how to pick a donor?

Muza

I am only starting the process and trying to understand what is important in picking a donor. I have some ideas, but I would love to hear from you. Thanks, ladies :)

eeh876

Hi Muza!

Well, I started by narrowing down. I wanted an open donor, and I am CMV negative, so I looked for the same in a donor (some people say not to worry about CMV, but better safe than sorry). That left me with a much more manageable number; about 20 or so.

From there, I bought the 2nd subscription package, and made a spreadsheet with notes on basic stats, family illnesses, staff impressions, my impression of their personality (from the donor essays), and my thoughts on their pics.

It was all quite overwhelming, but I just cut folks relentlessly until I got down to 3. Then I had some friends give their input.

After all of that, I ended up impulsively picking one the day I ordered- and it was a different one than I had wanted the day before!

That's what I did, but I obsess over things and research calms me down. ;-) At the end of the day, they have all been vetted exhaustively here, so you go with what is important to you; looks, education, or just someone that speaks to you. I don't think there is a wrong answer; just go with what you think is important.

Just my two cents. Good luck!

austingurl

I also wanted an open donor, so I did a search for open donors of my race. I saved that search and then each night just read through the profiles and deleted ones that didn't catch my attention. I started with medical history and personality. Basically, I wanted someone with a good medical history (no cancer was important to me since it ran in my family and things like that) and I wanted a personality that kinda matched mine or someone that seemed like someone I would like to hang out with. That narrowed it down to under 10. Then I listened to the interviews and looked at the pictures. When I narrowed it down to 3, I had my family and friends look over them and vote. Really, I had already picked my favorite but that was a good way to get them involved in the process and they picked my favorite too so it re-affirmed for me that I was picking the right one.

But I have to say wanting an open donor helped because there are not nearly as many of them so that narrowed it down considerably for me. What's funny is a friend asked me what eye and hair color my donor had and I had to check again, but to me, that wasn't that important and most people think that's really important. So really it comes down to what's important to you.