Stop Shopping!

I may have mentioned that the Mister and I met online.  For both of us, this involved scrolling through oodles of pictures and profiles, looking for someone who caught our fancy and didn't seem too incredibly insane.  In the Big City, that's actually more challenging than one might think.  Despite the fact that I seemed to be a Crazy Guy magnet, I developed a "what the hell" attitude towards online dating, often meeting someone for a drink even when I was pretty sure it was going to go nowhere.  You never know, it might be fun, and at least it meant I wasn't sitting at home with my cats, watching yet another episode of Law and Order.  I dated a lot of guys and they all started to blur together eventually (except for the wackos, who -- unfortunately -- became indelibly etched in my mind). 

The Mister, on the other hand, wouldn't go on a date unless there was a pretty good chance that he might want to marry the woman.  He'll probably say that I'm exaggerating a bit here, but if I am, it's only a smidgen.  He's a finicky one. I spent all my time doing field research.  He sat back until he saw what he wanted; then he pounced.  I try to make sure I've seen every option before making my decision, so that when I finally do decide, I'm 100% certain that this is really it.  I'm beginning to think that his way may be more efficient than mine -- it certainly is less time-consuming.  But not to do the research is totally against my nature, and causes a fair amount of stress: what if I miss something / someone really important?

My point is, I've found that this whole donor-surfing process is really freaking me out because it's so awfully reminiscent of those online dating days.  I research so much that the research becomes the goal, rather than just making a damn choice and moving forward with it.  Last night I had to make myself stop.  It all got too icky, somehow. I had finally found a handful of blogs by interesting women who have used donor eggs (which is great, because quality blogs on this topic have been hard to find), including one that lists a slew of donor agencies.  An amazing treasure trove of information at my fingertips!  And I could sign up for all of the agencies and search and search, and the longer I'd search, the yuckier I would feel. 

The reality is that if we use DE, we're not going to be flying someone in from Los Angeles or flying ourselves out to Florida or Vermont or wherever.  That is a good option for some, but it just doesn't fit with our style.  We're not jet-setters by any stretch of the imagination, nor do we have money to burn on The Perfect Brilliant Gorgeous Make-All-Your-Friends Jealous Because Your Kids Are So Amazing Donor.  I have no need to ensure that my children will be rocket scientists or mascara models.  Normal kids will be fine, thanks.  The Mister would give them Reading Genes and Music Genes.  What more could they need?  Besides which, I trust my RE, and I would want him and his highly-skilled lab folks to be the ones  evaluating any potential donors and taking care of the darling embryos.

I know that some future parents pay good money to ensure that their donor has extraordinary SAT scores or perfect porcelain features or siblings who are All-Star Whatevers.  This makes no sense to me unless perhaps the parents themselves are models or athletes or whatever, and even then, it seems to cross some weird ethical line on the one side of which is gratitude to the universe that strange women will give up their eggs and on the other side of which is an exaggerated sense of self-worth and thinking about children as material objects.  I'm not trying to be judgmental here.  Rather, I'm incredibly uncomfortable with eggs as a marketable commodity, and anything that implies more expensive eggs will produce superior human beings only makes that discomfort worse.

If/when we adopt, we would never be that kind of picky about the baby or the birth mother; we certainly wouldn't conduct a nation-wide search for the perfect pregnant woman.  Unless there was something clearly and horribly wrong, we would be really open-minded in a way that I don't feel myself being when I start looking at these big donor databases.  Using DE would give us a certain ability to choose, but that doesn't mean that the choice should be taken to the extreme.  At most, I would want a donor who is healthy and sane and who looks like my imaginary sister or my favorite cousin. 

So I'm calling a halt to the nonsense.  Let there be a moratorium on the Endless Donor Surfing!  If I'm going to continue shopping, I'm shopping local. 

Comments

[Egged]

Great post. You are right where I am. So weird to pick out an egg donor based on a slew of characteristics when if someone would just leave a baby on my doorstep already, I would love it and raise it as my own without a thought as to what type of education or eye color or GPA the birth mother/father had.

I would trust in nurture over nature.

That's why it is so weird to pick a donor. But, the fact is, we have to pick someone. And when there are choices, you have to decide what is most important. And I agree that it is nice to have someone the doctor already knows. One of our first priorities was that the donor actually produce a good number of decent eggs. We don't want to invest this money and then have no fertilized eggs at the end of it. So our first priority was using a proven donor who have proven herself at our clinic. Then we went down our other choices.

It's a very bizarre activity. DH asked me if I wanted to look at some outside agencies rather than choose from the relatively small selection my RE offered. I was afraid of getting on a never ending search for the person most like me and I was scared that I would never settle on someone.

I am satisfied with my choice from the choices presented. If I had a zillion more choices, maybe I would have chosen someone else. Who knows. And now, we don't know yet if this donor will agree to do it. We are still waiting. So we may have to go through it all again...

Sorry this was a long post. You just hit on things that I have been thinking about lately.

[luna]

excellent post. you know there comes a time when additional research becomes unnecessary -- there's always more to find and learn, but it doesn't add value and serves to overwhelm. sounds like you've got a well reasoned approach and I look forward to hearing your about your decision-making process. and I love the link. ~luna

[Heidi]

If it helps, we had a choice between exactly TWO anonymous donors (because we were going with local choices recruited by and offered through our RE). Well, we could have turned down either of those options and waited for another choice to come up, but we were most definitely ready to do it, and one of the women sounded enough like us that it made sense to move ahead.

No regrets here. I'm most definitely the researchy type myself--PhD in English!--but have with great difficulty learned to appreciate the fact that copious research can often hinder, rather than enhance, effective and enjoyable parenthood.

And for the record, the donor we chose had very few physical characteristics in common with me but quite a few with my husband, and especially with his sisters. Yet my son supposedly looks so much like me that strangers comment on it. Go figure. I thing people see resemblance where they expect to see it, though it's true he looks more like me than he does like my husband.

Good luck to you, and I hope that you can focus on the excitement of making a decision and moving ahead with it rather than obsessing over the decision itself.

[vanessa]

SO interesting! We we just talking about this in my college writing class! I totally agree, theres something so unnatural about trying to make some sort of super human from DE. I was reading an essay-- "Grade A: A Market for a Yale Women's Eggs-- that touched on this subject. It was from the donors point of view. It really made me think in a different perspective.
Good luck with your decision :)