Telling your child they are donor conceived

If you are thinking of creating your family through donated gametes - sperm, egg or embryo - or you already have children, you may have wondered how best to explain their biological origins to them as they are growing up. Donor Conception Network may be able to help you. DCN is a national charity which was started over 20 years ago by five families who had children through sperm donation and wanted to support each other and encourage others to be open with their children. Now there are 1700 member families and individuals, including lesbian and single parent families, heterosexual families, donor-conceived adults and those who are still thinking about whether donor conception is right for them. Some are pursuing treatment in the UK, others abroad; and their donors may be known, id release or anonymous. The DCN website (www.dcnetwork.org) includes amongst other things personal stories and a bookshop selling DCN publications about how to talk to your children about donor conception, and books for your children themselves. DCN also runs workshops open to all, both for those preparing to become parents, and for those who already have children.It is a chance to explore all the issues in a safe and confidential setting; the facilitators are skilled in running groups, and equally importantly are all parents of donor-conceived children. There are separate groups for heterosexual couples, and for lesbian couples and single women, as people often say they welcome the opportunity to talk things over with others in similar situations. One recent participant on the Preparation for Parenthood workshop stated: 'Thoughtfully put together with a good balance of factual, practical content whilst maintaining focus on the emotional and psychological impact of donor conception.' DCN believes that the more open parents are about donor conception the better it is for the health of individuals and families. If you would like to find out more, look on the website, or phone 020 7278 2608, or email enquiries@dcnetwork.org if you would like to know more or discuss something in confidence. Article: 6th August 2014 www.dcnetwork.org/

Do genes matter? Daughter of a donor discusses

On Thursday, I went to an event entitled Do Genes Matter? Families and Donor Conception. Organised by the PET (Progress Educational Trust) it promised to look at what genetics means for our understanding of family in light of donor conception. On materials promoting the event, the questions to be covered were laid out as follows: • What does it mean to have a child through donor conception? • What is donor conception like for the non-genetic parent? • How do grandparents feel about having a grandchild who is conceived with the help of an egg, sperm or embryo donor? • What is the role of the internet in finding donors or connecting with half-siblings? • How many parents can a child have? However, in my eyes, the vital – and missing – question that needed to be asked was: • What do genetics mean for the ‘donor’ conceived person? This was the glaring great hole in the whole event. Chaired by Walter Merricks from the Donor Conception Network, a panel of speakers included academics, fertility lawyers and campaigners. Interesting people with differing expertise and interests in ‘donor’ conception. But, were there ANY ‘donor’ conceived people themselves present on the panel? People who could speak to their OWN experience of the practice and their own feelings on genetic connections. As you may have guessed – no. Lack of representation To me, this really just sums up the entire problem with the social dialogue around ‘donor’ conception. That the voice of the ‘donor’ conceived is missing from this type of event speaks volumes. Because the rhetoric around ‘donor’ conception springs from the mouths of those wanting the answer it provides, or those promoting it as an answer, hearing from the product of this practice is not necessarily a great fit. As always, I am aware that there are many ‘donor’ conceived people who say – or at least purport – that they are uninterested in genetics and also many who are very much at peace with being conceived by a ‘donor’. I respect that perspective. But that there is a significant group of ‘donor’ conceived people who feel very much interested in genetic connections – whether they are at peace with being ‘donor’ conceived or not – should, in my view, be acknowledged in the public discourse about the practice. Is it not crucial to hear from the ‘donor’ conceived at an event about the ‘donor’ conceived? I think this is what it must have felt like for women before they had the vote – silenced, voiceless, talked over, written about and unconsidered. This may seem over the top, but I feel that for my voice to be heard here, in this type of debate, is as much part of a historical struggle as female suffrage once was. Read more... Article: www.daughterofadonor.com

