Who Am I Today?

There is a bright side to only seeing half the picture of who you are. You can always imagine and define the other half.  Whenever I’m challenged with something I imagine that my biological father had some great gift with which I too have been endowed. I think of this very industrious and anonymous sperm making a very long journey with an amazing gift just for me.

I can “fill in the blanks” with whatever gift would be most useful at the moment. If I’m nervous about a big presentation or speech at work, I fantasize a little to myself that aside from being a cardiac surgeon my sperm donor was a talented speaker..... and he gives amazing medical presentations all the time...the talent is in my blood! Or sometimes when I get writer’s block I tell myself the donor was a great writer and I too must have those skills deep inside.

To be honest, I do a lot of fantasizing about the identity of the donor. Not all of it is a self-serving motivational tool. A greater part of it is a futile attempt to quench an insatiable thirst for knowledge that I do not have.  I say “thirst” because the urge to know feels that instinctual, carnal, like an itch that my mind relentlessly and unsuccessfully tries to scratch. it's this sense that I need to lay my eyes on him, see him, so I can be whole. Imagining him is the only way to put my mind at peace.

I suspect my mother does a lot of fantasizing as well, though I’ve never really discussed it with her.  I mean, if you haven’t seen the face of the man that is fathering your child, I can’t imagine you wouldn’t naturally fill it in. 

I sense she is quite proud that the donor was a medical intern. It also leads her to believe I’ve been endowed with some type of heightened intelligence or knack for the scientific. While there is an element of this that really, really bothers me there is another piece of it that can pump up my self esteem when I need it. 

As with any psychological construct, the donor doesn’t have to be realistic or multi-dimensional, his total identity can exist only to serve whatever emotion needs to be fed. 

It makes me wonder if there isn’t an element of this at play for mother’s who undergo artificial insemination. The anonymity provides a “blank slate” or a “tabla rasa” of sorts on which you can project all kinds of thoughts and desires. Mates in reality are so much more disappointing. All men have flaws, many go bald, some drink...all seem to have a greater aptitude for flatulence than females :) 

Blogs of single women attempting to conceive via AI or raising children already conceived via AI are full of stories about men from prior relationships that just “weren’t right“ or “didn’t make the cut.”  Yet, many (dare I say most) deny that fantasy plays a role in the choice for AI.

Lori Gottlieb, a single mother via AI and author of the controversial essay, “Marry Him”  got lambasted by women across the internet for making the argument single woman who want a family should settle for “Mr. Good Enough.”  She wasn’t commenting on AI, but on the link between some struggles of single motherhood and her previous unwillingness “to settle” for a less than perfect mate earlier in her life (she later expanded this argument in her book "Marry Him".) I bring it up because she highlights the “fantasy” so many women have a the perfect mate. Gottlieb writes:

“A female friend who broke up with a guy because he “didn’t like to read” and who is now, too, a single mom (with, ironically, no time to read herself) similarly felt no regrets—at first. At the time, she couldn’t imagine settling, but here’s the Catch-22: “If I’d settled at 39,” she said, “I always would have had the fantasy that something better exists out there. Now I know better. Either way, I was screwed.”

When AI is the chosen course of action for single mothers, anonymous donation leaves room to make the donor the “something better” that “exists out there.” While I’m not contending this element of "sperm fantasy" is always conscious...it’s pretty hard to argue that it plays no part in the the AI experience.

All this fantasy however is a slippery slope. For me, it’s a constant struggle to figure out exactly which part is “the other.” I compare myself, my mother and my brother all the time to sort out what is the same and what is different.  Beyond basic physical traits it’s the difference in personality and intellect that are most interesting but so much harder to figure it out. Personality and intellect are so complex they don’t easily offer themselves to deconstruction - letting you put your sense of humor in the “mom” basket and knack for math in the “dad” basket.

Geez, the “dad” basket. God.....if it were only that simple.


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

The Dirty Little Secret

I visited the donor sibling registry yesterday and as usual, discovered nothing new or revelatory. It's starting to be one of those meaningless rituals we all have, like looking in the same jewelry store window on a street you walk down everyday. Nothing you can have, just nice to look and dream.

