Egg donation

[LovelyBath77]

SIL had this. I saw today a leaflet. Asking for egg donors, saying the child can contact them at age 18.

Do the parents have to tell the child they are conceived through egg donation?

Ginky, I suppose because I feel you are over estimating your potential importance in the child's life.

Yes, there is a genetic link there, but you are not the child's parent, she would not be told that you are and any "looking" for you would be on your terms.

This attitude is indicative of not having looked very deeply into it!

To be fair to ginky, some children do fantasise about a donor as a perfect parent, don't they, and imagine that once they meet this donor, he or she will suddenly be the wonderful picture-perfect mother or father they've always missed (especially when they're teens and actual mum or dad might not seem such a good deal!). Certainly we were warned about this on the recipient side.

Willyoujustbequiet that is just what I think. I wonder how many of those preaching have gone through that experience. We have. Our donor was Spanish and we know her age, height, eye and hair colour. U derived Spanish law donors remain anonymous. We haven't decided if we will tell DS or not. Just yesterday someone said he looked just like me.

Oh, definitely, and it's understandable. But I think to go along with that - to assume that would be the case and you'd have a reprieve of eighteen years then spend the rest of your born days trying to fend a grown man or woman off - is quite arrogant.

You don't legally have to tell the child, but I agree that morally you should.

See that's exactly what I would hope would happen. Thanks for replying.

I'm there in a genetic capacity or in the case of being a surrogate a tool for the child to grow.

I would very much hope I'm not important to the child, that I am just a part of their story but not someone who they really care about all that much because well why would they they have great parents who adore them.

But I would be very upset if one day my not feeling that I'm important left the child feeling rejected. If in the unlikely situation that they did somehow see me as more important than I am.

I suppose I just don't ever want to be in a position where I could cause pain to another human.

Donating eggs is helping someone else become a parent. You have to look at it as aiding the woman or the couple, not the child x

Snowdog37, we're in a similar situation except, in our case, the donor is from Moldova and our treatment will be in Cyprus. We know very little about our donor apart from basics that the clinic are permitted to give us. Our (potential) child will not be able to trace the donor and we've not considered what we will tell any child resulting from our treatment - other than that they were so wanted by us as parents that we travelled to Europe for the treatment that led to them being.

I think I like the sound of that book!!

True, pink. But no one has to think about being a donor. I guess it depends on your personality. I really appreciate that there's someone out there who presumably felt able to do that for us; I hope I'd be able to do it for someone else. But I think if a person would worry about the chance of a child constructing a fantasy of them as an ideal parent, that's fair enough too. Not necessarily an arrogant response.

No, that's true, but I suppose while I have no objections whatsoever to someone not being a donor (I'm not!) what can be frustrating is how many misconceptions and myths there are, and sometimes people do genuinely believe them but other times use them to stand behind as a reason.

So I don't mind "I don't want to donate my eggs; I really don't fancy it."
But I do mind "I would donate my eggs buuuuut myth" :)

People have traced their donor even when the process was anonymous. I really recommend joining the Donor Conception Network and finding out the history of donor conceived children and the differences that anonymity vs disclosure means.

The reason the HFEA made anonymous donation through fertility clinics illegal in the UK was in recognition that it was not in the best interests of any children conceived to have an anonymous parent. If you choose to still use an anonymous donor, then I don't see why you wouldn't tell your child that's what you did. It's their heritage. They are part Moldovan or Spanish or Czech.

They are still your child, just as a child conceived with donor sperm is the child of their parents. I love the pea poem

I agree with Cingolimama its very easy to say 'you must tell them' but its not a clear cut decision, we are pregnant with a donor egg and husbands sperm, the counsellor advised us not to tell anyone in case we decided not to tell the child and they found out via a third party. We are unsure whether well tell them, probably not is our thinking so far, as the baby is more than a donor egg and hubbys' sperm-its grown in me, will have lots of my DNA, is moulded by my pregnancy decisions, I will legally be the Mother so I don't feel that I need to be told how to manage my future baby.
Oh, to have had the privilege of doing it all natures' way with my own eggs and not having to make this decision on top of everything else!

Im eternally grateful that some unknown lady out there donated-for whatever her reasons but its not at the forefront of my mind-whats growing in me is mine.

Of course it is as clear cut decision. You are choosing to lie to your child because it makes your life easier. It's not about what is best for your child, however you choose to dress it up.

JigglyTuff I am very offended that you see a donor as an anonymous parent. I am my child's mother not the donor. I grew him inside my body for 38 weeks, I gave birth to him afyer 17 hours of labour, I breast fed him and nurtured him. If you had any understanding of the subject at all, you would know that donors undergo counselling and do not see their eggs as potential children but just as a piece of tissue that they do not need. I would l9ke to ask if you have a donor conceived child?

