To want to talk about donor conception

You are brave to bring this to Aibu OP. Mumsnet is generally anti gamete donation and a lot of people have very strong and very judgemental/ negative opinions about it. I hope it won’t distress you too much when these posters inevitably arrive. Put your hard hat on!!

But YANBU, there are all sorts of ways to create a family . As long as you are honest with your children right from the start, it will just become part of who they are like anything in life. Good on you and your husband for doing what works for you and good luck xx

I'm 40 and as it stands, childless with donor sperm as a single woman being my only option. I can't reconcile myself with this route and my own personal values. As painful as it is I've decided to take the emotional hit and grieve the fact that kids most likely are not in my future. It IS unbearably painful, but from a psychological perspective it seems like the lesser of two evils as I wouldn't want to treat a child like a commodity (that can be "bought" for my own selfish need) nor would I want them to experience the complication of being intentionally deprived of a relationship with their biological father. I also don't have family that could raise a child if something happened to me so that all felt too unfair/precarious too.

No judgement of women who chose differently. I just couldn't go ahead with it myself and this decision is painful but 100% right for my conscience.

Our donor was already a mother so that was a factor in believing she was making an informed decision to donate. And as I say we had treatment in the U.K. where everything is regulated by the HFEA.

Our younger child (now 9) was conceived with egg donation. We also have an older child. We thought very carefully before going ahead with treatment with donor eggs and I can only say I love them both as much as each other (and they annoy me sometimes as much as each other too).

We’ve always followed the Donor Conception Network advice to talk about it with our child from the start so both our children have always known. As do close family. We stayed in the U.K. for treatment so they’ll have the option of getting the donor’s details when they’re older (it was an anonymous donor so we don’t know her).

The future will always be unknown and our child could have struggles related to being donor conceived or resent us in the future. But that’s a chance we’ve taken and my husband was always confident that they’d ultimately be glad to exist.

I feel very strongly that egg donation and embryo donation exploits vulnerable and desperate women (it should be called selling because women are given discounts in the UK, or in other countries like the US, it's for-profit where agencies charge intended parents and pay women) - so I strongly judge anyone who goes that route.

However, no man suffers physically from selling his sperm, so I don't see it as exploitation, however, if any man (especially if they were young) asked my advice if he should do this, I'd caution him not to because it might be very difficult to know you have a child out there you have no opportunity to check on or know. So, you might want to consider why a man chooses to donate.

The other criticism against donor gametes is the child you're creating on purpose to not know their biological parent. So, this is something you'll need to consider as your child should have a right to know their origins, including his/her extended family, much like open adoption does. I would try to look at male gamete donations from a child-centered point of view and make your decisions based on that, not on personal desires.

I have concerns about all kinds of donations to create new people based on the issues it can give (and has given) a lot of children. For example, there are web sites where people try to find their donor dads when the only thing they know is that they were called "N346" and they were conceived in X location. (It is still not a requirement in all countries that children are allowed to learn about their biological origin sadly.)

One thing I read about telling children that they are donor conceived seemed to be a good tip: it suggested that you start telling the child immediately, ie as a baby, in appropriate language, so that you never have to decide on when to tell them. A couple in a documentary was interviewed and they had used a donor sperm. The dad said that he'd talked about it to his child from day 1, saying eg 'we got help having you, we got a seed from someone' and then this was expanded on. Worked well for them and their child always knew.

I do not have any children.

I think there can be all kinds of reasons, from ethical through to concern about the unknown (you only ever know as much as the donor has chosen to share with the clinic) to not being prepared to raise a non-bio child - I think the latter is particularly true of many men, who don’t form a bond with a baby through being pregnant and worry they might never bond with “someone else’s” child.

I’ve donated eggs so I don’t have an ethical opposition as such, however, I’ve always been very clear that I’ve no particular interest in getting to know the child/ren conceived using my eggs if they came to find me as adults - which ultimately could have an impact on them if they were keen to, and therefore I suppose falls into the category of ethics.

DH and I went as far as we could to have our own child. Issues on both sides and neither of us wanted to use donor eggs or sperm. It just didn’t feel right. I have ethical concerns about donor eggs both from the donor viewpoint and the child’s viewpoint. We remained childless, built a good life and don’t have any regrets about not going down the donor route.