Anyone Use Sibling Donation??

[SaritaMarina]

I was wondering if anyone has used sibling sperm donations. I will be the birth mother, and my partners brother will be the donor. I have lots of concerns about both the good and bad consequences by going about it this way.

I have tried insemination with frozen sperm twice. Both came up negative. My concern is that I may be wasting my money on this expensive sperm, when I could get it for a more reasonable price or even free like the rest of the world does. The freezing and thawing process of the sperm tends to kill them off and they only have a life span of 24 hours. Fresh sperm can live up to 4 days in the tubes waiting for the egg. So we started to look at our options.

We wanted to use her brother before we began this process but we considered how that would affect the child later on, when we revealed that Uncle James was suddenly Daddy James. Although James wouldn't be apart of the childs life in this matter, that is the basic understanding of a child or teen mind frame when revealing their true routes. Where he will be in the childs life as Uncle, we were also worried that it would affect their relationship.

James has a wife, and 2 kids. We talked to both him and his wife and they said that they were both willing to help us out. He also said he would take the $300 that we offered (for an unlimited supply) to help justify that he was SELLING his sperm, instead of just 'knocking me up'. He also agreed he would not over-step his boundary and resume the role as Uncle only.

Going this way will also allow my partner to be related to the child aswell. She is willing to love he/she however they become part of our family but it is an added bonus to have them be blood related to her. We have asked the advice from my parents, and hers, and they have also agreed that this is the best way to go, to allow us BOTH to have that special bond of being related.

Has anyone else have done this? If so, how are you planning on informing the child about their true routes? Please, any input will be appriciated!!

[outdoorsy]

SaritaMarina - My wife and I tried to use her brother's sperm, but you can see the results in my sig below. I wanted the child to know its father, but you are right to have some concerns. Of course there are also concerns with an anonymous donor -- you just have different ones. You are very lucky to have the open support of both sets of parents. That should make things more comfortable for everyone involved. With us, I drew up a written agreement based on a generic insemination agreement I found online. It laid out our intentions with regard to the child. In my state, the law says the bio dad can't relinquish his parental rights until after the birth, so we knew that our agreement had limited legal strength, but it was still good to have. We mailed it to the brother and he and his wife signed it and mailed it back to us.

With regard to informing the child, it was my plan to just be open with the child whenever it got old enough to start asking the questions kids ask. I would have said he/she had bio father, but that we are the parents. The child might not understand immediately, but would get it pretty soon. I do no think waiting til the teen or pre-teen years is a good idea, because kids are emotional then, and the child will probably feel you have kept something from them. Just my two cents.

[prettyisa]

We considered using my wife’s brother as a donor, but eventually decided against it. Partly because he wasn’t totally sure he was on board and we didn’t want to push him into a decision that carries so much weight, but mostly we were concerned about parental rights. Where you live has some bearing on this issue—if you’re in a state with lots of rights for gay couples and you get a very good donor agreement made up by lawyers (you should each have your own) then maybe you’d be ok in the event that there was some dispute. But the truth is that even in those circumstances you can’t count on it. The way things are set up in this country (there I go, brazenly assuming you’re in the states) there is really no protection for families created by known donors if the donor decides that they want parental rights. We trust my BIL, but you never know how people will change over time, and even the shadow of possibility that he could someday decide that he wanted visitation rights or, god forbid, custody of our children was enough to brave frozen sperm. It’s more expensive up front, and might involve more waiting and even more medical interventions, but it seemed like a bargain compared to the specter of a custody battle if things ever went downhill. Just things to think about. Lots of people use known donors with none of these problems—I think it depends a lot on how much risk you’re willing to bear. Good luck building your family!

[pleasantlyfurious]

We used my partner's brother's sperm to conceive and are really happy with that decision.  Of course we are still pretty early in the parenting journey.  Our son is one and a half and I am six weeks pregnant with our second.  Our son call him "Uncle" - because that is what he is, and while he is still too young to ask questions, he has already been in the same room as conversations about his donor several times, so I think that as his understanding catches up he will feel like he "always" knew.  I wrote more about it on my blog: http://www.westphillymama.com/2011/04/known-donor.html

Good luck!

[KSDoulaMama]

Um, we asked DW's brother- that was our first choice, actually. He was really weird about it so it didn't work out, but I am happy with the way things happened. I was going to get pregnant first and my wife wanted to carry second- but there is no way in hell we'd ask MY brother (or any other male in my family at all) to give his sperm when it came time for her to get pregnant, so I think a non-familial donor is best for us. We first tried using bank sperm and quickly decided a KD was better, so we asked a friend. Among other reasons why this has been great, we like that his genes can be the biological link between our two kids.

[southernfriedkarma]

DP and I only have sister's, so this wasn't an option for us, but we probably would have chosen to go through a bank because some close friends of ours are caught up in a nasty sibling donation situation.  

It's complicated, but our friend E is the bio-mom to son C, now 7 years old.  E was partnered at the time that she became pregnant, and the partner's brother was the donor.  They signed donor agreements, but there was no way for the ex to do a second parent adoption where they lived, so the brother remained the legal parent even though he had no "father" role in C's life.  E split with her ex shortly after C was born, but the ex paid child support and played a minor parental role for a while.  E now has new partner who has been a primary parent to C for several years as the ex's involvement has waned.  The new partner would like to do a second parent adoption, but the brother won't sign away his rights despite the fact that the ex no longer has any real interest in parenting, so everyone is in a messy situation now that the brother is trying to assert parental rights.  

I imagine/hope that this is a rare scenario, but it would make me very cautious to use a sibling donor without making sure that the relationships were all legally sound.  Can you do second-parent adoption in your state with a known donor?  You can't in our state, but I think it's possible in some.  

Best of luck to all of you as you create your families in the way that's most appropriate for you.  We all do the best we can for our kids, right?