What’s the difference in donors?

When I was at University there was a lovely Scottish bloke studying the same course as me. To save his blushes on the following story (although I seriously doubt he will ever see this) I have changed his name to Donald Stewart.

Donald liked a drink (we were 19/20, we ALL liked a drink!) and would frequently turn up for Monday mornings Spanish class with a pasty in one hand and pint of milk in another. He would often be hungover (or still drunk), and covered in bits of pasty he was trying to shove into his face washed down with glugs of milk from the pint bottle. He’d also be wearing both across his beard.

But Donald was a great bloke, loads of fun, kind, funny.. and skint. Happily for him though there was a sperm bank not far from the Uni (they knew their audience this lot), and you could earn 15quid per donation. As a poor student Donald did this on at least a monthly basis (I would swear it was weekly, but don’t think even the lax regulations of the 90’s would have allowed this).

Now, back in the ’90’s donations were anonymous, so I often wonder whether there is a hairy half scot somewhere eating pastys and drinking milk not knowing why…

Anyway, this preamble is to say that sperm donation has always, from the donors side at least, been a normal thing for a man to do. It also felt a bit ‘go on my son’ nudge nudge wink wink. However, I know that for a man needing to use donor sperm for whatever reason, infertility is as devastating here as it is for a women.

But here I come to my point. In my perception there is less of a stigma around sperm donation – note the handy placing of the sperm bank in my university city. Why is this? Is it because it is much much less invasive than egg donation? Is it because all things to do with a woman’s body are a bit more ‘mysterious’ (don’t even get me started on the fact that womens drugs often aren’t even tested ON women because their hormones make the performance unpredictable – e.g. one week out of every month womens Parkinsons medication doesn’t work properly as it was not tested on menstrating (or any) females – do me a favour and read Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez before this whole blog turns into a massive rant), or something else?

I actually think it has to do with various reasons. Yes, its much more invasive and inconvenient (welcome to womanhood! OK, I’ll stop ranting now), but I also think partly because we carry the ‘mysterious miracle of life’ whereas Bernards love juice might as easily find its way into a sock as a vagina (and frankly, if you called your kid Bernard, you have no one to blame but yourself for this state of affairs).

However, I also wonder whether part of the reason even women struggle with egg donation, where the donor is constantly questioned on her motivation and the infertile woman often prefers to put herself through endless rounds of IVF in a fruitless quest to have her own genetic child is due to history. Bear with me.

Until very very recently egg donation wasn’t possible, in fact the first baby born from egg donation isn’t even 40 yet (they were born in 1984, the first IVF baby was Louise Brown in 1978). Until this point, as a woman, you KNEW any baby you had was yours. As a man? Eh, not so much – why do you think monogamy (for women at least!) is an important part of marriage and being ‘pure’ until marriage prized? Because that way at least the man shagging you has a fighting chance of any offspring being his own – kindof important if you have titles and land and want to make sure you’re not leaving them to the local publicans child.

But now, women CAN make that choice. They can have someone else’s baby. Whether through donation or surrogacy this choice is now possible. But who am I kidding. Women have been looking after other women’s babies since the beginning of time, they just weren’t pregnant and giving birth to them first.

And the point of this blog? To say that no matter HOW you choose to have a family, and what ingredients you bring into it, all choices are valid. For me the questions when considering whether to go down the donor route were:

Do you want to have a child (children)? Well yes

Really though? Really!

By any means? Erm… I’m not stealing one…

No! I mean adoption, fostering, donation? Yes, I don’t care how

Right then, just checking. And so?

Well, why not go down the donor route? Yes. That’s the solution for me

So, there you go. That will be the next chapter of my story, and I hope it has a happy ending (not like that).