Deciding upon Donor Conception: The Future of the Child

The decision to have a child is one of the most important decisions you will ever make. Having a child is a strong desire for most individuals, although some are unfortunately unable to do so on their own. If that is the case for you, then donor conception might be a concept that you have thought about or that you are highly considering. If so, you might be wondering how donor conception could affect your child later in life. This article will discuss some of the effects that donor conception might have on a child, as well as tips on how to prepare yourself for explaining donor conception to your child. What is donor conception? Donor conception is the use of donated sperm, embryos, or eggs in order to conceive a child. Common forms of donor conception include surrogacy, in vitro fertilization, and sperm donation. A surrogate mother is often used when a female cannot carry to term her own child, and she wants to have a child with her own genetics. In vitro fertilization occurs when the male’s sperm is not able to conceive a child; therefore the female is injected with the sperm of a donor. And lastly, sperm donation is also common among lesbian couples and single women who do not have a partner and would like to have a child. How will it affect my child? If you are planning to use donor conception, there are a few questions you will need to ask yourself beforehand, such as the following: Who will tell my child that they are a “donor” child? Will I share that information with family and friends or simply keep it private? How can I prepare myself to explain the situation to my child properly? Will I be open from the start with my child? There are many questions, but answering these few beforehand will prepare you for the process, as well as help you to make the decision in a more educated way. Another aspect to consider when considering donor conception is whether or not your child will want to know about his/her donor. If the child does want to know about the donor, it is important that you understand the process of recovering that information. When your child is 18, they will have access to the donor registry with information about their donor, as well as information about any donor siblings. This information is stored by HFEA, the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority. The information is separated into two categories: non identifying information and identifying information. Non identifying information will include the physical appearance, number of children, and ethnic group of that donor while the identifying information will include the last known address, name, and date of birth of the donor. It is important that you are aware of this information and this process, and also that you receive counseling and guidance before making the decision to conceive by donor conception. Article: 31st October 2013 by Tess Young About the Author Tess Young is a freelance writer and blogger. Some of the topics that she writes about include technology, home design, travel and health. She suggests looking at the information provided by California Cryobank regarding the effects of donor conception in order to learn more about the process.

Being: The Donor Conceived Perspective

Another full house for the final event of Progress Educational Trust's 'When it Takes More Than Two' series. This time attendees were invited to consider gamete donation from the perspective of the donor conceived. Two donor-conceived people were on the panel and they answered the questions from an engaged audience in an honest and open way. First to speak was Jess Pearce, a donor-conceived adult who only found out about her origins when she was 28. Jess was told by her mum when she was considering starting a family of her own. Her father's vasectomy reversal had been unsuccessful and her parents turned to IVF using donated sperm. Although members of the extended family did not know about the donation, Jess took comfort in the fact that her parents never lied to anyone about her birth. She also knew that as a donor-conceived child she must have been 'really, really wanted'. She referred to her non-biological father as her 'social father' and explained that their relationship has remained largely unchanged by the revelation. Luckily for Jess, she had access to her donor number, but so far had had no luck in finding her donor father. Services like UK DonorLink had been a 'godsend', she said, for her to make friends and discuss her situation with other people on a similar quest to her own. Jess understood her mother's reasons for not telling her, and was grateful that she found out eventually. Although she still hoped to find some information, she understood that it was unlikely she ever would. Christine Gunter spoke next, worried that she might be adding a bit of 'doom and gloom' to the evening. In fact, Christine's talk wasn't as negative as all that. Christine is the Coordinator of UK Donor Link, which is designed to help people who were donor-conceived or who donated before donor anonymity ended get in touch with one another, if they so wish. Christine made the point that it's not just the donor-conceived who have an interest in their genealogy. The success of programmes like 'Who Do You Think You Are?' attests to the broad appeal of tracing ancestors. Similarly, in Christine's experience, the donor-conceived are simply curious about how they came to be, although for some donor-conceived people the revelation can leave them very distressed. Christine found that this was particularly true of those born via donor insemination (DI) in the 1940s and 50s. These people's parents would be unlikely to tell them about their donor and they may have found out in less secure ways. In such cases, said Christine, the confusion and lack of answers can seem to occupy every waking hour of a person's life. Further complications arise when one considers that at this time, there was no limit to the number of donations one could make. In some case, hundreds of children could have been born from one donor. Accidental incest and genetic sexual attraction remain exceptionally unlikely for the offspring of such donors, but can be a real fear. One donor-conceived adult who was struggling with the information about his conception commented that 'my parents never met, and if they did they might not like each other'. This is a common worry for older donor-conceived adults, Christine said - they don't like the idea of a 'medicalised' conception, and would prefer a traditional relationship between their parents. Dr Tabitha Freeman spoke next, and provided useful insights from her work at The University of Cambridge's Centre for Family Research. Tabitha's research concerned children who are donor conceived, and she found that the nature of their conception had very little noticeable psychological impact. More important to their development was the environment that they grow up in – the warmth of the family and quality of parenting. The same was true for children born to single mothers and gay couples; children did not seem to be negatively affected because they were donor conceived. Tabitha believed it helped that the children were obviously wanted, and the parents were likely to be involved and committed. Read more... Article: 4th March 2013 www.bionews.org.uk

