I have created a private Google+ Community called “Families Created using Donor Sperm and Donor Eggs” for Children, Parents, Grandparents, family Members and those who have Donated Gametes so that Families can be created. There is no judgement here, I am neither for nor against anyones choice in regards to wether they used known donors or anonymous donors. I want this to be a place where we can meet as like minded people as we have all chosen the same thing as the parents of donor conceived children and our children are all a result of that. My hope is to be able to meet some really great people and to provide information as I can about relevant news pertaining to DI and all that revolves around it and to also provide a forum where families and individuals who have donated (or those thinking of using or donating gametes) can come and talk and share.

Please check it out and ask to join if you want to be a part of a growing community.

By the way I am not an administrator for the group nor the creator of the group, I am just a mom who is finding refuge in the group!

The group is fully closed to create a private space for people to talk from the heart without anyone other than members seeing what they write,

The group is supportive and non judgmental

Genuine feel of care and compassion for others

All the members are/have lived with PND

A non professional support network

Postnatal Depression Awareness and Support Group

Postnatal Depression Awareness and Support Page

This is their Gramma who is not biologically connected to them. BUT she is the proudest, most loving, accepting, amazing Gramma ever and these kids ask for her and talk about her constantly.

Growing up I had a cousin who was adopted and I always remember my Grandmother treating him differently, I never once saw her show him any affection, as a matter of fact I am not sure I ever even saw her address him directly, and he knew it!  I suppose I had a bit of a fear of something similar happening to my kids.  But to my relief it has not turned out that way.  Perhaps it is the difference in generations and the difference in what makes up a family these days.  Our family makeup is a very eclectic one.  There is divorce on both sides, remarriages, step-sisters, step-moms, step-grandmoms, step cousins, aunties and uncles who are non-bio….and on and on.  So our kids have already been born into a family that has a varied past in blended families and members of the family who are not biologically linked but very much a part of our everyday lives.

A while ago I stumbled across an article that spoke about parents of those who chose to donate sperm or eggs.  I never thought how they may be affected by the notion that there were going to be an undisclosed amount of biological grandchildren born to strangers. Their DNA, their Grandbabies and they would never get the chance to know them, to even know if they existed or not.  I sat with this thought for quite sometime, trying to figure out how I felt about it, that my kids not only had the grandparents they see but that they have an entire family they will never know, not just a biological dad or half-siblings they will never know.  They have aunts and uncles, cousins and grandparents.  Then I shut it all off, it is all very overwhelming, and if I feel that emotionally entrenched by it all, I can only imagine how my kids are going to feel as they get older and start to realize the extent of their DNA and the lack of information they will be able to know about it.

This is a pic that was taken this past Christmas. This is a picture of Aunts, Uncles, Cousins and a Gramma who are not biologically connected to my kids, BUT who are the most amazing people in the world. Our kids are so attached and in love with each and everyone of them!

On another note, and one that caught me pleasantly off guard, there is yet another category of Grandparent in the mix.  I have been in contact with 2 of our children’s half-siblings.  One of the moms is a Single mom and she contacted me so that she would have the information to be able to give to her son if and when he wanted it, she stated that she was not particularly interested in extensive contact.  She did however facebook friend me and through that avenue we are able to share pictures of the children and keep tabs on daily life.  A short while after she friend requested me I got a request from her mother, the Grandmother.  She also was very polite and not wanting to be intrusive be she asked if she might be able to be a facebook friend so that she could also see her grandsons half-siblings growing up.  It struck me that in creating these children using a sperm donor we have thrown a monkey wrench into so many different family scenarios, and I will admit that in making our decision to use a donor I never once thought about the extended families on any level, in my mind it was all about us.

Along my travels through the interwebs I have bumped into the term ‘Epigenetics’, now I am not going to even pretend I am scientific enough to dissect the actual studies behind this term, but I will say that I know on the surface it is about the old argument of nature vs nurture.  For the past 4 years I have closely watched my children and tried to figure out if the traits and mannerisms they are demonstrating are coming from me – nature or my husband – nurture?  As of this day I cannot tell and a lot of the time I wonder if it really matters, does it matter why they laugh a certain way, or stand a certain way?  I could wonder forever, because they have family they will never know, and maybe it is the Mother of their sperm donor who stands like that or laughs like that, a Grandmother they will never know!

