Another Half Sibling Found ! December Meeting Planned !

We have learned that my two children have another half sibling. A boy only about 6 months younger than my son.

So counting my two kids, and "T", the little girl we met twice over the last few years, we know of 4 children born from our donor. I plan on referencing the new half sibling as "Z".

And wait the news continues. Both T and Z and their moms are coming to NYC the first weekend in December ! All four kids under one roof. When Z heard about T and my kids he asked his mom when he can meet everyone else and somehow Z's mom got all of us talking and it is happening. Amazing.

Doppelgangers, First Impressions, Birth Certificates

Dopplegangers

Both my children play chess and through their classes my daughter met another girl about her age who could be their half siblings doppelganger. The resemblance is not perfect but close enough that my wife and I will occasionally remark about it.

We wonder if our daughter has noticed it (or even our son) as she and her brother have a picture of their half sibling in my son's room. Neither has said anything and we have commented about it to them but it is amusing.


First Impressions

I have not posted in about a month as work and life in general have been busy. We attended a NYC Gathering of donor conceived families and my impressions are posted on the Donor Conception New York blog. I also posted there my thoughts regarding the January meeting I attended of the Third Party Parenting Network here in NYC.


Birth Certificates

I have wanted to write a post regarding birth certificates as I read a couple of other blogs about this issue as it relates to donor conceived kids here in the US as well as the ongoing efforts in the UK to require notations on the certs of kids conceived via donor gametes. We also just submitted passport applications for the kids so the issue has been on my mind as I had to obtain certified copies of their certificates for the applications.

In the US there is a bill before the Missouri legislature that would grant donor conceived individuals greater rights regarding learning more about their donors and also includes provisions regarding birth certificates but the bill lacks teeth to require compliance by out of state cryobanks. I hope to write more about these issues soon.

Cheaper by the Dozen

This afternoon while watching television with the kids we ended up watching the Steve Martin version of the movie Cheaper by the Dozen. I asked the kids if they wanted 10 brothers and sisters and of course the answer was yes even if that meant 8 kids in my son's room and 4 in his sister's room. The movie is plenty cute and despite the internal squabbles of the kids they all loved each other and as the movie ended they all lived happily ever after.

I realized this evening that my own kids will grow up like both my wife and I did with only one sibling and that will be basically their whole family except for two cousins on side of the family. No we are not even contemplating having more DI kids but the wish the kids had a larger family for support and just normal stuff is appealing.

It's been several months since the kids last physically met "T" their only known half sibling. I wish we all lived closer so that the kids could see her more often. They have not asked about "T" that much lately. I am not pushing them to include her in their thoughts and we let her existence come up naturally if and when the kids ask.

I still check the Donor Sibling Registry periodically to see if more half siblings are out there but as time passes it is less and less likely that there are others or at least if there are that their families will register their existence on the DSR decreasing the likelihood that we will even learn about them.

I believe I have written here that before I learned of my infertility I always wanted four kids. These days for financial reasons alone that is less heard of much less when infertility is encountered. So for now I will continue to live out my desire for a larger family through television while snuggling with the two beautiful kids I have.

Video of Donor 1096 Half Sibs - Family Reunion

This video made me cry as it was a great representation of how these 6 kids appear to be adjusting well by their knowledge of their conception stories. OK, I admit this topic gets me emotional as I still have fears as to how my kids will process their own story as they get older.

There are many who feel that in a fashion parents like me essentialy brain wash our kids to feel OK about their conception and who later in life will, in their words, feel their loss greater. I fully believe it depends on the child so I push back when I hear blanket statements.

I wish my kids lived closer to their half sibling as I do wish all three of them could spend more time together. Seeing how the Donor 1096 sibs act with each other was a nice way to spend a few minutes during my lunch hour.

Eric Jacobson featured in the video is a member of the DI Dads Yahoo Group and I want to thank him for sharing this video:

School Charts and Family Trees

The following post is the text of a message I left on the Yahoo DI Dads Discussion group this evening:

It's been a while since I have posted and I admit I have not been checking in as much as I used to due mostly to the fact that being aDI Dad has not realy been in the forefront of my mind lately. My mind has been busy with just being a dad, husband, breadwinner etc.

Anyhow tonight I was reading to my 6 year old before bedtime and we ran out of books to read so I grabbed the "Let Me Explain" book byJane Schnitter. This is the book where the story is told by a 7 or 8 year old girl how she was born using donor insemination.

I am not exactly sure why I chose this book but I have to think it had something to do with a sibling / family addition chart his kindergarten class had in school where I noticed a few days ago that my son had added a male sibling where he does not have one. I had asked him at school how he came to have a brother when he knows its just him and his sister and he merely indicated he had wanted a brother. I told him if anything he could include his female halfsibling as she really does exist. I realized however to include her would require using the term "sister" which in our home we do not use to describe this little girl. I did not say that to him but Iwondered if he would make the connection.

After reading the "Let Me Explain" book which spoke about how the little girl got her genes from her mom and some from the donor I decided to draw out a family tree so my son could see the relationship between himself and others in our extended family. As an aside I have to say that we use the term "donor" in our housewhere there are folks out there that use less clinical words. It is how we started and how the kids know the man whose sperm helped create them. My son also has a problem saying or remembering the word "donor" so occasionally he will say "owner" (how I hear it) which he finds amusing as to him he is only saying "onor" and gets embarrased by his forgetting the "d".

Anyway we drew out the chart including the donor and my children's half sibling as well as her mom (they are a single mommy family). We also included my sister and her family as well as my wife's brother and his family. We also drew out all of the individuals who reside in my children's grandparent's generation and their parents as well. Let's just say the page was getting a little crowded.

