Beyond Anonymity: The Rise of Open Sperm Donation

What does it mean to build a family through openness, transparency, and connection? In this episode, we sit down with Daniel Bayen, an open sperm donor, fertility advocate, and donor-conceived entrepreneur who is helping reshape the future of donor conception.

Having grown up knowing he was donor-conceived and connected with more than 20 half-siblings, Daniel brings a unique perspective to the conversation. His personal experience inspired a mission to create a more ethical, transparent, and supportive approach to family building—one that prioritizes honesty, informed choice, and lifelong connections.

As an open sperm donor, Daniel has helped more than 15 families achieve healthy and intentional pregnancies. Through his work with the Open Donor Association, he has also helped connect over 100 families with open and known donors. Based in Florida and working with families across the United States, Europe, and Asia, Daniel educates recipients and donors on navigating the donor conception journey safely and thoughtfully.

Join us as we discuss the realities of open sperm donation, the donor-conceived experience, the evolving fertility landscape, and why transparency matters for future generations.

Transcript

Daniel Bayen: 0:00

We have been successfully reproducing as humans for 10s of 1000s of years, right, and we've gotten really bad at it in the last couple decades or centuries. So the question becomes, what are we doing differently, right? Like, what kind of environments are we in, and what kind of things are we doing that our ancestors have not been doing? What kind of environment were my ancestors around that were super fertile and had a lot of kids and were able to reproduce all the way down to me.

Unknown: 0:29

Welcome to Perinatal and Reproductive Perspectives. This is a podcast where we empower birthing individuals, partners, and health professionals with evidence-based insights, holistic strategies, and relatable stories hosted by a healthcare expert. This podcast fosters understanding, equity, and growth in perinatal and reproductive health. Here's your host, Becky Morrison Gleed.

Rebecca Gleed: 1:00

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast episode are those of the host and guest and do not constitute medical, legal, or psychological advice. Content is intended for informational and educational purposes only. If you or your partner are considering donor conception or any reproductive option, please consult with a qualified healthcare provider, mental health professional, or legal advisor. Listener discretion is advised, as this episode contains candid discussion of reproductive choices, donor conception, and related topics. Welcome back to another episode of Perinatal and Reproductive Perspectives. We are here with donor Dan, who is an open sperm donor. We are going to take a deep dive into what it means for open donation. Welcome to the show.

Daniel Bayen: 1:55

Thanks so much for having me on, Becky.

Rebecca Gleed: 1:57

We've never had anyone in your space on the show, so thank you for being willing to come on and tell us what brought you into this space, and a little bit more about what open donor even means.

Daniel Bayen: 2:09

So, my mother was a single mother by choice. She was in her mid 30s, academic professional, so a professor in psychology, and when she, she always knew she wanted to be a mother. Some people, they start with those wishes in their 30s, but she always knew she wanted to be a mother, and she realized that the kind of quality of men she could find in the sexual marketplace, as some people refer to it, was not the quality that she was hoping to find for the father of her children, especially because she was a professor in developmental psychology, so she knows a lot about how important sperm quality is, and how important the environment for the child is in the first few years growing up, which is why she said I'd rather just do this on my own instead of going with a with a man that I don't really want as a father to my children, so she did some dating, trying to find a partner, but it didn't really occur after doing a lot of research in that kind of field myself too. I've come to the realization that it is just really hard for women in their 30s to find a great partner, simply because many responsible men are already in committed relationships and married, and then the choice has just become very slim, so she said, 'Hey, I want you to go with the sperm donor, and did it all herself. She, the whole process was a very expensive process. See, she doesn't like me talking about the numbers, but it was in the six figures for her to conceive my brother and me through all the IVF cycles and the sperm bank involved. Back then, open donors were not really a thing, but my donor, he did sign up for Open ID, but when I talk about open donors, I talk about open and known donors, so professional, prolific donors who are open for contact, who you can talk to before you work with them, and so

Rebecca Gleed: 3:56

can you tell people, I don't know that everyone will know even what an open donor means, can you help us better understand?

Daniel Bayen: 4:03

So, by clinic definition, it means someone who is open ID at 18. By the definition of the Open Donor Association, it's someone who's fully open and fully transparent from day one. So, someone you can talk to, someone who will keep track of the half siblings that are created through his DNA, someone who is open to contact in the future, who is open for future siblings, which is a big deal. My mother, she was prepared, and she bought a bunch of files from the same donor, which is why I'm so lucky to have a full sibling. But many of the other recipients, the mothers of my half siblings, did not do the same thing, so I saw firsthand how important it is, and my father, who was a donor, he told me he discontinued being a donor back then. Clinics did not have a family limit, so he could have continued, but he discontinued because he was not allowed to have a relationship while he was, or at least not a sexual relationship while he was a donor at the sperm bank. So, as a young kind of call. A student, he was able to do that for one and a half years, but then he also said, I don't want to continue doing that, but yeah, he basically turned into a fully open donor later on, which means he contacted me later, and he was open to connect to me and to my mother and to my brother and all the other half siblings as well, which is really what makes a donor open by definition.

Rebecca Gleed: 5:21

Alternatively, if they're a closed component, what would that look like?

