Double donation and people's comments

[midcenturymodernmess]

DH and I have been struggling with infertility for several years and are now looking at double donation. We will, of course, be open with the child in age appropriate ways from the very beginning and know that it's their story to tell if and when they want to. My question is more around the pregnancy and having a DD newborn. We don't really want to tell everyone and anyone about going through double donation but know that inevitably if I do get pregnant the first thing people always talk about is who the baby will take after, what the baby will look like etc etc. How did others who have gone through this cope with this? Do you just nod and smile and change the subject? And if the child does choose to share their story later on do people get weird that you didn't tell them earlier? I know this sounds like a really minor question in the grand scheme of things, but it's been such a hard journey to even get to this point and I don't want to make the fact that it is a DD pregnancy a continued topic of discussion.

I would keep it secret until you actually tell your child and then it should be their option if they want to share it with the rest of the family/friends or not.

It would be devastating if I heard about it from a relative other than my parents. This is my opinion mainly thinking about the future child.

i think you’re getting way ahead of yourself

focus on this… after you know that you are expecting babies

@Olivie12 This is kind of how we would prefer to approach it – but I'm not sure how that would be possible given that my family knows that DD is really our only way forward at this point, and some friends know we are struggling with fertility. Given this, I'm sure that there will be questions, and we just don't really know how to approach it and don't want to lie to anyone either. I don't think there would be any risk of a potential child finding out from someone else as our plan would be to never keep it a secret from them and to have it be something that was always openly discussed (in age appropriate ways) with the child so there would not be a surprise or moment of discovery. I guess I'm wondering how other people who have gone through DD have dealth with this..

@whichfan of course this is something way, way down the line and we are in the very early stages. We just want to make sure that we go into the process fully informed about everything and aware of how we would approach everything. (And of course we have lots of other questions about the more immediate process but these are questions that we are able to discuss with the clinic!)

You could tell your family that job tried a new doctor, a new procedure that gave you another chance. Perhaps that you had a new treatment overseas or something.

I think the children deserves to be the first to know.

@midcenturymodernmess Different situation here, as we're a same sex family who used a sperm donor, so single donation in a situation where its obviously we needed a donation.

I think it is worth considering these types of things at this stage of planning, because it is important to know how you want to parent, what you want to share etc etc. My wife (who is not genetically related) has found it really challenging having certain family members (her fathers partner) making comments about where our DD gets certain traits / comments around taking after me, or general nosiness about what we know about the donor. So I think its is worth thinking about how to address these things.

If you're in a situation where its known / suspected you'd need DD by family/friends, and you would like to say something, it might be worth deciding at what point you'd want people to know (during treatment, or if a pregnancy is achieved) and how to address it. It can be as simple as saying something like "we're proceeding with fertility treatment using double donation. We don't want it to be a secret from any future child/ren or our family. However, we would like to ask you to be respectful of our decision not to share details about the donors, and would ask you to try to be considerate of our situation by avoiding statements about who the child will look like / take after etc".

For family / friends you don't want to explain everything to, but feel may ask, you can leave it simple and just say something like "at the moment we'd prefer not to share details about current decisions we've made on our fertility journey".

I think the honest reality is that people only have a set range of standard questions when you're pregnant (do you know what you're having?) and when baby is born (who do you think they look like?). The "who do they look like" is such a evolutionarily driven question, and one I don't think people will mean to ask with any kind of malice. If you are successful, you can work on responses such as "they look like themselves" for example, that just embrace that the baby is their own individual. In my experience, these types of questions really just come in a phase when there isn't much else to say about a newborn, and really reduce once baby is older and they have more personality etc.

The other thing to consider, is that some friends / relatives will discuss who baby looks like / takes after to help reinforce that baby is like you and your partner, which could be quite affirming. My DD displays interests / traits like my wife, and its nice to be able to say "she take after you".

In the future if you are successful, you can make your own personalised book to help tell your child their own unique story: https://www.sensitivematters.net/c/80/the-magic-of-you

@2mumlife thank you so much for taking the time to share yours and your wife's experience - that's so helpful! I do tend to agree that it's positive to start thinking about how we would approach these things now as we do think it's important to go into this having considered all the challenges and how we would approach them. We know that nothing would (hopefully!) be said with malice but it doesn't mean that it wouldn't be challenging for either of us or the child. The book link is also really lovely!

@midcenturymodernmess I think all you can do is think through every scenario / situation when you're considering using donor/s to make sure its the right choice for your family. I did a lot of research on the views/feelings of donor conceived people. We picked a sperm bank that gave a huge amount of information about the donor, because it was important to us to be able to answer as many questions as possible if our children wanted to know. I even managed to connect with other parents whose children were conceived with the same donor (we have a small group where we'll occasionally post updates on how the kids are doing). At the end of the day, all you can do as a parent is your best to support your child. There will be challenges / emotions about things, but I do think being open within your family about using a donor creates an environment where its very normalised for your child. I also find it useful when my DD was very young to practice talking about her conception, so we've already had that conversation, and we'll keep having that conversation as she gets older. That conversation for us at the moment is even things like her identifying "Xs daddy" and saying "yes, thats Xs daddy. You have 2 mummies,. There are lots of different kinds of families". I also imagine that it also makes it a lot less awkward if people around you know, so that if your child starts telling people themselves at a young age the adults around them aren't confused and can affirm their understanding on their own story.

In my country it is mandatory to do some counselling before using an egg donor/double donor. I think it might be worthwhile to help you and your partner figure out exactly what it is you are comfortable sharing with others and what you would like to keep to yourselves. I haven’t used a donor but some good advice I have heard is that it is your child’s story and that they might encounter someone telling them about a donor in their future if you start telling people from this point. Do others really need to know about it?
Just to be clear, I don’t think there is any shame whatsoever in using donors but considering the impact this will have on your child if others know about it is really important. Best of luck.