Entry #20: Known or Non-Anonymous?
Non-anonymous donor: Someone who remains anonymous to the donor-conceived child until identifiable information is requested from the HFEA at the age of 18.
This entry was originally intended to be entry #16, prior to an egg donor being found, and has been adapted to take this into consideration
By mid-October, I’d spent many months immersed in the Surrogacy world. At the start of my journey, I had entered into this adventure with the set mind of starting my family using non-anonymous egg donation, although the reasons behind this at the time were based on years of irrational fears and misconceptions around surrogacy in the UK. However, by this point, I had made friends with many surrogates, several of whom were either known egg donors or had previously been altruistic, non-anonymous egg donors. As such, having had time to reflect on the events over the previous months, I was now at the point where I was comfortable starting my family using either known egg donation or non-anonymous egg donation.
To explain, before I had submitted my application to join Surrogacy UK, I had already committed to starting my family as a single man. With this in mind, I convinced myself that there was no need to know who the donor would be. After all, they would not be the ones who would be raising my child and from my point of view, the knowledge of this person was potentially an added “complication”. In addition to this, when most people enter the surrogacy world, many enter with the misconception that the surrogate will change her mind after birth and want to keep the child. As such, in order to protect me in case of such a scenario I rationalised that, should the surrogate (and potentially her partner) have no biological link to my child, I would have strong grounds for parental responsibility should any legal issues arise. However, from my many dealings with both Surrogates and IP’s through SUK, I know now that this is completely irrational, and in fact, it is sometimes the case that the surrogate is concerned that her IP(’s) won’t want the child(ren) after birth.
As winter was drawing ever darker, I had come to the decision that, should CRGH be unable to find a suitable non-anonymous egg donor by the new year (January 2021), I would take my care elsewhere. First, I would consider non-anonymous egg donation via an organisation such as Altrui. Altrui offers a service which includes exclusive 1:1 donation. This means that only you, the IP, will be the recipient of any eggs donated and therefore not shared with another family. Donation is from a UK based altruistic donor who is carefully matched with you where you are provided with detailed information about the donor.
Anyone considering becoming a non-anonymous egg donation can find out more information from Altrui HERE.
An alternative I looked into was the London Egg Bank. The LEB offer a database in which IPs can search for specific characteristics with which they are happy to match and select a number of frozen eggs for a set fee, depending on how many eggs are required.
More information can be found about the London Egg Bank HERE.
As my membership for SUK was still in the applicant phase, I also considered the future. Should I still be without an egg donor at the point of my membership being granted, I would request to join the Known Egg Donor waiting list with SUK. Having become friends with many KED’s through the SUK socials, I was no longer concerned about potentially knowing the donor of my child. In fact, I was at ease with the knowledge that, as my child became more aware of their identity and who they were, I would be able to answer these questions completely.
More information on becoming a Known Egg Donor through Surrogacy UK can be found HERE. They are working on creating a section dedicated to KED's but If you ask for the lovely Dawn when you make contact, they will be able to provide guidance on this.
As it so happens, CRGH were able to find a non-anonymous donor and embryos were successfully created in January of 2021. More information on this process can be found in Entry #18 and Entry #19.
Until Next time, Keeping the Dad Dream alive!
Read more from my Dad.Be blog here
Follow me on Instagram @stephens_surrogacy_adventure