Daniel Bayen: 5:26

So a closed component could be a donor whose identity is known, but he's not open for contact, which is sometimes even more traumatic than simply an anonymous donor who you don't know. I've found that some of the donor-conceived people who've had very bad experiences are usually those that were not able to contact their donor, but, but even more so, those that were lied to by their parents, so they did not even know they have a donor, which is another kind of segment, right? Or those that were trying to contact their donor, but the donor said, after looking at them, or after talking to them once, they said,"Hey, sorry, I don't want any contact to you. I don't want you to connect to my children or anything like that, because we don't align, or I'm not feeling it right. And a fully open donor will not do that. A fully open donor has this responsibility. He talked to the recipients. He is also not someone who will donate to anyone. If you go and purchase a vial from a sperm bank, anyone can purchase a vial. From a sperm bank, right, you can purchase a vial, no matter your ethnicity, no matter if you have gone through transition, right. You went from woman to man, you can still purchase a vial. You could be homeless, you could be mentally, you have mental health issues, anyone can purchase a vial. So, there's no screening process at all, which with most open donors a bit different, so they have a responsibility, then they know of it, and they will be open to contact later on in life. So the other segments would be either your parents never told you, which is worse than anonymity, and then there's anonymity, and then there's open with no contact, those kind of the most common situations that I've found,

Rebecca Gleed: 7:03

and we actually know from some of the newer research, and I think you're alluding to this, that if you don't tell your child, they eventually find out. I think it's like 90% even if you don't share it, somehow they still find out. So that's really not encouraged. It's more effective. I'm sure your mom can also speak to this from a developmental childhood perspective of having those conversations and being very intentional how you approach those, and can you speak to - you would call it screening, screening process.

Daniel Bayen: 7:36

Yeah, I have a screening process for my recipients, they can also talk to me and ask me questions.

Rebecca Gleed: 7:42

Tell us a little bit more about what that looks like from both sides, from you to them and them to you.

Daniel Bayen: 7:48

So every donor has different preferences, where he's open to work with and open to be the donor. Usually donors are focused on health, mental health, and financial stability, because you don't want drama in the extended network of recipients, you don't want issues coming up in the future, and I myself feel like I have a responsibility towards the other families, but also a responsibility towards the future donor-conceived child, so I just have to make sure that the environment is a healthy environment and not just the genetic foundation that I try to give to that family is healthy, so I will usually do a video call with recipients. I have a deposit for my video call, and I will say that simply having a deposit for the video call weeds out a lot of people who are unserious and who do not take this process seriously. It's really, it's just like $45 but it still weeds out a lot of people, just like there are a lot of low-quality donors. Open donor does not automatically mean a great donor, which is why I did the Open Donor Association, because I said, okay, we want some more kind of filters, and we want some more tests to make sure these guys are healthy and don't carry a bunch of genetic diseases or STDs or whatever, but the same you can find on the recipient side, so there will be people who have mental health issues, physical health issues or financial health issues. If they have mental health issues, I try to refer them to someone who can help with that. It's not like I decline them forever, but I will usually point in the direction and say, hey, there are certain steps that I feel like should be done prior to having a child without being offensive, I know this - people can take offense in that, but I always kind of point at the child and say,"Hey, what I'm doing here is I'm trying to be the best future donor for the child, and yeah, the financial stability is for me fairly easy to kind of filter, because I have donor fees, open donor fees, and shipping costs involved when I ship to my recipients or when they travel to me. There's also costs involved that way. I usually know that they are able to financially take care of a child.

Rebecca Gleed: 9:50

Yeah, how do you assess for some of that, like the health parameters, the mental health, the financial? Because I'm guessing there's some level of discernment from your piece, even if you have the. Certain thresholds or screening processes.

Daniel Bayen: 10:03

Yeah, I don't ask my recipients for blood work or blood tests, but I will ask them what they have done in order to prepare for their pregnancy, which usually tells me a lot about their current situation. There's usually like three different categories. There are those recipients who did everything they could and take this really, really seriously, and they tell me we've changed our toxins in the environment. We watched your videos about that on Instagram. We got rid of all the polyester and all the Teflon pans and makeup and all that stuff that our bodies are not used to, and our ancestors didn't have around when they were actively reproducing more successfully than we are, and if they see that, that's of course a huge green flag. Then there's also the recipients who are overall healthy, like they know nutrition is important, they know movement is important, but they haven't yet gone deeper into it. And then I oftentimes also have recipients in the video calls where I can tell the energy is low, I can tell they might not seem super excited about this process, and it feels like more they just think, okay, let's get a pet here, let's.. this is not

Rebecca Gleed: 11:08

sure.

Daniel Bayen: 11:08

And then I, of course, ask those questions. I don't just like feel the energy of the room, but I've talked to hundreds of recipients by now, and I've gotten pretty good at simply seeing how does this person kind of.. if you eat really healthy, if you don't have a lot of toxins in the environment, you can usually tell, like, these people are exploding with energy, and they're, they're abundant in their matter and themselves, and they want to reproduce, and they are excited to reproduce, and do all those things, and so when I see, okay, it's really the health is really not in place right now, I also work with preconception specialists, or people that optimize, like the preconception part. I also share a lot of content about that on my Instagram, so a lot of people get filtered out simply by seeing my content, and then realizing that I'm a different kind of donor, and I might not kind of be able to work with them, because I'm not doing this to help everyone and anyone, I'm doing this to help healthy people have healthy children, and because I want my own children to have a healthy network of half siblings, I want them to grow up with an international network of healthy cousin-like relationships, right? And I know that that offends a lot of people, but the recipients I work with, they, that's what they value about working with me, and that's kind of what not any healthy donor can offer.

