Why California Cryobank

When Brit and I first began actively planning for our family, our first hurdle to overcome was figuring out the who, how, and where. Who would be our sperm donor? How would we find him? Where do we look?

Should we ask someone we know? Should we use a sperm bank? Although we did toy with the idea of using a known donor, we both felt strongly that using an accredited sperm bank would ultimately be in the best interest of us and our future kids. Why? Because we knew going third party would mean that the donors would be medically vetted and that all parties would be legally protected. 

The next hurdle was finding the right sperm bank. Surprisingly, there was a lot to choose from. There isn’t one universal bank for all. And luckily for us, living in Los Angeles gave us access to some very reputable ones quite literally at our fingertips. After hours of Google searches and phone and text conversations with our familial network, choosing California Cryobank (CCB) was one of the easier choices we would ultimately be making.

CCB has been around for more than 40 years and is an internationally known and reputable sperm bank. Their donor database is more than extensive, with only 1% of donor applicants being accepted. That means 99% of potential donors get rejected - they only offer the best of the best! Furthermore, CCB’s customer service team was always available and understanding, compassionate, and warm. They held our hand and made us feel “normal” in what we were anticipating being anything but.

Okay…so far we had figured out that we are going to use an unknown donor through CCB. The next obstacle for us was finding our perfect match. CCB has one of the largest and most diverse selection of donors in the world, giving us a plethora of options. So how did we narrow down the hundreds of options? We filtered donors based on height, hair color, and blood type. We are both 5’7 and the men in our family are all over 6’, so height was important to us. We all have brown hair and knew that we wanted our donor to match that, too. And most importantly, we wanted our donor to have the same blood type as one of us, in case there were ever circumstances where our children would need medical attention. This was the biggest factor for us. This narrowed our search to less than a dozen potential donors. We understand that there are a billion possibilities of DNA sequences and nothing was guaranteed, but that’s where we started. From there, we reviewed their medical histories, flipped through baby photos, and found our match. 

Once we agreed and picked our donor, we had to figure out how many vials we wanted. We were advised that the average vials needed per successful IUI with a fertile and healthy woman, was 5. And if we were committed to having the same donor for all of our children, that we would multiply 5 by the number of potential children we wanted. Well, in our dream world, we would have 4 children. That means 20 vials – and vials are not cheap. Thanks to our family and friends giving us a generous nest egg as wedding gifts a few years prior, we knew we saved specifically for sperm.

Fortunately for us, CCB is located just a few miles away from our fertility doctor. On the days leading up to each of our inseminations, we were able to call CCB ahead of time and pick up our vial of sperm and bring it to our doctor to prepare.

Between CCB’s global reputation, applicant screening process, and customer support, it was a no-brainer for us to choose them as our sperm bank. And now that we are on the other side of this parenthood journey, we are so excited and giddy to share with you access to a 90-day Level 2 subscription to CCB’s donor profiles with the promotion code SHARONMOMS.

Do you have more questions for us about our journey to motherhood? Send us a message! We’d love to hear from you and use your questions to help guide our next post.