Wishing all dads out there a fantastic father’s day! Whether you are gay or straight, single or in a relationship, there are so many ways in which being a ‘dad’ can play an important role in a child’s life. You may be a donor wishing to stay in contact with a child like an ‘uncle figure’ or maybe you are co-parenting with a single woman or lesbian couple. Your family may have been created by fostering, adoption or even surrogacy. Whatever the process - one thing is for sure, that the journey to parenthood although not always easy, will have brought joy and love to your lives. We at Pride Angel have thousands of female members wishing to meet genuine sperm donors or co-parents willing to give the gift of life. Why not play a role in their child’s lives, whether it’s simply enabling a child to be able to send a father’s day card or even having regular contact with their dad. So if you think you can help someone create their dream of having a family and even achieve your own dream of becoming a ‘dad’ then why not register today for FREE with Pride Angel. Article: by Pride Angel 17th June 2012

What it is really like in a Fertility Clinic

I have just finished a photo shoot, something else I have never done before, but recently accepted as part of my "self awareness/maturing" process. With my hair done and makeup still on, sporting high heels and a smart dress, I ascend to the 10th floor of a Manhattan high-rise in a desirable neighborhood to the lobby of fertility heaven. My first shock comes when I notice that the majority of the patients in the waiting room have their partner with them. I'm handed a questionnaire that everyone else seems to have filled out at home. I stare at it, thinking to myself that I have no time to answer the endless questions that would require the presence of my husband. The thought crosses my mind that my husband barely remembers I'm doing this... he's somewhere on the other side of the world. I can't even reach him via phone. I remind myself that priorities in here are quite basic: If you want a child, than everything else can wait... I look around and I am aware of not exactly fitting the profile of the average person in the room. I have my wedding band and my engagement ring on. I look young, wealthy, calm and healthy, but I do not have my husband next to me and I'm leaving half of the questionnaire blank. The room is full of couples, mainly Jewish Orthodox ones, and single Asian women and young caucasian men. It's likely some of the single men and women are donors, I think, while the others are couples eager to have children. There are no light magazines to read like when you go to a nail salon, and the waiting area is quite crowded. Desperate to distract myself, I find a pamphlet on single motherhood that covers everything from adoption to IVF with donor sperm, but as a married woman, only half of it really applies to me. I find another pamphlet on fertility yoga. I don't think I have fertility problem for now, but until I go through all of the exams ahead, who knows? I pick up another one on the services offered by the center for couples dealing with infertility but this, too, doesn't necessarily apply to me... I realize how little I know about what's going on in my body. Am I fertile? Will I need to go through the extensive treatments described in the pamphlets that surround me? I feel like none of them speak to my situation. For now, I'm a "special" case, a new breed of woman... in a relationship and likely fertile, but freezing my eggs until the time feels right to have children. I'm not ready to be a mother, but I do not want to wake up one day and regret having played or let someone else play with my right to motherhood. Someone calls my name and I rise to meet her. Article: May 2012 www.huffingtonpost.com

Sperm donor who finds he has 70 biological children confesses to his fiancee

A lawyer who became a sperm donor and donated sperm to pay his way through college has learned that he has fathered an astonishing 70 children.
More than 15 of those have already attempted to contact 33-year-old Ben Seisler.

The sperm donor confessed to his fiancée as part of a new reality show, 'Sperm Donor', that aired on the Style Network on Tuesday.

Seisler donated sperm for three years while attending law school at George Mason, Virginia. He earned around $150 per donation.

He originally planned to remain anonymous but later joined an online registry called the Donor Sibling Registry that connects offspring and siblings to each other and their donors, Boston Globe reported.

During the reality show Seisler also comes face to face with two of his biological children, a boy and a girl.

The Boston lawyer said there is no 'road map' for the situation he is in now.

'It was kind of wild,' he said after meeting the children. 'On the one hand, these kids are biologically my kids. On the other hand they are not my kids. I didn't raise them. I have no control over how they are raised.'

View You Tube click, where sperm donor confesses to his fiancee You Tube.

