<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" When we first started talking about what characteristics we wanted in an egg donor, we felt our desires were fairly modest. We knew we could never hope to duplicate my fairylike grace, or my inimitable charm, or my unique and enchanting genetic predisposition to heart disease, blood clots, and diabetes. And we weren&amp;#039;t concerned about looks; Paul&amp;#039;s dark hair and brown eyes combined with my own coloring could produce a child of pretty much any Caucasian description. (As a child, I was a blue-eyed blonde, and I tell anyone rude enough to ask that my current hair color is the legacy of a distant relative. Thank you, Great-Aunt Aveda.) In short, we couldn&amp;#039;t make a donor me, and we didn&amp;#039;t plan to try. In even shorter, we weren&amp;#039;t going to be too picky. Can she make eggs? I thought. Then she&amp;#039;s in. But that approach has its own difficulties. It didn&amp;#039;t feel right to reduce a woman \u2014 an extraordinarily generous one at that \u2014 to &amp;quot;warm body, two ovaries, just this side of jailbait.&amp;quot; So we decided to narrow it down a bit. We felt we could accept any disorders that occurred in our own families, such as obesity or depression; since between us we have just about everything but schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, we decided to exclude only donors with a family history of heritable mental illness.  And we thought that was going to be enough. Those of you who have gone through the donor selection process may now enjoy a hearty laugh at my expense. Go on, I&amp;#039;ll wait.  Okay, stop laughing. People are starting to stare. You&amp;#039;re embarrassing me.  The problem became clear as soon as our clinic&amp;#039;s social worker began to tell us about their donor screening process. It is so rigorous, she said, involving everything from a complete medical history to a battery of psychological evaluations, that by the time a donor has been approved, certain traits like a tendency toward mental illness, or, say, heart disease have already been eliminated.  Well, hell. I&amp;#039;d been feeling good about our openness, our willingness to welcome a child without all that much regard to background. I&amp;#039;d found it reassuring to realize we had no interest in improving on what Paul and I could have brought to the table ourselves. (Designer baby, my ass. Not unless by &amp;quot;designer&amp;quot; you mean &amp;quot;alive.&amp;quot; I hear that&amp;#039;ll be all the rage in Milan this spring.) Now it became clear that by pursuing an anonymous donor match, we couldn&amp;#039;t help being more selective than we&amp;#039;d originally intended \u2014 it was inherent in the process.  All of a sudden, then, we had some decisions to make. While other operations allow a recipient to specify how a donor should look, our clinic bases the physical aspects of a match on the recipient&amp;#039;s own characteristics, so that was taken care of. So what else did we want in a donor?  For several days I thought about it. I applied my considerable powers of ratiocination to solving, once and for all, the question of what role biology plays in making us who we are. &amp;quot;Nature, nurture, nature, nurture,&amp;quot; I chanted as I went about my daily business, annoying Paul enough to make him mutter darkly, &amp;quot;I hope our donor&amp;#039;s powers of ratiocination are considerably less considerable.&amp;quot; And here is the conclusion I finally came up with: Paul is a goddamn saint for putting up with me.  Nothing else. The fact is, I don&amp;#039;t know. I don&amp;#039;t know how much of my own love of words, for example, comes as a genetic gift from my parents, and how much from their fond encouragement of reading. I don&amp;#039;t know where intelligence or engagement comes from. I don&amp;#039;t know whether I inherited or absorbed my inclination to optimism \u2014 in this case, to believe that whatever a donor&amp;#039;s personality, any resulting offspring will be simply brilliant in some way. And not really caring about which way makes it harder to narrow things down.  Because we had to say something on the two short lines provided on the form, that is pretty much what I wrote. &amp;quot;Loves language. Seeks knowledge. Curious about the world. Mostly happy.&amp;quot; I think \u2014 I hope \u2014 that those are things we can give a child ourselves. But a head start couldn&amp;#039;t hurt.  What traits do you hope to pass on to a child? If you&amp;#039;ve thought about donation, what do you consider important in a donor? And should I have added &amp;quot;Puts up with Julie&amp;#039;s bullshit&amp;quot; to my list of desired qualities? Because with Paul as a father, a child would get a walloping dose, but you can never be too careful. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/body/pregnancy-fertility/a2031/picky-picky/>