Outsourcing Surrogacy to India?

I'm not sure how I feel about this yet. I need to run over it in my mind a bit.

'm not concerned by the parents disability or sexuality. I am, however, having trouble with "outsourcing" motherhood. In the clip, they talk about cost and competition with Thailand like its the manufactured goods trade. From the shots in the video, the children are clearly related to their Indian surrogate. They will grow up so far away from one piece of their genetic heritage. On the other hand the will likely grow up in far better economic circumstances with more opportunity. I wonder how they will feel 20, 30 years from now. At least they will have each other.

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/deaf-mute-gay-couple-becomes-new-parents/160062-3.html

Technorati Tags: Anonymous, Children, Family, Sperm Donor, Pregnancy, Society, Women, Social, Infertility

Dirty Tweets, Sperm Donation and other forms of Detachment

In an opinion piece called  Dirty Tweets, Sperm Donation and other forms of Detachment. on Technorati, I detail how Weinergate struck a cord in the search for my sperm donor. Check it out and let me know your thoughts.

There was also an interesting piece in the NY Times on a gay couple and single mom co-parenting after sperm donation: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/nyregion/an-american-family-mom-sperm-donor-lover-child.html

Happy Reading!

Technorati Tags: Anonymous, Children, Family, Parenting, Internet, Society, Women, Social, Infertility

What Would I Have Wanted to Tell My Mother Before She Conceived?

A recent comment and inquiry on my blog inspired a response too long to respond in comment so I opted to make it a post. 

The Comment:

On June 16, Hang on Little Gertie wrote...

Visit "Hang On Little Gertie" the Blog

Hello, I've found your blog to be a very good and informative but difficult read for me. After 8 years of talking and research (including meeting with one of the UK's leading psychologists and a woman who has done the longest ever research project into the health and wellbeing of the children of donors and same-sex couples - click here - ie this has been a very well researched decision!) a year ago my partner and I went to a clinic in London in order to attempt to have a baby with a sperm donor. My partner then left me just before our first attempt and a year on I am ready to have another go. My partner and I were very welcoming of the change in UK law to rule out anonymous sperm donors (although obviously it has meant a vast reduction in the number of available donors). I just wondered what your thoughts were on this issue. I also wondered what your thoughts were on the amount of information that should/shouldn't be given to prospective parents. As an individual I find the range of choice overwhelming but as the hopeful parent of a future child I'm persuaded to think that the more information the better until that child is old enough to decide whether or not they want to seek contact with the donor (and then the clinic would pass on the contact information)? 
I admire and respect the way you have articulated your thoughts and feelings in this blog and would be really interested to know your thoughts.

My Response:

Hi there “Hang on Little Gertie”  - Thanks so much for your candor and sharing. Already that tells me you are approaching the situation in an open and healthy manner. I'm very touched that you have asked my opinion. It is a caring and truly maternal gesture that speaks volumes about how much you already care about your future child.

As I have said before, my gut wants to say “don’t do it,” but I’ve come to the realization those worlds are rarely heeded. I more effective in helping future DC children by advising on what I would deem best-case scenarios. While I don’t think any AI scenario is ideal, if chosen parents should know as much as possible about donors. When possible they should seek donors willing to have some limited contact with the child. I know it is harder to find non-anonymous donors and even more difficult to find donors willing to keep in touch, but this isn't your child's challenge or problem. Since you want a child, you should take on the responsibility of seeking the very best conception scenario. 

I know this is a long shot, but perhaps there is a gay male couple that needs an egg donor and would be willing to provide their sperm to a lesbian couple as well as be accessible to the child down the road. I actually know of two couples that did this and it has worked out rather well, creating a somewhat unique extended family. Some people gasp when I say this....'how can I give my eggs/sperm away?" but that's completely hypocritical to me. How is it not okay to donate your eggs to another family but it is ok to use another anonymous man's sperm?

More generally, I've often thought about what I would ask of or share with my mother If I could rewind and travel back in time 30 years before she conceived.  Here are two things that come to mind immediately.

