This is the story. In 1991 I purchased sperm from a bank on the west coast. I tried for nine months to get pregnant by this donor. Finally my doctor said the quality of the samples from the west coast bank his lab was receiving were not good, and suggested I try using the bank next door to his office. He didn’t tell me he was a half owner in the bank. So I went to the genetic counselor in the doctors office, we selected a different donor, I wrote down the number and we were off to the races. On June 16, 1992 I got pregnant by this new donor. I was happy, but sad, because this donor was anonymous. I forgot about being unhappy when my daughter was born and didn’t really think about it except at the rare times when my daughter wanted to discuss it. In 2006 we joined the DSR and waited. And Waited. In 2015 she got a match with the number I was given, but then DNA told a different story. Then the girl she matched numbers with got a DNA match, and that person was also from the new donor number I had been given. So now we knew the donor number I requested and was told I had been given, was not the donor used for the insemination. But who was????

By now my daughter had DNA tested with 3 of the four big labs. This time she used the biggest, and in September of 2016, got a half sibling match. But that match's posting on the DSR had an old email, so Wendy sent them snail mail, and made a special effort to get us in touch. Not only did the girls resemble each other, they matched via DNA, and this new match had a donor number listed on the DSR. After almost ten years, lots of legal wrangling with the lab, more heartache than I can say, and a lot of unplanned expense, my daughter saw a picture of her first blood relative from her donors side. Someone who looked like her.None of this would have happened without Wendy and Ryan Kramer’s magical invention. Gratitude barely covers it.