LF: Lesbian couple spend £13,000 on mail order Danish semen and fertility treatment so their child will look like a Viking - because British sperm 'doesn't cut the mustard'

Title: Lesbian couple spend £13,000 on mail order Danish semen and fertility treatment so their child will look like a Viking - because British sperm 'doesn't cut the mustard'
Source: Daily Mail Online
URL Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art ... sperm-doesn-t-cut-mustard.html
Published: Mar 31, 2015
Author: Emma Glanfield for MailOnline
Post Date: 2015-03-31 09:16:48 by cranky
Keywords: None
Views: 18819
Comments: 88

A lesbian couple have spent £13,000 having Danish semen and fertility treatment shipped to their British home so their child will look like a Viking.

Kelly and Anna Cooke, both 34, have chosen to buy sperm from Denmark because they want their child to have blonde hair and blue eyes and because British sperm 'doesn't cut the mustard'.

The married couple, from Camberley, Surrey, used Kelly's eggs for the insemination after receiving £300-a-time vials of Danish sperm in the post and later successfully conceived via IVF.

Anna put herself forward to carry the child so that they both had an input into the pregnancy and, after a heart-breaking miscarriage, she is now five months pregnant.

Kelly, a buildings manager, said: 'Danish sperm is the best in the world and such high quality.

'I suppose he would look a bit like a Viking, but we want our son to look like us.'

The pair, who got legally married in February, ordered their Danish semen from Cryos International - the world's largest sperm bank which has a motto of: ‘Congratulations, it’s a Viking’.

However, after inseminating Anna with four vials of Danish sperm, she had still not fallen pregnant so they forked out £5,000 for a round of IVF treatment.

That worked but she miscarried, so they spent another £5,000 on IVF and have so far bought ten vials of Dutch sperm.

Anna is due to give birth on July 23 but the couple want to keep the sex of their fair-haired baby secret for the time being.

Anna, a chef, who dyes her hair brown, said: 'We are just so pleased that after spending £13,000 we finally have a little one on the way.

'It doesn't matter that we have rinsed our savings and scrimped and saved for years to get where we are.'

Her partner added: 'With my eggs and Anna carrying the baby, he or she really is ours and we couldn't be happier.'

CONGRATULATIONS IT'S A VIKING! WHY WOMEN FLOCK ABROAD FOR SPERM

Danish sperm now accounts for a third of the total used by British fertility clinics.

Women from all over the world are choosing to go Scandinavian when they need a sperm donor, with shortages of homegrown sperm and better service cited as the main reasons for doing so.

According to Dr Alan Pacey, a fertility expert at the University of Sheffield, people prefer going abroad because of a lack of British sperm donors.

He said: 'We don't have enough donors in the UK to meet the national need. We don't have the clinic infrastructure sufficient to recruit enough donors - even when men want to donate.

'Often there simply isn't the size and scale within small NHS clinics to consider having a donor recruitment programme - plus if you're not confident that sufficient men are going to ring up and become sperm donors, the economics of it simply aren't going to work.'

Danish clinic Cryos International – which is the world's largest sperm bank – is also popular because of its customer service, according to experts.

Laura Witjens, CEO of the National Gamete Donation Trust, said: 'It's much easier for a British clinic to order sperm from Denmark which is Fed-exed the next day than to try and recruit their own donors and all the hassle that goes with them.

'The Danish model is customer service driven. It knows how to deal well with customers, it has a good website, and that's what we could do in the UK as well - it's not rocket science.'

Choice: Denmark's sperm banks, among them Cryos, deploy excellent customer service to help boost sales

Dr Pacey added: 'Denmark is geographically close to the UK. I think there's some sort of philosophical and intellectual bond that we have with Denmark.'

Most women flocking to Denmark for sperm are lesbians or single women in their 30s and 40s who do not see why a lack of partner should be a barrier to motherhood.

It is only in the past few years that there has been a 'Viking invasion' of Britain, due to changes in the law that banned anonymous sperm donation in Britain, leading to a rapid decline in donors.

A British sperm donor has to be prepared for the fact that any resulting child will have the right to trace them at the age of 18.

However, Danish sperm donors aren't anonymous and the detail given about the donor is extensive, which is part of the attraction.

With a British sperm donor, you get a number and choice of hair colour, while Danish sperm donors offer detail you can imagine including family background, job description, education and pictures of the man as a baby or child.

One expert said: 'Donors write personal messages about why they are a donor. You even get to hear their voice.'

The Cryos clinic has been running for 25 years and boasts 30,000 babies born worldwide. But a Viking baby doesn't come cheap, with Danish sperm bought over the internet and delivered to an address in Britain costing £460.