1- Acceptance and Validation of Loss - My mother's father died when she was 14 and it was a pivotal moment in her life. Regardless of how much a child knows about their parent or the means by which they loose a parent, the child feels a loss. I would have asked to her to think of her own experience of loss and come to terms with some of her feelings in preparation for my arrival.

If she were more accepting and aware of the loss that I would suffer when I realized I did not have access to my genetic father she could have better related to my pain. She would also have been more prepared to support me when I felt as if someone had died in the early years after I first learned the truth. Even in "right to know" situations where the donor's identity in not concealed, the child can feel they have missed out on having that individual in their life, or still be unable to locate the parent.  AI parents react negatively when I explain that all of the DC peers I have encountered universally experience some sense of loss at some point after learning the truth. It's as if the parents don't want to believe any decision they made could create pain for their children, which I can understand. Some of my DC peers have mother's who still disagree with their children to this day about how they "should feel."  However, I believe if you do not deny your child’s loss, opting instead to accept and support, you validate your child's feelings making them feel less alone. 

Imagine I were to go up to a very small child who just lost a parent they only had 2 or 3 years of their life to know and told them shouldn't feel upset because I had remarried. Imagine if I told them they were being ungrateful in their tears because they had a father and the father that died wasn't their real father. I bring forth this troubling imagery not to manipulate but to depict a realistic scenario of loss. AI can enable an unhealthy level of detachment from kinship and emotion. Just because you will not know the face of your child's biological father and just because a child is fathered by an individual who chose not to be in their lives does NOT invalidate their need to grieve or your responsibility to support them. 

If we can work together as a community of DC kids and parents to acknowledge this loss and avoid the denial that runs rampant in the media and online, we’ll all move forward in a more positive direction.

2 - Avoid Secrecy and Shame - A number of studies, including this one, have pointed out it is best to tell children early about the nature of their conception. This is where being a single mother or gay or lesbian couple is more positive because the lack of a biological parent is evident and must be explained. My mother and father like many other heterosexual couples were told to conceal the truth. This set the stage for secrecy, shame and eventual betrayal. Secrets are insidious forces that fester in the creases and corners of family relationships and burden your child. Be as honest as possible to your child, sharing age appropriate information as soon as you can. They should bare as little burden of shame and secrecy as possible.

I could definitely write more but as I have a day job to keep, I will need to wrap it up here :)  Please feel free to comment in response or email me at girlconceived@gmail.com with any other questions you may have. In addition, I recently added a few of my responses to commonly asked questions on my Parent’s Dealing with Infertility page.

Again I can’t express enough how much I value the opinions and insights of parents considering AI. In many ways it allows me to engage in discourse I feel I was in some ways denied and offers great satisfaction and peace. 

So, thank you. I wish you the best in your endeavors.

Sincerely,

Girl Conceived


UPDATE - A response from LittleGertie can be found on her blog at http://hangonlittlegertie.blogspot.com/2011/06/unexpected-connections-in-daily-life.html

The "Jewish Thing"

Since sharing the discovery of half of my ancestry via DNA testing, I'm surprised at the overwhelming interest in the "Jewish thing."  A number of friends, some Jewish, want to know how I feel about the "Jewish thing." Other's ask, "does your Mom know about the "Jewish thing?" Which yes, she does and oh boy that's a fun story for a later post. Still others shake their heads in understanding as if something has been explained or finally makes sense ....saying, "you know the 'Jewish thing' explains a lot."

It's all made me wonder A- what is the "Jewish thing" and B- how does it explain anything at all? It's as if the religious heritage of my distant cousins is a tangible carnival item sitting in the room when we speak. Typically I'm excited and share the vast information about ancestors from Russia, Lithuania and the Ukraine. When I offhandedly mention that these ancestors were Jewish there is a pause for a moment like I've taken out the "Jewish thing" and put it on the table.  I imagine it to be some kind of intricately decorated blue vase or something like that.....they are suddenly interested.....their eyes widen...wow the "Jewish thing."

