How did you announce your donor-conceived pregnancy?
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Anonymous
| I am pregnant with a baby conceived through donor egg. We are beginning to announce widely. I am older but still within realm of possibility that it would be OE. It feels like a buzzkill to bring up the topic in our announcements. Our immediate family and a few close friends know about our pivot to donor egg since we began last summer; however college friends, extended family, and our broad social circle dont know and somehow I feel like I am holding back. Our plan with the baby is to be very open about these origins from the start (no secrets) so now I feel like I have introduced an inconsistency. |
Anonymous
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There is a difference between secrecy and privacy. I'm a very private person, and I plan on telling my child from day 1 that they are donor conceived. Our families know that we used a donor egg to get pregnant. I may tell a few friends about it, especially if they will be in my child's life (most of my friends live hundreds if not thousands of miles away). But other than that I don't plan on making a broad announcement. I don't think it's anybody's business really. If my child wants to tell everybody as they grow up, I'm fine, but I don't think I owe anybody any explanation about our infertility issues and the way our child is conceived.
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Anonymous
| Hardly anyone knows about ours. They know I was doing IVF, but not that we switched to DE. I plan to be open with kids but they are still very young and it hasn’t come up yet. I do wonder how it will end up coming out with others, but for now I don’t feel the need to announce it to anyone. |
Anonymous
| I was surprised to find that my friends who used donor eggs don't even tell the kids. I guess I'd assumed it would be like adoption - make it part of the story from Day One - but for some reason it really doesn't seem to be handled that way. |
Anonymous
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I would say something to close friends, but not make a facebook announcement. In the first years of life, there are A LOT of conversations about who baby looks like and whether someone in your family had red hair or blue eyes or whatnot. People don't mean to be insensitive either, so if they knew it was a DE, it would help move the conversation away from these topics.
Different situation, but my sister was adopted. Whenever anyone commented on her blue eyes/curly hair and ask whose they were, my parents had a canned response- "they are lovely. She's adopted and fits in perfectly with our family." |
Anonymous
| I really don't think it's anyone's business You are having a baby. Period. Congratulations. |
Anonymous
With DNA testing available at CVS, this is a really stupid idea. |
Anonymous
This is true. But I also think I'd want to get ahead of all those "wow s/he looks so much like you, or your grandpa joe" type comments. I'd want to ground work to be laid already to say "well, that's not possible" smile and move along. I don't think you need to announce it to everyone, but I'd certainly let people who you see regularly know. To avoid needing to correct people in real time, or needing to "come out" with it each time a comment comes up. I do think you'll find many people don't realize a donor egg means you are not genetically related. |
Anonymous
Even stupider to tell friends and not tell the kids. Secrets always come out. I can't imagine that PP has multiple friends that are this silly. Sounds like a troll to me. |
Anonymous
Agree. I also plan on telling my child from day 1 - it's not a secret! - but I also feel that it's my child's information to share as he or she sees fit. It's the child's medical and personal information. While it could be slightly awkward to navigate general conversation about who the kids looks like, I just don't see the point in going into explicit detail about my child's conception and all of the nuances of donor conception just for the sake of casual chit chat. |
Anonymous
Well, maybe the baby will look like one or both of you. Babies can look like just about anyone - it's all in the eye of the beholder. Plus, you know how they say that spouses start looking like each other after a while -it probably has more to do with how they carry themselves, mannerisms, etc. I don't see the need to address those comments with more than a smile and a nod, or something vague, like "I love the way she holds her head", or "he is such a loud breather!" Personally, I would tell family and close friends, and of course, the kids once they are old enough to understand, in case there is a medical issue, or questions of something hereditary in the healthcare realm. Everyone else just needs to know that you are having a baby. Congrats, by the way! |
Anonymous
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I had a range of detail that I provided, depending on context. So the first people to be told of our pregnancy were the ones who knew the most about our challenges in getting there. There were a handful who knew from the start about donor eggs.
Then there were immediate family members - some of whom we trusted more than others in terms of how they would react. So we managed the level of detail, and the order in which we communicated, accordingly. Then there were the vast majority who don't need to know specifics, but for whom I often included language like "We are the blessed recipients of the unbelievable scientific knowledge/medical capabilities/modern science/collective skill of the reproductive industry.... And for anyone who was interested, or in similar challenges, I was totally upfront and happy to talk about the full scope of our journey. I wasn't always fully comfortable talking about it, though I am now (almost a decade later) but I am EXTREMELY glad that we were upfront and honest from the beginning. We have been that way with our kids also and it makes things infinitely easier. There is zero shame, no secrecy, no mystery, in how we became parents - there is only tremendous love, blessing, luck, generosity and commitment. Also, it's totally ok to feel your way through this a bit OP. You don't have to be perfect in your answers or approach right now. You will figure it out and it will all be fine. Congratulations on your pregnancy!!! |
Anonymous
| If you want to bring it up in individual conversations with friends it's fine to do that, but you are not withholding info by not sharing it. FWIW when I have older friends who get pregnant "with a little help" the possibility they used a donor occurs to me, but I don't need confirmation or bring it up. |
Anonymous
| My DE kids are now 18, and 15 year old twins. I have told them about their conception since the beginning. However, I believe that once the babies are born, it is their story to tell (and about their privacy). That being said, I have shared the facts of DE when it mattered. I don't want to encourage woman in their forties that they can easily have babies without a donor, despite the celebrities all over the magazines making this appear possible. |
Anonymous
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You just announce your pregnancy, OP. You are overthinking this. How you got here is irrelevant right now. You are pregnant! With a baby! Yey! That’s all that matters right now. When you start telling the baby her origin story, you will tell her about her donor. If you want to tell anyone else, you can (although reproductive psychologists recommend that you let it be the child’s information to share at this point). But the make up of your child’s genes is definitely not part of what you announce.
It feels relevant right now because you are still in the think of infertility stuff. In two years, it will feel so irrelevant. |