To want to talk about donor conception

The vast majority do it as part of their own IVF treatment to get a discount.

As someone who has had IVF (unsuccessfully) I know what an egg donor goes through and it is not anything I could ask someone else to do for me.

You clearly don't give a damn about that woman because:

1. she's never been a mother and has NO IDEA what it can mean to give away a child
2. the paltry sum given to women who sell their eggs wouldn't cover a semester's tuition in many countries.
3. The selfishness of the commissioning parents means they overlook the facts that egg retrieval can put that woman at risk of endometriosis, infertility, ovarian cancer.

I despise anyone who plays loose with young women's futures and creates warped justifications for exploiting their bodies. If you are so willing to justify commodifying women's bodies, a young woman could make more money in less time with fewer health risks if she worked a strip club for a month or did a few OnlyFans videos.

What age are you planning on telling DC?

🧟‍♀️ Zombie thread 🧟‍♂️

As a parent of a now (just) adult donor conceived, it has worked well for us. My DH has a genetic condition, so we used donor sperm.
We have always been open about using donor sperm and started when our child was about 18months. The story was much loved.
We made contact with the donor via our clinic, and now have a light email relationship. My kid has seen photos of bio paternal grandparents, asked a few questions and curiosity is filled. No actual meeting wanted!

Our kid is surprisingly well balanced ( for a teen!!) and loves to share their unusual start in life.

I definately think openess and honesty help. DH is dad and sperm donor is " sperm donor"

I thought way more about issues before my kid was born, than after.
Im not impressed by the judgemental people on here, but people judge others over so much, especially on an internet forum.

Hope you don’t mind me asking this, but have you/will you ever tell your son about his potential siblings? Feel free to ignore if you don’t wish to answer.

I completely understand your decision op, and I don't know what DH and i would have done in your position (for me personally I'd have really struggled with childlessness) but i struggle with some of the issues with donation.

You hear about these prolific sperm donors who have hundreds of bio kids.

For some reason I find it discomfiting the idea of my DC having hundreds of bio siblings we don't know etc.

On the egg side a lot of women who can't afford ivf end up egg sharing who probably would rather not if they had any choice. Plus there are vulnerable women doing it for money etc in some parts of the world.

I personally could not ever donate gametes, I could not cope with my bio kids being out there and not under my roof.

I am the mother of a donor conceived child and decided to have him when I was still single in my late 30s. I have friends who don’t have kids because they were single and never found the one, friends who were widowed leaving them with small children and friends who have to deal with a terrible coparenting relationship.

My DS has always known he is donor conceived, has read the letter the donor has written, knows (thanks to the HFEA) that he has 2 half-brothers born around the same time as he was through his donor’s sperm and that his donor has 2 children of his own.

He has always seen this as a gift. The donor gave him the gift of life and me the gift of having and knowing my DS. He is well adjusted, bright, happy and, apart from the usual pre-teen strops, we have a great time together. I am, and have always been able to more than support one child on my own but now also have a partner who we live with, with daughters of his own that DS gets on well with and while a blended family brings challenges of its own, he is benefiting from those relationships as well.

I honestly believe the life he is living is as good as anything I could have given him in most other conception circumstances, and better than many. I believe we will always remain a strong unit, we spend time together, go on holiday as the two of us, have fun.

I appreciate he will never know a father-son relationship with his donor but neither do so many other children and he has men in his life (my partner, his uncles and my father) who are strong role models and I am a strong independent woman and I believe that is just as important.

Don’t misunderstand me, I am not saying it is without challenges for some but, to date, we have experienced no more than any other family. I don’t judge anyone for the decisions they take but genuinely believe that any decision to have a child is fundamentally selfish and about the parent and not the child. All anyone can ever do is their best and that is all I am trying to do.

But the money being life changing means that some women may do this because they need the money.

Having your biological child raised by someone else is a huge decision, and women should not be in a position where they are motivated to do it out of financial necessity.

