Donor Sibling Registry

[Kimlee]

It's been a very long time since we've been able to visit this site - busy with a 3 year old and building a home. Anyway, hello again everyone. Hopefully I'm not repeating anything here but wondering if you've all heard of www.donorsiblingregistry.com.? For those of you who have used a sperm bank, it's a website where you can find your particular sperm bank and see if someone has registered using the same donor number as you. We checked it out and remarkably found our daughters half sister! We've been able to contact the parent and are planning to get the "girls" together next summer. It's been pretty awesome to swap pictures and stories. It's remarkable how similar the girls are in appearance and personality. We were able to also get a picture of our donor when he was about 4 yo. We were lucky that the other mom was very open about us being a mommy/mommy family. We were first a little worried about coming out to her but luckily she asked us right up front. If you do happen to check out the site and don't find a match, you can go ahead and log on yourself and perhaps a sibling will find you instead! Kimlee

[lexbeach]

Wow!!!

I checked it out and there were posts from three others who have used our same donor . I'm not sure I'm ready to contact them yet, but thanks for posting this link, kimlee. I had no idea such a service existed. It's a bit overwhelming to have found these three half-brothers (all boys!) whom I wasn't even looking for, per se.

Thanks!

Lex

[Kimlee]

It took us a little time to get use to the idea that our daughter had an older sister and that we could actually get in touch with her and her mother. We did get really lucky that the Mom is really cool - that helped a lot.

I've been corresponding with Wendy, the moderator of the site and this stuff is really groundbreaking. It seems that it grew out of a demand for siblings to connect and occasionally a donor has showed up and let himself be known as well. Apparently families have tried to get in touch with siblings through the cryobanks but Wendy says that they have really BAD record keeping and don't know how to find most of the kids themselves. We know that there are at least two other siblings out there besides Emily (my daughter) and Emma (her half sister). One of the neatest things is that Emma was raised in such a similar fashion to our daughter. They have both nursed until 3yo and neither of us vaccinated. It seems like we have the same attachment parenting styles. Kinda neat that we have the same parenting beliefs AND we picked out the same sperm!

If you do go ahead and make contact with these half-brothers I hope it is wonderful! Keep in touch, I'd love to hear how it goes.

Mitakaye Oyasin
"All my Relations"
Kimberly

[lexbeach]

Well, it didn't take long for us to decide to contact the other families who used our donor! We just figured, how could we not contact them? We were able to make contact with two of the families last night. One family is a pregnant single mom who only lives 100 miles away! Pretty exciting.

I will let you know how it goes as our relationships with these half-sibling families develop. I just wanted to thank you again, Kimlee, for sharing that registry with us. I'm sure our boys would thank you, too, if they could!

Also, isn't it neat how your dd and her half-sister have such similar names?! Wow.

Lex

[robynberkley]

WOW...how awesome...and beautiful pictures of you, Lena and the boys, Lex!!!

I'll have to remember this site for friends in the future! Thanks Kimlee!

[MamaHama]

It's great to see info about the registry here. We have also had a match through the Donor Sibling Registry, connecting with our son's two half-sisters. It has been overwhelmingly positive! They are also a two mom household, and we have a lot in common. We've exchanged pictures, e-mail, and phone calls, and hope to meet next spring. They live on the West Coast, while we're in Kentucky. For our family it has been an incredibly moving experience. It's really something to see the similarities in the kids...we just feel like they're our extended family.

We weren't really sure we would make contact if we found any matches...just wanted to know if there were any out there. Once we actually had a match it was almost impossible for us to find out more. A scary step... but it has been really worth taking the risk for us.

Hope everybody will keep posting as these relationships develop.

Carmen