Article: 29th September 2011 www.dailmail.co.uk

Read more about finding a known sperm donor, or donating sperm at www.prideangel.com

Three men talk about helping childless couples by donating sperm

Men willing to donate sperm help to create more than 800 babies in Britain every year through fertility clinics and hundreds more through personal arrangement – but now we are facing a shortage of "sperm donor daddies".
As many as 1 in every 6 people will experience fertility problems, and for many infertile couples, lesbian couples and single women – a sperm donor is the only way of achieving their dream of becoming a parent.

But as their identity is protected through fertility clinic donations, little is known about the men who make conception possible. Only the children they create are allowed to learn their names – and then not until their 18th birthday. Here, the 'Sun' newspaper talks to three men who have donated their sperm.

Ian Mann, 30
IAN, a gay pub quiz host from London, wanted to help childless couples but stopped donating after learning he carries the cystic fibrosis gene. "I got involved with sperm donating a few years ago when I was at the Manchester Pride Festival. "There was a stand for an organisation called Pride Angel which connects sperm and egg donors with infertile and same-sex couples. "I was at the age where I might have been thinking about having kids. "The fact is, I wasn't – but it got me thinking about how could I help.

"I signed up at the website for Pride Angel, which offers a completely free service, but for a while I did not connect with anyone I felt comfortable donating to. "You're put in direct contact with whoever you're considering and you're encouraged to keep in touch with your donor family. "Having a child is a huge commitment and I wanted to be certain whoever I was helping was going to be up to the job.

"Around the same time, I also started donating to the London Women's Clinic (LWC), a renowned IVF clinic on Harley Street. "I was warned that any children resulting from my donations could get in touch when they turned 18. It didn't faze me. "I figured that the chance of them looking me up was pretty slim. "Why would they bother when they had been brought up by two loving parents? "I was told my sperm were pretty strong, so everything seemed great. Then I had a screening by the LWC. "My jaw hit the floor when the results came back that I was carrying a dormant cystic fibrosis gene. "It meant that if my sperm was paired with an egg that had the same gene, the child would have cystic fibrosis.

"The odds were tiny but, of course, it's a chance no one wants to take. All my donations were destroyed and that was the end of that. "I was pretty depressed about it and spoke to my mum. She said there was no history of CF in our family. It was just one of those things. "Since then, I've got in touch with a couple of women through Pride Angel who are desperate to become mums. We're sussing each other out and so far it's going well. "So long as they get tested to make sure they're not CF carriers as well, my faulty gene won't be an issue. "I wish other men would consider being donors. There are so many people out there who would make great parents and just need a little help."

Pride Angel comments: The chance being a cystic fibrosis carrier is 1 in 25 people, so it relatively common. Many people will go through life being totally unaware of carrying the faulty gene, as it will not result in you having a child with cystic fibrosis unless you conceive with another person who in a carrier. When two people with the single mutation have a child, there is a 25% chance that the child will have CF, 50% chance that the child will be a carrier and 25% chance that the child with not be affected.

It is wonderful news to hear about men like Ian who are happy to help childless couples create the family they are longing for
To read more go to http://bit.ly/nOTqpp

Sperm donors desperately needed in Gold Coast Australia

DESPERATE couples and single women are being forced to import sperm from overseas to become parents because there are just eight registered donors on the Gold Coast.
The Gold Coast Bulletin can reveal the city's three fertility clinics Monash IVF, City Fertility and Queensland Fertility Group have only eight donors to cover a population of more than half a million.

Gold Coast fertility doctors believe changes to legislation have increased demand, but shortened supply. In 2005 laws changed allowing single women and same sex couples access to fertility treatments. The law also changed so that all Australian sperm donors were no longer able to remain anonymous.

Queensland Fertility Group Medical Director Dr Andrew Cary said about 400 of their patients statewide seek access to donor sperm each year, yet they only recruit about four donors a year.

''It's hard to retain donors as they are only allowed to create ten families, including their own and must now consent to having their identity released to any children who arise from the use of their sperm once the child reaches 18,'' he said.

