This is a very interesting video where a young teenager that has been born with the help of an egg donor talks about how she feels about this.
She says that she is curious about the donor, but she also says that she accepts it and she sees it as a miracle that she even has been born, and she seems happy and content with it.
I think this is one of the best statements when it comes to egg donation.
According to experts, it is best to tell children at an early age that they have been conceived via egg donation. I agree with this. At a young age, they might not understand the exact mechanics of egg donation and genetic heritage, but they are already at ease with the idea that they have been brought into this world with special help.
Whereas for a teenager, their sense of identity has already been formed more completely, and revealing something like this to a teenager can be a shock to them and might make it more difficult for them to deal with the fact, rather than when they have grown up.
The teenager here even says that she talked to her friends about this, and how her mother had two miscarriages prior to giving birth to her, and that it is quite incredible that she has been brought into this world in such a different way.
I really want to encourage you to watch this video. It shows how healthy and psychologically strong a young woman can be, no matter if she has been conceived with an egg donor or not, if the parents do a good job at raising the child.
The only drawback is that she doesn’t look like her mom, because she is blond and tall, while her mother is tall and blonde. On the other hand, she has her mothers mannerisms, talks like her, walks like her and people notice those similarities. And in fact, the teenage kid even mentions that she is very proud of it, and never ashamed.
Even “real” parents could learn from how this family has raised her to be a confident, beautiful, intelligent young woman.
"I was devastated and so was my husband after being told by my fertility specialist at age 38 that I had no option but to consider adoption or donor eggs (according to my doctor I was out of eggs and gave me 4% chance of getting pregnant and a 2% chance of carrying a baby to full term). After much research and dozens of hours reading infertility related articles and posts online, I have found your book! [...] After one month of trying I became pregnant and had a beautiful healthy boy. Nine months after that I did everything in your book again and after 2 months of trying I got pregnant again and gave birth to another perfect little boy."
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I reunite families separated for all kinds of reasons and I do it for free. Recently I have been contacted by people looking for their fathers who anonymously fertilized the eggs of their mother’s who also happened to be the same women that gestated/gave birth (no gestational carriers involved in anyonoe I’ve helped so far)
I’ve helped some dad’s who anonymously reproduced find their kids and vice versa. They are all so well educated and polite about not calling themselves fathers at first, the kids are grateful for their life and say that they had great male role models and did not miss their father’s involvement. These are kids from upper middle-class financially strong families that really wanted children. They are pretty darn well adjusted and had all their basic needs met. But the ones that contact me are curious and the curiosity is killing them – they feel like half of who they are is a mystery. Boy are they reluctant to refer to the man who fathered them as father – like they are really worried it will hurt their mother’s feelings or the feelings of the man who raised them as if he were their father. There is a shpeel, a bit of rhetoric the mom’s tend to gravitate towards which is it takes more than sperm to be a father etc etc the father is the man who is there for you all the time etc etc. Remember these are highly educated people and highly educated kids – they’re mouths go thru the motions of saying that when they know, a father is something you are by virtue of a biological act and then its up to the individual whether he is a good one or not, good, bad, deadbeat, absentee or anonymous.
I’ve been lucky and the reunions I’ve helped facilitate have gone well – and they always end up referring to the Father’s as Dad and the father’s always end up referring to their kid’s as their kids. And they forge their own relationships as either distant and polite or deep and bonded but always ultimately as what they are, father and son and daughter.
I’ll be interested to watch the link and read your blog.