IVF parents, will you tell your child(ren) They're IVF?

[MadeWithLoveAndALittleBitOfScience]

Just that really! I know some people have mixed views on the ethics of IVF and I know nobody has the given rights to have a child.

I had a very rare and aggressive type of cancer a few years ago. I still have the cancer and always will as it's not a cancer that can ever go into full remission. But after gruelling surgeries and extensive chemo and nearly dying, I'm here to tell the tale. I'm NED and long May that continue. But it'll always be in my body, just hoping it stays quiet and doesn't rear it's ugly head again.

The chemotherapy destroyed my chances of naturally conceiving (destroyed a large number of my eggs) so we had to go through IVF to select the good eggs. We were lucky enough to have 6 embryos. 5 in the freezer, and one currently sat in front of me. She is biologically ours, and she is the centre of my world. I think age is on my side. I'm still in my twenties.

There's my little life story and reasoning to get IVF. This was after my cancer treatment as I didn't have time to freeze my eggs. The cancer is too aggressive.

If you have IVF child(ren) are you planning on telling them, and if so, how?
We don't want to make it a big deal but we would like to tell DD how we had her, and any subsequent children should we decide to try for number 2. DD is only 2 just now, so we're a while off.

Just looking for thoughts and experiences!
Thank you.

I'm going to look at some age appropriate books
This is a great idea. There’s quite a lot out there.

Yes there is still a lot of taboo around male infertility

My husband admitted he doesn't feel the same way about our IVF children because they are IVF even though they still came from his sperm as our eldest and ultimately our marriage broke down because of it. He said he didn't know he'd feel that way when we were going through round after round of IVF is was only afterwards and he said they didn't "feel like his" children

But isn’t that all the more reason to tell? Otherwise you’re letting people with views like that win. Maybe I’m lucky in that I find those ‘going against nature’ arguments so ridiculous I just tend to laugh at them. Would they refuse any other medical treatment because it’s going against nature?

I really hope no one out there takes those views to heart because IVF is hard enough as it is.

@isthistheendtakeabreath That’s really sad. Does he have any relationship with your IVF children now?

I have 2 IvF girls - one FET and one IMSI. I’ve always talked to them about it with them - no big deal - it’s interesting for them .
I’ve also threatened to return them to the clinic when they’re being absolute pains in the arse 😂. They know I’m kidding.

😂😂😂

3 IVF/ISCI conceived children here. I can't remember 'telling them' as such, but they have always known.

For us, there was never really a choice to make as two of them also have the genetic condition DH has which led to us needing IVF in the first place. Both are likely to have difficulties conceiving naturally as a result.

No shame at all here - it is something we are quite open about and many of our friends and family know (there were various discussions about the genetics with DH's side at the time).

I did casually mention to DD1 that when she was conceived we implanted two embryos but one didn't stick a couple of years ago (she was 15). She was quite - disturbed is too strong a word - unsettled by this and a bit preoccupied with her potential twin for a bit. (My other kids are twins; she has no desire to actually be a twin!!)

I'm absolutely going to tell him as I said but will be making him aware of all the views out there so he doesn't walk into a debate which could be very upsetting for him. Absolutely those views are ridiculous but there are some vicious people out there and this is a very personal subject to potentially be confronted about. My post was just to try and explain to posters who had asked why perhaps parents may choose not to tell their children. It's not all black and white.

I'm wondering at what age those people waiting for the children to understand, will think they can understand? It is very easy to keep putting things off, and then all of a sudden they are a teenager and are OUTRAGED you didn't mention it sooner.

At the age you start talking how babies are made 'the daddy puts his seed into the mummy and the seed and the egg meet and grow into a baby' it is easy enough to say 'sometimes the seed and the egg find it hard to meet and grow, and in those cases doctors can help, which is what happened with you'.

It's not about waiting until they understand. It is better they grow up knowing with understanding coming later, in my opinion.

I think its good you are thinking about it. My twins had to bring something to school that was 'made in london' and I was driving into London and happened by chance to pass their IVF clinic and mentioned 'hey you were made in london you could bring yourselves into school' and proceeded to tell them mum and dad could not have kids the regular way so the doctors in the clinic put some of dad's sperm into mum's eggs in the clinic.
I didn't think too much of it until my daughter told me she had asked her Chinese friend if she was made in China...and her friend told her babies are not made they are born so I had some more explaining to do.
I think the most important thing is it is not a big deal - tell them when they are young and its something they have always known.