Sperm donor ‘left me for babies’

The heartbroken wife of a politician who secretly acted as a sperm donor behind her back says he has left her to be with babies conceived with other women.

Speaking from her home in the United States, Kathy Johnson says her husband Bill has returned to live in New Zealand where he donated sperm to at least 10 women without her knowledge.

“He wants me to move over there. He’s not coming back.

read more here:  

I wrote a blog post titled ‘Buying and Selling Eggs, Sperm and Embryo’s is a Crime here in Canada!!!‘ almost a year ago when the story of CEO Leia Picard and her agency Canadian Fertility Consultants (CFC) first came to light in the media.  In that post I wrote “I think that the unfortunate thing here is the fact that not many people who use donor sperm, eggs, embryos or surrogates really know or care what the Assisted Human Reproduction Act is or if what they are doing is potentially illegal, lets face it, no one has been arrested for it yet let alone charged.”   Well almost one year later that last statement is no longer true as we now have a case where charges have been laid.  However, I believe that the one about people using donor gametes and not knowing/caring if its illegal still remains.  As consumers of sperm, eggs and surrogacy, I feel that a large number of us are very ill informed about the laws, or even the fact that there are laws.  I myself have had many discussions (almost arguments) with individuals who do not believe me when I tell them that one cannot buy such baby making ingredients here in Canada.  The response from them is usually the same, they all seem to purport a story where they have a sister, who had a friend who’s aunt bought sperm at some clinic, who’s name they cannot remember, but they know it was in Toronto and they know it was not illegal!  *SIGH*  But really as your regular everyday citizen who has no experience with infertility is so unfathomable to think we would not know what the fertility industry laws are, let alone know anything about the Assisted Human Reproduction Act?  That is where I then find fault with the clinics, they have a moral and ethical responsibility to those who are new riders on the roller coaster of infertility.  They are the front line people who ‘should’ know the laws and who have an obligation to inform their clients of these laws and moreover be truthful with them.

It’s a shame to think that a statement that was made in Mr. Blackwell’s article by Sally Rhoads-Heinrich, whose company ‘Surrogacy in Canada Online‘ which offers a similar service would possibly ever come to be true here in Canada. “It’s a really sad day for Canadians, and for the babies that won’t be born,” said Ms Rhoads-Heirich of the charges. “If we have to cease working, it means they’re on their own and more subject to being taken advantage of … They’re just left with Kijiji and Craigslist.”

Sad indeed, but let’s be clear here.  Illegal is illegal.  We may not like the laws that our countries put before us and in this instance finally start to enforce and punish those who break them, but we have to abide by them.  We as Canadians do not have our hands tied behind our backs, we are able to speak freely and lobby our governments for change if we do not agree with the legal system.

I should preface this post by pointing out that I am in no way able to properly dissect the laws that are in place now or speak intelligently enough about them to make any sense of it, as I  have no legal background.  However, as a mom to 3 donor conceived children all by the same anonymous donor I can speak with what I feel is complete intelligence on what reading cases like this does to me and how I feel it will impact my children in the future.

Some examples that come to mind of what I refer to as the ‘muddled waters of infertility law and media portrayal’ are:

The Olivia Pratton lawsuit.  A Canadian case where a British Columbia women is fighting for donor conceived offspring to have the same rights as adopted children that will allow them access to their biological parents records.  The court initially ruled in her favor, only to later pull the rug out from under her and overturn their previous ruling.  She must now take her case to Canada’s top court and continue her fight.  What does a decision in her favour mean down the road for all those men who donated and were promised anonymity?  How does it affect my children’s ability to find out who their donor is?  Is it fair?  Insert mass confusion for so many here………

Olivia Pratton

Another Canadian example of how laws just can’t seem to be made, enforced or even decided upon, was the creation of the Assisted Human Production Agency in 2006. I remember sitting with a group of women as we were having a meeting about an upcoming conference I was part of that dealt with New Reproductive and Genetic Technologies.  When the news trickled into the meeting that this Agency was being created, there was a collective sigh of relief, it felt like this agency was so welcomed and would be just the ticket to whip our floundering fertility laws into place.  However, as with most things government the road was to be muddled and long, or short as it turned out to be.  ON october 1st of 2012 the Agency was shut down due to ‘budget cuts’ but in the 6 years they functioned, there was very little done, and as Macleans.ca reported:  “Those who work in the field weren’t surprised by the AHRC’s demise: founded in 2006, the agency has been barren for years.”  I can recall the numerous amounts of news media over the past 6 years about the agency and all of it was negative, and it seemed that the bottom line was that nothing was getting done.  In a National Post article it was said:  ”agency finally opened its doors in 2006, but soon became a butt of complaints, seemingly achieving little of its mandate, while Prof. Baylis and two other board members quit in protest.”  What more is there to say….except if the people in our government who have been put into place to figure this out and create some hard and fast laws for our fertility industry can’t even get their act together, how in the world are we as regular ol’ folk suppose to get it?

