# Views from donor recipient parents please



## its the hope that hurts (Mar 19, 2014)

Hi  I  have  a 5 year old oe  boy and  am just  deciding  about  de. 
We have  3 choices  really. 
1. I  am  matched with  a  redhead  donor at Greek clinic. But struggling  with  the  lack  of  info. Only eye and hair colour. Height weight and blood group. And age. Although  anonymous  I am thinking  red hair is uncommon  in Greece and  may be  more chance of donor or diblings  being found via the  donor sibling  registry. We are  not redhead  just my son and a redhead donor increases  chances of a redhead  baby but  no guarantee!  And the child may not want red hair but I  like it!

2. Some other Greek clinics give more info ie also occupation. Nationality.  Rough pen picture..  But no redhead  donor. My son is redheaded  and sone attempt  to  match is meant  to  be  valued  by donor conceived  children.  We would go for a blonde donor and may get strawberry  blonde baby but who knows.
3. UK we could  In theory get a  red head Id release donor. But use  most of  our savings.  My dh job is not super secure.

Any  views  on this  please.  Quite stuck with it all. Thank  you


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## theodora (Dec 14, 2010)

I really can't help you decide between donor methods, we have only 1 kid so we didn't try to match. But I just wanted to comment that you never know about hair color. My husband was born with red hair but now has black hair; my brother was blonde & is now also black. We did double donor & the (adult) hair colors of the donors were blonde & light brown, but our son is strawberry blonde/light red, & the pediatrician thinks it will stick to that color permanently. It is lovely by the way, you are right!! Anyway, do what you want about matching, but be prepared for the chance that the hair color won't turn up exactly as expected!


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## solomum (Apr 17, 2012)

It seems from your post that you are committed to being open to your children about their origins because 1. You care about physical matching and 2. You are interested, at least in theory, in finding siblings/donor through the dsr.
If these are important to you then I think you should consider the financial outlay now of finding an open ID donor in the uk. It is a small amount of money in the bigger scheme to secure something that you seem to value.
As for the red hair: both parents need to be carriers for the child to have red hair so presumably your husband has a recessive red gene. But there is no guarantee your child will come out with red hair even if you do have a red haired donor. One of my kids had red hair even though neither the donor nor myself is a redhead.. But we respectively come from ethnicities with high numbers of red heads (Gaelic/Ashkenazi) and have red heads in our family trees. now my child is older the red hair has faded to brown... Which is another way of saying that it's hard to engineer colour.

If more information is important to you - over an open id donor - then perhaps that should be your priority for a clinic given that red hair is not a sure bet?


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## its the hope that hurts (Mar 19, 2014)

Hi
The more info about the donors, is just for me to tell the child, in case they want to know.  Not for me really to be honest!

Yes my Dh and I are both carriers of the redhead gene. There are two alles (sp?) for the gene, I know it does not guarantee anything having a red head donor.  it just increases the chances I guess of a redhead.  It's mainly for the child and my son to know we tried for a fit for them as siblings\our family.

Thank you x


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