Receiving: The recipient parent perspective - London 24th January

JZ Young Lecture Theatre, Ground Floor, Anatomy Building, Bloomsbury Campus, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK 24 January 2013 - 6.30pm-8.30pm The Progress Educational Trust project 'When It Takes More Than Two', supported by the Wellcome Trust, seeks to clarify public and professional understanding of donor conception by focusing on the different parties involved. This second event in the project will focus on the perspective of the recipient of donated sperm or eggs, and is free to attend, but advance booking is required. If you email Sandy Starr at sstarr@progress.org.uk then he will add you to the attendee list. • What traits do gamete recipients prefer in a donor, and what are the scientific facts about the heritability of such traits? Does preferring a tall donor (height is a widely preferred donor characteristic) or deprecating a red-haired donor (the world's largest sperm bank closed its doors to red-haired sperm donors in 2011 due to a reported lack of demand) actually give recipients any assurance as to the height and hair colour of their children? • What of more complex characteristics, such as intelligence and personality? The extent (if any) to which such qualities are heritable is a highly contentious, and yet these same qualities frequently form the basis on which donors are marketed. Donor profiles provided by clinics also include such details as pierced ears, choice of car and favourite pet - can a choice of donor made on such grounds be meaningful, and if so how? • To what extent is it necessary or desirable to seek a 'matching' donor, whose looks resemble those of the recipient couple (at a generic level such as skin colour)? Is this important to avoid inviting questions about a child's provenance, or should we aspire to put such thinking behind us? Are such questions rendered moot by the limited availability of sperm and egg donors in the UK, which can make matching difficult or impossible? • Following donor conception, what are the challenges (if any) involved in raising donor-conceived children? Is it always incumbent upon parents to inform their children of the fact that they are donor conceived, in line with official support for the principle of openness? In what circumstances might parents inform family, friends, colleagues or teachers of the fact that their children are donor-conceived? And what if this is disclosed inadvertently? • What are the specific challenges (if any) faced by non-traditional families, which involve same-sex couples and/or co-parenting arrangements, when it comes to donor conception? What is the impact on such families of being less readily accommodated by established social conventions and institutions? And is this changing? Speakers include: • Dr Nicky Hudson Senior Research Fellow at De Montfort University's School of Applied Social Sciences • Olivia Montuschi Cofounder and Practice Consultant at the Donor Conception Network • Sue Moore Senior Fertility Counsellor at the Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust's Assisted Conception Unit • Professor Marcus Pembrey Founding Chair of Trustees at PET and Emeritus Professor of Paediatric Genetics at University College London's Institute of Child Health • Caroline Spencer Co-Active Coach and Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapist at Successfully Single Chair: • Juliet Tizzard Head of Policy and Communications at the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and former Director of PET Article: 22nd January 2012 www.progress.org.uk

Donor conceived story 'My dad was a sperm donor'

Sperm donation is often seen as a gift to thousands of infertile couples, who find joy and completion in a child that might not otherwise exist. But their children sometimes find that joy bound with longing, loss and lifelong confusion about their true identity.
Narelle Grech knows the details by heart: his code name is T5. He is brown-haired and brown-eyed with O-positive blood type.

He's probably in his 50s and attended university. He stands about 173 centimetres. His surname starts with T and he is likely to be Maltese.

These scant points are Narelle's only information about the man who is her biological father, a man who has occupied Narelle's thoughts and deeds for much of the past 13 years since her parents revealed that she was conceived with sperm donated to a fertility clinic.

"When I was a teenager, I carried that information around with me on a scrap of paper, the way other kids carried a photograph of their dad," she says. "It was my way of keeping a link to him because I had nothing else."