Rebecca Gleed: 12:27

Yeah, I'm guessing that's part of what makes this process work is this alignment of the health and this shared value between you and them and the long-term perspective.

Daniel Bayen: 12:39

Yeah, absolutely. I think when I asked my recipients why they chose to work with me, it's always first reason is health, because I track my health, I eat only organic food, I grow my own food where I can, I move and I work out every day, so do it. I even do things like testicular cooling and testicular sunning, and things like that. I do a lot of research around that, because I know this will affect the children later, and their ability to have grandchildren as well. I want them to not be come like physically or mentally infertile, which happens to a lot of people, right? They have so many toxins in their environment that they say, "I don't want any children, which I believe for someone organic or natural to say, "I don't want family is a very kind of absurd concept to me personally, but I try to give them the best foundation, and my recipients, they value that, and then usually also the transparency and the openness that comes with it.

Rebecca Gleed: 13:34

Yeah, I want to back up, because the audience may not know what testicular cooling is. Can you tell the audience some of these health approaches that you take explain what they are.

Daniel Bayen: 13:46

So, the general concept is we have been successfully reproducing as humans for 10s of 1000s of years, right? And we've gotten really bad at it in the last couple decades or centuries. So, the question becomes, what are we doing differently, right? Like, what kind of environments are we in, and what kind of things are we doing that our ancestors have not been doing, which is why I'm standing right now as one example. Our ancestors were standing a lot, and they were walking a lot, men, of course, differently than women. All the things that go for a man, and some, the fertility of a man are not the same that count for a woman, and some things they do, but the question becomes, what kind of environment were my ancestors around that were super fertile and had a lot of kids and were able to reproduce all the way down to me, and testicular cooling is basically to make sure that your testicles, your balls, as a man, do not overheat, which happens to a lot of men nowadays, because they sit so much, because they wear like polyester, unbreathable underwear, or tight pants, and things like that, especially me being Caucasian with European heritage, when I'm here in Miami, I can really tell when I'm overheating, because I've kind of explored that, and I have done some testings. Like sperm yoga grams before and after testicular cooling, so I will cool my testicles simply with cool packs when I intend to sit for a longer time, or two or three times a day, because my ancestors, they were running around at zero degrees Celsius, and they were out there in the forest trying to find some drinkable water, but when everything was frozen, they were trying to get some water, and so testicular cooling, and also being in the sun, are two examples that most people don't do, and that kind of I'm trying to share, because I really try to push it to the extremes.

Rebecca Gleed: 15:34

Yeah, you mentioned another term, a spermiogram. What is that?

Daniel Bayen: 15:39

So, a spermiogram is kind of a way to assess the metrics and the quality of your sperm, and it's much easier to assess sperm quality than it is to assess egg quality, but people say that men play a larger role than what people thought in the past about conception and the health of the baby. I've always known that it was like my sperm quality is an important factor, just as important as the egg quality. I would argue it's probably 5050 as to how important it is. But basically, they look at the amount of swimmers that you have, and then they look at how many swimmers of those are alive, so they call this the motility and the total total motile count, and then the morphology is important as well. So, how are these swimmers moving? How do they look? And spurn quality has declined, I think, around 50% in the last 50 years, as far as I know. Some, somewhat around that, not the exact numbers, because I get so much data from from that. I just know it's gone down rapidly over the last few decades, and what people forget, or what people don't talk about enough, is they usually question or ask themselves between, like, fertility and infertile, right? It's like black and white, you're either fertile or you're not, but we've really seen that through epigenomes, everything is passed on, the way you live is passed on when I eat a lot of steak before a child is conceived that child really loves steak. I see it in this in the social media posts sometimes from the recipients that the child really loves a certain kind of food and they are excited and they share it, and it was just the kind of food that I was eating a lot, which would make sense because nature is saying, hey, this this man was abundant enough to be chosen as a reproductive partner, so let's make it so that the baby does the similar kind of things as him, which is why you can go into a downward spiral of infertility. That doesn't mean you're infertile right now, it just means your family tree, your branch of the family tree, will eventually end in mental or physical infertility. Only way to flip it the other way is to get into an upward spiral of fertility. What, yeah, that's besides her question.

Rebecca Gleed: 17:44

No, that's helpful. Before we move on from screening, is there anything else that is important to share of your screening process of a recipient and then you as a donor?