''Due to this, less than 20 percent of potential donors who make initial inquires now go through to becoming registered donors.'' Gold Coast fertility clinics are interested in speaking with anyone who is considering donating sperm.

Sperm donor's altruistic reasons for helping women have children

Simon has two sons, aged 15 and 13, from a failed marriage, who live with him, and a six-year-old daughter from a later broken relationship, who lives with her mother. The 37-year-old divorced former business manager thinks he has a further five children, aged between two months and six years, living in Britain and another eight in countries including Australia, South Africa, Poland and Spain. He admits it could be more, but he plays no part in their upbringing — emotionally or financially — and has absolutely no desire to.
‘If, when they turn 18, they turn up at my door wanting to know who I am, then they would be more than welcome,’ he says blithely. ‘But I am not their father in the true sense of the word and never will be.’ Simon is a freelance sperm donor who offers what he jokingly calls his ‘magic potion’ over the internet to women desperate for children.

They make contact on various internet forums, where women post adverts seeking sperm donors or respond to his posts offering his services. He says the majority of his clients — more than 50 per cent — are lesbian couples, around 40 per cent are single women hoping to beat the biological clock and the rest are heterosexual couples where the man is infertile.

Simon is doing nothing illegal. By offering fresh instead of frozen sperm, his activities fall outside the regulations laid down by the Human Fertilisation And Embryology Authority, which governs licensed sperm banks.

'I'm not doing it for the money. I want to help people who can't afford to use a fertility clinic' Countless appointments have been suddenly postponed because one of Simon’s ladies is ovulating and he is urgently required elsewhere. One day he’s in Bognor Regis on the South Coast; the next in Sheffield, the day after he’s needed in Colchester, Essex. On his travels, he carries his ‘kit’ — a sterile plastic pot in which to deposit his sperm and some sterile syringes for the women to inseminate themselves with, without needing a turkey baster.

But if you were desperate for a child, would Simon’s DNA appeal? A tall, lean, friendly man opens the door to a small, messy detached house littered with his sons’ musical instruments and other teenage detritus. Blond and blue-eyed, the initial impression is of a slightly flaky hippy; an unconventional laid-back character who prefers life in the slow lane.

But appearances can be deceptive. ‘I don’t smoke, I don’t take drugs, I hardly drink and we don’t have junk food in the house. I won’t even eat sausages,’ he says sipping on fresh mint tea. A health and fitness fanatic, he swims, runs and is converting his garage into a gym. His body is clearly a temple. Single since his last relationship broke down last year, he’s lacked the time and energy to commit to another. With two broken relationships behind him, he’s not sure if he’s cut out for marriage.

He used to be the manager of an award-winning aromatherapy firm, which was founded by his Greek-born mother, Franzesca. Simon, who was privately educated and studied aeroplane mechanics in Canada after school, held the position for eight years until he decided he didn’t want to work 65-hour weeks.

Now, he does not work and lives frugally, eking out the savings he amassed during his business career. Simon’s house is owned by his parents, who have retired abroad, so there is no mortgage to pay. He claims to charge around £50 for each sperm donation, plus his expenses — little more than he’d receive if he donated through a clinic. So why bother?

‘I’m not doing it for the money,’ he says. ‘I want to help people who can’t afford to use a fertility clinic. My family, including my parents, know about the sperm donation. My father, who paid a fair amount for my education, keeps saying: “I want my money back.” ’ Given that Simon is not prone to self-analysis, it is hard to unravel what his motives are for becoming a freelance sperm donor. What’s in it for him?

‘I’d read there was a shortage of sperm donors and, though I had two boys, I’d always wanted three kids, so it seemed a good idea.’ Simon applied to an NHS fertility clinic attached to a teaching hospital in London and after undergoing a barrage of medical tests to ensure he carried no sexual or hereditary diseases, he was accepted as a donor. His GP records were also checked for a history of psychiatric illness.

He was paid £20 plus expenses each time, but has no idea if any of this sperm — screened and then frozen for storage — produced any children. When, in 2002, Simon met his last partner, a Korean languages student, he put the sperm donation on hold, but resumed it shortly after the birth of their daughter. He says this was with his partner’s blessing, but not long after, she moved out with their little girl. ‘She didn’t get on with my sons and it was easier for everyone if we lived apart, but we were still together,’ explains Simon. ‘Then she met someone else.’

