Deciding to start a family

My wife and i have been together for some time now and are finally at the point where we feel it's right to be thinking and actively looking to start a family. We've known for years that we want a family and the longer we're married and the more friends & family have kids, it makes us want it even more. We have names picked out for either sex, we have a plan as to who will carry first, we know which hospital we want to use, you name it we have an answer for it.

My wife has always been the one that we decided would go first as she is a couple of years older so it makes sense that way so it seems simple enough, all we need is some sperm and we'll be pregnant quicker than you can say 'turkey baster'.

Well that's what we thought. We have been actively persuing pregnancy since May through various routes and the only time it's simple is when you have money to throw at it, as much as £6000 per try!!! The cheapest we've found is £900 but again that's per try. You might think the NHS is a possibility but to qualify for treatment on the NHS you must be able to prove that you've had 6 unsuccessful months of trying, at best thats £5400! That's not the sort of money we want to be using to try and get pregnant, think of the nappies, clothes and food you could buy for your new child with that!

So recently we've drifted away from the private treatment route just because we want a family but we don't want to bankrupt ourselves getting there and not be able to provide for our children long term.

This has left us with a couple of options, friends and randomers on the internet.

We started browsing websites in our search for sperm thinking that there must be a relatively normal guy who looks a little like me that would be more than willing to masterbate into a sterile cup for us and be on his way but boy were we wrong!

The only people we have managed to speak to (replies are not easy to come by - something we again were not prepared for) are usually one of the following:

• Really bizarre looking and with it a little strange 
• Want money for spunking in a cup
• Will only do NI
• They are what we have aptly nicknamed "uber donors"
• They go into WAY too much detail about their home life and reasons for donating
• Easy to scare when it comes to asking questions

The really bizarre looking ones aren't too much of an issue, we've spoken to a guy who looks like Mr Bean, he's nice enough but he's not for us.

The ones that want money for their 'spunk' are not good. It's illegal to sell sperm in the UK and as soon as you know they want paying for it you know they're doing it for the wrong reasons.

NI. NI is 'natural insemination', basically sex. Now we're not being funny but if we have to sleep with a man to get pregnant and have our family then we'd rather live childless, that may sound extreme but there's so many marriage and moral boudaries being over stepped it scares us both. Plus if you're reading this and have a long term partner and are in a monogomous relationship, imagine them with someone else. Not nice is it?

Uber donors!! These guys REALLY like to spread their seed, they have anything from 10-50+ donor kids running around the UK and that SCARES me. There's a small chance that any donor child could meet and be 'intimate' with a 'sibling' in the future but these guys that have 50+ kids, you're not telling me that there's as much chance of 2 of them meeting and settling down as guys that only have a handful at most? It worries us both.

The guys that go into too much detail is a new one by us. We got talking to a guy last week, asked him lots of questions and really started to like him. He asked us a few back which we answered and when his reply came we were shocked.

This guy basically sounds like he's trapped in a bad marriage, his wife is a control freak and he has no way out. Apparently she wouldn't give him sex so he had to resort to pleasuring himself whilst watching porn (his words!!) which his wife went crazy about because he knows how she feels about porn. Then he said that he was sharing porn with one of his friends. TMI! Dude, seriously! We appreciate your honesty but we don't need to know about your porn and wanking habits!!

The most frustrating ones are the ones that run for the hills as soon as you ask basic questions. We need to know that you'd be happy with the set up we're offering before we accept your sperm so please be polite and acknowledge that, if you've changed your mind that's fine but just tell us.

The only other option is friends. We've spoken to one of our male friends who is thinking it over but other than that we don't have a lot of male friends, just a lot of male family and again, that would be so wrong!

So in closing for this opening piece, finding sperm is one of the most difficult things either of us have done before in our lives, we're convinced that we'll get there eventually but i have a feeling that it's going to be a long, long road.