Common Threads: Donor Conceived via Sperm Donor
Recipient Parents & The Donor Conceived Community
Connecting ~ Listening ~ Learning
Andrea~Donor Conceived
30 y/o Female, mother
Conceived via Donor Sperm
What is a challenge that you face being donor conceived?
We as a society can and should be doing some things differently, and we are way behind the times here in the U.S. My son was in the ICU with a serious brain condition and I needed to know my true medical history to save his life. I don’t know what would’ve happened had I not already found my dc family and had they not been willing to provide me that info. Many DCP and their children have died for lack of this knowledge, and that can’t happen.
What do you feel could be done better for the younger donor conceived population who are just beginning their journey?
I wish my parents had made the choices you’ve already made for your children. The one thing they did right was to support me fully in my desire to know my biological family. We dc adults do not seek out our bio families because we were not loved or supported enough, that notion is insulting to us and to the parents who wanted us so deeply. We do so because there’s an indescribable, primal need to know who we are and where we come from. There is a need to know our medical history for our children’s sake, if not just our own.
What message would you like to share with donor recipient or intended parents to help them foster the healthiest life for their DCP child.
There seems to be a common misconception amongst recipient parents that only the DCP’s that weren’t told from a young age have issues with being DC as adults, but statistically, that doesn’t appear to be true. For the most part, we struggle with being DC in similar ways, but those who weren’t told the truth have to overcome additional trust issues with their parents, which is sort of different. I would never advocate keeping it a secret, obviously, but we have to get rid of this misconception that the “WHEN” of disclosure is the sole cause of the challenges that DCP face.
There is a longing to know our genetic parent and siblings, and to see ourselves reflected in their eyes. Our parents are the ones who raised us, wiped our tears, cheered us on- they can and will never be replaced. Please never forget that. ❤️
I believe that we, as donor conceived have the LISTEN to Recipient Parents, HEAR them, & TRY to understand that this is and has been a scary journey for them as well. We need to somehow be able to educate one another in a manner that is respectful. We must understand that there will be times we all feel “triggered”, but also realize that we must work through that to achieve our shared goal….helping those suffering now as well as future generations. We can’t change the past but we can make significant progress if we work together. In regards to DCP and RPs, there can’t be a “them” vs. “us” mentality going forward because we are really in this together, or at least WE SHOULD BE.
I think it would be important to hear from Recipient Parents as well so that DCP can perhaps better understand what making this choice was like. We, as DCP, live with the consequences as a result of THEIR decision and become very locked in it from that angle. We can’t reach the “before we existed” and touch that. I imagine some of the pain, the feelings of loss, of being different than everyone around you, of feeling like no one understands, of feeling like you are flawed at a basic human level- I imagine those things are so very similar to infertility and what that grief must be like. I think there are probably more similarities than there are differences between us, and there is more shared pain than we realize. Another example is the fear of rejection. There is a fear for DCP of being rejected by bio family, and there’s a fear I’ve seen from RP’s of being replaced in some impossible way. If we can reach each other through our shared emotions, I think it would be pretty huge and enlightening.
~Andrea