Negative

Last Tuesday, I suddenly got a phone call from Dr. Stork's office. The nurse called me to let me know my blood test results and it turns out, everything is negative. Well, in case of the STDs that certainly is a good thing, but when it comes to my blood type and CMV status, maybe not so much...

I did a little research and it turns out that only 15% of all people are Rh negative. If the mother is negative and the father is positive, there is a chance that the child could be positive, too. This in turn could cause complications if the blood of the mother and the baby got interchanged during the pregnancy or birth. There are ways of reducing the risk with shots etc. but there still is a risk and mothers who are negative should consider to buy only sperm from donors that are also negative.

I talked to P. L., my friend the Power Latina, about it. She said that the same was the case in her family, where her mom is negative and her father is positive. Her brother is positive, but it all turned out okay. This was more than 35 years ago in Mexico, so she thinks, I should not worry too much about it.

But it is not only my Rh factor that is negative, but also my CMV status. CMV is a flu virus that almost all people have been exposed to in their life, usually via chicken pox, cold sores, or mono. Even though I had chicken pox as a child and I believe I also had cold sores before, I tested negative for CMV. I don't have any antibodies in my blood. Should I get exposed to the virus during pregnancy, or if the sperm is CMV positive, the baby could have developmental problems, and be born blind, deaf, etc. So, this is a serious risk to consider, too, when I make a decision about the sperm donor.

I really seem to be a rare kind of breed with a negative blood type and a negative CMV status. One of the sperm banks I looked into has about 300 donors, but only one of them has a negative blood type and a negative CMV status. He is not an open id donor and is brand new to the bank, so no pregnancies have been reported, yet.

It is already hard to find a donor that is negative in one area, but one that is negative in both areas drastically limits my choices. So, I will spend the next weeks trying to figure out what is important to me and which risks I am willing to take in all of this. I definitely have to look into more sperm banks.