To not tell anyone I'm using egg donor

[WantToBeMum]

New member, first post
I'm single, early 40s, trying to have a baby. I had some fertility treatment using sperm donor, it didn't work. I was open about using a donor as I'm single. Friends and family were accepting of it, but it did raise eyebrows.
As treatment had not worked I had tests repeated and was told my AMH is too low, I no longer have my own eggs to use. I'm devastated!
Egg donation was suggested - "double donation" using egg and sperm donor - and I've decided to go for it. I don't have any concerns about this, I will think of the child as my own.
My AIBU is: I don't want to tell anyone I'm using egg donor during my treatment and for the first few years if successful. I fear comments and worry I'll be constantly reminded the child is not biologically mine.
I do plan to be honest and open with the child when they reach appropriate age so it will come out naturally then.
Please don't reply suggesting adoption/fostering, I'm well aware of the benefits of both but I'm looking for advice about this situation only please.
Long post, thanks for reading!

Egg donation is more about someone's need to experience pregnancy - you don't become a mother simply from the act of giving birth

If you feel so strongly about it why not look into embryo adoption

Willyoujustbequiet your post highlights how the cognitive dissonance on egg donation versus surrogacy is sometimes eyebrow raising...

Family may need to know for medical reasons e.g. if your child has a genetic condition or if their cousins do.
Obviously HCPs need to know.
Teachers may need to know if they are teaching genetics.
It's not totally private but as a PP says it is the child's story to tell as well.

It's your business, so you can tell who you want or not.

Although I would tell my immediate family.

My friend has had 2 egg donor babies and tells everyone, but I personally wouldn't, because I'm more private.
Good luck.

@Newoneonherr
Agree with everything in your post!

If the two of you genuinely have concerns about children’s welfare, why not put that into cases where children are actually abused, harmed, raised without love, without adequate food, clothing and shelter?

You won’t.

Op, YANBU. I am using donor sperm and the only people who will know will be me and my child.

Are those against egg donation also against using donor sperm?

You would never tell a women who adopts a child that they aren’t really that child’s mother. There’s much more to being a mother than genetics.

What they are against is women making positive decisions for themselves.

If you are concerned about children’s genetics resulting in sexual relations between relatives, egg and sperm donation is not where your worry should lie.

Would you want to grow up not knowing who your parents are? Grow up knowing that the woman who raised you isn't your mother either?

I disagree that this is what OP is proposing. I would advise on being open, but sometimes I forget that the world has too many judgemental idiots. I think you have to be open with your baby from the off. I would be inclined to be open with close family and friends before you start to get it out of the way. Unless they’re the kind of pricks who think adopted children aren’t real children, does it matter if they know? A baby you have grown and birthed and mothered is your baby. I’d worry about risking upset by a reveal later on.

What I mean Boopsy is that clinics have limits and laws in place.

For starters, you select your donor sperm and there is a limit to how many people can use that one donor. There would be a maximum of ten related siblings in the UK at any one time.

It is just possible they may meet up and fall in love but it really isn’t likely, especially given that the children will know from the offset that they came into existence via a donor. Aged 18, they can know who their donor was. That does NOT mean they will ‘knock on his or her door’,it simply means they know his (or her) name.

Now, if you think about the lives some children are living, it’s pretty chaotic. Plenty of children are growing up in families now where the man they believe to be their father isn’t. That’s been something that has been true since the beginning of time, hence the folklore tales and roman heads of the households picking up the child to acknowledge it as his. Think about the close knit communities some of these children grow up in. Wouldn’t you say it’s FAR more likely for a child growing up with a stepdad he believes to be his real dad to meet his sister locally at school, in the pub, at work, and now know she’s his sister? I would.

If people are genuinely worried about incest, look there, not at donor eggs and sperm. If people are genuinely worried about children’s welfare, look to refugee traumatised children, look to children growing up in poverty, children abused, starved, humiliated. Don’t look at me.

Totally get it. It’s surprising how opinionated people can be about IVF (that they aren’t having) which can be really upsetting at an emotional time. I imagine donor sperm / eggs brings out similar comments that would be hard to get your head around.

