Gay Family Options .org   

• What's So Great About this Web Site?  Why Should I Post and Pay for an Ad?
• Why are you Providing and Maintaining This Web Site?
• Why is There a Fee for Posting a Parenting Ad?
• Can I Put a Banner on Your Site and Pay You for Advertising?
• How Long Will My Ad Stay Up Once It's Posted?
• How Long Can I Expect to Need My Ad?
• How Can I Get a Photo into My Ad?
• How Could I Help Support This Site?
• How Do I Buy My Ad?
• What are Techniques for Alternative Insemination at Home?
• What Tests Should Our Donor Have?
• Who Pays for the Medical Tests?
• Can I Have My Donor Ship his Sperm to My Home?
• Do You Have Any Medical Background?
• Can My Partner Carry My Fertilized Egg?

What's So Great About this Web Site?  Why Should I Post and Pay for an Ad Here?

• Because this site gets results.  If you post an ad here, you will get responses.
• There are no subscription fees - you can keep your ad posted for as long as you need to. Other sites charge either the posters of the ad or the people who want to respond to the ads a recurring monthly subscription fee. With this site, you pay for your ad one time and it stays up for a minimum of 3 years or until you are ready to take it down.
• Because responding to your ad is free, you get a larger pool of people to choose from.

Why are you Providing and Maintaining This Web Site?

Because of all the trouble my partner and I had finding a sperm donor. We lived in a small city and didn't have any gay male friends at the time. We used to cruise the gay male bulletin boards to try and find someone. We finally found a site similar to this one wherein we found our donor.

Why is There a Fee for Posting a Parenting Ad?

As most of you know, I started out posting parenting ads for free. There are several reasons I started to charge a fee for posting an ad:

• The ad posting/deleting and maintenance time I spend on the site is about 4 hours a week. That's 10% of a full-time work week!
  
  
• The cost of the Gay Family Options domain and web hosting has come out of my own pocket thus far. The fee for an ad is to reimburse me for my expenses and time required to maintain the site. Also, the nominal fee I charge for posting an ad means I don't have to use advertising to pay for the site. I really don't like to visit sites that have pop-up or obnoxious blinking advertisements and I want to keep this site free of that sort of thing.
  
  
• When my partner and I were looking for a donor, we would have gladly donated the $10.75 I'm asking to post an ad. I can't tell you how many hours I/we spent surfing through gay male bulletin boards hoping against odds that we'd find someone suitable, nearby and interested in helping out.

Can I Put a Banner on Your Site and Pay You for Advertising?

No.  Don't even ask.  If I like your site or organization, however, I may put a link to your site on my links page.

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How Long Will My Ad Stay Up Once It's Posted?

Three years, unless you contact me and ask for an extension. There is no cost for extending the time your ad is posted. The 3 year time designation is to keep the ads and ad information current.

How Long Can I Expect to Need My Ad?

Most people keep their ads up about 1-2 years, as this is how long it usually takes to find a co-parent and then conceive. Keep in mind that the average time it takes to conceive is 6 months. Some people have more stringent criteria than others and have had their ads up for more than two years. However, I've had people write to have their ad taken down in as little as 2 months because they were already 1 month pregnant!

How Can I Get a Photo into My Ad?

You can attach a picture to a separate e-mail: support@gayfamilyoptions.org. Just be sure and give me enough information so I can find your ad. i.e. Country, State, City, reply-to e-mail address.

How Could I Help Support This Site?

That's an easy one. Tell any friends who may be looking for a co-parent situation about this site!

How Do I Buy My Ad?

To buy from 2Checkout.com: Buy Now

Or use Paypal by sending payment to support@gayfamilyoptions.org.

What are Techniques for Alternative Insemination at Home?

First, obtain a few 5cc syringes and specimen cups. Don't use a syringe larger than 5cc; it's not necessary. Sperm sample volumes range from .5cc to 4cc, with an average of about 1cc to 2cc. Also, in case you're wondering, don't use a needle with the syringe. It is dangerous and would likely damage the sperm, not to mention you!

