The Search for Super Man

The Queer Family Podcast refers to finding a sperm donor as “the search for superman.” As Mrs Dr Greys Anatomy and I have started to research our options and are planning, we have learned all too well what this means.

Searching for a sperm donor is quite fun and entertaining. The user interface for most donor websites could be updated and improved—absolutely. Currently it’s like an old Match.com or Plenty of Fish interface, but if they changed it to a Tinder or Bumble interface and named it “Plenty of Swimmers” or something along those lines it would be a real hit. It would also help if Mrs Dr Greys Anatomy and I would be notified if we had a common match. The two of us can’t even decide on pizza toppings…how are we going to decide on a sperm donor!! As of now, we are sharing a login using the free promo codes we got off Reddit to access the donor’s adult photos for 3 months, only to rinse and repeat once our promo code expires.

We will be the first to bitch about the cost of sperm. Nothing has been safe from inflation, not even sperm. When we casually looked a year ago, Sperm was about $1,100/vial. Now it is at almost $3,000 a vial–and this is for your run of the mill sperm. If you want the premium shit it’s $6,000-$8,000 a vial easily! For those that don’t know, one vial equals one try. So depending on how many kids we want, we are going to have to buy multiple vials! This isn’t a decision we are taking lightly, nor should we. There are so many factors that go into picking a donor, many of which we didn’t realize until starting the process.

Mrs Dr Greys Anatomy prefers a donor who is 6 ft tall (or more). She doesn’t want to limit our future son’s dating prospects. While I agree- a donor who is at least 6 ft is ideal to help our children’s chances of excelling in athletics and becoming the Olympic athlete I always dreamed of being, air plane seats aren’t getting any bigger and long flights are uncomfortable enough for me at 5’8! If we are raising a traveling savant, don’t we want to consider their comfort on a plane as well?

Still, our filters are set for 6’ft and occasionally I’ll change it to 5’10 just to see what our options are.

The height requirement is already limiting our pool.

As I am not going to be carrying or using my eggs, I’d prefer someone who resembles me slightly with mostly Irish heritage, blue eyes, and at least a college degree if not more. Add in the 6’ ft requirement and you get 0 results returned. Take away the college degree requirement…and you get some starving artists who are jizzing in a cup just to keep their lights on.

There was one who was promising. He was a psychiatry medical resident, was Irish, blue eyes brown hair, and per the sperm bank description “looks like he walked off the set of Grey’s Anatomy in his scrubs.” The Mrs was at work when I found him.  I texted her, “I found the one. Search is over.” I was so excited but wanted to wait for her to come home before we looked at his full profile together. The baby picture was cute, but I’m at an age where I think all babies are cute after they grow out of their alien phase the first month.

When the Mrs got home, we fired up the computer, clicked his profile and were so disheartened to see a total frog of a man sitting in front of us. I’m sure he is a nice enough guy, just trying to make ends meet as an over-worked, under-paid resident in a high cost of living area, but we sure were disappointed.

It certainly sounds shallow of us to weigh looks so heavily in this decision—and what I’ve found most interesting, and perhaps most daunting, is the fact that we are playing God a little bit. Ultimately, we just want to give our kids the best shot at life and don’t want to make their lives harder than it already will be, being raised by 2 moms of different races and backgrounds.

Mrs Dr Greys Anatomy will always ask “would you date him” when I bring up someone who I think is promising and checks most of our boxes…

“Well no, I wouldn’t date him because he is a man.”

“But you know what I mean. Would you swipe right on him?”

“Yeah sure, he’s kinda cute.”

**BIG EYE ROLL***

“Next.”

I think that’s why they call it the search for super man—you’ll never find the perfect donor and there will need to be a little give and take with some of the requirements. I’ve come to terms with the fact that our donor doesn’t have to be Irish. The Irish will take credit for just about anyone anyway! —Obama and Rihanna are perfect examples; though, the Irish don’t take credit for Trump… Mrs Dr Greys Anatomy prefers to not have a full Asian baby and would prefer the baby to be mixed; and I agree—mixed babies are totally in right now, plus it’s also better for genetics. Less inbreeding as she likes to remind me all those with blue eyes are products of inbreeding. There was a donor who did look promising, he was an engineer of some sort, tall, blue eyed, but Russian… and a half Chinese half Russian baby is too many world superpowers in one tiny human.

There are other things that we have control over, that a heterosexual couple starting their family do not—for example, family history and genetics. Now, I’ve made it clear that my genes die with me. Between cancers, auto-immune diseases, heart disease, addiction, and early death I would be doing the world and my future children a disservice if I decided to reproduce. PCOS and potential endometriosis also make getting pregnant and staying pregnant more difficult.

The Mrs does have better family history than I do, though some of it’s unknown with her family being in China. The language barrier makes things a little difficult, her dad’s ambivalence adds another layer of complexity, and half of her biological family live in a rural village and don’t always have access to health care. What we do know, is she has a fast metabolism, very little body hair, and doesn’t have body odor and that’s been a convincing enough argument for both of us that she should carry.

We’ve found a few promising donors, and while they themselves are healthy, their family histories have been big red flags. Mom has lupus, uncle has ALS, brother is a republican (just kidding!). It just gets us thinking, would we really want to subject our kids to any potential issues with their health down the road. If we were in a heterosexual relationship the family history wouldn’t matter too much when it came to procreating; however, now that we have a choice, where and how do we draw that line?

Personality and demeanor is another overlooked category and unfortunately it doesn’t seem like a profile on a sperm bank will be the best representation. There was one donor who had something along the lines of “Donor XYZ knows trauma and knows what it’s like to be neglected so he has made it his life’s mission to treat others with kindness.” And while I can see where they were trying to spin this in a positive light, I’m not out here trying to make more serial killers. I know what trauma and neglect can do to a person—I listen to a lot of Morbid and Dateline!

This whole process has got me wondering who is working at these sperm banks? Creative writing majors that didn’t become the next Rebecca Yaros, Sarah J Moss, or Stephanie Meyer (thank you JK Rowling for making it so I can never use you as a reference again). Some descriptions are just comical, and you know are fictional. “When Donor ABC is not grabbing things from the top shelf for his mom, he is volunteering at a children’s soup bank.”  “Donor QRS once saved a school bus full of puppies from drowning in the Potomac after a terrorist attack.” “Donor LMNOP has perfect pitch, speaks 15 languages, and knows how to fold a fitted sheet.”

Who is working here…and also, are they hiring? I could really go for an employee discount…

Turns out Mrs Dr Greys Anatomy will need a man for this next chapter of our lives, stay tuned as we figure out just who that man will be.