Choosing Pizza Toppings, I mean, Sperm Donor Traits

Surprisingly, Robert, the lawyer I met with on Friday, was not bald, nor was he poorly outfitted. He also seemed very knowledgeable. I inquired about developing a co-parenting agreement, and he explained that the document has absolutely no legal value. In other words, it wouldn't really do us any good except to decrease what little money we're saving for the baby. He did present a number of other options though. First, D and I could get married in a state in which gay marriage is legal (assuming we get up on the right day of the week and pick a state where the law doesn't change every half hour); this would somehow affect the child's status. Second, we could complete an out-of-state adoption after the child is born. He explained that he can refer us to an adoption attorney in Washington for this. I'm still a little unsure of how both of these options work so I sent an email to Robert yesterday asking for clarification. I think I might have been so excited by the thought that it's possible for me to legally adopt our child that the rest became little more than adult talk on Charley Brown:  "Wa-wa-wa..." 

In terms of the donor agreement, it seems that unfortunately we won't be needing one of those. Our known donor has decided that he can't commit to our plan for fear that he'll become more attached to the child than he would intend to be. While this may sound like a serious setback, it actually feels sort of freeing. Our friend will still be known as an "uncle" to our child and will still be in his or her life, but we won't fear that he'll want more than we're willing to give. Honestly, too, I think I worried that I would feel a bit like an outsider because of having the biological father in our lives. D and I went on the California Cryobank website and did some preliminary searches.

Choosing a donor is surprisingly a little like choosing pizza toppings. Let's see, we want a donor with at least a Master's degree -- check -- but not in something geeky like molecular biology or engineering... We can choose each item -- hair color, hair type, skin tone, ethnicity, level of education, Keirsey personality type, facial features, etc. And we can even read an essay written by the donor (D has already warned me that a misused apostrophe is not necessarily cause for elimination). And each donor's description is something corny like "easy-going adventurer" or "cool chemist." I imagine our future child asking about his or her father and my answer being "Your father was a cool chemist, honey." Ha! What's really interesting is since each donor is anonymous, there are no actual pictures (only baby pictures and drawings of the adult man's face) but the donor's appearance is described in terms of what celebrity or celebrities he most resembles.  "Look, Sweetie, there's your donor daddy, Brad Pitt!"


Our first appointment at the fertility clinic is in two weeks -- April 28th. It seems like time couldn't move any slower! D is busy calculating when we have to inseminate to produce a baby in her preferred zodiac signs, and I'm already figuring out what teaching load I should request for spring and summer of 2011, hopeful that we'll have a newborn around then. We'll update the blog when we definitively choose our toppings -- I mean donors. : )