Good luck Snowdog xxx

JigglyTuff you have a terrible attitude, why are you so judgemental? if you read my post properly, you'll see I said we are undecided anyway and the baby is not born yet so Im not lying to anyone, how we conceived is no one elses' business but you keep being so righteous.

Wow. Donor eggs are done so differently here in nz. And I'm so fortunate that we do do it differently.

I'm an egg donor. 4 times, 1 successful. For each donation, I met the recipient couple, talked with them, talked about their lives our lives, the upbringing of the hopeful child. What kind of parents they would be. Etc.

We all agreed on open donations - there was never a question of telling the child. And from the one successful donation I get letters, emails, photos. We've stayed with them (they don't live in the same city), and they are coming here next year.

The child understands (she's now 10) who she is, how she came to be, and has her own description of who I am. For me, they are my extended family. Mum is like my older sister, the kids (she had one previous) are my nieces.

I believe that in Europe, egg donors are paid for their eggs, however in nz, they are voluntarily given. In nz, there is an addendum on their birth cert which notes her genetic link to me.

I'm trying not to be judgemental of you OP. I don't see what you would lose by being open with the child. I can only see that you have so much to gain. No one will judge either you, your family or the child.

For me, I was in a position to help someone who couldn't achieve what they wanted on their own. and I'm forever grateful that I gained such a loving family from my one gift.

There was a programme on R4 the other week about 'embryo adoption' in the USA of 'spare' embryos after IVF. It was a similar set up to what you have described Peaches

Egg donors in the U.K. are not paid for their eggs.

I would not be happy with a system like the NZ one.

I think there are an awful lot of assumptions and generalisations and attitudes that blanket policies for everybody in a one size fits all kind of a way.

The problem is that the process involves real people: And every single one of their parents is a different person. And no intellectual argument about whether to tell or not covers all situations. Parents might feel that a particularly anxious child or one that has struggled to bond might not even cope with with the gentlest introduction to the topic. A child could suffer the traumatic loss of a parent which might mean finding out would be hugely traumatising all over again. Or a parent might simply realise that their child is the sort of person who wouldn't want to know.

And the decision not to tell is not forever. A parent might make that decision when their child is small and they're bonding and getting their head around it. They might not continue with that decision when they have a secure relationship with a well balanced -8 year old.

It's something so personal and each situation so different I really don't think it's helpful to make intellectual arguments saying that everybody should do this or shouldn't do that.

Incidentally, meeting someone genetically related to them apart from being massively improbable, is not the same as it is for most other people. It's taboo in our society because of the personal relationships between them (which they don't have) and because of the higher potential for genetic abnormalities in their children. That's not an issue either, as carriers of genetic abnormalities will have been screened out too. So any objection is purely on taste grounds. So if nobody is any the wiser I don't see the problem.

There have probably been and will be many, many more cases of people unknowingly marrying a half brother or sister and it never being known in the general population than there ever will be amongst donor children.

Absolutely Bill

If I shared stories of various estates where multiple women are pregnant to the same unknown fathers who's children end up meeting in the same schools and social outlets and going on to have their own children - very common. Children born from egg/sperm donation, not so much.

I was against removing anonymity from donors or because I care either way but because people can't help becoming whimsical about it and seeing it as more like adopting a foetus than having a family and getting wide eyed about being reunited with lthe real parents when the child turns 18.

It's not only silly thinking but also dangerous.

It's a slightly different situation but my friend's husband is a carrier of a potential genetic defect that could effect future pregnancies and children. He only found out a few years ago at 26 after he had been with his girlfriend now wife for ten years. This has completely thrown a grenade into their life and I cannot believe they didn't tell him before this. The couple might have to have donor sperm, my friend really wants to be a mother and may have made different choices about the relationship of she had known earlier. It was cowardly to leave it until they were settled to drop that into a conversation. It's ruined my friend's relationship with her in laws. It's immoral to withhold information from someone that could effect their lives.

Of course you're your child's mother, cute! I'm sorry if you thought I implied otherwise.

Sally - I said downthread that I'm the mother of a donor conceived child. Please do me the courtesy of reading all my posts.

Bill - if you tell your child from the moment they're able to comprehend, there's no need to worry about the right time. Through DCN, I know tens of DC children and I've known them since they were babies. They all know they were donor conceived. That's pretty much the only thing they have in common - they're as diverse a group of kids as any other group. Being donor conceived isn't a big deal to any of them - it's just part of who they are. And yes, there are lots of people who are lied to about who their dad was. It's not a good thing. I do not feel I have the right to withhold information from my child about their genetic origins, however much easier that may make my own life.

Finally, I do admit that I feel very strongly about this. I waited until they changed the law in the UK before seeking fertility treatment because of the extensive research I carried out on donor conceived children.