Daniel Bayen: 17:55

Well, I think that a modern recipient, this is the biggest choice of her life, and I think that's important to put out there. It's arguably just as important as who is your partner you raise that child with, right? However, the partner you can still disconnect from, right? There's will still get divorced, but the child is yours, and the genetics from the donor will be in the child for the rest of its life, and into kind of eternity. That I mean, having children is as close as we can get to eternity as humans, as, as possible, right, but we cannot live forever. The only way we can go into the future and pass things on is really through the children that we have. So, it's, it's such an important choice, and I think a lot of people do not understand how important this choice is, and couples who are in a relationship, they sometimes do not do enough work prior to conceiving a child, and do not prepare well enough, and then have issues they have to work with for the rest of their lives, because they did not prepare well enough before the child was born. Rates of autism are going up, rates of ADHD, mental health issues are going up, physical health issues are going up, all sorts of things, and then we don't even count in all the situations where modern medicine kind of figured it out and fixed a problem. Those are usually not really put into the equation, but many people would not be able to survive if there wasn't modern medicine to help them survive, and a lot of it comes by not preparing for that reproductive journey, and not choosing the right reproductive partner or donor. A donor, the reproductive partner term is just for anyone you reproduce with biologically, and so I think it's an important choice. And health should be the most important factor. And after that, transparency and responsibility should be the most important factor. How tall the donor is, and kind of how his smile looks, and some other things. They might not really matter too much as those two things. And sperm banks usually just try to paint a picture of this like perfect mystery box donor. They're really good at drawing a picture of this unknown guy and making you kind of fill that out with your own imagination. When it comes to reproductive partner, but that is a fallacy, because that person that is imagined by recipients often doesn't exist, and when, then later, the donor becomes open, there's a lot of situations where recipients are very underwhelmed by what they were sold, that might be someone who's homeless, even that has happened, there has been homeless donors in the past, there have been donors that have not taken care of their food, or you know what they eat, and they've been drinking. You can drink and you can be a donor. They don't test you for drugs every time, they test you once when you start. You can do cocaine and be a donor. Maybe the swimmers even become more motile for a while, but long-term effects are definitely good. So, I think you know that that is just really important to look into the health, look into the lifestyle, and see how deep you can go. Look at the body, look at the blood reports. Is he, is he not using testosterone? Better take more time, and if it takes you a month, and you just, you know, do the digging, and dig for a month, and research for a month. I think that's important.

Rebecca Gleed: 21:01

It's so important I'm thinking as a couples therapist of how many couples I see who didn't pick the right partner or didn't prepare well, and I see them either immediately postpartum or 510 years down the road, and really this emphasis and regret of I wish I had prepared more, I wish I had taken this a little bit more seriously, I wish I had been more intentional about the partner that I chose. So, a lot of those tenets I see as a couple's therapist.

Daniel Bayen: 21:30

It's true, it's just.. it's just harsh reality. I mean, we can make as many Disney movies as we want, and we can imagine our future whatever way we want. At the end of the day, natural selection is going to decide whether or not your children will be able to grow healthy families themselves, and I see that a lot with younger women in their mid to late 20s that are hoping to find this perfect and this perfect partner, but on the other side I also know a lot of men, and I've worked with a lot of men, both entrepreneurs and donors, like really healthy men that I kind of filtered for high income and high health, and I found that even though those maybe only five to 10% I would want to see my own daughters with, right, and I've kind of come to the conclusion with a lot of donors that for many women choosing, and this is something controversial, but for many women choosing an incredibly healthy donor can be advantageous compared to a mediocre partner.

Rebecca Gleed: 22:32

Sure. Well, and you've talked about this idea, kind of alluding to the ancestral piece. Can you speak to a little bit more of, of why that's important to you, considering our ancestors,

Daniel Bayen: 22:46

they were successful, they made it all the way to you being able to have this conversation with me right now, and so it's like the basic thing that I tell people first is our bodies were not designed for all the things that we invented the last 100 or 200 years, these things our body cannot take on all these toxins at once. Our body might be able to handle some microplastic and handle a little bit of modern exhaust fumes and things like that, but it cannot take on all these things at once. It won't be able to do it, and that's where we see rise in PCOS as well, so many people have mild PCOS, PCOS, fertility issues, and our ancestors didn't have that. So I'm not saying, like, throw everything away and become like Amish or something like that. That's not what I recommend to my recipients, but I personally, when I'm on my route to becoming a donor, I changed probably 7060 70% of my environment, I was already a healthy person, but I still found more things that I had changed. By now, even like my desk chair is made out of cotton, and I just, just small things, and even the placement for my mouse, because I didn't want my hand to touch the polyester, I got this for the placement of my mouse, because they didn't want to touch polyester all day, because it will leach into my body, it will go into the samples, and then it will affect the children. So my ancestors were around natural materials, so I'm trying to do the same thing, and I think that is like the easiest kind of way for people to understand and to start questioning their environment. It's not like other people take the route and say, oh, they're selling you this because they're trying to kill you. No one wants to hear that, and it's not, it's not really the case. No one is actively trying to kill you, right? Otherwise, you probably wouldn't be here, but but it is true that our ancestors were living in an environment they adapted to over a long, long, long time, and we've changed our environments faster than we can adapt to it again.

Rebecca Gleed: 24:45

Yeah, now that makes a lot of sense. And something that I haven't heard a lot of is considering our ancestors and what we can learn from them. Does this affect you in your personal life at all? If someone finds out, you know. Donor Dan is part of this open donor association. Does that affect you personally in any way?

