Finding my egg donor

Diary 20th February 2019

I received the documents that will start the egg donation process. I can select basic characteristics: eye colour, hair colour, and indicate preference for 'ethnic origin'.

Now, if you'd have asked me months even weeks ago I would have said my only preference was that I could actually secure an egg donor. Nothing else would matter other than them being female and egg donating! I wouldn't be fussy. And really I'm not.

But I do know upon thinking further that I really want my baby to look like me - at least I want people to look at us two and connect us - to know that they are mine and I am their father.... instantly. Now I articulate it like this, I can see why I was always unsure about the idea of adoption. (The process is giving me answers as much as it poses questions.) I suppose therefore I should pick characteristics for the egg donor that are most like my own. To increase the chance of those characteristics coming to the fore.

But at the same time, what of the joy in spinning the wheel? What of taking a chance on the outcome, knowing it will be perfect anyway and knowing that there will be 50% of me in my baby no matter what?

If I was doing straight surrogacy however, I feel all this questioning would go out the window: for it would not matter to me the eye/hair colour of the surrogate etc.

So why when I look at this egg donation form do I already see boxes I would tick and not tick?

I do and I don't want this choice.

This is the strange feeling when you are a single IP - you're not creating a 2 parent family, you are creating a 1 parent unit and in doing so you have to consider half of you that is not there. I suppose it's the same feeling anybody who uses anonymous donor eggs or sperm feels - the 50% unknown - the mystery ingredient.

I have to ask myself, what is the most important characteristic of a donor?

My answer: that they're healthy and they donate healthy eggs. Perhaps that is the best hope I can wish for.