Dear Diary......

Apparently the human brain ignores the majority of information it receives to prevent information overload. But once something becomes "important", suddenly there are brown cars everywhere you look.  I'm finding the same with being a sperm donor. I don't think fertility and other associated topics were ever really discussed around me. And now….well, everyone seemingly has a story.

I went to visit my brother and his family over the weekend. Over dinner my sister-in-law piped up with "M and S are pregnant".

"Oh that's great!" I gushed, "They’ve been trying for years right? Glad it finally happened - they'll be amazing parents".

Now it turns out that in fact they hadn’t been trying for years and that was just something they'd been telling my mum to keep her off their backs. We'd all just accepted the lie and assumed that M had chemically castrated himself through over use of hair removal cream in places it shouldn't be used...

However, it wasn't all good news: "Poor A and M are still trying though. It's been two years now and they haven't had any luck."

It transpires that A and M had been tested, and are independently fertile and on that basis should be able to conceive.  But apparently some people aren't compatible (immune responses or somewhat) and no matter how much they try things just aren't going to work out.  They've seemingly tried everything; A has even given up wheat (and beer) as it was suggested that it may help but to no avail.

This was new to me.  My running list of Reasons People Need Sperm Donors included things like lesbian couples, single women, cancer, etc but at no point did I think that two people who are supposedly in full working order would need a third party to step in.  And it's sounding likely that they are indeed going to involve a donor.

So my weekend away with my brother and his family ended up not only being a wonderful weekend, but also reasserting once more that I was doing a good thing by donating. And if A and M do end up using a donor I'll be looking very closely at their child to check for similarities...

Blog entry written by a current Sperm Donor  and IT Consultant in  the city