I ended up looking at all the video clips of Wendy Kramer and her son, Ryan, on everything from Oprah to GMA. Man this pair get some serious airplay. I do appreciate the work that they have done with the DSR and the exposure they have given the cause but I still find myself getting annoyed. I questioned myself, ----why were these 10-20 minutes of the two talking so infuriating? I mean they are doing a great thing, right?

 In one segment Ryan is described as a "rocket scientist"  and Wendy as a "trailblazer." God, you have to love TV, soon we'll have AI "super heros." Ok, Ok,  I know we need speakers out there and we need a core Web site, but there is something inside me that cringes at some of these clips.  I'm not saying this to bash the pair in any way but something here is a little artificial. The donor-conceived "story" needs more voices.  It shouldn't be dominated or owned by one (or two) core voices.

Just as I was contemplating this anger, a note popped up that I had to pay my DSR dues. The subscription fees on the DSR have gone up to $50 a year  but you can also pay a one time fee of $150. Images of a really bad infomercial popped into my head..."are you looking for half your genetic heritage?...so you wonder who you are?...fret no more....get a year of endless searching for your father for just $50 or.... order now and get our limited time offer to search for a lifetime for just $150!"

With more than 30,000 connected on the site...that adds up to a lot of money. Curious, I started looking through the tax returns publicly available on the site. I didn't realize that they took a salary, albeit reasonable $80,000 for Wendy and around $6,000 for Randy plus all the office and online fees and coverage for travel around $11,000. Somehow I thought this was all being done out of their pockets but I guess that would not have been feasible. It's become a career, at least for Wendy. Still, however much this made me less grateful and put a chink in the "saintly" image I had of the DSR, I guess there is no other way to keep it going.

All this reviewed and weighed, I was STILL irritated.  It's not as if I want them to go away, so what is irking me?

I think part of it is that these stories, Wendy and Ryan traveling around the world giving speeches, the movies with pretty actresses like Annette Benning and J. Lo are the appealing, easily-exploited side of artificial insemination. In these made for TV stories, everyone is aware,. There is strife but family and friends are mostly supportive. The families, though a little taxed, operate mostly functionally. There is a far more complex and painful underbelly to the donor offspring experience that is not explored or given a voice.

What gets barely mentioned is that much of artificial insemination is kept a secret. A secret, that like a tangling ivy grows through a family and holds people back. A secret that can't be evaluated or studied in the myriad reports and recommendations out there. The numbers can't be documented but I would argue those hidden in shame and silence are the majority.

When there is divorce (as I believe is the case with the Kramers) then things get revealed. Yes, there are some lone "DI Dad's" out there supporting the cause, but they are few and far between.  For that reason, I don't think their open and accepting viewpoints are truly reflective of reality. Most men, including my father, are not so keen to announce they are incapable of having children.

And, yes, I will admit I am talking here about heterosexual families, because, clearly secrets of this nature aren't possible when you have parents of the same sex. Somewhere along the line, the child would figure it out. I think this is an ideal dynamic because it forces these parents to truly consider the loss to the child and at the very least come to some common agreement on what will be said and explained. I'm not saying it isn't less difficult for children of gay and lesbian parents to deal with, I'm saying the scenario is one less ripe for the growth of dysfunction and secrecy.

But, many, many of us inhabit this darker side of AI, where it was used as a band aid for a very deep wound a couple endured when they discovered they were infertile. We find out, often in tense situations where one parent is angered at the other and we are not supposed to tell people. Often, not all of our family knows. It's shameful, its a failure, its something of which our parents are not proud. It's also part of the fabric of who we are.

I have a younger brother and he doesn't know. My aunts don't know. My uncles don't know. Family to whom I have no biological relationship tell me I look them in, have their gifts and qualities and I just laugh inside.

My mother told me in a chaotic moment  and I am not even sure my father knows that I know. She says it would "destroy " my father. To be honest, I don't really care so much about how my father feels, its the situation with my brother that feels like someone is ripping my friggin heart out. He has a very adversarial  relationship with my Dad at the moment (as many young boys becoming men do) and my mother is concerned  that this would add fuel to a fire.

I post for him on the DSR, hoping I can find his donor and spare him some of my own loss. I would give up finding my own if I could find his for him. I can't imagine telling him without having something to share, otherwise it's just delivering a gut wrenching loss.