I'm not disappointed about this new religious heritage, I just don't get the fascination with this very small piece of my very complex identity. Maybe it's just that I'm less surprised than my friends. Let's be honest here. My mother was inseminated in NYC by an intern at Lenox Hill Hospital on the Upper East Side. She requested a Polish donor with brown hair and eyes.  Ahem.......um yeah......there was a very high likelihood the gentleman was Jewish. Let's get real, I would be surprised if he was not Jewish.

Having grown up in NYC, I have many, many Jewish friends from childhood up through college to present and I've never heard of the the "Jewish thing." The closest thing I came across to the "Jewish thing" was when a good girlfriend of mine started dating a Protestant guy and other mutual friends would say, "well it won't last long, there is the Jewish thing." Suddenly, Judaism was a focus, an elephant in the room.

As a kid I can remember countless times I wished to be Jewish.  Most of the Jewish kids I knew were incredibly gifted with highly educated, very successful families. I assumed that was part of being Jewish. I fully acknowledge I was stereotyping but children are simplistic and this was a positive stereotype (so cut me a little slack before sending me hate mail.) I found Judaism far more mystical and exciting than the Catholicism in which I was raised (again here.... a child's viewpoint.... not an incentive to send me an email asking "why I hate Catholicism") I'll never forget the time when at about six, I nearly gave my VERY Catholic Grandmother a heart attack, reciting a Jewish prayer in Hebrew a friend had taught me at the park.

But back to the greater issue here. It's not that I'm not excited about this new world to explore. I just don't get the intense fascination with it or the assumption that I'm now magically Jewish.
Being Jewish, at least to me, is not about DNA. Being Jewish is about beautiful religious traditions, culture and a vast, trying history you learn and discover as you are raised.  You can't get the "Jewish thing" just by being born, it has to be given to you. When my biological father released sperm from his body into a cup and detached from it (and me) he took away the Jewish thing. That is unfortunate.

This leads me to believe that the fascination with the "Jewish thing" has more to do with the "sperm donor thing." What I'm trying, successfully or unsuccessfully, to get at here is that the parcels of  inheritance are very blurry when it comes to anonymous sperm donation. What the sperm donor does and does not bestow upon you is highly debatable. The letters and patterns of my DNA genome spread across the table cannot describe the shape of my ancestors faces, they cannot tell me the stories of the women before me that made their way across an ocean and they definitely cannot communicate the essence of what it means to be Jewish.

So that leads me to ask you, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, what do you think about the Jewish thing?

Am I Absorbed or Obsessed?

There is such a fine line between being passionately absorbed and dysfunctionally obsessed. Since I received my Family Finder DNA results I've found myself fixated on downloading and analyzing the lists of  genetic relatives. Even though its been a few days since I have received the results, every time I log in, I get a little high. I feel my mouth curl into a smile and my heart races a little. I look at the 100s of names....Adler....Goldstein....Mitchell and I am in awe. I cannot believe after 30 years of excepting that half of my identity would remain unknown forever, I received this tiny glimpse into the unknown.

A Complicated Web of Family....Found?

I almost broke my neck sliding on a rug in a frantic dash to the laptop in my bedroom. Minutes earlier I'd received a note on my BlackBerry while watching some mindless reality TV. A donor-concevied friend had gotten her Family Finder results early and they were online. She suspected mine were too. The DNA sample she provided had uncovered tons of 2nd and 3rd cousins all likely related to her unknown sperm donor.

I sent my DNA kit around the same time so the note made my heart skip a beat. "Laptop" was the first thing I thought. "Need to get to laptop." I vibrated with an energy I can only remember from childhood in the early-morning hours before Christmas, when I'd float down the stairs with anticipation.

I jumped up from the couch, into the hallway and caught the rug on my turn into the bedroom. After I hit the floor, I scrambled back up and calm myself enough to locate the laptop. I grabbed it and plopped on the bed. Passwords and kit numbers.....dammit....why does everything have to be locked down these days? It's life's cruel joke that as my short term memory wains with age I must simultaneously amass more and more random usernames and passwords. 

Making matters worse, my brain lacked its normal processing capacity already wrapped up in fantasies about what was to come. Suddenly I understood why some men say their brains stop working when they are anticipating ...ahem....exciting events.

Finally I cracked the code and opened the site.  There they were.

"MATCHES"