The syringe and specimen container should be clean and dry. If you wash and re-use them, be sure there are absolutely no water droplets left anywhere. If you have to, use a blow dryer to insure this before you use them because water droplets will rupture and kill the sperm.

The following is what we learned from our inseminations with the physician by the non-inseminee watching and asking questions.

• When you get your specimen, draw it into the syringe very slowly to avoid damaging the sperm. The same idea applies when you insert the semen into the vagina.
• Place the semen deep into the vagina, but do not try to place the semen directly into the cervical opening. If the uterus gets too much at once, the prostaglandins in the semen will cause the uterus to contract and expel the sperm.
• After the sample is in place, lay with your hips elevated by placing a pillow or two underneath your bottom-side. Half an hour is good, but longer is better.

That's it! This method worked for us - three times!

What Tests Should Our Donor Have?

You can be as thorough as you want. On the advice of our physician, we asked our donor to bring results of the following tests:

• ABO-Rh blood typing
• Chlamydia by PCR
• Cytomegalovirus (CMV) Antibody
• Gonorrhea
• Hepatitis B surface Antigen
• Hepatitis B core Antibody
• Hepatitis C Viral Antibody
• HIV Antibody (AIDS test)
• HTLV-1 Antibody
• RPR (syphilis)
• Semen analysis (count, motility, morphology)

Additional tests you could ask for are:

• ALT(SGPT)
• Canavan disease carrier screening *
• Chemistry panel
• Complete blood count (CBC)
• Cystic fibrosis carrier screening
• Fanconi anemia carrier screening*
• Gaucher disease carrier screening*
• Niemann-Pick disease carrier screening*
• Sickle cell disease carrier testing***
• Tay-sachs disease carrier testing**
• Urinalysis

    * For donors with Jewish ancestry.
  ** For donors with Jewish or French Canadian ancestry.
*** For donors with African American / African ancestry.

To be as thorough as possible, you should consult with your own personal physician regarding pre-insemination screening.  Also, don't think being of a certain race excludes you from being a carrier of a disease more common with another race.  Here is an email received from a site patron:

"Hi, I just wanted to send you a suggestion  for your site.  I am of Caribbean African American descent and I just went through the process of genetic testing.   I followed the suggested tests on your site, and to my surprise - thank god my doctor is thorough - I found out that I am a carrier of TAY SACHS.  To my surprise, and my doctor's, we would never think I would test positive for TAY-SACHS.   Well here is my suggestion - you may want to add African American to your list for TAY-SACHS test because someone like me may not care about the race of their donor and not think to do this test. "

Who Pays for the Medical Tests?

Luckily, our donor has medical insurance which paid for most of the tests we asked for. He paid his own insurance co-pays which was very nice. If your donor does not have medical insurance, a cheap way to get an HIV test is to go through your local health department. Who pays for what will have to be decided and agreed upon between you and your donor.

Can I Have My Donor Ship his Sperm to My Home?

Yes. The Bio-Tranz^TM container is designed to cool semen to approximately 5 degrees Celsius for shipping purposes all over the United States. You can get more information at http://www.zdlinc.com/ship.html.

Do You Have Any Medical Background?

Some. I have a bachelor's degree in biology and a post-graduate certificate in cytology, making me a certified cytotechnologist. Huh? What's that? You can find out more about what I do here. This page contains useful information if you've ever had an abnormal pap smear or just want to know about pap smears in general and who evaluates them.

Can My Partner Carry My Fertilized Egg?

There are infertility specialists who are willing to harvest an egg from one woman, fertilize it with donor sperm and implant it into another woman's uterus. This procedure is known as In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) and has been used for many years by fertility centers.

The procedure is very costly, however, running $7,000 - $10,000 per egg transfer, with about a 30% success rate each time. It also involves the use of fertility drugs, which bear some risks to the user.

Here is a site I found on the net that allows you to search for an IVF doctor in your area: http://www.infertilitydocshop.com/. Another site for information is http://www.ivf.com/. You could also do a search for IVF using google to get a zillion more resources than I could list here.

If you can think of a question that should be posted here or just have a question you'd like to ask, you can submit your question to support@gayfamilyoptions.org.