Keep it to yourself for as long as you feel like it. Good luck! Xx

upatthesky the potential issues with choosing donor gametes are the ethics of creating a person who has no contact with their genetic parents deliberately as an active, controlled choice rather than making the best of an existing situation as in adoption. Gamete donation is less problematic than surrogacy simply because the newborn is not created with the express plan of removing them immediately from their gestational mother immediately (which breeders wouldn't even do to a puppy yet people deliberately create human babies with this plan). There are ethical issues with planning purposefully to create a human who will have potential issues around the way they came into being though.

With egg donation their are ethical problems around the very considerable danger of health problems caused to the woman donating eggs by the egg collection process. This is the only thing which makes egg donation different to sperm donation. It's obviously more of a problem in countries where young childless women are recruited on university campuses to donate for money because they're good breeding stock...

Using both donated gametes obviously means no biological connection at all for the child which has the potential for identity issues for the child. It's deliberately done, deliberate choices are made about bringing a child into existence, that's why it's different to adoption, which surely anyone not being willfully and deliberately obtuse can comprehend.

Would you want to grow up not knowing who your parents are? Grow up knowing that the woman who raised you isn't your mother either?

If you discovered today that due to a mix-up at the hospital, your child did not share your genes, would you and they immediately stop thinking of yourselves as related to each other?

The corollary to you suddenly becoming not that child's mother (in your way of thinking) is that you would presumably think that child is not yours, just some stranger living with you that you're somewhat fond of. I don't think that's how you would react. Which means your definition of what it is to be a parent has something profoundly wrong with it.

Adoption is not making the best out of a bad situation.

I know a lot about both, forgive me.

There are indeed ethical considerations with egg donors but given that the OP hasn’t mentioned going abroad as far as I can see I am working on the assumption that she is using a clinic in the UK, where laws are stringent.

The OP does not want to adopt. It is you speaking about adoption, not me, so I’m unsure why you are lecturing me about it. It is not for her.

It would be for me. I would happily adopt. However, I wouldn’t be accepted at panel. Since I still want to be a parent, I need to look at other options.

‘But that is about what you want!’ you may respond.

Correct. Like every other parent.

How is adoption not making the best out of a bad situation? I have an adopted sibling whose single parent died. Of course adoption wa making the best of a bad situation for the child . Children who already exist but whose parents can't look after them are in a bad situation. Adoption is an attempt to make the next best situation for those children. How can that be incorrect?

I appreciate the points about adopting were made by multiple other posters not upatthesky so apologise for directing the whole post to you, but the points stand.

The op has responded with interest to another pps recommendation that she go abroad due to shorter waiting times, so the very dubious practice of recruiting young women for risky commercial egg donation is relevant.

OP. My strong advice (as with some other posters above) is to make sure you bring the child up knowing their history, before they understand what you are saying. This means starting to talk about it before they are 2. Just as a story.
Mummy wanted a baby and she couldn't make her own baby so another kind lady gave her an egg and a man gave her a seed, and they were put in my tummy and I grew you .
It helps you get familiar with how to word things before it really matters and it avoids a 'big reveal' at any age.

Because adoption should be done because the parent(s) want a family not for altruistic purposes.

Surrogacy is regularly utterly condemned on MN, but the fact is that, no matter how strict regulations are regarding gamete donation in the UK, a woman has to put her health at risk to donate eggs, it is not a risk free procedure. We are also know starting to understand that some of the medications needed to artificially grow and mature those eggs can carry possible long-term health implications for the donor.

But it's fine to use egg donors on MN, fine for women to donate their genetic material to create another human being, just not the use of their wombs because 'it's not a right to have a baby'.

YANBU.
Wishing you all the luck in the world.

upatthesky according to who? Kinship adoption is a preferred choice where there are suitable family members willing to adopt a siblings or other relative's child. Often the adopting parents wouldn't otherwise have been planning to extend their families. The is what happened with my sibling, who became my sibling as a pre-teen and is now indistinguishable from my siblings by birth in the family dynamic.

Presenting your personal, subjective opinion as factual is disingenuous.

timshelthechoice I disagree that egg donation is fine, it's just not as bad as surrogacy which often also involves egg donation and two different adult women being exploited to deliberately produce a commodity child destined from before conception to be removed from it's birth mother immediately. The fact that that is absolutely horrifying when done to a newborn animal but fine when done to a human newborn is astounding.