Narelle remembers her parents sitting her and her older sister down at the family dining table one Sunday afternoon, her mother telling her that she was conceived with the help of another man's sperm and how much they loved her.

At first, she laughed it off, thinking it was cool to be different. "But, later that night, I was washing my face in front of the bathroom mirror and I realised that everything I thought I knew about myself had vanished," she says.

"The man I thought was my father wasn't and half the family I thought was mine wasn't related to me. I started crying uncontrollably. Almost from that moment, I wanted to find him. Not because I wanted another father, but because I wanted to discover who I really am."

Narelle is one of the hidden generations of Australians given life by our ever-expanding technological and scientific expertise. She was born in 1983, at a time when donor conception was still in its relative infancy and donors gave their sperm anonymously. She is one of hundreds of people Australia-wide who are today searching for their biological antecedents, but may never find them.

At the heart of the dilemma is a delicate balancing act between the competing rights of offspring and their donors. Offspring feel they have an emotional and medical right to know their biological history. Yet, while many donors are happy to be contacted, others gave their genetic material in a spirit of goodwill to childless families, in the belief that their identities would remain anonymous.

Rightly or wrongly, they fear a knock on the door might tear their families apart or lead to claims on their estates. There is another even more pressing reason why Narelle needs to find her biological father.

In May, doctors diagnosed her with advanced bowel cancer, which doctors say may kill her within the next five years. Her cancer, discovered after she suffered severe abdominal pain one morning, is the most aggressive kind and, though she is just 28, is already classified at stage four.

"The galling thing is that doctors suspect the cancer is genetically linked," says Narelle. "My mother's family has no history of cancer. The possibility is that I've inherited a genetic predisposition from my biological father." The diagnosis is a nightmare come true for Narelle. For more than a decade, she has sought, without success, the identity of the man who helped her parents conceive her.

While that has eluded her, she has discovered something else, something that now keeps her awake at night. She has, she says, eight half-siblings scattered around Victoria and possibly Australia, all created with her biological father's sperm. "I have eight brothers and sisters out there who I've never met, but who all share some of the same genetic building blocks as me and that terrifies me," she says, curled up on a sofa in her suburban Melbourne home.

"Each one may be a genetic time bomb waiting to go off and it's probable that they don't know anything about it." An unfortunate combination of disparate, sometimes contradictory laws across state boundaries, poor record-keeping and bureaucratic inertia means that Narelle and others like her may never find the answers they are seeking so desperately.

Article: 5th October Australian Women's weekly aww.ninemsn.com.au

This story shows how important it is for donor conceived to be able to receive more information about their donor, something which Pride Angel strongly supports. If you are considering conceiving using donor sperm or eggs, why not think about the option of finding a known donor through a connection service. This will not only enable you to discover more details about the donor such as their characteristics and personality, but most importantly you will have more information to pass onto your child and even have the ability of maintaining a level of contact, between donor and child.

Woman happy to tell her child - she does not know who her father is

Jessica McCallin has already chosen a name for her unborn daughter. She will be called Freya, after the Norse goddess of fertility. ‘Freya is one of my favourite girls’ names,’ she says. ‘I didn’t know the meaning but, when I found out, I knew straight away that would be her name. It’s perfect.’

It’s somewhat fitting, too. Because Freya’s father is a 6ft Dane in his 20s, with greeny-blue eyes and blond hair. But beyond those few physical characteristics, neither Jessica nor Freya will know any more.

This is because last June, Jessica, 36, flew to Copenhagen and was artificially inseminated with the sperm of an anonymous Danish donor — and more and more British women are doing exactly the same thing.

Last year, about 500 to 1,000 British women were treated in Denmark, resulting in between 100 to 200 pregnancies. ‘It was an incredibly easy process,’ recalls Jessica, who is single. ‘After a few months of monitoring my cycle, I booked a flight to coincide with the time I ovulated.

‘I’d found out about the Danish sperm bank through a friend. It occupied a few rooms in a tasteful period building in the centre of Copenhagen.

‘The nurse put me at ease. I didn’t feel a thing as she carried out the procedure, and it was over within minutes. Then, half an hour later, I was back strolling round the streets of Copenhagen. I felt very comfortable about what I had just done.’ So why did Jessica go to Denmark rather than use a British sperm donor?

