Hi everyone,
This week we bring you an unconventional shopping guide.
Sperm banks, apps, legal contracts, acquaintances ghosting after being asked for a “sample” — this is modern parenthood, unpartnered. Friend of the pod, Erin Crapser, breaks down exactly how she sourced sperm (spoiler: not from a bank) and built a family without waiting around for a gay bestie to materialize at her local gym. She also shares helpful resources at the end, in case you or someone you know is browsing for sperm.
Here for all your shopping needs,The Prism Team
Erin Crapser builds and markets technology products. She also enjoys reading print periodicals, eating pupusas at the farmers market, and taking pictures of insane bumper stickers.
One thing that makes Erin feel well: Taking a walk around the block.
It’s giving sperm.
I became a solo parent using sperm from a guy I connected with on an app whose tagline is: Find People, Make Babies.
It was an educational, unconventional and ultimately heartwarming journey to get there. Some people have always known they wanted to have a kid. Others (like me) stumble upon this realization after decades of dating, marriage, divorce, and a global pandemic. In March 2020, I left my NYC studio apartment for my mom’s house in LA (s/o to Jaja the maintenance guy who kept my yucca tree alive for six months). A lot of reflection during masked neighborhood walks led to the realization that my family was one of the few bright lights in an otherwise dark time, and I wanted to expand our ranks. So I decided to have a child.
Approaching 40, my options were: baby with someone I didn’t want to have a baby with or baby alone. It’s a familiar scenario, but I took a less familiar path. And I get asked about it a lot. So here’s how my quest unfolded, in case it’s useful to you, your friend, or your cousin’s college roommate.
Path 1 - Find a (romantic or platonic) partnerI sought romance by attacking the apps and doing my hair before trips to the grocery store “just in case.” I was also open to parenting with non-romantic partners (I knew a few straight female/gay male couples raising kids together — the setup resembles an amicable divorce with shared custody). However, despite my consistent presence at the gayest gym on the eastside of LA, I found neither a platonic partner nor a grocery store soulmate, so I decided to take the solo baby route.
I already possessed a functioning uterus and viable eggs — I needed sperm. I approached the process with the same rigor that any good Millennial with a LinkedIn profile would bring to a job search: lots of outreach, informational interviews, and a Google sheet with 14 tabs.
Path 2 - Phone a friendThe classic scenario is that you and your gay best friend from childhood split a bottle of rosé and you pop the question… can I have some of your sperm? Soon, you’re ironing out the details with an attorney and determining what insemination method you’re most comfortable with. But I didn’t have any friends that fit the bill. I did send one exploratory (some could call it desperate) text to an acquaintance that has remained unanswered, going on three years now. I’ll assume that’s nothing personal.
Path 3 - Find anonymous spermUnless you’re on a solitary deforestation-protest campout in the Oregon woods (how quaint), you’re a stone’s throw from viable sperm. Many people go straight to the sperm bank, where donors undergo health screenings, sperm is screened for genetic issues, legal paperwork is complete, and sperm transport is covered. As one woman told me “I would have had a kid with a spoon if I could, but it doesn’t work that way. A sperm bank was the easiest means to the desired end of a baby.”
But when I started perusing the donor profiles on sites of well-known sperm banks, it just didn't click with me. I felt more of a connection with the RAV4’s available from the Toyota of Glendale’s website than I did with any donor. Was it the Geocities-era web design? The deliberately impersonal donor data grids, differentiated only slightly by baby pictures with varying amounts of hair? I’m not sure. But it wasn’t for me.
Path 4 - Connect with a known donor (this was the path I took)Ultimately, I opted for the path less traveled, working with a known donor. There are agencies that facilitate introductions between donors and recipients (sometimes for a five-figure fee), but I used an app called Just a Baby where I could connect with potential donors (and handle all the legal, testing, and insemination logistics on my own).
Now that I could choose a donor based on actually meeting them, I had to figure out what was important to me. Did I trust this person to participate in an inconvenient process? Would they sign a legal document surrendering parental rights? Were they open to meeting my child in the future? And most importantly, did I feel comfortable with them?
In the era of Spermwold and Elon Musk (our best-known pro-natalist), some friends were skeptical of guys who would just give their sperm away for free. But in my experience, these men were motivated by a desire to help others, often spurred by an initial request from a close friend. I first met the donor who ultimately helped me have my son at a coffee shop in LA’s Atwater Village. He was warm, thoughtful, and really went out of his way to help me without any financial compensation (including a roundtrip from Glendale to my doctor’s office in West LA — a drive I would only make for a cash prize or to save the life of a family member).
Sometimes I wondered why I had made the process so hard; a sperm bank would have been a lot easier, and I can only assume that I would love any child the same, regardless of who the donor was and how many Zoom screening calls I endured to find him. Maybe I’d been trying to exert some control over a process that makes you feel like you have none. But it was a good opportunity to listen to myself, and make decisions based on how I felt, not necessarily because of how they penciled out (rarely does having kids make sense on paper). My advice to anyone considering whether to have kids alone, with a partner, or a polycule in the Oregon deforestation camp — or not at all — is to trust yourself. There’s pretty much no right choice… only the choice that’s right for you.