Finally some good news...

Our donor just passed her screening! That's hugs news. Egg donors are put through a gammet of tests including a lot of bloodwork, several interviews, physical examination, and a psychiatric evaluation. This is our third donor. The first one failed her pre-screening examination which means at the young age of 21, she may have IF issues herself. (ouch). At the time we selected her, she was probably not an ideal choice because she had some physical characteristics that I had questioned but eventually felt comfortable with. Making the decision to use a donor was difficult, and I would say making the decision to use her as a donor was the most difficult of all-- because she was the first. That was the first big leap into the world of donors. We lost $500 bucks with her failing her tests because the agency wouldn't refund our money, and didn't have any other donors to choose from. We are using a donor agency because our clinic doesn't have many options for what we are looking for ethnically.

We moved onto a different agency and selected a second donor. The second donor looked more like me. Not identical, but good enough. But we had no information about her "intellect". No college admission scores, etc. But she had proven fertility which was a plus. Well, she didn't pass the silly FDA interview so that was the end of that option.

So this donor is our third selection but a really great choice. She lives locally which is phenomenal. We're both happy she appeared in the database. She showed up right as we were looking for donor #3. So we got first dibs at her. Features-wise I have learned I won't find the perfect donor. Something a therapist told us once left a lasting impression and changed my perspective: "No donor will be perfect because I won't be in the list". I am my own perfect donor. And I have already accepted that I probably can't make this happen on my own. So the best I can do is find somebody that has acceptable qualities, prioritize what's most important, and make a selection. Through the process of selecting a donor I have gotten to know my face better than I ever have. Which sound silly but it's true. We started looking at facial structure. Hair type...Cheeks.... Eyes-- too close together? too far apart? I could go into this in detail but maybe another day...
Anyway, we also had to prioritize how we saw different aspects:
Looks?
Intellect?
Proven fertility?
Age?
Personal medical history?
Family medical history?
Cost?
Characteristics/personality of donor?
It's just so absurd to have to make this kind of a decision about your future child's genes!!! When you really stop to think about it, it's so damn twisted.
I know some people who really believe the donor's personality matters. What her favorite color is. What her favorite food is... I don't know. This was an aspect that ID and I couldn't get on board with. The question of nature vs. nurture. We are both believers that both are important and cannot be ignored, but it turns out we both lean more heavily toward attributing personality traits to nurture. Or I believe if it is nature, I don't think it's always the nature of the genes of the donor per say. It could be the nature of the donor's brother! Or parent! I believe that assuming the personality of the donor will carry over to the personality of the child is not a given...
We probably initially screened depending upon the general "look" of the donor, and then prioritized medical history (something that has a serious nature component and is therefore not in our control...) followed by "intellect" (also has a partial nature component...). Seems so shallow to think about it. What is the best way to prioritize these?

A lot more could be written by me and ID about this topic. We philosophized about it for months! Especially because we had to keep re-evaluating things every time we selected another donor!

Well, for now we've got a donor and I'm so relieved about that. If all goes well we're looking at an early April retrieval. wow this is a long process...