Vent...

*ISSUE RESOLVED, PARDON MY VENT*

We've been fairly open (at least I think so) about our use of frozen donor sperm. So let's get real about what that means: A. We don't know our donor, nor do we want contact with our donor at any time. B. We realized from the beginning that there would be other children conceived by our donor. C. We neither encourage nor discourage some type of verbal/written contact with donor sibling parents, as long as it concerns the children in a positive manner.

So, when our donor's last remaining vials were bought and his free profile removed from the catalog, I contacted the only person who had been open on the forum about their donor (who is also our donor). I was hoping they had saved a copy of the free profile, but didn't expect anything more or less from them. They hadn't saved a copy, but we did maintain very loose contact via email. I'll admit, I liked being in contact with them. We didn't email more than 4 times back and forth, and most of that was simply concerning my son/surgery. So, I thought we'd possibly maintain this over the years, and find out about certain characteristics or medical issues concerning the kids. Maybe we will...i don't know what the future has in store.

However, something written on the forum kind of made me think I had been an intrusion into their world. Or rather, the presence of my child was irritating. Which put me off. In a thread concerning donor siblings, the person said that when they found out about another donor sibling, they were irritated/upset because they thought they had bought all the remaining donor vials.

We've both discussed that we had extra stored vials in those previous emails. Amz and I bought in bulk when we purchased sperm. We made a list of our top 5 donors, and then called up the bank and went down the list. We told the employee we wanted the donor highest on our list that had enough to bulk order. Our donor choice was #2 on our list, and the employee said that we had purchased all the open vials of our donor. We were fine with this because, frankly, we bought a billion sperm (or more). The bank we used has what are called "final release vials" which are only available to parents who have already had a successful pregnancy/live birth with that particular donor. They are more expensive, and after they are purchased, the donor is removed from the catalog. So months ago, when I saw the other person post that they'd bought the donor's final release vials, I wasn't surprised to find out that our donor was no longer available...i already knew that.

However, I never mentioned when I had purchased our vials to this other person. So, it seems to me like, this person thinks we bought our vials AFTER they bought the final release, so it's like we shouldn't have had access to the donor or something. I don't know. I could be taking this all wrong, but it put me off when I read the post.

I had always told Amz that if we chose not to have more children, or had already had a sibling for C, and we had left over vials...I would offer them to other parent's of donor siblings. I don't know now...

I just needed to get that off my chest.