Daniel Bayen: 25:07

Well, looking at the numbers, my chances of survival are much higher than theirs, so I don't really care too much. And I was donor conceived myself, so it's really hard to argue against the donor conceived donor, and that's also one of the reasons why a lot of the donors who usually suppress new donors, so there's like maid suppression going on between donors, there's also maid suppression between women and mothers a lot, but when I came into the industry and I said,"I'm a donor-free donor, the donors that would usually suppress a healthy donor like myself, because they want to keep their position of power in their Facebook group or Reddit group or whatever, they were like, "Oh, cool, let's listen to this guy, because if you know, maybe he will say something good as a donor-conceived donor about donor conception, and then that's good for all the donors, right? So it's really hard to argue against me, because I'm kind of a product of my own creation in a way, right? And in person, people don't really say anything. I just had a post on Facebook that had like 400,000 views, and there was 550 comments underneath it, and I would say probably 70% were hate comments, but I know where those come from. I know that it's reproductive instincts for people, it's a reproductive instinct to be afraid of someone who reproduces a lot, because in a natural setting, in a tribal setting, someone who reproduces a lot is risking the survival of your tribe because of incest risk in small tribes. Now, if there's a donor who donates internationally and there's 8 billion people, it's a whole very different story. But we will still feel subconsciously intimidated by someone who's reproduced a lot. And then, of course, for men, it's like they are struggling. The modern man is struggling to build a family, struggling to have offspring and have children and find healthy women who want to reproduce with him. And then they see a donor who's doing that for a living, he's being paid to do just that. And then I can imagine why that would be upsetting or a reason to hate on me. So, yeah, people call me, they say I have a breeding king, or they find something about my physical features and say I shouldn't reproduce because this and that, so I get quite a lot of that, or religious reasons, but I remind them that God said to be fruitful and multiply all the hick hack that came later in the other books, but I think that we should maybe think a bit more about how we can stay in this kind of state of of Eden of paradise, and so I like to say that to the Christian sometimes. I get some Christian haters here and there too, but that doesn't really matter too much to me, because I don't associate with them. They're more like, I have I'm building my garden, I'm building my work, I'm doing my thing, and they're like on the other side of the river, down like in the kind of hole of potential extinction, and they're trying, and they're yelling things out of there. I can like hear them a little bit, but sometimes I have to yell things back, so that the people in between, that are like, so they can hear what's going on, and then they can like see that I do have a point to make. It's not just I have to argue back, I can't just be like, "Oh, let the haters talk, because I have to show the people who might be interested in working with me or working with a donor, I have to show them I'm not going to become a serial donor who will donate to like 20 sperm banks. I don't work with sperm banks, I keep track of all the recipients I help. I only help about one new recipient a month, right? Sometimes it takes more cycles, but it's not like anything dangerous for my recipients, and I care mostly about my recipients, I care about their children, I care about my girlfriend, I care about my family, and the better I do, and the better we do, the more people will not like that.

Rebecca Gleed: 28:32

Yeah, I think that's the beauty of the podcasting platform, it's it's not about agreeing or disagreeing, it's really just opening it up, so we can hear different perspectives, and I hope listeners will be open to hearing your perspective in an alternative perspective. That's what this is about. Do you have maybe a few stories you can share of maybe something that felt really fulfilling around a recipient, or maybe a story that also felt more difficult?

Daniel Bayen: 29:00

So just today I got some pictures from twins in Vienna that were conceived through a donation, and that recipient she prepared really well. She only had one try, one artificial insemination attempt, and she conceived the first time and had twins, and the first twins in her bloodline that she knows of. So I think she just also did really well in preparing. I think there's even studies showing that when people prepare really well, they can push their chances of success into like the 40 50% area, depending on their age. But yeah, that was so great to see those pictures of the kids. She was also what I liked was my father said that I should also, I should donate to all cool moms, and they're they are two cool moms, so they're really a great couple, and super healthy, and you can already tell that both twins are very healthy too, and I love seeing that, so that's very fulfilling. Yeah. Oh, there was one situation where the clinic in the UK felt intimidated by me because the recipients, they didn't want to work with the daughter poor. Folio of the clinic anymore, and then there was a newspaper article that talked about my donor fees, and now for contacts, and contacts in the UK, you're not allowed to charge for profit, but I'm a nonprofit donor overall, so everything I make as a donor is reinvested in testing and health, and my team I have people that help me do my work, and that helped me do the Open Donor Association, it's invested in helping other donors become great donors, it's invested in all these things, like supplements, I don't have, like, an income where I'm not, like, hoarding money or anything like that, because I believe money should be converted into creating healthy life, I think money should not be stacked, I think people have too much of a scarcity mindset, and we have to shift from the scarcity of around money and finances and realize, hey, actually our organic matter is is at at stake here. If we, there's a lot of stories of people having a lot of money, but, but no children and no family, and so they've basically gone extinct over that. But the point being, I run this nonprofit, and in the UK, I'd only charge for my travel expenses and loss of earnings and those kind of things. The article just didn't make it sound like that, because it was more like kind of trying to get attention. So then it's like, oh, this donor charges so much for an international donation, and he charges men for the Open Donor Association, and stuff like that. So it went more in that direction, which is kind of expected and fair to me. I always believe the real people will do the research, and they will listen to things such as this podcast and make their own mind up, rather than just reading an article or watching one documentary on Netflix, and say, "Oh, now I know everything about this industry. And so the clinic banned me. The clinic took samples from two recipients, and they destroyed them, and they were already prepared. They were already paid for. These recipients were already planning to work with me, and they chose me freely. They did not choose an anonymous donor. They chose me for a reason, because they believed me to be the right match for their family growth. Great recipients, I really like those recipients. And so, since then, I have been trying to manage and kind of struggle that situation with them, and finding other clinics that we can work with, which was not easy, because Fairfax, for a directed donation, Fairfax Sperm Bank charges $6,500 So, if you don't choose a donor in their portfolio, if you just want to do a directed donation, they have these fees, because this is not their profit kind of line, right? Their profit line is like the cattle, they like the donor cattle, they like the donor, they can treat like cows, they give them 100 bucks, they sell the milk, basically, right, it's no different than than like kind of farming cows at the end of the day, that's what the business is about, at least, and of course I know for recipients very different than drinking milk, that was very hard for me because the recipients in the in the UK were just great recipients and I felt like it was truly unfair that women are not given the reproductive freedom and the reproductive choice to have a child with whoever they choose in Asia I had to marry someone for a day just so I can do a donation and then divorce her the other day again because you cannot be the donor if you're not married in some countries in Asia, and that a woman cannot intentionally, especially when they're intentional and they're smart women, cannot just go out there and say, 'Hey, I want to reproduce with that person through a clinic because I don't want to have sex with that person and I want it to be all tested. Maybe they're a same-sex couple, maybe they're a single mother by choice, and they don't want anything emotional, they just want a healthy donor. Then that should be their reproductive freedom. There should be no systems or governments or anything like that in place telling them they cannot reproduce with whom they choose to. And so the women have to do more work, which was arguably natural selection as well, which kind of shows that these women are extra intentional if they're going all the way and doing all the work in order to have a child, which my mother kind of did, right, and I'm proud of her, and I'm proud of the small family branch that she built within our larger extended family, and so that's really something difficult that I find, and donors have gone to jail for being donors, donors have gotten to pay a lot of child support for being donors, because you can protect yourself from child support, which is also why I have to run as a nonprofit, so even if I wanted to make a profit, it wouldn't be possible, because the moment a recipient sued me in some states of the US, I would be liable for child support, which there is about a 5% risk of from what I found with other open donors, so I think that's kind of the most difficult, and I know that on a larger scale, to change that is not possible, because most people do not want donors. Most people do not want other people to reproduce. They want to reproduce themselves, have a healthy family themselves. But maid suppression is a very strong kind of gene that we carry, right? Mate suppression is one of the reasons we are alive, because our ancestors were mad suppressing other ancestors, so that's something I struggle with a little bit, but I find that the longer I'm in the industry, the more I can navigate the loss, the more I know a clinic here or a person there that can help. So, yeah, there's a solution for everything, usually.