Simon denies it was a mid-life crisis that drew him back to sperm donation. He says he does not quiz his clients as to why they want children and would only rule someone out if they were obviously mentally unstable. 'It's better than getting pregnant by a stranger in a nightclub. You can’t ask about sexual health or hereditary diseases in those circumstances, can you?'

To read more go to http://bit.ly/od7v8Q

The HFEA is launching a public consultation about sperm and egg donation: have your say

The HFEA is launching a public consultation about sperm and egg donation. The HFEA believes that the current level of remuneration – £250 per donation for "reasonable expenses" and loss of earnings may but deterring donors.
One in seven British couples have problems conceiving and the demand from infertile, single and gay couples for donated eggs and sperm is steadily rising.

The consultation will focus on three main areas of policy:

:The level of compensation for donors
:The number of families a donor can help to create
:Family donation

Prof Lisa Jardine, Chair of the HFEA said:

‘The donation of sperm and eggs is a generous act and donors have helped many thousands of people achieve their dream of having a child. We know that many people are facing long waiting lists at clinics because of a shortage of donors. We want to ensure that we have the best policies in place so that there are no unnecessary barriers in the way of those wishing to donate whilst protecting those who are born as a result of donation.’

Compensation for donors
Payment for donation is not allowed by law. It does, however, allow compensation for inconvenience, in addition to expenses and loss of earnings. Our current policy is designed to ensure that donors are not out of pocket by donating but that they do not gain financially from it. We currently allow donors to be compensated for expenses and loss of earning, but not for inconvenience.

Feedback from clinics, however, shows that not only do some donors end up out of pocket, but the system is more complex than it needs to be. We are therefore seeking views about whether clinics should offer a lump sum, rather than reimbursing for actual expenses.

Another question in the consultation is whether the HFEA should introduce compensation for inconvenience, as some other European countries do. This move may remove a barrier to donation, but we have to be careful that it does not create a financial incentive to donate. Other countries have different schemes in place. For example, in Denmark, sperm donors receive 50–150 Euros (£45-£135) for the examination, use of their time and travel expenses. In Spain, egg donors are compensated 900 Euros (around £765) whereas sperm donors are compensated 45 Euros (around £40) per valid sample they produce. This is a blanket fee for loss of earnings, expenses and inconvenience.

Another key question for the consultation is issue of egg sharing, where patients donate their eggs in return for a reduction in the cost of their treatment.

The number of families a donor can help to create
The HFEA set a limit on the number of families one donor’s eggs or sperm can be used to help create. The current limit is ten families. This limit minimises the possibility of two children from the same donor having a relationship with each other without knowing they are genetically related. It also addresses the perceived needs of donor conceived people and their parents in maintaining a relatively small number of siblings.

The HFEA are seeking views on what the family limit should be, to ensure the right balance is struck between increasing the availability of donated eggs and sperm and protecting the interests of donors and donor-conceived people.

Family donation
Family donation includes many different types of donation relationships, some more common than others. Donation between sisters, cousins and brothers are the most common donation relationship. The HFEA have also had reports of mother to daughter, daughter to mother, father to son and son to father.

Receiving sperm or eggs from a family member is an attractive option for some as it maintains a genetic link between the recipient and any child born as a result. It can also avoid long waiting lists at fertility clinics.

Donation of this kind can, however, raise some social and ethical issues such as unusual genetic and social relationships. For example, if a woman donates an egg to her sister she will be the genetic mother and social aunt of any child born as a result.

There are a number of options for regulation of family donation including a ban on the mixing of sperm and eggs between close genetic relatives (those who would otherwise be banned from having sex with each other) or only ban the mixing of sperm and eggs between genetic relatives.

The HFEA could also issue additional best practice guidance to clinics or ask them to have a strategy in place to handle cases of family donation.

