5 Tips for Narrowing Down Your Sperm Donor Choices

We recently received a number of questions on how to choose a sperm donor. It is indeed one of the most difficult choices to make. You have to figure out what qualities you're looking for in a donor - medical history, physical characteristics, psychological issues, etc.

Here are five of the best ideas we found around the web:

1) Write a list of specific qualities you're looking for. If it helps, make a list of the qualities in your ideal partner: eye color, hair color, personality, smarts and anything else you can think of. If there are qualities you won't budge on, mark them with a star. Any you're willing to compromise on (e.g. light brown hair in a donor that has all the other qualities you wanted, but is lacking your favorite dark brown color) don't star. Something like this will help you figure out exactly what you want.

2) Look at your family health history and figure out what you can and can't accept in a donor's medical health history and write it down. If you have any questions, contact your sperm bank's genetic counselors (any good bank will offer at least one free consultation).

3) Gather copies of baby photos from members of your family if you want a donor with similar features and compare it to the donors' childhood and baby photos. A number of sperm banks also do adult photo matching, where you send in a photo of you, a partner or a family member and the sperm bank matches your preferred photo to a number of donors's adult photos. They give you the best matches to choose from.

4) Once you've selected the donors you like, compare them to all your notes and narrow them down. Many women have said creating a spreadsheet helps as well.

5) When you've narrowed your choices down to 2-3 donors,  create an "exhibit" for each donor. Get poster board from your nearest Staples or Office Depot (or the equivalent) create an "exhibit" for each donor. Paste their personal profile, staff impression, favorite foods, medical history, baby photos,etc. Choose the most important aspects of your donors and display them. If you're involving friends and family, this can also be a great way to help them give you their opinion on each donor.

Can you think of others methods that have helped you?