Pregnancy Rates?

ctbride08

what are some average/good pregnancy rates for donors? Did you even bother getting this info? 

We're looking at 2 donors (the only red-heads available at the bank) and one is new so no reported pregnancies and the other has a rate of 10% - seems low, but i have nothing to compare it to...

2brides

No, I never asked.

Two*True

Personally I'm not looking at that.  At least not early on.  For me, I'd rather have less 'siblings' out there. 

thiswillbe

As long as our donor has at least one reported pregnancy, we're not worrying about pregnancy rates. IMO, I think pregnancy rates speak more to the fertility issues of the people being inseminated than the quality of the sperm. Now if there were a way to find the lesbian pregnancy rates with a particular donor's sperm, I might pay more attention.

bluedaisyus

i have no idea, but i do know that we had similar concerns with our two top choices. our re told us not to worry about it if someone didn't have any reported pregnancies, especially if they were a newer donor. i think maybe it would be a little more of a concern if they had been in the system longer, but do you know how many people have tried those particular donors and for how long, how many tries before switching up, etc?

sucess rate in general isn't that high, it's only around 20% per try, right? i also read somewhere recently that the average woman takes a year (or a little more?) to get pregnant. so, if 1 woman used that donor, and she got pregnant on the 10th try that would give him a 10% rate, which is still faster than the average, right? (ok, that didn't make me feel any better...) but, i'm sure there are many situations like ours, where we tried our first donor for three cycles and then switched to a new one. if we get pregnant on this try we'll have a 100% success rate with this donor, but only a 25% success rate overall--and because we switched, our first donor has a 0% success rate for us even though we might very well have been successful with him this time around. and our tries would affect his overall success rate. so...maybe your guy with 10% was the first choice for three people, but they switched after three tries and then the first try with another was successful! and: most of the people going through clinics are dealing with infertility, which means it's probably going to be longer and the success rates lower in general.

so some of that may be total bs and me just rambling, but i think there are a lot of variables and it's probably not something to really worry about.

ctbride08

hehe, thanks for the thoughts ladies

I agree that without the paramenters of the statistic, it isnt meaningful - i was just trying to get a feel for how it compares to others since our donor base is so tiny.  So, with your help, i've concluded that it doesnt really matter! at least not yet....

Its so interesting to see people's different points of view...i stumbled across a message board yesterday where many women (using the same bank we are) placed a very high priority on number of sucessful pregnancies. It gave me food for thought since we haven't discussed it much on here.

thiswillbe

I think the perspectives different people have also has to do with their potential donor pool. You're looking for redheads, and have 2 potential donors. We're looking for a black donor, and have 9 potential donors. With those limited options, we can't be as picky as someone who is choosing between hundreds and hundreds of donors. If I were trying to decide between hundreds of donors, maybe things like number of pregnancies would start to factor in a bit...

2brides

I agree. We were looking for a blond hair/blue eyed donor (L's coloring) which left us with about 2-4 choices per month.  From there we narrowed down based on medical history. That typically left us with 1-2 choices per month.

I also think it depends on how much you want to know about how many other 'siblings' are out there. We evidently have a very popular and very verile donor. I found a Yahoo site says that there way more kids born to this donor than I ever cared to know about. I haven't joined the group because while part of me is curious know if any of these kids look like my kids, there is a part of me who wants to stay ignorant to the fact and just think that my kids just have each other as siblings.

cookiemonster03

I haven't thought about it, but I imagine sperm donors are highly screened for THIER fertility, so the rates would be off anyway, assuming most users have IF problems..

2brides

they are screened, but among the 4 donors that we used, their post thaw rates varied significantly.  I don't know if this was based on the donor, the bank (freezing procedures), or the RE (thawing procedures) - I would guess a combination - but the variance was remarkable. (Not surprisingly we got pregnant by the donor with the highest count.)

thiswillbe

2brides:

they are screened, but among the 4 donors that we used, their post thaw rates varied significantly.  I don't know if this was based on the donor, the bank (freezing procedures), or the RE (thawing procedures) - I would guess a combination - but the variance was remarkable. (Not surprisingly we got pregnant by the donor with the highest count.)

I forget: did you try any of your donors more than once? I am wondering if the post-thaw specs change much from one vial to another of the same donor.

We were thinking of doing one initial ICI at the RE's office to figure out the post-thaw stats of our first donor, then doing a few months at home. Is it safe to assume that for a specific donor, the post-thaw stats stay about the same, vial to vial?

2brides

Yes, we used 4 donors in 9 tries. Two of the donors we tried 3x with, one we used 2x (there weren't any more samples available - they were some in quarentine, but we didn't want to wait), and then viola on the last one!

I really don't think there was much difference between the samples from the same donor (I can't really remember, but I don't remember thinking, "wow, that is a lot more/less than last month!"  When they gave us the post-thaw numbers of the last (ans successful) donor, we were shocked at how high they were.