How to participate
People can share their views through a series of questionnaires on the consultation pages of the HFEA's website. They will also be holding a series of workshops with patients, donors, parents of donors conceived people, as well as those who are donor conceived. The HFEA will also be consulting with clinics.

The HFEA wish to hear a wide range of views both from those directly affected and those who are interested in the issues. The consultation ends on April 17 and decisions will be made at the Authority meeting in July.

To take part and have your say, follow this link www.hfea.gov.uk

To read more about gay parenting, sperm and egg donation visit www.prideangel.com

To read more go to http://bit.ly/gggIEO

Secret sperm donor donated sperm to his aunt and lesbian partner

A 15-year old boy secretly donated sperm to his aunt's lesbian partner so they could have children, his parents have discovered.
Charlie Lowden's parents Charles and Lynn are now coming to terms with the fact that the two children they considered to be their nephew and niece are actually their biological grandchildren.

They only discovered the family secret last December after Charlie, 20, died following a routine hernia operation.

After his death it emerged that several years previously he offered to donate sperm - unofficially - to his aunt Sarah Ashman, now 40, who is his mother's younger sister, and her partner Claire, now 30.

He knew they had wanted to have a baby, but Claire had suffered a miscarriage after becoming pregnant by another donor. Claire Ashman, a beautician from Choppington in Northumberland, subsequently gave birth to a boy, Carlton, now five.

Three years later they asked him to donate again, which he did, resulting in Sarah, who is now two.

The lesbian couple agreed to keep Charlie's true identity as the father under wraps. However, his death forced his aunt to confess the situation to her sister.

To read more go to http://bit.ly/h1qhNo

Sperm donors deserve more praise

A FRIEND recently revealed he had fathered a baby. No cigars though, just a carefully worded statement. "I have been told there is a pregnancy, but I don't know the mother, or when the baby will be born."
Say again? My friend explained that after 20 years of thinking about it, he had become a sperm donor. Which made the whole thing a bit tricky. Is a pregnancy something a donor also gets to celebrate?

My friend saw my dilemma and said he wasn't going to have children of his own and at least now he would have the satisfaction of knowing he had helped a family achieve its dream.

That is a generosity of spirit I hadn't considered before. We often sing the praises of organ donors, but who gives thanks to the sperm donors?

My friend said the journey wasn't easy and there were the doubts: "Am I up to the job fertility-wise? Will I feel too old if a child seeks contact 20 years later? What would my partner and family think about it?"

He admitted it was a tug on the heartstrings knowing that he would never be more than a donor number and that another man would be the father of any children.

But just the same, he gained a lot of satisfaction from the thought that any parent who went down the track of IVF was "OK in my books".

"Full marks to any man who consents to accept donor sperm as part of his efforts to become a father. And praise to his partner for helping him through such a time," he said.

I was so touched by his motivation and how deeply he had considered all the factors and yet I think most of us take the whole process of sperm donation for something to even snigger about, to our shame. The fact is many IVF clinics desperately need more donors.

You need to be altruistic -- as there is no payment -- and committed, because new laws now require a lot more effort. And, disappointingly, all accessing IVF must now have criminal record checks and counselling sessions


To read more go to http://bit.ly/fhX5hn

Donating sperm - Why do men choose to donate?

It takes just minutes, but the emotional consequences of donating sperm can last for years. So what makes men do it? By Alice-Azania Jarvis, The Independent.
Sperm is a hot commodity in 21st-century Britain. Women will travel miles to find it and pay thousands to access it. Obtaining a donation from the European Sperm Bank – which is to say pursuing the standard, NHS-endorsed option of licensed donation – can cost upwards of £2,500. That's before diagnostic testing, treatment costs, and "pregnancy slot" bookings are taken into account. That's £2,500 for three, thumb-sized vials of frozen semen – and it might not be enough.

Treatment could be unsuccessful, at least the first time around. It might be a one-off, or it might a recurring problem. It might not even be possible to buy a donation. Demand for those frozen vials dwarfs availability, and the result is a system in which eligibility is strictly regulated.

