Let’s Talk about Egg Donation

The most important thing to remember is that whatever feelings you have when you start to practice your story, they are normal. Just feel them, thank yourself for acknowledging those feelings, and move on. That's the point of starting early. You can't hurt anybody, and you won't have to worry that you are harming your child if you have a feeling that makes you uncomfortable.

Once your baby is born, continue the story while you are rocking, feeding, loving, nurturing, and holding your baby. Now the story is about this baby, with this particular name, and a particular person helped this child be yours. Express your gratitude. Tell your baby how grateful you are that Nicole gave you what you needed or that the angel brought you that part you were missing so that Johnny could be yours.

Early Childhood

As your infant becomes a preschooler, the story remains pretty much the same as the story for your infant because preschoolers are very concrete. You can share that there was a part that you were missing in order for Johnny to be yours. Regardless of the makeup of your family, whether you are a single dad, a two-mom family, or a family with a mom and a dad, the story is still the same: for a baby to become a baby, it takes an egg, or an ovum or a cell or a piece from a woman; a sperm, or a seed or a cell from a man; and a uterus for the baby to grow in. Some or all of those parts may have been given by someone else so that you could become a parent.

By the time children are five years old, they typically have come to understand that babies come out of women's bodies; until this point, they actually believe that they have always existed. Maybe they believe you went to the deli to get them or to the hospital, where babies are waiting. That's where the story of the stork and the cabbage patch came from--children believe that they have always been here, just in some other form. This can be a time when you point out pregnant women, usually the moms at preschool who are having their second, third, or fourth children. You can talk to your youngster about when you or your surrogate was pregnant with Johnny and what an exciting time that was.

Look around your community and find families that were obviously formed in different ways. Undoubtedly, at the grocery store or at your child's school, you will see children being raised in two-dad families or single-mom families. You may see two Caucasian parents with an Asian daughter and surmise that family was formed by adoption. There may be children being raised by a grandparent or families where everyone looks alike or families where no one looks alike. You can turn these observations into conversation starters by talking about families coming together in a lot of different ways--as yours did, with the help of someone who gave you a very important piece so that Sally could be yours.

The more you find ways to weave the family-building story into the fabric of your everyday life, the easier you will find the conversations that ensue. You may find your child asking questions about the parts of her she is curious about. Your child may want to know if "that lady's favorite color" is purple or if she also really likes soccer. Some of these questions, you may be able to answer, and in some cases, you may have to simply ask your child what she thinks. Engaging your child in his own questions is the best way to find out what he is thinking.

Keep every shred of information you have ever been given about the donor. Make a copy for safekeeping, and keep a copy readily available so that when your child asks a question about the donor, you can say, "You know, I really don't remember her favorite color, but I do have some information about her, and whenever you are ready, we can look at it together." Sometimes children don't really need an answer to a question; they just need to know you are willing to engage in the discussion with them.

All the while as you are having these conversations with your very young children, you can read to them the many wonderful children's books about families conceived through donor conception. (A bibliography can be found at the back of this book.) Children's books can function as templates. A pre-reading or preverbal child can look at the pictures while you fill in the blanks to match his or her particular story. In this way, you don't have to always figure out how to find opportunities to talk about family-building because the books can do it for you. Most children will not be interested in these books or the stories for a very long time, but that is not a reason not to start early. Children want to know about all kinds of things before they understand them, like where the sun goes when it's nighttime or how Grandma's voice got into the telephone.

Laying the foundation or the building blocks for understanding about how babies are created, grown, and born is a process that takes time. Learning and understanding is a gradual process that occurs in developmental stages. We can't learn to multiply until we can add and thus understand that multiplication is sequential addition. Without the foundational understanding, we would simply be memorizing times tables by rote without any understanding of what they mean. Preschoolers learn about their neighborhood. Kindergartners learn about the post office and the fire department. First and second graders venture out to learn more about their city. In the fourth grade, students learn about their state. Not until high school do students learn world geography. People can't comprehend the greater world until they can grasp the smaller community surrounding them. So it is with understanding means of conception. Obviously, children don't understand the meaning of genetics, but they can initially understand "this part plus that part equals you."