The Blonde or Brunette

Selecting an egg donor with your wife is like searching for the perfect first date.

My wife, Rachel, and I have been immersed in the world of infertility treatments for the past four years. It's an exclusive, rotten club to be a part of, a secret world of injections and mood swings, surgeries and waiting rooms, late-night crying sessions, alienation and rage. In other words, it's a microcosm of life, concentrated into four years, under the supervision of a doctor. Every day of that four years is marked by a singular, obsessive focus: Get pregnant.

And what do we do when those four years have yielded a miscarriage and little else, except the remnants of track marks across my wife's stomach from more than 200 hormone injections? Little else except the shaken foundation of a strong marriage, battered by an inability to share the love of parenting? We work through our disappointment, laugh at the absurdity of our situation, and embrace, as my wife calls it, "weird science."

For the past six months, Rachel and I have been searching for egg donors, a process we have discovered to be both ridiculous and profound. We sit in front of our computer and browse a donor database, searching for candidates based on photo and bio. Whether they have pretty eyes, nice hair, a good nose, above-average IQ, athleticism, mental health, and whatever other positive traits we can think of. It's like my wife is helping me select the perfect first date, only at the end of this date I will be taking my date's egg to a lab, where a technician will fertilize her egg with my sperm, then the cellular glob will be injected into my wife's uterus.

Of course I'm both overstating and understating the process. The arrangement is strictly professional - there is no personal interaction with the donor, and the procedure is more complicated than simple egg fertilization. My wife's cycle has to be timed to the donor's cycle so that her body can accept the embryo when it's finally transferred. And because the hormone treatments send the donor's ovaries into hyperdrive, we don't just get one egg. We get anywhere from 10 to 50 eggs, on average. Those eggs become our property, frozen for future use should the first attempt not work.

Yes, it's weird science. It's also fascinating, because it brings up many questions, especially when I suggest an egg donor who looks nothing like my wife. Maybe she has blue eyes like Rachel, the same curve to her smile, similar interests. But what if she has brown hair to my wife's blond? Is 5-8 to my wife's 5-4? Am I making my choice based on some subconscious algorithm of genetic fitness, sparked by an overly systematic analysis not normally found in choosing a mate?

Even more bizarre is when Rachel suggests an egg donor who looks nothing like herself. I wonder if she's attempting to "improve" upon her own genetic legacy by picking the right donor, if her perceived failings in the fertility game have caused her to doubt her own fitness. Maybe she secretly thinks I'd be better off with someone else, a woman who can give me a child the old-fashioned way. Without doctors and injections and procedures that require hand scrubbing.

But I won't ask those questions, because I know what Rachel would say. She would say we're making it up as we go along, that doubt and fear are unavoidable. So I'm left to invent answers to my absurd questions, and the best answer I can come up with is this: My wife and I love each other. Love is the essence of our marriage. Not how many times we've been to the doctor, how many needles we've prepped, how many post-op recovery rooms we've waited in. Searching for an egg donor is another extension of our love and commitment. There is no wrong way and right way to pick the best donor. Like all major life decisions, it will take compromise and patience.

We've set no deadline for selecting our egg donor. Somewhere in the world there is a woman for both of us, and we will have a family.

Micah Nathan of Brookline is the author of the novel Gods of Aberdeen (Simon & Schuster). Send comments to coupling@globe.com.