Is it my place to tell him? I feel like I am betraying him. If I do havoc will breakout in my family and my mother will be in pieces. When I found out in my early twenties I remember being almost numb to the idea. I had never really gotten along with my Dad or connected to him so it wasn't a huge "loss" as I don't think we ever had a real  bond. The part of it that felt terrifying was to hear my brother and I had different donors. I felt ripped from him, my little brother, my pal. 

As I contemplated the thought for the first time it was like an appendage was being ripped from me in some way. I felt sudden intense anger at my mother, who in all her clamor to have a child couldn't think enough to find means to use the same sperm. I felt protective of this little boy, who in my arms I held at seven years old when he was born, pretending he was my baby doll and fighting with my mom to give him his bottles. God, I love him so much and..... I'm suddenly incapable of protecting him from what I know to be an intense feeling of loss ...outside of keeping a painful secret. I felt my mother's actions had separated us and it was unbearable.  At that time I could not think about it without having trouble breathing. Only a few years later can I even talk about it and here, without my identity, its still a secret.

These stories aren't told on Oprah or in the movies.

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Dr Alvin C. Weseley

So I found out today it was not Dr. Decker but Dr. Alvin C. Weseley who inseminated my mother. It's so frustrating that as donor offspring our backgrounds are kept so secret and guarded. After looking for Dr. Decker for years, now I have to change my search completely. Life can be so overwhelming sometimes.....

How to search engine optimize your donor blog (or any other blog) Part 1

I typically write about the search for my sperm donor father and all the contemplation and endless whining (on bad days) that entails. Recently, however, I've been getting a lot of questions about technology and blogs. Maybe I am an amazingly popular writer .....but far more likely it's because my blog comes up on top of Google for many key terms. Why? One answer: Search Engine Optimization or "SEO" as the techies like to call it. I have a lot of experience working as a technology consultant for well-known companies and let me tell you, SEO is what its all about.

Funny, if only I could "search engine optimize" my donor search things would be much easier :) How nice it would be if I could just put together a few algorithms, enter a few pertinent facts from my mom, run a search and voila, here is your donor! For know I will have to settle for using technology to help me get my story out there. As all of us donor offspring know, its not so much that something (or someone) is out there - its being able to find that entity.

The more donor offspring blogs we have search engine optimized, the stronger our voice. So I am also going to start posting tips on SEO and blogger optimization you can use for your site. Here is the universal first step:

1 -Check to see if Google has actually indexed (sort of like categorizing) your page. Go to Google and type: "site:" and the name of your site. So for example, I would google "site:connectitblog.blogspot.com"

If you have been indexed you will see results like this:

If you have not been indexed you will see this:

If you get the above result, then you have not been "indexed." Which in simple terms means that the Google web crawler has not yet made it to your page.  See, even though everyone thinks that Google searches the Web it actually searches a copy or "picture" of the Web. Google is crawling the Web all the time, indexing pages, but since the Web is always expanding that takes some time. If the Google Web crawler has not made it to your page to take a picture, you don't exist.

So what do you do to get indexed? 

First, go to : http://www.google.com/addurl/ and you can request your site to be indexed. Next prepare your site to come up high in the results.....

We will go over that next post :).......

Seeing the world

I travel a bunch for my job and its always surreal to look out the window of the plane. When you are close enough to actually see the world beneath you, it seems so small. I especially like the little cars travelling in lines and the houses laid out like honeycombs . It's almost like an ant farm. I realize that while it seems vast, the world is not so big.

Then, like everything other time I philosophize, my mind leads me "to him." Am I flying over him. Is he maybe in his yard and, in a moment of rest, looks up to see a tiny plane flash by. "Up here....it's me."

And then its usually a pushy flight attendant offering nuts that pulls me out of day dreaming.

Why are there so many connections "to him." Why do so many of my thoughts lead to this invisible person....its almost literary...like the "eyes" in the Great Gatsby that look down on everyone or Dicken's unknown benefactors. I think the fact that he has no shape or form is what leads my mind to him most. Our unconcious minds are simple. They do not think grand thoughts or complex ideas, instead they want something simplistic, a face, an image, a mantra. But this isn't simple. How can my mind simply grasp the artificial inseminnation process and the transfering of DNA anonymously to another. My unconsious is like a skipping record or something, searching and searching for something to fall on. Ahhh the joy I would feel to have a face...just a face to hold on to.