I think that further confusion is being bestowed on the general public as sperm and egg donor issues become more mainstream in the media with movies like “The Kids are Alright”,  and tv shows such as “Seed”.  If you are a person who  has been blessed with the joy of a child(ren) created through egg or sperm donation I think you will agree with me that these shows and movies miss the mark in portraying the true reality of all that comes from having or being a child off donor gametes. For both those who are experiencing fertility issues and those who are not, seeing hollywood’s portrayal of what life is like in these blended families may cloud your judgement from the truths of what it is really like.  My fear is that those who want to have children will think that in the end it will all be honky dory and everyone will forgive and forget, and for those who sit on the outside and look in, those who have never experienced infertility and the longing for a child, I fear you will see these shows and think that life that has been created via sperm or egg donation is tormented, troubled and morally wrong.  Confusion abounds when “Hollywood” gets involved and starts to tell their version of our stories……

I truly believe that until the fertility bigwigs are regulated and strict laws are put into place, the world of infertility will remain like the wild west, lawless and corrupt.

But what of us, those who are despartley trying to have a baby, I would wager a guess that most do not even know that fertility laws are so lax and that because of this we may one day end up in court fighting for something other then the fairytale.  I get it, at the moment you want that baby, you could care less about the laws or the future impact they may have on you or your children, or that anonymous donor you chose.  But if you choose to know one thing, know this….Cover Your Ass, do your homework, put emotions aside for a moment and think about the legalities of what you are entering into.  I myself am guilty of not thinking ahead and pandering to my need to have a baby allowing all sense of reality to wash away, I have blogged about it numerous times before.  Today 4 years and 3 kids later I deal on a regular basis with all of it.  Every time a case is heard and ruled on, I wonder if it could change the contract I entered into, for good or bad.  I think about having to tell my kids and wondering if they will hate me for it all one day.  I wonder if my marriage is strong enough to withstand the years and emotions that are coming.  I have given up the fairytale and am loving and living the reality.

I guess it comes down to so many unknowns and so many misconceptions (no pun intended)!

AND I QUOTE the National Post once again:

“It’s a mess,” said Sherry Levitan, a Toronto lawyer who specializes in the area. “The industry is just tied up in knots. Everybody is worried abut the next phone call. People are very nervous because nobody knows where the line is.”

 

It has been 6 months since I have posted on my blog.  Originally I had decided to take a break just over the summer until my girl went off to JK, but somehow 3 months turned into 6 and I found myself ignoring this great space that I had created for myself and all the great people I had subsequently met through my involvement with social media.  Its funny how I actually have missed people whom I only know through words and pictures on a screen.  I have missed my interactions with those I befriended from around the world and those who confided in me.

Over the past week or so my blog has been nagging at me to come back and to start writing and to start rekindling and rebuilding some of those relationships.  However, so much is different now, yes, very different then 6 months ago.  My daughter is in full-time jk and the twins have been going to preschool 3 days a week, and so I find myself with free time *gasp* I actually uttered the words that I thought I would never again speak.  Everyone is 6 months older and in kidlet land that make a huge difference.  I find myself on the verge of once again being able to decide what it is I want to do with my life when I grow up, and if I am honest, I would have to say I am doing it.  I wanted to be a mom, check.  I wanted to be a wife, check.  I wanted to have a home and cars and stuff, check.  And, I wanted to write…..CHECK!!!!!

Right before I backed away from my blog and my social media activities I was offered several opportunities to write and get paid for some of those.  I so wanted to do it, but for personal reasons I felt that it might hurt my home environment, I felt that it may potentially harm my little family unit that I had worked so hard to create.  I was scared BUT now I am not.  I am going to push forward with a few changes in place.

