My kids are donor conceived AMA

[logsonlogsoff]

Just that…

I think we forget how it used to be for LGBT people, how wholesale discrimination was common and many people thought us gays shouldn’t have children, let alone be helped to have children if we needed it.
I’ve had plenty of people tell me being gay is wrong, or it’s okay if I’m gay but gay marriage is wrong, or marriage equality is wrong, or that we’re not ‘really’ married, or it’s okay to be gay and be married, but to have kids? No, wrong and selfish.

Someone asked me what advice I would give as a parent of donor conceived kids - and the number one thing I would say is you made your choices for a reason, don't listen to anyone criticising those choices - it;s none of their business.
You don't comment on their life choices and they shouldn't comment on yours.
As 2 women we have made sure our children have good male role models in their lives too.

How did you choose your donor? Did you look for qualities/appearance similar to you, or deliberately different?
Do you think there is any difference in your relationship with the DC and your partners relationship with them, because you are biologically connected? (Sorry that's a bit personal but am genuinely curious, as someone who considered using an egg donor)

Donor wise as we did it in U.K. we had limited info on the donor and the clinic advised us to not to focus on subjective qualities - I.e. is someone ‘good looking’ so we thought about things that were important to us as couple - such as education and we did ask for a donor that had my DW hair colour, eye colour.
TheClinic asked for family photos, incl ext family and then came back to us but the donor they suggested sounded perfect for us and we had no regrets despite not seeing a photo of him. We
Do look at the children though and there are some features that are so clearly not me, that I’m looking forward to seeing pics/meeting donor when the time comes.

Difference in relationship?
Yes, but because we are two different people, so we do have slightly differing relations with them. our children don’t love one of us more than the other re who gave birth, and I genuinely believe that.
We are just the mums. And they treat us as the mums.

In fact both kids often reference how they are like DW - as in ‘I’m good at swimming cos mam is a good swimmer’ or ‘ my hair is curly like mam’s’ even though that’s not a biological reality, and they’re old enough to know it’s not.

This is really interesting, thanks.

Do they have any contact with their bio siblings? I nannied for 2 families who used sperm donors years apart (they didn't as far as I know even know each other). The children looked very, very similar. I always wondered if they had the same genetic parent but never said anything.

We’re not in contact with any one outside of our family, our kids are still young.

Do you kids ever say anything to suggest they wish they had a dad? This is something that worries me.

Also, what do they call you both? Everyone suggests 'mum' and 'mummy' but I don't see how that will work because what teenager uses the word 'mummy'?!

No, they haven’t. They have really great men in their lives - uncles, grandfathers and close male friends,Perhaps that’s why.
Or it may just be that they see their family as us 4, and you don’t miss want you don’t have.

Still the oldest isn’t quite a teen so we’re absolutely expecting some ‘ why don’t I have a dad’ ‘ you did the wrong thing’ stuff but who knows.
I do know our kids love us both equally and wouldn’t swap either for anyone else.

We are Mama and mummy,
And know lots of 2 Mum families who are the same. We know mums and moms, mummy bea and mummy Sue, and the ‘mums’ or the ‘moms’ from older teens.
In my experience tho it is parents to be who get hung up in what kids will call you or the grandparents etc. In most cases - and in ours- we had decided what we would be called then oldest DC gave us mummy - mama
Instead.