One afternoon over Starbuck's coffee, a friend of mine commented on the fact that this "unknown" being that is my biological father almost sounds biblical, like god or something. I had to laugh, so hard actually that I spit a bit of coffee across our table attracting the attention of those around us. But then come to think about it there is an element of truth to her observation. I think the link is less religious and more faith based.

By this I mean that because you can't see this person, because in some cases like mine you have to come to terms with the idea of never knowing, you just have to have faith that he is out there. You have to have faith that while you may never meet him, he is a good person. You have to have faith that he is whatever your mom was told he was like tall, smart, and handsome.....and the only thing you have to go on is yourself. You - the only place, ironically, you can find "him" insomuchas half his DNA is written into every cell in your body. Talk about the "holy spirit" . Too bad I'm not religious or I could really take this comparison somewhere meaningful :)

But anyway....you get the drift.

Confronting Identity

When I saw Jake's note I my heart started to race, and I wondered if I was weird. This man was not a potential date, he was potentially my biological father. Why then, did I feel such titillation?

I stopped for a moment and looked around the room, as if I were doing something bad, like looking at a questionable or dirty Web page or something. I switched on the light on my desk - as if turning a light on made things less sketchy.

Why were there all these emotions? I pushed away from from my desk and went into my room to put some things away and gather myself together. Organizing my room always made me calm, brought internal order. Entering the brightly lit room, I was caught by a picture of my mother, brother and myself, in a frame on the bookcase. I walked over to it and although it was in front of me, my mind flip back to his email-

"Dear ---,

Fate would have that I checked my yahoo email today, something I rarely do anymore. I went to myspace and was only able to open one of your attachments. You are a very beautiful woman. Can you send the attachments to this email. I check this email daily. I do see a resemblance. The only way to find out is to do a DNA test. The test cost about 130.00 which I would be glad to split the difference. I also have copies of my DNA test.



Truly yours.
Jake."


"You are a very beautiful women" ----- Is that appropriate? I thought. I looked at the photo I held in my hand -- was I beautiful? Yes, I mean I guess.... I think. I put the picture down and laid in my bed. I remember my Dad would always stop by the bathroom when I was a self-concious teen putting on makeup and standing in the doorway he would say "you know, you are so beautiful sweetheart" ---"DAD!!!!" I would whine in my teen embarrassment, and he would walk away.

Fifteen or so years later I was overcome with tears. The type of blithering, runny knows tears they reserve for day time soaps. Was he admiring something he was in awe of? Was my father wondering where my beauty came from? What is the difference between this man who did not know me, and this man that had carried me home from the hospital admiring the woman I was?

I was not prepared for this. I had to work, I had things to do. How dare someone I did not know create this drama?

In seconds, tears switched to anger and I charged back out to my desk and slammed the laptop closed.

A day or so went by and I realized I need to reply and get the testing done. I wrote him back after I had looked at a few DNA test sites. I had to laugh when I saw the DNA site. It was clearly a baby's momma - site. The kind of site they use on Maury Povich show called "Who is my baby's daddy?" A female guest sits in tears with two men competing for paternity of her child. Maury - speaking in the background as they do a split screen of the child in question and the father.

This is what it had come to...good grief. The site had a home made kit you did not even have to send away. You use swabs from the drug store ( apparently qtips do not work too well) and envelopes and you follow the instructions printed from the site. Include a check and your baby daddy drama is close to over. They had overnight, high-cost, tests. I thought, when would you need to know tomorrow if someone was you father? I opted for a the second fastest method - one week and we would know.

I swabbed my cheek and asked Jake to do the same. We never spoke live although he offered to meet in person and put the cheek swabs together. I chose to keep in email. I was such a live wire, I could not imagine how I would be meeting this person.

It was right before Thanksgiving - could we get any more ironic?

Technorati Tags: Anonymous, Technology, Gay Parenting, Parenting, Children, Family, Pregnancy, Women, Sperm Donor, Infertility, Society, Artificial Insemination, Gay

Dr. Decker Donation and the Transfer of Loss

I spent time emailing on the Donor Sibling Registry today and I can't help but feel like this is futile. For those of us that were conceived during and prior to the early 1980's its tough to make connections. At that time sperm donation was pretty low-tech and did not involve freezing which made the process all the more sketchy. Donors were often medical students strapped for cash recruited by fertility specialists associated with their educational facilities. They would donate the sperm within hours of insemination if not sooner.

