How to choose a sperm donor at our bank

They hand out buttons to clients announcing, "It's a Viking!" And their sales brochure says of their donors, "His ancestors took England, Greenland, Iceland and most of northern Europe. Better get a stronger crib."

They'll also pass on girl-talk-style evaluations of donors, courtesy of their female lab employees who have actually sized up these fellas face to face.

For example: "Dagh is tall, slim and has very fair skin. He's got good looks, and the staff could easily see him as a male model in, e.g., a Hugo Boss ad."

But I scroll on to more local options, including No. 356 from the Sperm Bank of New York Inc. An 18-page description ($12) and a baby picture (also $12) reveal an Italian-Irish man who works in public relations, is a vegetarian and never gets upset when he has to wait in line. He looks quite dapper as a kid, in a gingham bow tie and straw-colored hair.

But what about the guy with the Ivy League degree on Idant Laboratories' Web site? He's a Jew of Russian heritage who studied at a prestigious Midwestern university.

JACKPOT! He went to Dal ton, the super-exclusiveUpper East Side high school. But could I use that to get our kid in?

Intrigued, I click to spend an extra $8 and view a handwritten 10- page profile, where I learn that this guy - a lab technician calls him "a really rich and good-looking lawyer" - has self-described "excellent, thick" hair.

But let's be honest. I'm a blonde. And women want their kids to resemble them a bit.

"You won't have a 5-foot-2 Chinese woman saying to us, 'I want a blond, tall donor,' " said Rodgaard.

My eyes drift over to an Italian-German-Hungarian, at the Park Avenue Fertility Group, who loves Chinese and Italian food and does laundry in his spare time.

"We used to only sell lumberjack types from Minnesota," said Joanne, the office manager there. "But we started using local samples to appeal to a more Upper East Side, Jewish and WASPy clientele."

Successful insemination requires anywhere from two to over 20 "straws," or vials of semen. An average client buys about 13, costing $3,575 to $9,000, depending on the bank. And that doesn't include the fertilization procedures - another several thousand dollars.

HE'S tall, handsome, has gray-green eyes and plays the guitar.

He swims, drives a vintage Ford Capri, wears size-91/2 shoes and loves orcas. He says his most memorable childhood experience is "lying in a big open range filled with rabbits."

But is he the man to father my children?

With the click of my mouse, he could be. I could simply plunk a few servings of his frozen sperm into my online shopping basket (at $275 each), select FedEx delivery ($200 extra) and wham - he and I could be making a baby.

Hmmm. But it says here that he "talks too much" and has problems focusing.

Better pass - after all, there are millions of other sperm donors out there on the Web.

Germans. Vikings. Jews. Dalton and Harvard grads. Muslims. You name it.

And, I discover, you can choose based on everything from whether a donor voted for President Bush to whether he eats dairy to how much he bench-presses to how impressive his rsum is. (Yes, many provide actual rsums.) Some donors will even send you a baby picture and eventually become instant-messaging pals with the bundle of joy.

Infertility treatment is a $1 billion-a-year industry and growing, says Dr. Jeremy and Lorie Groll, whose book, "Fertility Foods," will be published in May.

In 2001, there were 29 sperm banks licensed by the state Health Department. Today, there are 69 - 22 of them in the city. But nobody ever actually visits these businesses - sperm is now almost a 100 percent Internet trade.

"With a few mouse clicks, you can go through all the sperm banks and order from all over the world," said Claus Rodgaard, who runs the TriBeCa outpost of Scandinavian Cryobank with his wife, Trine.

HE says a lot of his customers are women doing this on their own.

"Single women spend a lot of time reading through all the profiles, and some say, 'This guy sounds great. I'll take him!' "

"She wants to meet a prince on a white horse, but that didn't happen, so now she has to do this . . . We supply as many details as possible."

But his wife says it always come down to the same factors: "Single women want the highest-IQ, most good-looking babies."