I've Looked Through Almost 20,000 Egg Donor Profiles

What I've learned and what I wish I knew sooner

Okay, first of all — sorry I’ve been a little MIA lately.

I promise I have a really good reason!

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been looking through egg donor profiles. Which sounds completely normal and reasonable until I tell you that I’ve now looked through almost 20,000 of them… not even exaggerating… When the ADHD hyperfocus finds a target, there’s not much you can do about it! And mine is laser-pointed in only one direction.

Ryan knows how I get when I hyperfocus on something. So early on he made the very wise decision to let me have at it and bring the top profiles back to him once I’d, in his words, “gotten my crazy out.”

Honestly, probably the right call… lol

I am a little crazy about this, but it’s such a special and important decision, and I want to feel confident that when we finally choose someone, we’ve actually done the work.

Starting the Search Local

I started with local donors through Utah Fertility Center, which felt like the natural place to begin. Honestly, we feel really lucky to be working with them. Utah has a lot of healthy, educated women, and a lot of intended parents travel here specifically to work with this clinic because of its medical reputation. The team has been incredible to work with, and they gave us access to their donor pool after our initial consultation.

The first thing that surprised me when I started going through local profiles is that most of them only have baby photos. Because local donors are often donating for families nearby, some of them understandably want to protect their identity a little more, so there’s not as much information available right up front. If you’re interested in someone, you have to request more information from the clinic and then do a guided Zoom call where they walk you through medical history, family history, more photos from different stages of the donor’s life.

We found a few local profiles we’re interested in, and set up a meeting for more info.

How Egg Donor Agencies Differ

After that, I started exploring agencies.

Agencies work a little differently. There’s typically more information available upfront, including photos, videos, and essay questions. One thing that really surprised me was how much variance there is in how different agencies operate. Some basically hand you a database and say good luck. Others require you to fill out a pretty detailed profile about yourselves before you can even browse — personality, values, education, family background, interests, health history, etc. At some agencies, matching goes both ways. If you’re interested in a donor, she also has to feel good about working with you, too.

I really love that. Feels like it makes the whole thing feel more human.

The downside, however, is that I now have about twelve different accounts with random agencies across the country, which means I’ve filled out roughly twelve versions of “all about us” forms and get 12x more emails.

A few times I went through all of that and then found several profiles that felt really promising. But more often than not I did all that work only to realize we wouldn’t be interested in anyone in their database.

(Am I the only one who always quotes this obscure line from The Swan Princess?)

I Wish I Knew This Sooner

Eventually I found a service called Tulip Fertility that aggregates profiles from a lot of different agencies into one searchable database. I wasn’t sure about it at first because it costs $99 a month (there aren’t many moments in this process where you think, great, what this needs is another expense!) But it’s ended up saving me a lot of time. You put your information in once and can browse donors from agencies all over the country in one place, with filters for height, eye color, hair color, blood type, education, genetic screening, test scores, and ethnicity, and more.

This is when things really accelerated. They have over 20,000 donors listed and I’ve moved through well over half of them so far.

Donors that Stick Out

One of the most interesting parts of the process has been seeing how differently donors approach their profiles.

Some of them are incredible. They answer every question with real thought, they tell you why they decided to donate, they share things about themselves that make you feel like you actually know them a little. You can just tell they’re taking this seriously.

And then some people clearly typed their answers in about four minutes.

(Not real profiles, just an example of an agency page)

I’m not here to judge — this is a voluntary process and everyone approaches it differently. But I’ll be honest: every time I came across a profile that felt rushed, or had spelling errors in the first paragraph, I found myself moving on pretty quickly. This process requires an enormous amount of trust, and I feel like the small things communicate a lot about how someone approaches something that matters.

Building Out Our Top 10

After all of that, I finally narrowed the list down to about 250 donors. That’s when I pulled Ryan in and started showing him profiles. Together we’ve worked it down to around 100, and now we’re slowly building our final top ten.

Once we have that list, we’re planning an “Egg Donor Selection Night” — where we sit down with our families and go through the top ten together. We want to include the people who will help raise our kids and be in their lives for decades. They’re all in on this decision!

Coming Soon

There are already about five donors who I’m pretty sure will make that final list! I’ll share a little about their profiles in my next post— what stood out, what drew us to them, and why getting to this point has been so much harder and so much more meaningful than I ever expected.

Until then, wish us luck!! Gonna go bury myself in more profiles…