By on March 3, 2016

Shhh mommy is bloggingThis is an open letter to all of the amazing and terrific medical personnel that we depend on daily to help keep ourselves and our families healthy.

We love you, we really do. And we thank you for all you do.

We have called you in the middle of the night to wake you out of a sound sleep because of a fever, rash, colic, or any number of ailments our children may have that seriously freak us out.

We can’t tell you how many times we are going to thank you for stitching up an eyebrow, or a forehead, casting an arm or a leg, removing a bean or a bead from our toddlers nose, or diagnosing us with a case of chicken pox, along with an assortment of other childhood illnesses.

When our children have been diagnosed with something of a more concerning nature like Autism, ADHD, Anxiety, or seriously ill with those diseases that we find even too horrific to utter we turn to you for guidance, treatment, and support.

Because I am a mom via egg donation I can attest that it truly takes a village to create and raise our families. That’s why I am reaching out today for your help. It’s important that we all use the correct language regarding egg donation, embryo donation, and surrogacy with egg donation or embryo donation.

What is very helpful to we parents via egg donation is for the medical community to listen to us as we explain the often complex way our child came to be. If you think its wild hearing it for the first time, try being a mom who finds herself answering the dreaded “maternal side” of the family health questions.

“Our son was conceived via egg donation. Genetically, I am not related to my son. But this is what we know about his egg donor, and this is her medical history.”

That really is all you have to hear, unless you are truly interested in egg donation, and what that journey is like.

What is not helpful are answers like:

“So, genetically, he is really not yours.”
“Please tell me more about the donor mother.”
“So let me get this straight, his real mom was his egg donor, but you carried him?”
“Why isn’t his genetic mother here at this appointment today?”

And my all-time favorite: “Wow, that is really kind of crazy, how does your husband feels about him having a baby with another woman?”

The egg donor is referred to as the egg donor unless the intended parents have chosen to refer to her by name, or Aunt Sally, or a nickname, or whatever they choose to refer her as. Please don’t refer to her as the “Donor Mom” because she is not my child’s mother.

I am the one who is up nights feeding, nurturing, loving, changing diapers, and carrying for this child.
I am the one who loses sleep over sickness, crying, fevers, and my child’s welfare.
I am the one who practices in her head the story I am going to be telling my child on how he was wanted, celebrated, and prepared for – and how we worked so hard despite many failures to bring him into the world with the help of a very nice lady who donated her eggs to us.
I am the one who is going to balance work and mothering, who will cry with happiness as I watch my child say his first words, or take his first steps.
I am the one who is going to sob the first time I leave him at school of any kind, watch him get his heart broken, leave for college, partner, marry, and maybe one day have his own family.

I am the one. Not our egg donor. She is going to be too busy living her own life with her own children.

So please remember when we are sitting in your exam room with our children and we have to answer the dreaded health history — when you see or hear us begin to relay to you that our children were conceived via egg donation just listen, and if you have any questions about our donors health history which is part of our child’s health history you ask about the donors health history, not the donor mom, or the genetic mom, or the real mom’s health history. Because frankly, she’s not any of those things.

We are our child’s mothers and no one else.

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1 Comment
  1. Reply

    Emma

    April 11, 2017

    As an egg donor and a lesbian who will likely take advantage of sperm donation, I can’t stand these questions! There are children out there who were born as a result of my egg donation, but they are not “mine”. I am not even remotely close to being considered someone’s mother right now. That’s incredibly disrespectful and rude to imply. Donors are not parents.

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