Mark Jackson first learned of the sperm shortage six years ago. Sitting at his computer, reading news of the Boxing Day tsunami, he was made aware of his own mortality. “I realised that you could be wiped off the earth without having left any impact,” he reflects. “My eye was caught by a ticker running across the screen. It said that there was a shortage of gamete donations. I didn’t even know what that was, but I clicked on the link. I realised that maybe I could make a difference after all.”

Since then, his sperm has been used to “help” two families and Jackson has become a trustee of the National Gamete Donation Trust (NGDT). He is one of almost 500 registered donors in the UK, sharing his sperm via the 138 licensed clinics around the country. In 2005, when British law changed to allow donors’ offspring to learn, on turning 18, the identity of their father, that number was widely predicted to drop off. Suddenly, the prospect was raised of biological sons or daughters rocking up on donors’ doorsteps. It’s a scenario soon to be played out on the big screen, thanks to US comedy The Kids Are All Right, and it would be enough – sceptics reasoned – to turn many men off their trips to the fertility clinic.

To read more go to http://bit.ly/bP4xJ2

Been there, donated sperm and got the T-shirt

Should egg and sperm donors be rewarded with souvenir mugs and T-shirts? An independent think tank has launched a consultation to consider this and other wide-ranging ideas for increasing donations. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics will also canvass public and professional views on the consequences of allowing body tissues and organs to be openly sold and traded.
'There's a real demand for bodily material that's simply not being met. Demand significantly exceeds supply', said Dame Marilyn Strathern, professor of social anthropology at Cambridge University, who is leading the consultation working party.

Other ideas to be considered include: easing laws prohibiting the collection of eggs from dead people; helping recipients and donors to exchange thanks or tokens of appreciation; and improving technologies for saving organs and tissues from those who die outside hospital. According to Management in Practice, they will also look at 'presumed consent' systems, 'thank you' letters and certificates.

'Perhaps we should accept that we can only do so much to meet the ever increasing demand', said Professor Strathern in a Nuffield Council press release. 'We also need to think about the morality of pressing people to donate their bodily material. Offering payment or other incentives may encourage people to take risks or go against their beliefs in a way they would not have otherwise done'.

To find out more information go to
http://bit.ly/bL4opJ

Confessions of a Sperm DOnor

‘The nurse handed me a plastic jar and led me to a small room. There was a TV showing a porn film...’
Hospital workers hustle past, oblivious. They’ve seen it a thousand times. I’m standing outside the delivery room, a newborn swathed in a blanket in my arms. If there’s an amazed look on my face, it’s because the child is my first. The hitherto hypothetical being is now embodied in precise measurements: she weighs 8lb 1oz; she is 20in long; her head, which fits into my hand, has a circumference of 14in; she was born at 8.39pm; she is a girl. When she screws up her face against the hospital’s fluorescent lights, I instinctively shield her eyes.

Wind back three years to April 2007. I was a single guy living in a flat by the beach. I had just bought a motorcycle. During the day I worked at a magazine, while after hours I was writing a novel. One Sunday night, I came home, switched on the computer and received an e-mail from an old friend:

“Hi gorgeous family & friends, “For the first time in my life I can’t call, e-mail or text you individually thus the group e-mail. You may or may not have heard that I’m heading to Sydney to get treatment for breast cancer on Monday. It’s stage 1 and they have caught it early but apparently quite aggressive so seems I’m in for a bit of chemo.”

I was 11 years old when we met, on a family holiday at a ski lodge in the Snowy Mountains. Tina was 13, the second of four kids. She had thick black curls above a ready smile and sharp blue eyes. Her father was a sheep farmer who, when I was 14, slaughtered a lamb in the shed, cut out its beating heart and handed it to me. By then we were close family friends.

Tina grew up to become a trader in Hong Kong, from where she sent the e-mail.

My reply felt unequal to the situation: “What a shock. Thinking of you. Will help in any way I can.”

Two days later, Tina replied: “I have no idea how to phrase or approach this so am going to come straight out with it. Would you consider sperm donation?

“I don’t want you to feel pressure to do this just because I am sick. It would have to be something in principle you felt happy to do.”

OK, there it is – right there on the table.