Rebecca Gleed: 34:55

Yeah, I don't disagree there. There's there is a solution for everything. You talked about maid suppression, for someone who may not know that term, what does that mean?

Daniel Bayen: 35:05

So, maid suppression is for me, it is everything that hinders you from growing your family, so it's almost everything in the normal sense. A great example of maid suppression would be if you live in a town where there's only one hairdresser and she gives the woman like terrible haircuts, because she wants access to the men in the paternal investment, which, which has happened. There have been cases like that, or women telling other women when they find a great partner, they're trying to look for things that are bad about that partner, and it's just subconscious, and they can even be friends. It is very natural for women to do that. Men do the same thing. Male maid suppression in the past looked just like taking a sword and killing the other one, that was like male suppression in the past. Nowadays, male maid suppression could be something like looks maxing, so that means you make yourself look really, really, really attractive, but then you don't reproduce, so you take away the reproductive opportunities for those who are not looks maxing, but they're just trying to be healthy fathers, and they're just doing the work to be healthy fathers. They're not taking testosterone or any other peptides, that's a modern form of mate suppression. But so many other things are maid suppressive too. I believe things like college are mate suppressive. I believe things like employee being employed and working a job, I believe that's mate suppressive. I believe there are so many forms of mate suppression, social media, watching social media, and thinking you have to have this kind of setup in order to grow your family first, that's maid suppressive, watching Disney and waiting for the princess to show up, or the prince to show up, that can be considered mate suppressive, so, so I share that with my recipients, because I hope for them to walk through their life being aware of mate suppression being a thing, because I want them to have not just a healthy family, but also a potentially stronger and larger family. I believe having full siblings is a great thing. I believe having multiple children for the children is great. It's kind of the upward spiral I was talking about for family growth, whereas if you have an only child, that can turn into a downward spiral, and the chance of only children, only children having fewer kids, is higher than the chance of large families having lots of grandchildren. They usually have more kids later on. So, yeah, that's a little bit explanation about mate suppression.

Rebecca Gleed: 37:15

Thank you. I think the audience will benefit from that. Some might argue that there is a gatekeeping process to going to some of these more traditional sperm banks or clinics, in terms of it's important to have an independent gatekeeping piece, if it's maybe an independent medical piece or a fertility counselor doing some of this formal psych testing. Do you have any reactions or opinions if someone comes to you and says, well, you're your own gatekeeper, that doesn't really count.

Daniel Bayen: 37:48

Yeah, I've gone through multiple psychological assessments because I work through clinic collaborations with recipients, so sometimes I have a recipient and she wants to go through a clinic or store a bunch of vials at the clinic, which is usually like for me the most expensive thing to do, but it gives her a lot of vials and she can grow a family. So this is for recipients who plan a lot of children or are thinking they might need a lot of attempts. So I go through a clinic and I usually have, I think I've done like four or five psychological assessments at those clinics. I've done more physical testing than any other donor, because I've worked through clinics in different countries, and every country has different tests. You can imagine that the clinics in China, they ask for very different tests than the clinics in the US, or the clinics in Europe, right? So I have all those tests transparent through my Instagram and LinkedIn, and people can - anyone can see them, anyone can see my full name, and those tests. People that trust an institution like that, that just say, 'Hey, I will put on my trust and I will outsource my family growth to that institution, are the same kind of people who say, 'I feel overweight, I'm just going to take a pill to solve that problem for me. To be honest, I know this again is like a bit controversial and will offend people, but I believe that reproduction, out of all the things, is a thing that you should not outsource. I think it is a thing that you should do yourself, and do the work, and find the right reproductive partner in doing it. I don't think you can just put it into someone else's hands. Oh, I tell my recipients during the video calls, I'm not trying to sell you anything. Think about it as long as you want, do your research, look into the internet, and my content, and other people's content, and then make a choice, and I believe that the right people will select themselves out of the pool of people, so I trust that process fully, and my recipients do too. And I also will say that most donors I know, they used to be bank donors and now are open owners, because they realize this is the right path, so they've gone through all the testing from the banks, and they know that there are healthy donors. Plus, at the end of the day, if with an open donor, the children are born, there are healthy babies to look at that you can look at, right? With a sperm bank donor, you don't know that you might be the first recipient, you don't know right how many other recipients have purchased the vials with me when. Recipients are serious, and you know the deposit is paid, and the process is starting. They can request pictures from the other recipients, from the babies, at least those where the other recipients said it's fine to share.

