How to pick a donor

[rissar]

My dh and I will be attempting our first ivf soon. They want us to have ds back up. We are having trouble picking a donor however b/c my dh blood type is not as common. He is B-. We found one who is italian like my dh and is b negative; but we didn't get a good vibe from his profile. So, my question is: How did you pick out donors? What is the big beal about matching blood types? Did you go with more physical charateristics than blood type? Thanks in advance for your help. This is new to us and we're not exactly sure what we should be looking for.
M

[susan123]

Rissar!

Actually my DH is B- too! and I didn't know that it was rare! You do not have to pick a donor of the exact same blood type with your DH.

for example, I'm A+, my DH is B-. We can have children or any bloodtype, A,B,AB or O. Actually if you are blood type A, and your DH is B, you can pick any donor blood type. This is without investigating bloodtype of earlier generations though. It gets a little complicated, and I dont' think I can explain this clearly to you. But my point is: you do not have to pick a donor of exact same bloodtype. This also depends on your bloodtype.

Hope it helped a tiny little bit!
Susan

[avalilly]

From what I have been told clinics will tell you to pick a blood type based on your DH so a mere blood test of the child would show either your blood type or your husband's.

I think this gets into the realm of is using a sperm donor going to be secret from your child and others. See a blood test would not tip any one off that the child wasn't biologically your husbands.

So if you feel comfortable with any old blood type cropping up then I would choose the donor by other characteristics that feel right to you.

Good Luck!

[cs1984cs]

Based on this site, blood type in the child is pretty much a crap chute in the majority of cases:

http://www.biology.arizona.edu/Human...pes/Intro.html

Although I am doing ED, personally, aside from the race, a healthy family history is a must. The rest is bonus.

Good luck,

CS

[rissar]

Thanks girls for all of that information. cs1984cs- thanks so much for the link. I skimmed it a work very quickly- didn't want to get caught. The link has a lot of useful information.

All of this is a little mind boggling or maybe it's just the stress of IVF. We, however, are going to tell our future child up front about using ds, so I guess blood type won't be a factor. The nurse at my clinic just suggested it, so I assumed that there was medical reason for doing so - besides the gene thing.

M

[Kylie]

We ended up picking a donor that was my blood type. He's O+ and I'm O-. I picked my donor by walking into the sperm bank (it's two towns over) and showing them a photo of my dh (which resulted in them telling me that the donor who most resembled my dh out of my three choices was one previously described as nerdy! ). So I told the director that I just wanted a good-looking donor with brown hair and blue eyes. If they had tried to match my husband to the donor I would have ended up with ugly children. Not because my dh is ugly, but if they tried to pick someone that looked like him I know they would have picked someone not appealing to me. And if you are buying genes, why not buy hot ones . I ended up with pretty cute kids, by the way . Oh, the donor's profile was very impressive too. Med student, mechanically inclined, athletic, clean family health history. It was almost too perfect! He also said he was romantic, which I thought was nice.

[cs1984cs]

Rissar,

The Rh is good to know b/c if you are negative and the baby positive, there could be trouble; perhaps that's why they did the typing.

Good luck,

CS