The head of the world’s biggest sperm bank, one of 15 private clinics in Denmark, says the number of women travelling to the country for treatment has soared.

Cryos International, based in Aarhus, was set up in 1987, has 427 donors on its books and supplies sperm to 65 countries. Half of all women who have treatment in Denmark have come from abroad.

To read more go to http://bit.ly/fXhaj5

Exhibitors at the Alternative Families Show London

Exhibitors at the Alternative Families Show London
October 22, 2010 10:00 by PrideAngelAdmin
The Alternative Families Show is taking place this Saturday 23rd October 2010 - 10am to 5pm, Grand Connaught Rooms, Covent Garden, London. Tickets are now available on the day priced £10.

The Alternative Families Show is for would be parents and for families already set up. For those people looking to start a family there are experts on hand to discuss all the options available to a same-sex, male or female couple and to single people wanting to become a parent. Informative seminars will be running throughout the day from conception to schooling.

The show is also for families we have legal advice, opportunities to meet support networks, other parents, and to hear about research findings from Stonewall on children. There will be free children's entertainment throughout the day, allowing parents to speak to the experts in the same room.

Exhibitors at the Alternative Familes Show include:

Pride Angel
Pride Angel is a leading worldwide connection site, fertility forum and blog for lesbian, gay, single and infertile couples, wishing to become parents through co-parenting and donor conception. www.prideangel.com

London Women's Clinic
The LWC provides IVF and fertility treatments to assist couples and individuals overcome their difficulties in conception and pregnancy. They have over 20 years’ experience and operate one of the most successful programmes in the world. www.lwclinic.co.uk

London Sperm Bank
The UK's premier sperm bank. Giving women in the U.K. maximum choice without having to undertake expensive travel abroad. The LSB is licensed by the HFEA. www.londonspermbank.com

Stonewall
The lesbian, gay and bisexual charity. Stonewall played a key role in lobbying for important legislative changes for gay and lesbian parents. www.stonewall.org.uk

Time for children
Time for Children is a child-centred fostering agency specialising in the provision for sibling groups - hence our motto, 'enabling brothers and sisters to stay together'. www.timeforchildren.org

To read more go to http://bit.ly/aBmrPm

Sperm donations: Rights of donor offspring to know donors identity

The debate surrounding the rights and welfare of donor offspring has been gaining momentum over the past few years, and a growing number of countries have already banned anonymous sperm donation to ensure the right of offspring to access information about their donors. In the US, however, anonymous donation is not only legal but is still the prevailing norm. With no central registry and no federal or state regulation requiring long-term record keeping, information about donors is kept by individual sperm banks and fertility clinics according to various standards and for different lengths of time.
The outcome of the current situation is that many US donor offspring will never have potential access to information about their donors (either non-identifying or identifying information subject to donor's consent to disclosure). This reality raises serious issues regarding the ethics of denying individuals the right to information about their genetic origins. It also makes it particularly important to collect data on the actual needs and desires of donor offspring, which could provide empirical support for future policy initiatives.

To read more go to http://bit.ly/blavhW

First US study of attitudes towards donor conception published

A study into the attitudes of donor-conceived siblings has been published in the US. Said to be the first empirical study of its kind in the US, the report's authors - from The Commission on Parenthood's Future - surveyed nearly 500 donor-conceived adults aged between 18 and 45 aiming to feed into international debate on the ethics, meaning, and practice of donor conception.
The report, entitled 'My Daddy's Name is Donor' (the name was taken from a controversial T-shirt slogan produced by a company founded by two lesbian parents of a donor-conceived child), shows that although 45 per cent of donor offspring agreed with the statement 'the circumstances of my conception bother me' and that half expressed concerns or serious objections to donor conception itself, well over half (61 per cent) of donor offspring favour the practice and are far more likely than non-donor conceived adults to become donors themselves.

The findings also reported unease about payment for gametes with half the respondents being disturbed that money was involved in their conception. It also found that approximately two-thirds of respondents supported the right of donor-conceived offspring to obtain information about their biological father and to know his identity.

To read more go to http://bit.ly/aEhAnp