Rebecca Gleed: 40:12

Well, kind of a segue to asking another question around you talked about your dad and his divorce. I don't know how much that topic of being a donor influenced the divorce piece, but I'm wondering. I think you mentioned a girlfriend. Does that come up for you and your girlfriend around you being an open donor?

Daniel Bayen: 40:35

So, my girlfriend is the pre-conception specialist that I was mentioning before, who she talks to my recipients, and she helps my recipients. When my recipients go into the process, there's always a preconception call included with her, that way they kind of get in touch with the idea of, oh, what could an extended family be like, and see what my closest network kind of consists of. And she's a very, very healthy young woman, and she knew more about toxins than I did. She even helps and coaches me if she sees things around me that we can improve, like she found a supplement and said we can forget about a better supplement than that. She understands how valuable it will be for her and her own children to have a lot of half siblings around the world. She would love to be an egg donor herself, but does not want to do it prior to having her own children, which I completely understand. I think people who don't want any kids, they should at least be egg donors. That's again something controversial to say, but yeah, she's all fine. But I did have a relationship when I first started as a donor that was already a bit unstable because I was traveling and I was gone for a few weeks and she couldn't handle it mentally. She went to a therapist, and they put her on some, on some medication right away, which was, like, to me was not understandable. But then during that trip, I realized, well, you cannot really trust your partner 100% because I thought my loves this girl, I thought I'm gonna have children, and I thought this will be forever. And then this happens, and she doesn't want to be with me anymore. At the same time, I saw my half siblings and my family, and they were always there for me. I could, like, live with them right now if I, if I wanted to, like, I could join their tribe right now. They would always invite me and support me. I'm also not an energy trainer, I'm also someone positive, but.. and I realized, well, that family is something that is can be much more real and much more long term, and so I said, okay, I have to be a donor, and then she wanted to get back together with me, and I told her, hey, while we were kind of in this, in this break, when I was traveling, I decided that I wanted to be a donor, and she couldn't handle it at all, the idea of me, of other women carrying biological offspring from me, even though I'm not the parent, I explained her the contracts, I explained her like me being donor conceived for her it was like she would be carrying the child from another man as a surrogate, which I think is of course something very different for me. So I've had both experiences, I've seen women really like it, and I've seen women having a problem with it, and while I was not in a relationship, I would talk to women about this, and I would find that most women, if presented well, they thought it is a wonderful thing. If you say, if you just start the conversation with, yeah, I'm a sperm donor, I have 20 kids, that sounds weird. That's not the right way to put it. What I said is, I would start the conversation with my family and my background, my story being donor-conceived, and why I became a donor myself then, and the kind of idea I have for my own children and their half-sibling network, and usually I found that it gave a lot of social proof because they would say other women choose this man as a reproductive partner, so there's something about him that must be good, right? If 20 other women said,"I want him as a donor, then I'm more interested in engaging in this conversation compared to the man who was not yet chosen by any woman to be a reproductive partner, and oftentimes can be true. I mean, there's many healthy men who don't have any offspring, they're focused on, I call it lifestyle maxing, or just looks maxing, or something like that, or health maxing, which is fine, or they're maximizing their health, but then there's also many men that don't have any offspring, no children, no family, no past family, no nothing, and there are hidden reasons as to why that is the case, so I found that in about 20 to 30% it's a problem. Women don't want to associate with me, or go on a date with me, or are interested in me, but in 50 to 70% of the cases, they become even more interested and more engaged.

Rebecca Gleed: 44:31

Yeah. No. Thank you for sharing that. I'm wondering, you've used the word controversial a few times, and that kind of can bring up the topic of ethics. Do you have any ethical reflections or anything that may have come up for you personally, or as you've observed with clinics, or with the process that is worth highlighting?

Daniel Bayen: 44:52

Well, my father said, and most other donors say, to always put the children first, and I think that's like the main core. Or ethical idea, that's the most ethical, most ethical thing I think you can do. I prioritize, or try to prioritize future donors, conceive children with every choice, and that I make. The fact I'm doing podcasts like this is not necessarily just to become like to try and go viral and be famous or grow my income. It is because I also believe the donor-conceived children later in life can watch this and learn from both you and, and get more into this kind of family growth environment, rather than a drug environment, or a money environment, or sex environment, or whatever kind of other environments there are that long term lead to unhappiness in the long term, or an older age, but I do see people not doing that all the time. I mean, sperm banks, by default, do not prioritize the outcome for the donor-conceived children, because they're trying to make a profit. Many donors that are not donor-conceived themselves, they- not everyone, but many - they prioritize their own kink, their own sexual fantasies, their own ego, sometimes their own racial like ideas and motivations. It can be so many things that are not the child that is created, right? The child that is created is the number one kind of reason I'm doing this, and I think that I hope that more institutions and more people will prioritize their future children.

