Insights into Living with Male Factor Infertility (MFI) – Choosing Fairfax and a Donor
Guest bloggers, Morgan & Wyatt, are back to share their story on choosing a cryobank and a donor
After we told our fertility doctor that we had chosen to go with a sperm donor, they graciously emailed us a list of a few cryobanks that they would recommend us using, and we spent weeks vetting each and every cryobank not only from their list but from our own research as well. It was extremely important to us that the cryobank we chose offered the following;
- Free access to the donor’s medical profile and genetic testing
- Reporting of donor pregnancies
- Childhood/baby photo
- All donors received proper FDA Required Testing
- All donors received STD (herpes, HIV, HPV, etc.) testing
As we searched and compared our “must-haves” to each cryobank, one kept staying at the top of the list, and as we looked further into them, not only did they check off everything we wanted, they offered so much more than we didn’t even know we wanted. Things like an audio clip of the donor, annual medical and personal updates, limiting donor births, and the FaceMatch option was only offered by Fairfax Cryobank, and we were hooked.
Choosing our donor was made impossibly easy with the Fairfax FaceMatch, all we had to do was upload a photo of my husband and we were given a list of donors that matched closest to his appearance, there is an indicator on each donor profile saying if it is a low, medium, or high match, unfortunately, my husband didn’t have any high matches, but we did have a few medium matches that we looked through.
For each donor we looked at, we checked their medical profile, first. I had extensive genetic testing so we cross-matched each donor’s genetic test results to mine, to be sure there would be no issues with a future baby. We read about the donor’s immediate family members if they had any health conditions or what their cause of death was (if applicable), and we also looked at their appearance description. My husband has dark brown, straight hair, brown eyes, and he is around six feet tall. Obviously, we weren’t looking for my husband’s twin, but we were pleased when we saw that some of the donor’s features would match my husband’s. Using the FaceMatch tool, and after checking each donor’s medical reports, I gave my husband the reigns and let him choose from there, because so much had already been taken from him with our infertility journey, it was important to both of us that he made this choice for us.
We currently have done two IUI’s with donor sperm, and we actually used two separate donors because he ended up having two favorites and we were happy with either one, but we chose the first one just because of the cost. One vial from donor one was about $40 cheaper than the other, so we decided to order just one vial for the first time, and when it didn’t work, we went with the other donor we liked. Sadly, our second IUI ended in miscarriage, but we are confident and hopeful that we will be able to quickly get pregnant again with our third donor sperm IUI.
Follow along with Morgan and Wyatt’s journey with MFI through Facebook @journey2babyh and Instagram @themohoney.
Learn more about the resources Fairfax Cryobank provides for couples facing infertility on our Couples Facing Infertility resource page.
