Anyone checked out the donor sibling registry?

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We don't refer to the half-siblings as "half-siblings" either. We just talk about them as kids who have the same donor. But, I do wonder if we will need to think up a better term in the years to come. We certainly do not think of them as brothers and sisters of our boys, but we do think of them as biological relatives of theirs. They will most likely never get to meet their donor, so these kids will be their only link to that side of their genetic history. I think it will most likely be a very important link to them someday.

What are your reasons for choosing to wait to have contact? I think that it's really hard to know what to do, but when I put myself in my boys' shoes, I think "of course I'd want to know who these other kids were!" One of my friends just recently found out that she has a half-sister from her father's first marriage (which she never knew existed). She desperately wishes that she could have had contact with this sibling from an earlier age, and said she thinks that we're doing the right thing by fostering a relationship between our kids and their half-siblings starting now. It is reassuring to hear, since we're really in uncharted territory. But sometimes I still wonder, so it is always nice to hear the reasoning behind different choices people are making. Most of our friends IRL who used annon. donors are choosing not to even look at the DSR, so we feel like we are definitely in a minority in that we are choosing not only to find the other families, but also that we are planning to have them be a part of our lives. It helps that the majority of the other families are also AP and lesbian families, people who we would choose to be friends with if we just met them randomly.

I'd love to hear more of your thoughts!

Lex

How to proceed? I think there are a lot of families trying to figure that out.

We discovered another family with the same donor about 3 years back. A 2 mom family 2o minutes away! We actually had shared the cost of reinstating the donor in 2000. We emailed a few times and then I got scared when I realized we had mutual friends and stopped. I just got another e-mail from wendy at dsr stating a 3rd family was interested in contacting me. I paid the $40, saw the family listed, but haven't initiated anything. There are 4 families listed with our donor, 7 kids.

I have two trains of thought on the whole thing-

1. At this age, it is not the curiousity of the kids. (My eldest is only 5) It is just for the parent(s) involved. We should keep each others info in case of some sort of emergency need, and just proceed based on the desire of the kids.

OR

2. The kids should be together having playdates, etc so that when the time comes, and they are curious, we can just let them know "Oh, X and Z have the same donor as you" and it is not a big "coming out", if you will.

I think my fears included my kids and my parenting being judged too much. As in, another parent comparing the kids who are the same age since they both share 1/2 their genes. I think I'm explaining this very muddy! I'm also not a very social person, so meeting with an unknown family would be very anxiety producing. The things we do for our kids!

OT t is interesting, for me, to see that the 2 mom family struggled with infertility while using this donor, but not with another donor. I used clomid for both my kids and then had 3 failed clomid cycles, 3 failed gonal-f cycles and and ivf that resulted in a pregnancy that failed at 7 weeks, miscarrying at 12 weeks. I'm passing some of my feelings of failure onto the donor!

I'd love to hear how other people's contacts went. Do the kids seem to share personalities or look similiar? My kids clearly have some traits from my partner and even look like her because they have picked up her facial expressions. What other traits do they have from the donor that I don't even see? kwim?

Sorry so long. I can make short reply very painful!

I didn't realize that they'd started charging money to join the DSR! I guess one of the moms in our "family" group must be a member, she always lets us know when new people join. I remember that they were always asking for donations. . . $40/year is a lot, IMO. I could understand something closer to $15/year. . .

Our bank (california cryobank) also claims to limit sperm usage to 10 families per donor (which, if every family had a bunch of kids, could be a lot of actual kids), but it's really not a very strict limitation. Our group contacted them recently because we wanted to know if they would tell us how many families there actually were. We have already found 9 families, and it just seemed a little too unlikely that we would have found 90% of the families who used the donor. This was the response the CC gave:

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I don't know if it's more strictly regulated at your bank (i.e. do they follow up after you buy the sperm and see if you got pregnant?), but if not, there could very well be more than 10 families per donor.

Lex

wow, this is really interesting, i'd never hear of this before now.
I just went on the site and saw that there are 2 other families who used our donor and have posted messages. I'm really curious, but can't see the messages without paying the 40 bucks, which I'm not yet sure I want to do.

We chose an identity release donor, which means that although we (the parents) don't ever have access to the donor's info, our son will be allowed to get it directly from the sperm bank when he's 18. To be an identity release donor, the person donating just agrees to have the identifying info that the sperm bank has released, any kind of contact beyond that is up to the individuals involved.
I chose this way because although I wanted an anonymous donor, I also wanted to be able to provide my son with the option of knowing about the person who gave half of his genes, a pretty natural curiosity I think.

One issue I've thought about a lot is that we plan a younger sibling with the same donor (we like the results the first time! and I got pregnant really easily). But I don't know what will happen when my older child turns 18. If he chooses to find out about the donor, then he'll have info about our younger child too, that that child is not technically supposed to have yet. I'm not sure exactly how we'll handle that.

And I wonder how it would work out with biological half-sibs that are not part of our family...if older kids had the info before my kids turned 18, or if my kids had the info and we were in touch with younger half-sibs....

it's a really complicated situation in terms of figuring out how to best meet the needs of the kids involved (most important, imo), as well as the intentions and decisions of the donors and the parents... and of course, pretty far away for me, as my son is only 2 right now.

anyone else out there use an identity-release donor? thoughts?

I'm also reminded of a sperm bank we considered but didn't use that put half-sibs (and donors too, i think) in touch with eachother right away -anonymous at the time of conception, to legally protect those involved, but then not anonymous afterwards. It's an interesting comparison because those families intented to create sort of extended family networks from the beginning, while it seems that the contacts created through this website are coming up quite after the fact. anyone with experience with that sperm bank (called rainbow something i think?) have thoughts to contribute?

looking forward to the continued discussion with you all...

theskuldt & others,
we have an identity-release donor as well, and are only in the ttc stages. All the same, i have considered what you mentioned. Our plan is to have more than 1 child using the same donor's sperm, and the thought has already crossed my mind about if one and not another child wants to know about the donor, and about age considerations.
Having a identity-release donor was not our first priority (ie: as in eye colour, etc to look more like my partner), and actually my partner & I had different ideas about it & decided that if our #1 donor 'happened to be' an identity-release donor, than that was what was meant to be. I wanted an id-release donor so that our children have the choice to contact or not. My partner has concerns about idealizing the donor and being disappointed upon contact. It will be interesting to see what happens, and I am glad that we discussed our concerns.
I've also made a brief visit to the registry site and seen that there is someone there with the same donor (as we are trying with). I don't figure we'll ever register with the registry, but it is interesting to just see that others (with the same donor) have -- also proving that our donor is indeed fertile (which we knew before anyways).
So, yeah, that's my thoughts. (And we need all the positive/sticky-vibe thoughts we can get this week as we go in for insemination #2.)
-Michelle

We didn't use an identity-release donor because we don't like the way that it is set up, but I would love for our kids to have a chance to meet their donor someday if they want to (which I'm guessing they would). Probably the only way it would happen would be if the donor decided to register with the regisrty. There are some donors who have already.

For those who did use identity-release donors, I wouldn't worry about younger siblings getting to meet the donor earlier than age 18. I actually think that would be a bonus. It seems like those in the adoption field have already shown that open adoption is the most ideal route, and that early contact goes along with that. The field of sperm/egg donation hasn't quite caught up yet, aside from banks like rainbow flag.

Good luck this cycle, Michelle!! I hope you see a in the next few weeks!

Lex