I have one child conceived at age 37 with my own eggs after three cycles of IVF (DS1) and twins conceived with donor eggs at age 39 after 3 failed cycles with my own eggs. DS2 and DS3 were conceived in the first donor egg cycle. DS1 is 11 and DS2 & DS3 are 9.

When the twins were about 3, I began telling them that my eggs were "sick" and I needed another woman's eggs to have a baby. At this age, they know the complete story. They have seen pictures of the donor and they know that they are not genetically related to me. It hasn't been a source of concern so far, but of course they are not teenagers yet.

From my perspective, they are all 100% my babies and my love is equally strong for all of them. I was so lucky to have the chance to have all of my boys using modern technology.

Your child will find out. They just will. Probably using Ancestry.com or 23 and me. Why would you risk it? Tell the truth.

We used a DE, did Shady Grove's 3-1 shared program. Did not work the 1st time, didn't even get a day 3 embryo. Worked the 2nd time, got 2 blasts which we genetically tested. One perfect embryo who is now our 10m old son. We don't want him ever to remember a time of not knowing the way he came into the world. It's just one piece of his fantastic story.

Anonymous wrote:http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/sunday-commentary/20100618-Clark-and-Marquardt-Sperm-donor-5867.ece

This may be interesting to those here. While it focuses on donor sperm vs. eggs, studies on this subject are so sparse that one can't be too picky.

It was our choice to tell our DD about her genetic origins right from the start. We wanted to control the way she found out, so that it would be part of her self-story from a young age. My feeling after reading all the (limited) research on the subject was that kids do best either knowing from the very beginning or never knowing at all. I didn't feel comfortable relying on them never finding out--what if the donor had a health problem and came forward at a later date? With all the advances in genetics, what if my child found out as part of medical testing? I would hate for this to come up as a surprise somehow and for the fact that we lied about this (and yes, I've heard the explanation about it not being a lie if it never comes up) to overshadow the years of love and care we've provided for our child.

One can be very picky. This study was funded by the Institute for American Values, a socially conservative think tank. You can choose to think that this is a legitimate source of information, but I definitely don't.

Anonymous wrote:http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/sunday-commentary/20100618-Clark-and-Marquardt-Sperm-donor-5867.ece

This may be interesting to those here. While it focuses on donor sperm vs. eggs, studies on this subject are so sparse that one can't be too picky.

Interesting, yes, but flawed. This study has not published in a peer-reviewed journal. It has however, been published by: the Commission on Parenthood's Future and FamilyScholars.org. I smell an agenda (referring to these "researchers", not PP).

I had my first daughter using my own eggs at age 41. At age 43 we tried for another with my own eggs, but after 2 failed IVFs we moved to DE. We got pregnant on our first try with DE. We chose a donor who was like me in many ways but had some bonuses (traits that I WISH I had) - very musical, taller than I, etc. My son is not quite 2 and we have already started to tell him about hsi origins. Our family is already "blended"...I have a step daughter, a genetic daughter and a DE son, so each kid has a different story. I hope my kids understand that we love them all the same. We also chose to do a semi-open DE arrangement. Our donor has agreed to let our son contact her once he turns 18. Since we knew we'd tell our son about his origins from the start, we wanted to give him the option of finding out about his donor and meeting her if he ever wanted to.

We felt very comfortable choosing our donor as our clinic provided a long history with physical, psychological, medical background on the donor and her family. We have both baby and adult pictures of the donor as well.

We are so happy we did DE. It was really a very easy decision for us.

http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/sunday-commentary/20100618-Clark-and-Marquardt-Sperm-donor-5867.ece

This may be interesting to those here. While it focuses on donor sperm vs. eggs, studies on this subject are so sparse that one can't be too picky.

It was our choice to tell our DD about her genetic origins right from the start. We wanted to control the way she found out, so that it would be part of her self-story from a young age. My feeling after reading all the (limited) research on the subject was that kids do best either knowing from the very beginning or never knowing at all. I didn't feel comfortable relying on them never finding out--what if the donor had a health problem and came forward at a later date? With all the advances in genetics, what if my child found out as part of medical testing? I would hate for this to come up as a surprise somehow and for the fact that we lied about this (and yes, I've heard the explanation about it not being a lie if it never comes up) to overshadow the years of love and care we've provided for our child.

02/01/2012 16:56

We chose donor egg after several failed IVF cycles. We implanted two eggs and now have one little boy! Also, we have a number of fertilized eggs on ice for the future.

The odds they gave us for a two-egg transfer was one chance in three for each of zero, one, or two children.

PP 23:21 again. We have decided that we'll tell our children in age appropriate ways as they grow up. As the other PP said, we will tell them both truths, that they did not come from mommy's egg and that she loves them as much as if they did come from mommy's egg. We spent a lot of time during our very long (nearly 5 year) journey to parenthood, meeting other families on-line that have dealt with this (on an on-line ARTS forum) and the general consensus from those many families is that you do not want the child(ren) to think that there is anything wrong or embarrassing or that needs to be hidden about their creation. They are normal children who are loved by normal parents (well, almost). If you treat is as if it is worth knowing, but not wrong, then they'll learn to understand it that way as well. If you hide it and they find out, then they will feel that it was something that needed to be hidden and not discussed and there is something wrong with it. For the families that we spoke with, it was emotionally healthier for the children if the parents treated this as a normal part of their lives. So that's how we'll try to handle this.

Pp, why do you suppose they even told you?

8:18 here: I think in many ways it would've been easier if I'd known all along, but I was a horrible teenager, and I'm afraid I might have said some really hurtful stuff to my parents if I had that in my arsenal. Then again, because I didn't know, I always teased my dad about how different I looked from him, and I'm sure that was hurtful, too, though he never showed it.

My paernts decided that they would tell my brother and I about using donor sperm when we were both 18, but I think they didn't really want to tell us, so they let it drag on for a long time. I didn't find out until I was 32 and had already had a child. Like I said, I was upset with them, but I do understand how it happened that way. Honestly, I thought "Didn't they trust me to love him anyway? Did they think it would make such a difference to me?"