I am changing my blog up to be more of an opinion space then one of personal stories, I will still from time to time be blurting out some inside info on how I am doing and how being a DI mom affects my life, but I want to dive deeper into the media and political side of infertility and in particular gamete donation.  I am hoping to be able to create a support group in my direct area that allows me to be able to help families face to face with similar circumstances as ours.  I would like to get back some of my previous opportunities to write and make a small wage for doing so.  Most of all I want to write without fear or shame and with the knowledge and belief in myself that I am doing all of this for the right reasons.

I will never be to shy to say that I am a writer again!!!!!

I have created another blog:

PANDEMOMMIUM

Here I am talking about all the crazy stuff that comes along with a life filled with 2 year old twins and a 3 year old, a life that is keeping me very much on my toes and very sleep deprived.  I talk about being part of a couple that is struggling to keep their shit together, their love life some what in existence and their minds relatively stable.  Come on over and check it out, it is a very new blog that is just getting its foot hold in the blogosphere and trying to find its niche.

Oh yeah and one more life changing earth shattering thing, I finally cut my hair off after 20 years of having long hair.  I just woke up one morning sick and tired of sitting on my hair when I went to the bathroom and decided to chop it off……best decision I have made in the past 6 months!!!

Oliva Wrote:

“The uncomfortable truth is that very few of us would have chosen to have a child in this way. We would have preferred to have the child of the person we love and live with. The delight and joy at being pregnant/giving birth/raising the child is likely to be tempered at one time or another by sadness that this is not the child of the person we love: for me – not the child I had in my mind when I imagined what OUR child would be like. For some people using DI or egg donation, this acknowledgement of difference happens when the child is quite young -the complete lack of physical resemblance to the non-genetic parent, the emergence of traits which seem to come from no-where. For me it happened slightly later. Our first DI child had been a difficult baby and a hyper-sensitive toddler and child. When he was seven or eight I went through a period of finding it very difficult to relate to him. It was only when I realised that it was because he wasn’t living up to my fantasy of what I wanted our child to be like – he wasn’t displaying the qualities and talents I had wanted a child to inherit from Walter – that I was able to mourn the child we couldn’t have together and accept our son for the truly lovely person he really is. I could not feel closer to him now.”

The post hit home for me and addressed a lot of my own fears and concerns about raising donor conceived children and wether or not that made my parenting different from those parents who were able to both supply the genetics for their children.  I have not yet looked at my children and felt any disconnect, and to be honest, reading that part made me feel very sad and extremely fearful that one day that might happen to me, I really can’t bare the thought of ever feeling a sense of distance from my own child.  I have blogged about my struggle with my monthly “Auntie Flow” and how even though I know I can NEVER have a genetic child with my husband, I hate her because she keeps taking that little bit of a fantasy away from me every month.  She really can be a nasty bitch!  You can read my post all about that here:  “Still Playing Head Games With Myself”

Olivia Wrote:

“and it’s amazing how much extended family conversation in particular revolves around who looks like who and where various talents (or horrible habits) might have come from.”

It is incredible to me how sensitive I am to this situation.  A large part of my husbands family does not know that we used donor sperm and therefore the conversation constantly comes up when we are at get togethers about who looks or acts like who, and I am always uncomfortable in these moments and tend to freeze up.  Surprisingly my husband is the one to immediately perk up and respond with something light and funny to fill my silence.  It is one of those things that I wonder if I will ever get over.  My kids are very young still, 2 and 3, and I am not sure if they pick up on the awkwardness that I am feeling. When they get older I hope I have a better way of handling it because if I continue to treat it like a negative situation then that will certainly reflect onto them and how they feel about being DI kids.

Olivia Wrote:

“I am not, however, talking about being ‘a perfect parent’. This is a trap we can easily fall into because our children are so wanted. We absolutely do not need to feel guilty at being infuriated, yet again, by our much sought after children.”

I often have the guilty feelings when I am feeling frustrated or angry with my kids.  How can I be feeling like this when these little angels were so wanted by us, and we worked so hard to bring them into this world.  It has been an internal struggle for me over the years, and I get extremely pissed off when I am just being a ‘normal’ mom and telling my parenting woos of being tired and cranky to someone who knows our situation and their responses are “well, be careful what you wish for” or “Well its what you wanted” …uggggghhhhhhhh, is just feels like a slap in the face.  I suppose that I still have a lot of work to pull myself out of guilty mommy mode on this one!

