Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mom from DE here. Re the issue of being open - I just want to advocate for not trying to keep the secret. I totally agree about telling your child, without shame but in celebration of how much your child was wanted.

Don't tell your child but tell the child he/she can't talk about it - that screams of shame and will diminish any message of love you attach to it.

Deal with the family/friends who are going to potentially be an issue LONG before you child is old enough to be aware. Handle it so she/he doesn't have to.

I wholeheartedly agree with talking these issues through w/ a counselor who has experience with DE, blended families, adoption, fertility struggles, etc... It was profoundly helpful for me and my husband.

Good luck!

I find this discussion very helpful, but the bolded part is completely naive and unrealistic. My MIL is in her 70s, devoutly catholic, from a latin culture. Loves making a soap opera out of anything. Catholic church forbids IVF even with own eggs. How am I supposed to deal? Tell her FU and your religion? Convince DH to become estranged from her? Never give her a chance to talk to the child? Wait for her to die before having children?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mom from DE here. Re the issue of being open - I just want to advocate for not trying to keep the secret. I totally agree about telling your child, without shame but in celebration of how much your child was wanted.

Don't tell your child but tell the child he/she can't talk about it - that screams of shame and will diminish any message of love you attach to it.

Deal with the family/friends who are going to potentially be an issue LONG before you child is old enough to be aware. Handle it so she/he doesn't have to.

I wholeheartedly agree with talking these issues through w/ a counselor who has experience with DE, blended families, adoption, fertility struggles, etc... It was profoundly helpful for me and my husband.

Good luck!

I find this discussion very helpful, but the bolded part is completely naive and unrealistic. My MIL is in her 70s, devoutly catholic, from a latin culture. Loves making a soap opera out of anything. Catholic church forbids IVF even with own eggs. How am I supposed to deal? Tell her FU and your religion? Convince DH to become estranged from her? Never give her a chance to talk to the child? Wait for her to die before having children?

Anonymous wrote:Mom from DE here. Re the issue of being open - I just want to advocate for not trying to keep the secret. I totally agree about telling your child, without shame but in celebration of how much your child was wanted.

Don't tell your child but tell the child he/she can't talk about it - that screams of shame and will diminish any message of love you attach to it.

Deal with the family/friends who are going to potentially be an issue LONG before you child is old enough to be aware. Handle it so she/he doesn't have to.

I wholeheartedly agree with talking these issues through w/ a counselor who has experience with DE, blended families, adoption, fertility struggles, etc... It was profoundly helpful for me and my husband.

Good luck!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mom from DE here. Re the issue of being open - I just want to advocate for not trying to keep the secret. I totally agree about telling your child, without shame but in celebration of how much your child was wanted.

Don't tell your child but tell the child he/she can't talk about it - that screams of shame and will diminish any message of love you attach to it.

Deal with the family/friends who are going to potentially be an issue LONG before you child is old enough to be aware. Handle it so she/he doesn't have to.

I wholeheartedly agree with talking these issues through w/ a counselor who has experience with DE, blended families, adoption, fertility struggles, etc... It was profoundly helpful for me and my husband.

Good luck!

I don't agree that everything you want to keep private or not tell others is shameful. Pregnancy, atheism, death, Santa is pretend are things I've talked to my child about where we discussed not telling others certain things ever or for limited periods of time (including other family members). In the example, shame is a real issue, but it doesn't have to be the case. In the end the info is really the DE child's, but trying to protect it's privacy until they have a better understanding and can make a clearer decision for themselves isn't bad. But you also couldn't use any sort of punishment or get mad at a young child for not keeping it private, so you need to be prepared for the fact that they might say something.


PP you're responding to. I agree that privacy doesn't equal shame. However, to tell a child that he/she needs to keep secret how he/she was conceived is a pretty mixed signal. I would never put my child in the position of feeling like anything about how they were conceived is somehow too problematic to talk about. That is a very different kind of thing to keep private than whether or not Santa is real.

Anonymous wrote:Mom from DE here. Re the issue of being open - I just want to advocate for not trying to keep the secret. I totally agree about telling your child, without shame but in celebration of how much your child was wanted.

Don't tell your child but tell the child he/she can't talk about it - that screams of shame and will diminish any message of love you attach to it.

Deal with the family/friends who are going to potentially be an issue LONG before you child is old enough to be aware. Handle it so she/he doesn't have to.

I wholeheartedly agree with talking these issues through w/ a counselor who has experience with DE, blended families, adoption, fertility struggles, etc... It was profoundly helpful for me and my husband.

Good luck!

Anonymous wrote:Am 5 months with a DE baby. First was not DE. Whole family is SO excited and happy.

I'm assuming you're capable of loving someone not genetically related to you, so that's not an issue. Otherwise here are things that I thought about (either on my own or had heard elsewhere) that are specific to having 1 DE and 1 OE (not DE issues generally).
1. Jealous of husband for being genetically related to the DE child. Non-issue for me.
2. First child is mean to your DE child for not being a full sibling. Not a real issue - first is very caring. Could it happen that they'd fight and the first would low? Yes, but it would be an anomaly and we'd deal with it appropriately.
3. DE child feels bad for being DE. We won't be giving them a reason to. We're not sharing our personal info with the world, but will be open early on and have been open with close family, who is also supportive. Teens in particular are known for finding things to feel crappy about, so it is very possible that this comes up. However, if it wasn't this in particular, it would be something else, to the extent the child is prone to depression, low self-esteem, etc. (which, of course we'd do our best to avoid and would deal with appropriately if it came up). I don't see that DE alone, would cause this, if we don't treat it like something to be ashamed of.
4. Other family members have issues/jealousy with the DE child looking into possible 1/2 siblings and or wanting info about the donor (if it happens, and it probably will - esp. 1/2 siblings). I feel pretty confident that neither I nor DH will take issue with this and I plan to be supportive. Can't tell what first child would think at this point, but since we plan to be supportive, I'd expect that will shape what the first child thinks, too.

I recommend talking to a counselor specializing in DE. We talked to Ellen Glazer. DE was great for us, but there are a lot of things to think about in the process.