WHO ARE DONORS: TWO TYPICAL PROFILES

One of the first questions that potential recipients ask us is "Who are the donors?" Many recipients cannot believe that anyone would willingly go through a drug cycle for someone else because they themselves have endured so many Pergonal cycles. Others tell us that they are sure that the only reason donors go through the procedure is for the money. Consequently, they view donors as decidedly unsavory.

Probably you too wonder who the donors are and why they do the procedure. You probably harbor some misconceptions about donors and would really like to get a sense of who your donor could be. We have interviewed about 2000 potential donors. Although each donor is a unique person, with a set of characteristics and experiences that are uniquely her own, we can make some generalizations about donors

· Many donors have family or close friends who have experienced infertility or adoption.

· Most donors have confidence that their bodies work right. In contrast to recipients, who often feel that their bodies "betray them", donors report that their bodies can withstand physical and emotional stress. Donors tell us that they are up and around the day after surgery or childbirth, that they never get sick, and require little sleep. They don’t worry about the drugs or the retrieval.

· Many donors are physical risk takers. They state that their hobbies are ones like sky diving or rock climbing. In contrast, recipients often tell us that they are risk takers in life (like in business or their career or finance or even emotionally), but would not say they are physical risk takers

· Most donors report that they are content with their life and love their families. A typical population of college women scores about 11 on a widely used measure of depression, the Beck Depression Scale--they are depressed^[i]. College donors, in contrast, score under 5: they are not depressed. They report, for example, that they love their parents and are happy with their lives. Donors (ones that are accepted to be donors) are motivated only in part by the money they are paid. Donors are most often motivated by altruism or by healthy narcissism, or a little of both.

On paper, Jennifer seems pretty average. She's 5' 6", weighs 150, a little more than she should, and has brown eyes and brown hair. She's almost thirty years old, has never been to college, is a full-time mom with two little girls 9 and 7. But, Jennifer is far from "average." She has been a donor five times and each time she has made a pregnancy for the recipient. She calls herself a "Fertile Myrtle" and thinks of her "doning" (as she and so many other donors have termed it) as "the second most important thing in my life." The first, of course, is her being a mother.

Jennifer came to a donor seminar in the mid nineties. She knew nothing about the drugs or the injections and the number of visits it would take. When she found out all the information, she was not sure she could master all the drug mixing or the schedule or whether her husband could give her shots. Her husband's initial reaction was that it was too much to do, "It'll really change our lives--no more beer on the week-ends, no more trips to the shore in the summer. I don't want my wife to work. I don't want it to screw up her fertility. What if we want to have another child?"

After thinking about whether she wanted to be donor for over a month, Jennifer called the clinic and scheduled her psychological screening. She brought with her a list of her husband's concerns, as well as her own. She talked a lot about her large and loving family. She explained that she learned a lot about giving but how difficult it had been financially for her in a family of five sisters and two brothers. She wanted to explain how she always wished to go to college, but there was no money. She said she thought she always wanted to be a decorator or maybe an architect--she told us how she was steaming wall paper off the walls of her "incredibly old farm house" and each layer revealed a "different time and older and older styles of wall paper--I got a glimpse of older and older generations of moms. I felt like I was reaching back over time." Jennifer seemed smart, but was rough around the edges.

Liz is very typical of another sort of donor whom we meet at every seminar. Liz is a twenty-three year old college student extraordinaire. She’s a double major: sports medicine and psychology; she’s a member of the College soccer team; she belongs to many clubs and organizations; she’s been to “twenty-six of the fifty states” and wants to get a graduate degree in Health Psychology when “I’m around thirty.” She’d also like to get married someday, “but not now” and have at least “three kids.” As well as being physically active—she works out and runs at least three times a week--and socially very busy, she holds down a part-time job at the local deli because she’s paying her own way through school. At twenty-three, Liz has one more semester to earn a bachelor’s degree at a major state university.

Liz describes her family as “good looking and smart.” Her father is a businessman and her mother is a full-time mom. Neither of them went to college, but Liz and her two brothers and one sister are “all headed for that bachelor’s degree.” Liz does have a steady boyfriend with whom she is sexually active. “He supports my decision; it’s my body and I can do what I want with it. In fact, Nick will be my injector.” Liz has told her mother about the donation—“she’s okay with it and wishes she could be a donor, but she’s forty-five, but I think she looks like my sister.” Liz hasn’t told her father, who might “get upset about the Catholic stuff.” Although Liz was raised Catholic, she says, “I got all the good stuff, but none of the bad. I think what I am doing is really wonderful, not a sin at all. I won’t burn in hell for this.” When asked about what she would do if she found herself with an infertility problem when she was in her forties, Liz said, “I’d get a donor, what else?” Liz is clearly a risk-taker and is a donor “in part for the money, but more for the experience and to learn about my own fertility and to help some couple along the way.”

Who Are The Egg Donors?

WHO ARE DONORS: TWO TYPICAL PROFILES