“It felt like a frozen pea,” she said of the first lump she’d felt on her breast early one morning, dressing for work. We were sitting on a cliff overlooking the sea. The swell was rolling in, in long, tidy lines. The sun was out. Tina smiled a lot, though her smile seemed unnaturally fixed. She’d had a lumpectomy ten days previously, and her doctors had said that she had “clear margins”, meaning they’d found no cancer in the tissue surrounding the tumours they had removed. But it was a high-grade cancer, and they were putting her on an aggressive course of chemotherapy.

I was frightened. If my oldest friends were getting cancer, why not me? And death had been on my mind anyway: my father had died suddenly of a heart attack the previous year. But I knew my fear was irrational. Tina’s wasn’t.

“I’m worried the chemo will fry my eggs,” she said. “I want an insurance policy.” The fertility specialist had told her that freezing eggs was a waste of time. Embryos are a lot hardier. But she didn’t have time to find an anonymous donor. There was (and still is) a severe donor-sperm shortage in Australia. You can spend years waiting. Her oncologist had agreed to delay the chemo only long enough for her to have one period: as soon as she started menstruating, she needed to extract the eggs, fertilise them and freeze the embryos. Then she had to start chemo.

If I agreed, she said, the possibility of it resulting in a baby was remote. First, there was the cancer: she wasn’t in the clear yet, and she wouldn’t know more until after the chemo and radiation therapy. Then, there was the fallibility of IVF: plenty of things could go wrong, especially since we only had one shot at it.

But even with the long odds, I knew it could lead to a baby. I thought about my beachside pad, the draft of my novel, my motorcycle. I valued my bachelor life. Tina said that in the unlikely event that the baby was born, she’d ask nothing of me. I could remain anonymous if I wanted to.

I meant it when I offered to help. I tried to imagine how I would be with cancer. What would be my priorities? What would I hope for?

My decision boiled down to this: baby or no baby, I knew I could live with myself if I helped her. I didn’t want to face the feeling that would follow turning down a friend in serious trouble. Plus, I was flattered.

Not that I had reason to be. She was asking me because I was single, straight and healthy – a rare hat trick in Sydney. She planned to recover, then meet a man and have babies the old-fashioned way. But just in case, knowing the embryos would be there, frozen in nitrogen, while the cancer-killing drugs polluted her body, would give her something to hope for.

Ten days later, I was in the IVF clinic. A nurse handed me a plastic sample jar and led me to a small, windowless room in the centre of the building. There was a TV showing a porn film, a side table with porn magazines and a box of tissues on it, and, aptly, a La-Z-boy recliner. A button on the wall had a sign next to it that read, “Press here when you have produced a sample and a scientist will collect it.” I felt like the king bee in the royal cell of a gender-flipped hive.

The IVF was successful. I wondered at the scientists in their lab, orchestrating on behalf of total strangers a phenomenon that usually happens in intimacy, then going to lunch. They froze three of our embryos and five of Tina’s eggs in nitrogen.

First Tina’s hair went. Then her eyebrows. Then her eyelashes. After four months of chemo, Tina did seven weeks of radiation therapy. Then she went skiing.

Meanwhile, I had started dating a woman and was discovering consequences to what I’d done that I hadn’t anticipated. My mother had warned me that the embryos would be an issue for other women in my life, but I hadn’t believed her. I was sure they’d see the bigger picture.

In January 2008 – eight months after I’d donated – I got an e-mail from Colorado. Tina had had her first period since the clinic. She’d beaten the cancer and she was ovulating. Her hair grew back, black and curly. She came back to Sydney and met someone. In October, she found out she was pregnant. I was off the hook.

Three months later, I received another e-mail: the baby had a chromosomal disorder. Tina had been through too much; she decided to terminate. But it cost her dearly. She went into a meltdown. The boyfriend was out of the picture. She asked if she could use her insurance policy – the embryos made with the pre-chemo eggs.

My relationship with my girlfriend had deteriorated by then, and the embryos had become a bone of contention (we split not long after). And quite apart from that, I was terrified of having a baby.

