who doesn't look THAT much like me. We had selected 3 others who did look like me, but 2 of them pulled out and 1 didn't get to retrieval. I do wish that my donor looked more like me, but we'll just have to see what our baby looks like. Hopefully more like DH???

[hildes]

Yes, we saw photos on a CD with donor's voice, including photos of her with her mother and her son. She looks similar to me, though not like a twin, but that's fine. As Diana mentioned, even kids with the same biological parents can look quite different from each other. So, while I wonder about how I might feel, I don't think I will be too upset if this DE cycle works and we end up with a child who looks a little different from my DS who was conceived by IUI 5 years ago. Let's hope I get to find out!

Hilde

[Margarete Anne]

Laenae,

Our donor was from the donor pool at our RE's office. They require the donor's to be in a monogamous relationship and to have had children of their own.....we were not able to see a picture of our donor, but we did see pictures of her two children. Amazingly, her dd looked just like my baby pictures. However, that daughter could have looked exactly like her dh and in the overall picture, that could have meant nothing to our fertility issues. As it turned out, one of our boys looks exactly like my dh and one of them, we are told, looks exactly like me.

Now does that mean anything at all to me, now, after all this time......no it does not.....my boys are my boys and no matter who they look like, I love them to pieces. Would I have seen pictures of the donor if it was offered.....yes, I would have, but I do not feel at all bad that I did not have that opportunity, in hindsight.

Good luck on whatever you decide. Hang in there...you are on your way.

Margaret Anne

[50/50]

We saw photos of our donor. I've noticed that most agencies offer this, some better than others. There were 4 photos of the donor we selected, her facial features do not look like me at all but is the same height and weight. We personally did not want to go with an agency or RE pool that did not offer this as what she looked like mattered to us somewhat.

[Monkeylove]

I know its not quite the same, I'm using donor sperm. They don't let you see the donor but I was able to buy his baby picture. This helped alot, it was strange how much he resembles my DH. I'm kinda glad that we don't know what he looks like now though, I think it would be harder on DH. Maybe something like that would be helpful to you.
Good luck with whatever decisions you make!
Bren

[BC-MAV]

Yes, we know what our donors looked like... donor #1 and donor #2. We met both donor #1 and #2. We had pictures of donor #1, her DH, and her kids... because sometimes having a picture of a donor's kid will give you an idea that either the donor's genes were more dominant or that her DH's genes came through! Donor #2 has no children so it was just pictures of her and physical descriptions of family members weights, heights, hair color, eye color, etc.. that we looked at.

We viewed TONS of donor profiles and many donors included pictures of themselves as babies, children, pictures growing up, pictures of siblings, and pictures of parents so you could get a "total" idea of physical attributes and perhaps see where the donor's attributes came from.

Personally I could not go with an unknown donor but I guess that is similar to adoption where you don't meet/know the birthmother or you never meet/know the birthfather, so you have no idea what your child may or may not look like. It's not that the looks were so very important, it was just normal insatiable curiosity and need to know what the donor looked like.