I'm a mum to a (known) donor conceived child and am aware that being a egg or sperm donor is a lifetime commitment - committing to be there should the child have any questions about their origin/why you donated when they grow up. If the 'win' for the egg donor is a shit tonne of cash, they may well not have thought the donation through, and be equipped for what may come 20 years down the line. There's no win for the child if donors are financially motivated.

I personally despise this attitude. A woman getting paid for her eggs could be a life changing thing for her while it changes the lives of recipients. It could pay off crippling debt, help a young woman finish university, or help a struggling mother pay bills. How DARE you be on your high horse saying women should not be compensated for this very beautiful gift of life they give to another? A win/win situation where a donor and a recipient both have their lives improved is good for everyone. It’s absolute shit that UK and EU governments think they have a right to limit compensation for such an important act.

We used a donor for our kids. They are old enough that donors were still anonymous. He left a paragraph describing himself and it’s very evident what talents they get from him as the kids are good at maths, science and music which they don’t get from either of us!

we did an DNA test so they know his ethnicity.

they have a mild curiosity about him (so do we, I’d love to see a photo and see his other kids) but it doesn’t seem to have caused them any trauma or difficulty. They’ve always known. We decided to go for it after learning that only a minority of adopted children seek our their bio parents. It seemed less morally questionable if it wasn’t inevitable that kids will always want to know their biological roots.

I used a donor and have two extremely well adjusted children/ teenagers who are open about their conception. They have also connected with their donor and his family. If you are upfront and confident people fall into line. I've had one person not be polite - turned out he had extreme mental health issues and an inability to hold his tongue.

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/assisted-reproduction-kids-grow-up-just-fine-but-it-may-be-better-to-tell-them-early-about#:~:text=It's%20something%20that's%20been%20shown,adulthood%20(20%20years%20old).

Here's an interesting study from UoCambridge you might like to read

Hi. I had a child via sperm donation - DS is now 17. I struggled with the idea initially - would it mess the child up etc but ultimately went for it as a single parent. My concerns were allayed to some extent by choosing an open ID donor that my DS could contact when he's 18. It's all turned out absolutely fine. My son has zero interest in who is father is. I have a child and adult photo of the donor and an audio recording of him being interviewed. He's never shown a shred of interest. I used a US sperm bank and I don't know what happened but he's ended up with vast amounts of siblings. Lots of us are in a Facebook group and those living near each in the states (most of his half-siblings are over there) are meeting up and are forming bonds. He has no interest in meeting/connecting with any of them either - that he is a donor-conceived child is just of no consequence to him. I thought when he started secondary school that I would have to talk to him about how to tell his friends - but he'd told everyone within about three days of getting there. When I went to pick him up his lovely new friends asked 'is it true that Lucas has X about of siblings and his dad is a sperm donor'. I confirmed that it was. There thought it was cool and that was that. My advice: go for it - it's the best decision I ever made. And be honest right from the get-go so there are no nasty surprises. Conversations from when he was very young along he lines of 'I really wanted a baby but needed help and a nice man gave me the thing that was missing and I was able to have you' made it completely normal for him. I have a friend who did the same thing as me. We met at a workshop on 'how to tell your child they're donor-conceived' - he's completely fine too. Good luck.

Just to add to this @Dream2762 i have nothing at all against donor conception. But transparency with the people created is the key.

I know many families who have used donor sperm - all of them open about it.
I know straight couple who used IVF, they’re also open about it, and one straight couple who used egg donation - also open about it.
Its transparency that’s important - there are a lot of couple in relationships now where the father isn’t actually the bio father of one or more children but isn’t aware of it.
as it ever was thus.

I don’t sit in judgement of anyone. I’m answering the questions raised and giving the reasons I did what I did. My reasons are not a judgment of anybody, they are a thought process/ logic around why we did what we did.

It is impossible for me to answer the question and say why I chose not to use an anonymous donor, without saying that I felt it would be unethical.