I didn’t have to do it. If I said no, Tina could try thawing her pre-chemo eggs and looking for an anonymous donor. But I remembered what the fertility specialist had said. You need embryos.

My generation is smarter, freer and probably happier than my parents’. But there is one torment unique to us, or at least half of us: all those single women approaching 40 and terrified by the prospect of never having children. Think about that for a moment. By virtue of being a man, I’ve had the time to travel the world, try one profession and then another, go back to university, and remain a bachelor as long as I like, knowing that whenever I’m ready to settle down, I can. I understood why so many women in Sydney were becoming choice mothers.

I considered Tina’s situation. She had courage and determination. She had a successful career and owned a nice house where she could raise a child. She was close to her sister, who had agreed to adopt the child if the cancer returned and the worst happened. Most of all, I knew that the baby would be born into welcoming arms and excellent, if unusual, circumstances. I thought about the amity between us and went with my gut feeling. Now I had nine months to put some order into my thoughts and decide what role I wanted to play in the child’s life.

The easiest line to take was to call it her baby. I could tell myself I’d done a favour for a friend in need, get a pat on the back and step out of the picture.

Then, there was the godfather line. Tina would parent the child, but I’d be there at the periphery. That seemed the fairest deal – she got the child she wanted and I got a bit part. Friends of mine, fathers, said, only half-jokingly, that I’d have the best of both worlds: all the pride of being a father without ever having to change a nappy.

But how far out was this periphery? The “godfather” analogy falls down under scrutiny. What was I planning to do, buy the kid a subscription to National Geographic and phone on his birthday for the next 18 years? I realised that I had nothing to pattern after.

I had to work it out for myself. Three months passed. I flipped the whole thing around and tried to imagine it from the child’s perspective. On a piece of paper, I made a list of things I would want from my father, were I a child. I wrote down “loved”, “valued”, “protected”. I wrote down the word “conversation” and stared at it a while. When I was 28, I had called my father some names in anger. We didn’t speak for years. Then he died suddenly. Conversation seemed important. Tina was now in her second trimester. Friends were intensely curious. Men especially asked, “What’s the legal situation?” The legal situation was that when the child was born, Tina would leave the father’s name off the birth certificate. If I wanted to, I could put it in later. As far as the government was concerned, she was a single parent. Still, my name was all over the IVF documentation. People suggested I get something in writing from her. I told them we had done everything in the spirit of friendship. “Friendships sour,” they said.

On the web, I found cases where the relationship between a donor and a recipient had soured. And I knew from experience that we have it in us to spit poison at one another – my parents’ divorce had been one of the most toxic events of my life.

Despite that, I didn’t want a contract. We weren’t dealing with a commodity here. The media always report it when donors and recipients turn against each other, but never when things work out. Tina and I understood one another perfectly. She had assumed financial responsibility from the start, that day on the cliff. There had never been any question on that front. She was happy for me to have as much or as little engagement with the kid as I wanted. The only thing she asked was that whatever I decided to do, I do it consistently, for the child’s sake. That made sense to me. There’s an old gag: how do you make God laugh? Tell Him your plans. The baby was due in early February. In January, I fell in love.

I made sure my new partner met the woman carrying my child. If it was a deal-breaker, it was better to find out now. My partner wasn’t thrilled, but to her eternal credit, she could see the bigger picture. Her first question was, of course, what role are you going to play?

The answer came on February 9, when I arrived at the hospital half an hour after Tina had given birth. Donors are less prepared than most men for what happens to you when you meet your child. I know now that what you feel when you become a father is beyond the understanding of non-fathers. It’s difficult to put into words. It feels like your being billows out from you like a womb. You become larger. All the questions that had plagued me for nine months seemed irrelevant. All the intellectual disciplines – ethics, sociology, psychology – that frame those questions seemed profane. They deal in abstractions, whereas my child was in the world. She weighed 8lb 1oz and measured 20in. She had a name: Sabine. I held her in my arms and knew that I was meeting a witness to my life and to its worth. I felt I had to examine more fully what I believe. I knew I loved her. I thought of my father and the troubles we’d had. I shielded her eyes from the light.

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