I'm in a same-sex relationship so we had IVF with donor sperm. We have a lovely picture book about this which explains that we went to the clinic and the doctor put the donor's sperm together with mama's egg in mummy's tummy. DS2 loves it because it's a story book all about him. The book doesn't talk about sex, just what the ingredients are to make a baby, so he'll end up knowing and understanding about IVF before he knows about sex.

Gosh I find it really interesting to hear others' experiences. With one 'natural' and one IVF I can honestly say I completely and utterly forget we went through IVF - it's only until threads like this pop up that I ever think about it. I was on loads of threads at the time and it was mentally very gruelling but it had a happy outcome and that's all that lasts for us.

Again I see no reason to make a big deal out of telling them. It's far more important in my view to tell them if any potentially genetic condition was passed down e.g. male factor.

Well, as someone who has her DD solely because of a very generous man who donated his sperm to us (and his generous wife who was happy for that to happen, in fact, encouraged it), I want to say thank you so much for what you did. I wouldn't be a mother without people like you.

I have to be honest and say I’m baffled anybody donates egg/sperm. In a way it would be more understandable if it was financially compensated, but in the same way I wouldn’t hand a baby to somebody I didn’t know, I couldn’t give them the building blocks for one either - they could be anyone and I would constantly wonder if the baby was mistreated.

That said I think it comes from the fact I do know of a donor conceived baby that was severely mistreated so I probably have a skewed view on the matter 😢

Google Louise Brown, she was the first "test tube baby". I remember her birth being all over the papers when I was a child (I'm 49, she's now 44) and still know her name form memory.

@TeenDivided we didn’t wait until he could understand - we had a picture book as another PP said and used that along with all his other books so it was just another book he looked at. So he knew he was an IVF baby long before he could understand the science.

DD is five and was conceived with the help of IVF and a sperm donor. I’ve read her a book from the Donor Conception Network which mentions the donor and the clinic, but doesn’t go into any detail about the treatment.

I haven’t mentioned IVF yet and don’t plan on explaining this to DD until she’s several years older. I’ve read about children (now adults) who were conceived by IVF and simply couldn’t get their heads around the process when they were young. One child believed he wasn’t human, while another spent years believing that she was a robot!

I think we have the single mum version of the same book. DD really likes it and often asks for it.

Had IVF due to endometriosis, biologically ours. Told her when she was older and she was delighted. She thought that due to age gap between her and her sibling that she was a 'mistake'....quite the contrary!!

i haven’t had Ivf, but am teaching my oldest at the moment about where babies come from. I would probably wait until then to have the conversation about how some babies are made from sex and some are made from Ivf. In fact I will include this in the chat to my daughter. She’s really into science so would find this fascinating.
my daughter and her friend are fascinated by the fact that one of them came out of a tummy and one came out of a vagina. Ivf is so common these days there’s no harm in them knowing, I think it would be seen as an interesting fact about themselves.

Yes he does but sparingly - legally morally genetically he is their dad - but a few hours every other weekend. I don't know if he will ever have them overnight

It's tragic really. We lost so many naturally conceived babies before having them which is why we turned to IVF and finally bringing home healthy babies was supposed to complete our family and put the heart ache behind us and instead it caused his chronic unhappiness, resentment and detachment from family life (and them in particular)

The worst thing is I can't ever tell them the reason why he left - that it was specifically because of them and because they are IVF babies and eldest can't ever know either in case it causes a divide and resentment. So only I know the "secret" of why he walked away. And so because of this I'll likely never tell them they are IVF

I started telling my DD about it when she was quite young, and then just added bits as she grew older. It is now in the curriculum for PHSE at least (or it was at her old school, so year 8) so I’m glad that she already knew. She doesn’t know all the ins and outs of it (ICSI) but understands the basics.

Ii’s always infuriated me that anyone would object to it, essentially if the body is working properly then there would be no need for it so it’s simply another medical option alongside all the other medical treatments on offer today that improve our lives 🤷‍♀️.

I think whatever gets kept a secret can lead to shame.

I’ve been extremely open with my children about our struggles to have children and my miscarriages, as I think it could help them later and it helps them understand some of my sensitivities with certain subjects. We didn’t have IVF in the end but it was on the table and i
would have told the child in an age appropriate way.

@isthistheendtakeabreath thats awful,I’m so sorry

It’s never occurred to me there would be any issue in telling a child they were conceived via IVF. It’s babies from surrogacy I always wonder about - I would be utterly, utterly horrified to know that was how I was born.