For us it was essential that we had a relationship with our child’s biological father from the very beginning. There needed to be a relationship between our donor and our child(ren), in order for us to go ahead. Not for our benefit (as you can imagine it’s a lot more complex for the adults doing it this way) but for the sake of the person being conceived. We all had to be on the same page regarding transparency, healthy communication, who holds and does not hold parental responsibility and most importantly an agreement that the person we have conceived is always placed at the centre of all decision making.

I can conceive naturally, so I’m not sure how that’s relevant? In my case, conceiving naturally would have been logistically a lot easier and involved no injections, hormones and invasive procedures. It would have been a lot better for me financially and physically. One of my IVF cycles almost ended in me dying of a life threatening haemorrhage.

I think it’s incredible that IVF exists for those with fertility issues. I simultaneously think we need to be very careful about how IVF is used to ensure everyone involved (including the person being conceived) is treated ethically.

It was important for me that I thought ahead- not just about the baby I wanted, but the person they would become- independent of me and my own wishes. As with any family, I may have made mistakes that I’m not yet aware of, because I’m human. And they may have questions I haven’t thought of or simply disagree with me. I’m not claiming there is one way to have a family or that I’m better than anyone else.

I would love to adopt as well. Some of the things you’ve said are irrelevant- I can conceive naturally. And I do want to adopt. But adoption is an entirely different process. Nobody should adopt for any reason other than because they genuinely want to adopt.

Do I think I used a donor in a ‘better’ way because they are known and not anonymous? Yes, otherwise I wouldn’t have put myself through the last 6 years of IVF.

Do I think I’m ‘better’ than anyone else? Absolutely not. My decision to do what I did had nothing to do with what anyone else did or didn’t do- it had everything to do with my own morals.

Someone conceived via a donor up thread said, “A parent - child bond is so much more than biology and to suggest otherwise is so deeply offensive to me and to many other families.”

I consider myself one of those ‘many other families’ and I agree. My spouse is not genetically related to either of our kids. That doesn’t diminish their role as a parent in any way. But it also doesn’t diminish the role of our child’s biological father.

By prioritising our children’s mental health over our desire to have a family, we have had to make additional space for uncomfortable conversations, invasive treatments and complex decisions.

We have tried to take everyone involved into account, for the sake of our children. Not to judge others, but to do what we think is in the best interests of our kids.

I was raised by my mum and a man who was not my biological father. Lots of issues and I will spare you all the details but I strongly believe genetics are so much more intertwined with your personality and identity than you likely realise. Having genetic children of my own really cemented this for me when I could see how much like me and their dad they were. I adore that we can understand them in this way.
I imagine you will probably see my post ‘unkind’ as you only wanted positive, life choice reinforcing responses but I really think it is unethical to intentionally create a life from the very start that will be deprived of two genetic parents.

Reflecting on this. I think a big problem in the UK is awkwardness about sex / fertility etc.

We wentvthrough infertility and openly discussed it with friends. There is no shame at all to me but I know culturally it's different.

Ditto to sex and baby making. I think its not ruining a chds innocence to understand a biological function from a young age. We live on a farm though so see it in action!

It's neither awkward nor a burden.

Just like with adopted children, you drip the information to them from a young age.

It's a bit of genetic material. Your parents are who brings you up.

We considered this and went as far as having a counselling session with the clinic to discuss everything.
Ultimately we decided againt it. DH was never keen and after the counselling I didn't feel good about it either.
I beleive that honesty is vital and that if we had a child we would have to tell them. Then that extended to who else to tell, family, friends. People comment so much on who babies look like like etc. By telling people DHs infertility is then revealed and that would have been difficult for him.
I think donor conception can work very well for some families but it wasn't for us. We actually adopted 2 children in the end
Good luck OP.

‘** if you’re asking me, Yes. We did. ’

there you go then, you used a donor. Just because you feel you did it a ‘better’ way doesn’t mean you did.
Perhaps you shouldn’t have at all given you couldn’t conceive ‘naturally’, perhaps you should have accepted you weren’t having kids or - as people like to suggest - adopted.
I would never have used IVF ( or so I believe) but I certainly don’t sit in judgement of those who did.