Olivia Wrote:

“…What of the future? Walter and I assume that at some point both our children will go through a range of feelings about their inability to know more about one half of their genetic inheritance. These feelings may range from sadness to real anger at having this information denied them. It is our guess that this may not happen until they are quite a bit older, possibly contemplating having children themselves and/or doing a mid-life stock-take, making family connections etc. Although they will be autonomous adults by then, what they will be going through will be the result of a decision Walter and I took many years before, so I think we have a duty to be there for them, emotionally at least, for the duration. I don’t think it would help to feel guilty (as I know at least one adult offspring’s mother does). Nevertheless we have to accept responsibility for the decision, and support our children whatever way we can, although we cannot be ultimately responsible for their happiness or success in life.”

This has to be my biggest fear about raising DI children, when are they going to get mad at me, when are they going to turn to their father and in a moment of anger say “You’re not my real Dad”, it makes me tear up and cringe every time I think about it.  We made choices for them and now we have no choice but to live with them and try to understand them.  A while back I wrote this in a blog post, and it still holds true for me today when I read this part of Olivia’s post:

“I have said it before and I will say it again, I don’t want to live my life based on fear.  Fear of my fellow man and how they will take my information and use it against me.  This fear was embedded into my psyche as a very young child and I was always told to keep the family secrets to myself.  I have struggled with this concept as an adult many times and especially when it comes to having donor conceived children.  I DO NOT want my decisions to affect my kids negatively, especially when I feel so strongly about them, and my decision to talk about my family being created through donor conception is one of those tough choices I have had to make.  I have made my bed and now I have to lay in it, these children have been created using donor sperm and I will never regret that.  I have chosen to talk about it over the www via a blog (a very mommy thing to do these days)!  I have chosen to tell them they are donor conceived, and I chose to use an anonymous donor.  Yes I have chosen for them, but as parents that’s what we do until they are adults and then they go off and choose to create or not create their own families and they will make choices on how and when they will do that.  My fear can not run my choices but neither can my heart, there has to be some sensibility to it all and I will be the first to admit I am not sure I am there yet!”

Olivia’s Post has touch a real nerve with me today, but not a bad nerve, just one that brings the fact that I am raising donor conceived children to the forefront after weeks of pushing it aside and busying myself with everyday life.  I am reminded that I need to have these days where I look at them and focus on how we are going to tell them and when.  Focus on making sure they never feel badly about being donor conceived and focus on keeping my emotions and feelings in check so that I never make them feel like our decisions were ones we regret!

This piece of paper was folded up, tattered and along with the important words that were on it, there were also directions to a moms house for a play date.  But this is why the paper is so important. It is a letter I wrote to my daughter when she would be just 3 months old, and it is a letter that got haphazardly filed away and not looked at until now, 3 years later.  But what strikes me most about it is that the words and the message are still so very real today, the only difference is that I am far more proactive in finding the facts for her and the concern I had about upsetting my husband has subsided and I have pushed forward with my goal to create a community for myself that involves half-siblings for my now 3 kids, and my openness with all my friends.  I talk freely about my children being donor conceived and I answer any questions that people have for me and I also take the criticism with a grain of salt.  I admit to my mistakes and am trying achieve exactly what I wanted to 3 years ago when I wrote that letter, happiness and purpose for my children.

Here is the letter I wrote March 7th, 2009:

“It wouldn’t be fair of me not to provide you with as much happiness and sense of belonging that I possibly can in regards to the way we have chosen to bring you into the world.  However, I am in a bit of a pickle, I not want to upset the man I love, your Daddy.  I have my two greatest loves and I only want for both of you to have a happy life.  The problem is providing you with all the information I can will potentially upset your Dad, but if I don’t then I potentially risk upsetting you.  What is to become of my feelings, all I know is that I am confused and scared and I feel very lonely with the other moms.  Sometimes when they share their stories of conceiving and how much their husbands look like their babies, who got who’s eyes, mouth, mannerisms, it is all I can do to hold back my tears.

I feel like your Daddy doesn’t understand where i fit into all of this or my desire to fit in somewhere.  I feel good talking to another mom who is in the same life situation I am in, I don’t feel like I am walking around with a secret.  I need to make sense of all of this in order to have it makes sense for you.  I want it to be a happy life for you, I don’t want my desire to have you be a sad, lost experience for you.  I love you my sweet baby girl!!!!”