Rebecca Gleed: 46:27

Yeah, I love that as an ethical guideline of put the children first. And as a final topic and question, I'm wondering if you have any advice for potential donors or potential recipients, what advice would you give them?

Daniel Bayen: 46:44

So, for both, this is an incredibly important choice, a big thing. I would, before I go into either the work as a donor or the work as a recipient, I would maximize my health first and build a strong foundation around health, because if you're a donor and you have a reputation as someone who looks unhealthy or is unhealthy, then it's going to be much harder to find recipients that want to work with you, and recipients, if they reach out to donors and they look unhealthy and they act unhealthy when toxins they usually show in their kind of behavior and respect to themselves and and others, then you're going to have a hard time finding a healthy donor, so definitely important to prepare well for the journey, and then for donors, I think that's also why did the Open Donor Association, and we have the general community, which is just like$25 nonprofit set up in a way so that young donors can join us and learn from more experienced donors to become better donors, and I think that's really important. I'm very lucky that I was raised by a donor father, but I think that many donors, they need more perspective from someone who's donor-conceived, from donors who've been doing it for five or 10 years, which the community is kind of all about, right, and we can't force our rules on younger donors or anything like that. They still, at the end of the day, do what they want to do, right? If they want to be an open donor and go to the sperm bank at the same time, that's not something we can control, even though I personally think it will lead to issues in the future, but we can talk to them about it, and they can ask us questions, and they can make their own more educated decision on this, and for recipients, probably something similar, but both donors and recipients have to be very careful with the intentions of the other people that they talk to when they grow their family. I think that's one of the hardest things to navigate, because many recipients, if you're a recipient, you go into recipient communities. Many recipients will try to cope with their decisions by saying it was the right choice, it was the best thing they could have done. There was no other thing they could have done. But I know my mother is one example that deep down, or in inner circles, these people might question their choices. My mother didn't question the donors she chose, but she wished she had found a partner earlier in life. But, of course, that's like not something they will want to share with the public or with other women. They want to kind of maintain the status of, like, oh, I'm strong, independent, I made this choice, I get, I went the right way, I did the right things, and you should do it just like me to reinforce my choices were right, so it's very, you got to be very careful with with whom you trust and who you ask questions, and that can even include your own family, your own parents sometimes have ideas about limiting your family growth because they did it or because they think that's the right path for you, which is why the Health Foundation is so incredibly important, because as you get in touch with the kind of with nature more and with your health more, the more you feel driven towards what is natural and healthy for you as well, which means you will be driven towards a healthy reproductive partner. For someone who's unhealthy, it's so much easier. To also choose a reproductive partner who's unhealthy, but for someone who's healthy, they will internally feel disgusted by an unhealthy reproductive partner. Same for women who are in birth control, that's a great example. If you're in birth control, you feel attracted to more feminine men, but then, if as you get off birth control, which happens oftentimes when women get married, and they want to have kids, they get off birth control, and they start to feel disgusted by their husband, or they just start to dislike their husband. And then you have this issue, you have a problem, right? So just stay within your nature and trust your gut once you're healthy, like as you're not 100% healthy, and you can improve things about your health and lifestyle, and of course, there's no 100% but I'd say 95% Once you're at these 95% and you really feel healthy, abundant, you have a good rhythm, a good structure. Circadian rhythm, like a good circadian rhythm is getting to bed and waking up with the sun and the darkness, and staying in kind of touch with the with that rhythm of nature. As you have all those things lined up, then you're going to feel driven towards better choices and better reproductive partners as well. And from all the things I found, I couldn't tell you or just talk to this person or that person, but I do think it is a great idea to take some money into your hand and talk to a real counselor or specialist who has worked with many families, because they have seen all the goods and the bads, and these people have talked to them about their deeper inner feelings in a way that maybe your friends wouldn't talk to you about. So, I'm also going to have a call. Her name is Sarah, but I forgot the last name. It's like a family community for recipients. So, I, what I'm saying is, I would trust these leaders of these kind of communities, those that are counseling and working with many recipients, rather than I would just trust a few recipient voices, those will just confuse you.

Rebecca Gleed: 51:51

Yeah, well, I certainly learned so much today, and I'm confident that the audience will too. So, thank you so much for coming on. Tell everyone where they can find you,

Daniel Bayen: 52:02

so if you just Google or go on Instagram or any other social media form and look for Donor Dan, you can find my profile. Usually, there's a link, and you can find my portfolio through the link. You can also find the Open Donor Association. Sign up for the Open Donor Association. We have some other donor portfolios on our website as well. If you're looking for someone with a different ethnicity or a different kind of physical features, we're trying to kind of help anyone grow a healthy family. So, Donor Dan or Open Donor Association.

Rebecca Gleed: 52:30

Perfect. Thank you so much for coming on.

Daniel Bayen: 52:33

Thank you as well, Becky.

Unknown: 52:37

If you would like to learn more about how we can help visit our website at Perinatal Reproductive wellness.com and while you are there, check out the latest edition of our book, Employed Motherhood. We also invite you to follow us on social media at Employed Motherhood. Finally, if you enjoyed listening to the show, please subscribe and rate it. Thank you. Bye.