My kids are donor conceived AMA

[logsonlogsoff]

Just that…

Egg or sperm?

Do they both have the same donor?

I considered doing this - I got to 37 and hadn’t met anyone. Then I met now-DH.

What’s your situation - are you single or did you need assisted conception? And congratulations!

I'm considering this if I dont meet someone in a few years. How much did it cost? How did you go about it? I have PCOS so not sure if I'd qualify for one round on NHS as a single person like same sex couples with fertility issues do or if it would all have to be private!

@TheDuchessOfMN Sperm donor, as we’re 2 women.
@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitzBoth kids have the same donor and are full siblings.
Didn’t need fertility treatment- other than the lack of sperm that is!
I do have a straight friend who hit 36 and was single so decided to go it alone … she did similar to us.
@Msgiggles30 the first go using IUI was around £2k which included initial fertility tests, all scans, sperm, drugs, and IUI. It worked first time.
2nd kid was about £1300 as initial tests re fertility et all had been done and this covered 2 x IUI tries, pregnant on 2nd.

That's really not as much as I thought it would be! What clinic did you use? (I know this may not be applicable due to area). How long did the whole process take from initial consultation?

‘ it? I have PCOS so not sure if I'd qualify for one round on NHS as a single person like same sex couples with fertility issues ’

I know a lot of LGBTQ+ parents and parents to be and getting NHS treatment is actually very tricky for them as you have to prove several years of ‘trying’ or infertility which is quite tricky when you’re 2 women! You might have the same issue as a single woman - probing the at your PCOS has actually affected your fertility. You could well still get pregnant with it if you weren’t single.
Initial consultation at a private clinic will get you the hormone tests etc that you need to give you an idea of whether or not you may have barriers to getting pregnant for a few hundred quid.

Why did you opt for medical intervention instead of at-home insemination?

And not related to your AMA thread title but if you don’t mind…
As a lesbian couple, how did you decide who would be pregnant?
If both of you had wanted to be pregnant, would you have considered it with the same sperm donor but separate eggs?

We used a private London clinic, and the reason it wasn’t that expensive was because I was lucky enough not to have fertility issues.
As for the process - a few months from initial consult to pregnancy test! We spend about a week picking a donor but everything else was very quick. It could have been shorter, we timed it to suit work schedule as in the week or so before ovulation you get a scan every other day to check follicle size so that the IUI happens exactly when you’re ovulating to give it the best chance of success.

@Whadda
We wanted to both be equal legal parents and to both go on the birth certificate and to do that ( at that time) we had to be in a Civil Partnership before conception and to use a clinic or to be able to prove that we had used an anonymous donor and not had sex with a bloke! Clinic seemed the easiest/ safest way to do this for us.
And as we were going to buy sperm anyway we used the clinic that would provide everything including the sperm.

As to who was going to have the baby, I was the one keen to try for kids and DW wasn’t mad keen to be pregnant. I didn’t mind. I would have been perfectly happy for DW to be the birth parent but as it turned out I ended up having both.

DW had tests to see if she would have 2nd child with the same donor and discovered that she actually did have severe fertility issues. We decided that I would just have the 2nd as we wanted a sibling and as I had already conceived without issues it seemed the easiest way.

Thanks for the info. Regarding the poster asking about at home insemination I assumed that wasnt legal in the UK as thought you could only get sperm from clinics here

With a number of donor conceived adults coming forward to say that despite their parents' love and honesty about their conception throughout their childhood they still felt something missing, do you worry about any long term impacts for the children? That they might feel there is a puzzle piece missing from their heritage and background that your love can't replace, and that a letter from the donor and hope of possibly meeting at 18 might not resolve?

Was the sperm donor anonymous? I wondered if you’d had any thoughts about handling future conversations with your children about their genetic background?

You can get sperm from anywhere! You can go on FB or websites like Pride Angel, you can use a known donor and co-parent or have a donor who wants to help you out.
You can import sperm from abroad to do it yourself.
But I can’t tell you the number of stories I’ve e heard of this going wrong…any known donor can claim parental rights, and will get them, if he changes his mind. Doesn’t matter what doc you have drawn up.
In the U.K. I would advise any couple who are serious about using a donor to 1) get married or have a CP pre-conception 2) use a clinic or a HFEA regulated sperm bank
That way you are both equal parents in the eyes of the law, both can go in the child’s birth certificate as ‘Mother’ and ‘Parent’ and the donor has no claim or responsibility for the child.
At 18 your child wi still be able to find out who their donor was if they wished to. We assume ours will.
I know people who have decided save money by finding someone to donate - and the hassle it has caused has not been worth it. Not for the sake of a few grand.

