A sperm donor often remains in the background and yet he is elementarily involved in the creation of the new life. Falk told Familyship how he deals with this.
“I donated at sperm banks, but I realized I didn’t know who would have a child from me. I may not like my parents at all, or vice versa, and yet we remain connected for a lifetime. That’s when I switched to private sperm donation.”
Falk reports that it varies greatly how contact is made after the fact. In heterosexual couples, it is sometimes still unclear whether the parents even tell the child how it came to be. With lesbian couples it is different, many attach importance to the fact that the children could get to know Falk, if they were old enough and wanted to. Other children, however, he meets a few times a year. What is new now, he said, are single women who are looking for a sperm donor and approach him. Some of them would have met a life partner after the birth.
He says he particularly remembers Petra and Doris, a lesbian couple he met on an Internet platform more than 16 years ago: “After a few e-mails and an exchange of photos, we sent each other the phone number.” For Falk, the voice is just as important as the visual, he says: “After about an hour of talking, we made an appointment. We met a few days later in the middle between our homes.” They sat down in a café, in a quiet corner, so that not all the people around them could hear what they were talking about. Falk showed his health attests and his spermiogram, both sides agreed to sleep on it for a night and then make a decision whether or not to take the plunge together. “As soon as I got home, I had a WhatsApp on my phone. They wanted me!” says Falk. From there, everything happened very quickly. They decided not to draw up a contract, the women wanted to indicate “father unknown” at birth. The cycle was observed and without further ado a meeting was arranged for ovulation. Again they met in the middle of the residences, the cup was transported warm and dark and the women a few months later parents. “I really only donate once per cycle, which is enough,” Falk says.
How he came to be a sperm donor in the first place is subject to chance: “I was asked by my mother’s friend, who worked as a doctor in a sperm bank.” He does not want to put an exact figure on how many children have been created by Falk. He has had negative experiences with this and it is hard for him to understand: “I have fathered all the desired children! Everyone is very grateful to me. That’s important, isn’t it?”. He would not donate if he had a bad gut feeling, even if it gave the impression that alcohol or drugs were involved with the parents-to-be. Sympathy and intuition, he emphasizes again and again, are decisive. Once, he says, a mishap also happened to him: “I put my semen directly into the syringe without using the cap at the bottom. And when I wanted to close the top, the semen ran out the bottom. Annoying for the women. Happened to me only once, rookie mistake!”. If he could give other men a tip on what to consider before donating their sperm, it would be the trust between him and the recipients, “besides, to discuss exactly what you want and what you don’t want. Because contracts are void.”
