Sperm donation can make parenthood possible for many patients

Sometimes, patients need a little help from sperm donation to conceive. This type of third party reproduction can help single women, lesbian couples and heterosexual couples struggling with male infertility. Our Southern California fertility center has helped countless patients grow their families using this innovative fertility treatment.

How does a man become a sperm donor?

Before a man can become a sperm donor, he must go through rigorous testing and meet certain criteria to ensure he can donate healthy sperm.

The man will undergo a physical exam and testing for sexually transmitted and infectious diseases. After that, he will provide a semen sample to be analyzed for sperm count, motility (movement) and morphology (shape). Then, a sperm sample is frozen for six months and retested to ensure health and quality. This is true whether patients use a known sperm donor or an anonymous one from a sperm bank.

How sperm donation works

Before moving forward with sperm donation, you will need to decide whether you are using a known or an anonymous donor. The team at our Southern California fertility center can work with you to help make the best choice for your family.

After selecting your donor, your doctor will help you determine which treatment will be the most likely to help you conceive using donor sperm. He will make this determination based on the results of your fertility testing and your family-building goals. When it comes to sperm donation, two common treatments are intrauterine insemination (IUI) and in vitro fertilization (IVF).

• IUI is a simple procedure that involves using a catheter (a thin, flexible tube). The doctor inserts the washed and prepared donor sperm into the hopeful mother’s uterus. To prepare, the woman may take fertility medications.
• IVF is more complex. First, the woman takes fertility medications for ovarian stimulation. She then undergoes an outpatient egg retrieval procedure. Embryologists fertilize the eggs with the donor sperm in the laboratory before the fertility doctor transfers one of the resulting embryos to the hopeful mother’s uterus.

After both these procedures, the doctor will monitor the woman for pregnancy, until she takes a pregnancy test two weeks later. For most patients, donor sperm is a successful treatment.

To learn more about sperm donation and determine whether it’s a good fit for you, contact us. Our Southern California fertility center is happy to assist you on your journey to parenthood.