Sperm is harvested from an anonymous donor. This sperm is frozen and stored at specialised sperm banks. Each donor has their own bio-profile which includes age, height and weight. Other aspects include education levels, background and interests.
This information is useful if you are looking to find a donor which matches your personal expectations. For example, you may want someone who has been educated to university standard as that fits in with your lifestyle and aspirations.
Another important factor is that of screening: sperm is regularly screened for hepatitis B and C, cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anaemia and sexually transmitted diseases.
There is the option to have sperm from someone you know rather than an anonymous donor. This may be a good friend or someone you feel is best suited to your needs. This does have its advantages in that you know who is donating the sperm (so you know what you are getting) but it’s not without its problems as well. One of these being the role that person will play in your child’s life.
Artificial insemination, or AI, is the process by which sperm is placed into the reproductive tract of a female for the purpose of impregnating the female by using means other than sexual intercourse. In humans, it is used as assisted reproductive technology, primarily to treat infertility using sperm from the woman’s partner, or sperm from a sperm donor (donor sperm) where the male partner produces no sperm. It is also increasingly used to enable women without a male partner (i.e., single women and lesbians) to produce children by using donor sperm. In cases where donor sperm is used the woman is the gestational and genetic mother of the child produced, and the sperm donor is the genetic or biological father of the child.
Artificial insemination is widely used for livestock breeding, especially for dairy cattle and pigs. Techniques developed for livestock have been adapted for use in humans.
Donor insemination can be used as an effective treatment for male factor infertility or for single women who desire children.
A new procedure called ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection) can result in pregnancy in very severe male factor infertility so that many cases that would have required donor sperm can now result in pregnancy with the husband’s sperm.
All donors are thoroughly screened by the sperm bank for infectious diseases such as HIV, hepatitis, and gonorrhea. The sperm is frozen and kept for 6 months and the donor is then tested again for HIV to make sure that he did not have a recent HIV infection when he produced the semen specimen.
The donor sperm insemination is one of the oldest procedures in the medical reproduction. During many centuries it was efficiently used for the couples with male factor infertility. Before development of ICSI, the donor sperm insemination was the only conception chance for the couples with a grave male infertility factor.
At present this anonymous in our clinic procedure is used if there are no spermatozoa available. If the ejaculate contains no spermatozoa at all, in several cases they may be obtained directly from the testis via surgical techniques. If at least a few live spermatozoa are obtained, ICSI procedure can be applied as an alternative to donor insemination, thus ensuring biological paternity even for severe male factor infertility.
There are a variety of factors that can contribute to a woman’s chances of conceiving through the use of a sperm donor. Your age, past history of pregnancy, method of insemination and number of inseminations per cycle can significantly impact the likelihood of pregnancy. Women under the age of 35 with no history of fertility problems have the best chance of becoming pregnant with donor sperm. Because it is possible to do one to two inseminations per cycle, women who fail to conceive after several cycles may be evaluated for fertility problems.