My DE kids are teens - AMA

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP, thanks for doing this! I’m a former donor and I wonder about my recipient family(ies) all the time and hope they are happy and well. So, for one of my donations, the clinic inadvertently discharged me home with a form that had the intended father’s name and address on it. I still have it in a file cabinet somewhere. This was from about 15 years ago when anonymous donations were the norm and semi-anonymous or open donations were pretty much unheard of. Would it be horribly intrusive and unwelcome to send a letter just saying “Hello, I might be your child’s donor. I’m open to contact, but please disregard if you prefer not to hear from me”?

I should probably have shredded it a long time ago and pretended I never saw it, but I’ve held onto it all these years. I believe the recipients were a same sex couple or possibly single father. Any thoughts?

Oh, please don't do this. 🤢

[Anonymous]

NP here. Curious about not telling the grandparents. My twins were conceived with donor sperm. My parents know and so do the kids. But DH still does not want to tell his parents. I don’t want my kids to feel it is a secret to hide. They are in upper elementary. It’s causing some friction between me and DH.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP, thanks for doing this! I’m a former donor and I wonder about my recipient family(ies) all the time and hope they are happy and well. So, for one of my donations, the clinic inadvertently discharged me home with a form that had the intended father’s name and address on it. I still have it in a file cabinet somewhere. This was from about 15 years ago when anonymous donations were the norm and semi-anonymous or open donations were pretty much unheard of. Would it be horribly intrusive and unwelcome to send a letter just saying “Hello, I might be your child’s donor. I’m open to contact, but please disregard if you prefer not to hear from me”?

I should probably have shredded it a long time ago and pretended I never saw it, but I’ve held onto it all these years. I believe the recipients were a same sex couple or possibly single father. Any thoughts?

This is the OP. I always wonder whether the donor thinks about the kids and wonders whether they are loved and well cared for. I would love to put the donor's worries at ease and tell her how intensely grateful I am to her for giving me those boys. I feel I owe it to her to make sure that they are cherished because she took a huge risk in entrusting me with her genetic offspring.

I’m a different donor. I’m 45 now and donated when I was 23. The money allowed me to quit my very toxic job, move across the US to DC where I found a job and career that I love. I also met my husband here and have two healthy happy kids and a very nice life in general. I do think about the person that my egg helped to make and hope he or she had a wonderful childhood and is a happy young adult. They’d be about the age I was when I donated. I signed the form that I’d be open to contact but have not heard anything. On retrieval day, the recipients left a very nice letter for me and told me a lot about themselves, their struggles with infertility, their personal and professional interests and why they selected me. It meant a lot to me that they took the time to share so much with me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you feel closer to your 15 yo or have a stronger connection than with your twins?

This is such a ridiculous question.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did your twins ever get teased or treated differently by other kids or families due to their DE status? Was it ever a thing? I have a DE child; I worry sometimes not so much about my own kid, with whom I have a very close connection, but how other kids might treat my child as 'different' ?

Op here. My kids' friends and our casual acquaintances don't know the kids' DE origins. In fact I didn't tell my parents because I worried they would not accept them. Both of my parents passed away without knowing, but they absolutely adored their three grandsons.

NP here also with one OE and one DE kid. I love both my kids equally but the DE kid looks a lot like the egg donor and takes after my DH while the OE kid looks like me. I marvel at seeing my face in my OE kid's face and I miss not seeing that in my DE kid but I tell myself that he could have easily taken after his dad facially. Like PP we never told the grandparents for the same reasons. DE kid knows that "another lady helped us" as we were taught to do during the required counseling so that there is never a bombshell moment. He also knows that this is private medical information that we don't reveal to other people.

Shouldn't that really be his call, not yours?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NP here. Curious about not telling the grandparents. My twins were conceived with donor sperm. My parents know and so do the kids. But DH still does not want to tell his parents. I don’t want my kids to feel it is a secret to hide. They are in upper elementary. It’s causing some friction between me and DH.

