Telling children conceived through IVF about it...

[Highlove]

My lovely IVF-conceived baby is only a toddler so I'm not yet seriously thinking about this...but I guess we do need to decide when and how. It's not an issue as far we're concerned, but I think she has a right to know and that by NOT telling her, we'd potentially make it an issue if she inadvertently finds out from someone else. Am really interested to hear how others have handled this and how their DCs have responded.

Thanks.

There's a lot of research out there that says the earlier you can tell your children about their origins the easier it is for both parent and child. 18 months is not too young! My grandson was conceived using donor sperm and the councellor said that the gentlest way to introduce the subject was through picture/story books. They couldn't find one that they liked (a lot of the existing books out there are very American and/or religious.) Since I was a children's author they asked me to write one. I wrote two; one for donor eggs and one for donor sperm. They're called Wa-Hoo! and Wa-Hoo! 2. I self published the books because this is a bit of a niche market and mainstream publishers need to sell enormous quantities before they're interested. They're not in bookshops and I don't want to use amazon.
I'd be happy to send them to any parents of donor conceived children out there. You can buy them via my website. www.jonathanshipton.co.uk. £6.99 each.

Can I ask which is the donor egg book? Is there anywhere I can see examples of the pages inside? I'm looking to get one for my son who is donor conceived but haven't found one I liked so far

Hi Lauren
Yes it is really tricky to get the right style of book. I looked at loads on line when I was doing the research and just couldn't find one that really appealed to me. I suppose if I had, I wouldn't have spent the last year writing one of my own. Anyway I'm glad I did it and I understand a lot more about the difficulties involved.

The Donor egg book is Wa-hoo-2. If you look on my website www.jonathanshipton.co.uk there are some page samples. I hope they work for you and your boy.

Hi, my parents had IVF to have me and my brother, I feel I've always known so they must've been pretty open about it when we were young as I can't remember being sat down and told about it. I will probably be open if IVF works for me xx

Hi Dawn
Your parents got it right. The ideal is to feel you've always known. Sitting someone down to have the talk when they're older has the potential to be quite traumatic for ivf children. Not telling them at all is even worse.
Good luck.

Thanks for the reply, I just bought it now. I do actually work with donor recipients through my job and we often discuss ways to tell the child and I do recommend 'the pea that was me' for an age appropriate book so it's good to have another suggestion when people ask

I had IVF as a single woman with donor sperm. I plan to tell DD at an early age, so it will never come as a shock to her and hopefully she'll feel that she's always known.

However, I've read a few online posts by people who'd been conceived by IVF. I was surprised to read that one child had grown up believing that they weren't human, whilst another child believed for years that they were a robot. For this reason, although I plan to talk about the donor early on, I don't plan to go into detail about the IVF process until I feel DD is old enough to understand.

I don't know if this fits in with expert advice. I'm interested in reading the books for children that have been mentioned.