In my case it was Dr. Decker's NYC Park Avenue clinic on the Upper East Side. What is ironic is that while I am sure his name warmed the hearts of the families he helped have children, his name fills my heart with loss and anger.

In this Houston Press article entitled "Donor Babies Search for Their Anonymous Fathers" a child of artificial insemination, Nancy LaBounty speaks to exactly this loss:

"I just think it's a transferring of loss," Kathleen says today. "The parents are pursuing this, and by going through anonymous donation, they get their dream of parenthood. But then that loss is just transferred to us."

She is exactly right. Artificial Insemination, if not dealt with correctly and thoughtfully is the transference of loss. I know my parent's felt incredibly loss and unhappiness when they found out they could not have children and this loss was somehow alleviated when they participated in artificial insemination. The loss was not resolved, however, but delayed and transferred to their child.

I often read blogs and post by parents of donor offspring that claim the relation is only biological and "unimportant" compared to the bond with the parent that raised you. Yet, if it is unimportant and so inconsequential then why the need for insemination? Why not just adopt? Why do so many women with husbands unable to conceive children opt for donated sperm? The answer is that is important to those couples to have at least some kind of genetic relation to their child. Why then is this desire from the child so easily invalidated?

It's so hard to talk about this without coming across as an ungrateful child. I do love my parents immensely but I don't agree with their actions. It is not the artificial insemination I am upset with, it is the anonymity. How can you create a life with so little knowledge of person that contributes the DNA alive in every single cell in their body.

I just don't understand?

Frankenstein Finds Hope in An Envelop

Yesterday I asked my Mom to put her cells in an envelop with mine and send them to a lab in Michigan. I had the CaBRI Medical Center envelops on my desk for nearly a year and could not bring myself to ask her. As much as I want to pull the dark covers away and expose what happened in the bright light of day, its so hard to talk to her. It's nothing terrible. I mean, its the creation of a child, but somehow it makes me feel guilty to push her for information. This is not the story that gets told online and in those happy Dateline reports but I believe it is actually very common.

I think my Mom sees herself as my sole creator in so many ways. She is not my only parent, she is married to my Dad and while he is my father he is not genetically related to my creation. Here's where the contemplation gets a bit sticky - while its physcologically exceptable for the human conscious to think of itself as the sole creator of another being, the mind is perplexed by the idea that we are created solely by one. The idea of "one creator" is not at all new, I mean look at literature from Frankenstein to Jesus Christ to Roman Mythology, we have all these examples of a child coming from just one parent. Laughably its typically only from men, but I won't even start on that rant.

I remember reading the story of Athena springing from the head of Zeus in college and laughing out loud that Ma must have seen it that way. She does not know who that other individual is, she does not know his name, his face or the swagger of his walk. So its easy to feel like I just grew inside her like magic, like the immaculate conception, like an ameba that just popped off her side through fission.

I remember asking her one day, "Ma, what about me is different? What do you see in me that makesyou say, 'this does not come from me'"

She just sat there for a moment and looked like she was honestly contemplating the question, scanning me for signs of "him" and she came up with nothing.

I crinkled my brow and looked at her in disbelief, "honestly Ma?"

She thought again.

"Well, I don't know where you get the big feet and small boobs from, but other than that, no, nothing." Of course only the undesirable things could be "other" and that makes things even more convenient. Anytime you stumble on some bad characteristic you just chalk it up to the sperm.

All humor aside, I don't fault her for the perspective and I know how much she loves me. It's her way of dealing with an issue that I can't personally resolve. I won't quote Frankenstein here, I did that enough in college, but the chapters on the woes of his creation definitely come to mind. It's important to note that Frankenstein is the name of the creator, not his beastly creation whom we fear so much. I read and examined the text throughout college and my heart was just ripped out for the beast. I felt his tumult, his confusion. I did not relate to anything evil he did but I could see how he felt such loss. I can understand how the idea of just one parent rather than an entire identity could frustrate you to insanity.

So in those small pieces of us, placed in an envelope and shipped to MidWest, I too began the path to pull together something of separate human pieces, an identity, a creator, a reason for my small breasts :) and big feet.