I am the OP. In my case, my kids really don't talk about their DE status in general. I don't think that they think about it much. I don't think that they struggled with keeping is a secret because it seems like a non-issue to them. I am their mother and they are my kids and it isn't any more complicated than that. I know that they are only 13 and things might change in the future, but so far it almost never comes up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did your twins ever get teased or treated differently by other kids or families due to their DE status? Was it ever a thing? I have a DE child; I worry sometimes not so much about my own kid, with whom I have a very close connection, but how other kids might treat my child as 'different' ?

Op here. My kids' friends and our casual acquaintances don't know the kids' DE origins. In fact I didn't tell my parents because I worried they would not accept them. Both of my parents passed away without knowing, but they absolutely adored their three grandsons.

NP here also with one OE and one DE kid. I love both my kids equally but the DE kid looks a lot like the egg donor and takes after my DH while the OE kid looks like me. I marvel at seeing my face in my OE kid's face and I miss not seeing that in my DE kid but I tell myself that he could have easily taken after his dad facially. Like PP we never told the grandparents for the same reasons. DE kid knows that "another lady helped us" as we were taught to do during the required counseling so that there is never a bombshell moment. He also knows that this is private medical information that we don't reveal to other people.

Shouldn't that really be his call, not yours?

Not at 9 it's not.

[Anonymous]

I just wanted to say to any donors who may be reading this - thank you! My DE toddler is the absolute love of my life and the sunshine of the extended family. I feel lucky every day.

[Anonymous]

How did you handle questions like “what is our culture/ethnicity” and “why do I have ______ colored hair/eyes” if those features were indeed different?

So thankful to our donors! We’ve started the telling process, but they are too young to fully grasp the details, but I’d like to build onto their story.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How did you handle questions like “what is our culture/ethnicity” and “why do I have ______ colored hair/eyes” if those features were indeed different?

So thankful to our donors! We’ve started the telling process, but they are too young to fully grasp the details, but I’d like to build onto their story.

This is the OP. I just explained that the donor's ethnicity is different. I am from a Caribbean island that was colonized by the English and African slaves. Th donor is from a Caribbean island that was colonized by the Spanish and African slaves. We talk about how my heritage is similar to the donor's, but also different.

[Anonymous]

23 and me was around 15 years ago, I know did the testing then.

That said, I'm not surprised they are boys. I think it would be totally different with girls.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP, thanks for doing this! I’m a former donor and I wonder about my recipient family(ies) all the time and hope they are happy and well. So, for one of my donations, the clinic inadvertently discharged me home with a form that had the intended father’s name and address on it. I still have it in a file cabinet somewhere. This was from about 15 years ago when anonymous donations were the norm and semi-anonymous or open donations were pretty much unheard of. Would it be horribly intrusive and unwelcome to send a letter just saying “Hello, I might be your child’s donor. I’m open to contact, but please disregard if you prefer not to hear from me”?

I should probably have shredded it a long time ago and pretended I never saw it, but I’ve held onto it all these years. I believe the recipients were a same sex couple or possibly single father. Any thoughts?

Oh, please don't do this. 🤢

Most likely they never told the kids. But one of the DNA sites will be how they find out...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you feel closer to your 15 yo or have a stronger connection than with your twins?

This is such a ridiculous question.

OP said AMA. Thus, your opinions don't matter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you feel closer to your 15 yo or have a stronger connection than with your twins?

This is such a ridiculous question.

I think people avoid the question because the answer is yes. PP, assume yes. The answer is yes.

[Anonymous]

Donors and recipients can learn a lot from hearing from Donor Conceived People. There's a subreddit called AskADCP where some of them are willing to answer questions. Generally the consensus there seems to be that accurate and open information should be made available. I have also seen some of them share that they feel DCP should be able to meet their genetic siblings as children. This is the course of action my family intends to pursue with genetic siblings of our children.