While drawing the chart for purposes of showing shared genes I drew the lines to my kids as solid lines from my wife and the donor and a dotted line from me to the kids. My son later drew over this dotted line as a solid line conecting me to him and his sister. I will admit I smiled at that not truly knowing what made him do that or really why. I can say to myself he did it to make me more real but (1) I know I am real so that thought is silly and (2) I have no idea what he was thinking and I should have asked to see what he would say but the moment passed quickly.

When we finished the rough hand sketched chart he asked if he could bring it to school and I paused and stated that we should wait before he does that. He did not push the issue so I was not required to say why or why not I had made that decision which I was happy about as I was not ready to answer it myself despite the fact that some of the other parents already know our story.

All in all an interesting week as I had not been thinking about thisstuff too much lately.

I hope everyone is well and not getting a Summer cold which I nowhave and truly is annoying in 100 degree temps in the NYC subwaysystem.

Eric

Meeting Their Half Sibling - Again

Tomorrow we drive South so the kids can spend the weekend with their half sibling. We are staying at their house and the kids are real excited. Tonight was Purim so the kids were up later than usual and we are hoping that does not throw their schedule out of whack. Big day of driving and hopefully the kids are good. Exciting stuff.

Second Meetings….Postponed

Tomorrow it’s supposed to snow. I hope it really snows bad. We were supposed to be driving South to spend the weekend with “T” and her mom at their house. When I told my son that due to the weather we were postponing the trip he was very very upset and crying uncontrollably.

Now as he is my child I know he was crying for a number of reasons including not being able to see his half sibling who he was very much looking forward to seeing. He was also crying as the trip was an adventure and a chance to be in a rent-a-car. He was also crying as he wants very badly to see “T”’s puppy before the dog is no longer a puppy. The boy has wanted a dog for as long as I can remember.

It’s hard to say how much a 5 year old, sorry 5 ¾ year old, can miss another child, they really barely know each other but I guess at their ages (“T” turned 5 last month) they can sense at least what we already know that they are connected in some way beyond just being a friend.

Certainly we treat the relationship differently than a simple friend. We have a few pictures of our kids with “T” around and they periodically view the home movies of them with T from their first and only meeting (weekend) to date. When we talk about being created with the help of a donor we always refer to T as well as her story as it is part of their story. So for our kids to know “T” is someone special and above other mere mortals is not surprising, so when a planned weekend we have been talking about on and off for some time is postponed it is natural that the kids should be disappointed and be upset.

So I hope it really snows bad up and down the Northeast and Middle Atlantic seaboard so I can justify to my kids, and ourselves, why they are not seeing “T” this weekend.

A Second Meeting, One Year 6 Months Later

In August 2006, my kids first met their half sibling "T", and at the end of this month, if all goes as planned, the kids will meet for a second time.

During the last year they have exchanged cards, drawings and the occasional phone call. My kids have watched the video of themselves with "T" numerous times and see the picture of them all together whenever it has not fallen behind my son's dresser.

This meeting will be quite different than the first as it is not on the neutral ground of the hotel we met in and the first day we spent at a theme park. We are traveling to "T's house and per the plan staying with "T" and her mom. I expect the kids will have lots of fun and also get on each other's nerves by the time the weekend finishes.

We thought about doing the tourist thing in "T"'s city and I am sure there will be a bit of that but for right now just the thought of the kids playing in the backyard and hanging out is enough for me to hope for and see them reacquaint themselves with each other. Building any real relationship takes time and familiarity.

Probably until they are all a few years older a true relationship will not fully take hold. But for now just seeing them have some fun and begin to build some memories is all I can really hope for.

Daily Tasks: Check for Half Siblings. Done That.

One of the issues confronting a number of donor conceived individuals, like their adoptee counterparts, is the curiosity and desire to know if they have “family” or at least biological relatives out there.

As opposed to their adoptee counterparts today’s generation of donor conceived have online registries that they may have registered themselves on or that their parents have done so via their donor numbers if those numbers are known. A few months after learning of the Donor Sibling Registry I registered each of my children under their common’s donor’s number and cryobank.

I have to wonder in this age of the Internet how many parents, biological or social, check these registries on almost an obsessive basis to determine if new half-siblings have registered or whether their donor has registered. It’s not something I do everyday anymore but I do admit to checking at least once a week if not more. Sometimes I don’t even realize I am doing it I just find myself linking from this blog or off the main Yahoo DSR discussion group.

As much as I wonder about the parents of very young children checking on a periodic basis I wonder what the frequency is for donor conceived individuals themselves. Certainly for those that only know the clinic’s name or that of the doctor such action is not possible but for those individuals that do know enough info what is their thought process and do they check more often just because they can?

Will the ability to easily check these registries push the desire to know more to an obsessive level and if no additional entries are ever made for their donors will it further an unhealthy level of loss? For some individuals the feelings of loss are obviously normal emotions to have in this regard but are we fueling these emotions by the ease of these searches?

In the long run the benefits these registries provide between creating kinship and allowing the exchange of medical information among families far outweigh the remote possibility of creating an obsessive “checker”. Like anything Internet related I guess it just comes down to using it in moderation and looking at it as a tool.

"She's My Half-Sibling"

no. 398

This morning my son asked to watch the video of he and his sister with T. Has it been 11 months since the only trip we met T and her mom already? I asked who T is to him and he said "she's my half-sibling". No prompting. There was no discussion using that term in the past weeks that I can think of. He just knew.

I then asked him what do he, his sister, and T all share. He said they have a common "onor". [Of course I heard "owner".] I corrected him by stating "donor". He just giggled and repeated "donor".

We try not to let them watch video or too much TV in the morning but this DVD will always be an exception. Which when they get into a pattern of wanting any video can be a problem as they know it.