@StateOfTheUterus yes, as it was U.K.
Our kids at 18 will be able to find out full donor details. Less worried about genetics as using a regulated clinic means that the number of children conceived with the same sperm was strictly limited.
But yes, we talk to our kids about their donor, yes they know it was anonymous, yes they know they probably have half-sibs in the world.
That’s one thing about being a same-sex couple, it’s all open by default. No secrets. I know at least 2 couples ( heterosexual) who have used assisted pregnancy ( sperm donor, egg donor) who have t told the children, and as far as I know are not intending on telling their kids.

[quote logsonlogsoff]@Whadda
We wanted to both be equal legal parents and to both go on the birth certificate and to do that ( at that time) we had to be in a Civil Partnership before conception and to use a clinic or to be able to prove that we had used an anonymous donor and not had sex with a bloke! Clinic seemed the easiest/ safest way to do this for us.
And as we were going to buy sperm anyway we used the clinic that would provide everything including the sperm.

As to who was going to have the baby, I was the one keen to try for kids and DW wasn’t mad keen to be pregnant. I didn’t mind. I would have been perfectly happy for DW to be the birth parent but as it turned out I ended up having both.[/quote]
Thanks, that’s really interesting. Had no idea that the law around same sex parents on birth certs was set out like that.

@toastofthetown
Honestly- no. I’m not aware of that happening with children of gay parents conceived since the laws regarding donors changed.
In fact, that was why laws were changed - for kids at 18 to be given details of their donors- to allow donor conceived children to know their heritage. Which I support 100%.
It goes back to the openness - our kids know why we had them, why we chose this path. They know they have 2 mums but not a dad. They know that they have a donor. They know their family is different to some.
But they have friends who are adopted, who are being raised by single mothers, who’s parents are divorced, who are in mixed race families, mixed nationality families, who are being raised by grandparents instead of parents. They know who they are and where they come from, as far as anyone does we hope.

@Whadda with kids a birth certificate is everything! Is the basis of all proof for passports, anything official and life is much easier if you’re both on the birth certificate.

You actually don't need to be married on in a civil partnership to both be on the birth certificate and be the child's legal parents, as long as you use a registered fertility clinic and fill in a form confirming you are aiming to conceive as a couple.

@blondie887 the laws have changed since our experience, we were one of the first couples to have 2 mums in a birth certificate but TBH ( I work with a large LGBTQ-+) parenting grp - I would till advise a couple to marry or get a CP first. Particularly for the non-birth parent - but yes, if you use a clinic and not private conception, declare on the forms and register the child together you will be allowed to go on the birth cert

I have 2 DCs with my ex wife via Anon donor sperm. I had to do a step-parent adoption to legalise my relationship with them (this was before the law change). My DCs have so far been utterly not interested in finding out anything about the donor. They will not be able to get any information at 18 as at the time of conception the law was different. We have always been really open with them and shared the (extremely limited) information we have about their donor. I wish we had more information tbh

Times have changed for the better. I have a very good friend with major fertility issues who wanted to conceive but was considered to be a ‘single’ woman as she had a female partner not a male one, so it wasn’t legal for a clinic to treat her. And the NHS didn’t treat ‘single’ women either for IVF.
And she couldn’t get married because there was no CP or marriage equality at the time.
So the solution? I male friend agreed to be a donor and he posed as her long term fiancé for almost a year so she could get IVF treatment, with me and her actual partner going along to some appts etc as her ‘sister’ and sisters girlfriend. Absolute farce!
Some of the staff absolutely twigged but just played along pretending that these two lovely ‘straight’ people were having a baby together.
Still, it was worth it - against the odds she did conceive a healthy baby.

Crikey, not sure how long ago this was but sounds a million miles away from my experience.

My (female) partner was treated as the potential child's parent every step of the way at the fertility clinic. She had to give signed consent for every element of the treatment, even though I was the one undergoing the physical treatment, and she wasn't biologically involved in any way.

Example above was 18 years ago when the law still said that IVF was to be for straight, married couples… 10 years ago DW was treated like the equal parent she is the whole time too at the clinic, registering birth and everywhere else.
My wariness re: legal status of non-birth parent is coming from experience of many lesbian parents we know who have gone through divorce/separation and weren’t married, or used private donors snd have discovered that they aren’t considered equal in the eyes of the law…