[J*e*n*_78]

I was curious if anyone else has been through an ivf cycle and happened to be a slow responder then went to iui with DS?? what kind of meds did they put you on??

We tried ivf with my husbands frozen TESE sperm but it was a . It wiped out our savings so now we have to turn to iui with DS.

Thanks !! I hope I can officially join the iui board here in the next month or two!!

Jen

[sammylena]

to the IUI board, I'm very sorry that IVF didn't work for you and hope that IUI is the answer.

[infertilitynovice]

I just wanted to welcome you to this side too. My DH and I never had the savings to do an IVF/ICSI cycle so we started with a DIUI first. We were only going to do the IVF cycle b/c my DH had a vasectomy after his youngest was born. Though I really didn't want to go the DS route, we had a really good experience with our bank and the donor's supersperm worked right away, so I guess it was just the way we were meant to have a child. All my initial tests and bloodwork showed that everything looked fine with me so I wasn't put on meds. I'm sorry to hear that your cycle didn't work, but I really hope DIUI will be your answer. Good luck to you this cycle and I hope someone is able to respond that can answer your meds question.

[J*e*n*_78]

thanks for the welcome ladies!

[lauraang]

Melissa, how did you choose your D? Were you able to see the "specs"? This is something that has been mentioned with us, but not investigated and I'm curious how that works.

Laura

[infertilitynovice]

Laura ~ Honestly, once I came to terms with the fact that this was how we were going to have a child, I became competely obsessed with donor profiles. The greatest thing is that most of the banks have great websites that allow you to search using specific criteria. We were interested in trying out the gender sorting technology so that narrowed down the banks we could use pretty quickly. It is more expensive, but we thought we'd give it a try or two before switching to the regular stuff. DH already has 2 boys and since this will be our one and only together, we thought it would be nice to give a little extra try for a girl. Turns out it worked...or it was coincidence Anyways, I started with very specific criteria. I had hoped to get a donor with Native American heritage, but that proved too difficult so we nixed it. Then I became obessed with widow's peaks and adam's apples. My DH doesn't have either and they are dominate traits so we were careful not to go with anyone who strongly displayed those traits. In the end, we stayed with general hair color (DH has dark brown hair, but matching the exact shade didn't work, so we just stayed away from blonde and red), approx. build, ethnicity, and Western European heritage (again, we figured most caucasians have a little English or Irish in them). We did pay a little extra for the entire profile once we narrowed our choices down to a few. Musical talent was really important to us b/c DH plays the guitar quite well. Careers are really important to some, but not to us. I, personally, don't think that just b/c your dad is a doctor that you will be too. My father didn't graduate highschool but he's got a genius IQ (neither did Einstein, btw).

I also felt more comfortable ordering from a bank far away from us. I know the likelyhood that our child will run into a donor sibling is next to nothing, but with ART becoming more commonly used, I didn't want to add to the almost nothing risk. Fairfax is a very popular bank in Virginia that a lot of women use, but their policies about shipping to close geographical locations was too lax for my taste. There was one donor that had been used for years and had his own waiting list (a mile long) b/c he was so popular. Most banks have a limit on how many times a particular donor can be used. Fairfax does too, it is just really high I guess.

Our bank has a photo matching service that we elected to use. We didn't get to see the adult pictures but the staff there compares your DH to the donor to look for similarities or any major differences that might stand out. We were provided with the donor's baby/toddler pictures though.

Sorry, I know this post is insanely long, but it can be a slow and tedious process. I would recommend narrowing your needs down to a few "deal breaker" characteristics and start searching the web from there. If there are certain services you would like your bank to have, then that will help narrow things down a bit too. Most don't provide gender sorted DS, for example.

We used the San Diego branch of The Fertility Center of California (when you enter that name in Google it comes up "Sperm Bank of California" I believe). We worked with Kathleen there and had a wonderful experience. This whole thing can be quite awkward and she helped make it more comfortable. I've also heard great things about Midwest Sperm Bank. I talked to someone there but we didn't end going with them. The person I talked to was helpful though.

Feel free to PM me with any more questions. The donor subforum seems to have more action on the side of ED, but I've found it helpful when I had questions.

Good luck!!