Listening to DI and DE Moms: NYC Gathering

Last night I attended an installment of the NYC Gathering's dinner get-togethers here in Manhattan. The group organized by Sara Axel of the blog "Our Story Begins at Home" usually is attended by women who either used donor eggs, donor sperm, or both conceiving their children. I was the only dad in the room.

Last night the dinner had Wendy and Ryan Kramer as special guests. Both had been in town for an SMC event held in Brooklyn this past weekend. The featured topic discussed by Wendy and Ryan was "Who's Your Mommy? Should they tell their twins they came from donor eggs?".

The identity issue is wholly mixed together with the disclosure issue so both topics were discussed and brought up by the roughly ten women in attendance. I sat at the far end of the table as I have a bad cold plus I had the kids with me as the dinner was immediately after their school extended day pickup. I also heard the common theme that some of the husbands did not want the kids to know their conception stories more it seemed to their discomfort than the interests of the kids.

The moms in discussing the "Who's your mommy?" questioned the differences in connections to the donor when the mom carried the fertilized eggs producing their children. The fears of feeling less of a natural parent. Overall an interesting evening and I was sorry I felt like garbage and that I had to leave early.

9/15 NYC Presentation - The Ethics of Telling Children if They Were Donor Conceived

Sorry for the short notice but just learned about this speaker / presentation.

Per an email to Ms. Sweeney at Columbia the presentation will be in Fayerweather310.

Eric

------Original Message------

From: Infertility Network

To: IN-Yahoo

Subject: New York, NY: 'The ethics of telling children if they weredonorconceived', Sept 15

Sent: Sep 15, 2011 12:32 PM

The ethics of telling children if they were donor conceivedSpeaker: John Appleby, Welcome Trust Fellow in Bioethics, Cambridge University,UK

Sept 15/11. 6:00-7:30pm. Columbia University, Morningside Campus, New York

NB.The following location are both given in various notices about this event, socheck with Meghan Sweeney, to be sure which one is correct before going:

* Hamilton 516

* Fayerweather 310

Presented by The Columbia Master of Science in Bioethics program

RSVP: Meghan Sweeney, ms4184@columbia.edu

A need for local networks but for now just lunch

This Friday, if work schedules allow, I will meet for only the second time another father of a child conceived via donor insemination. The first such meeting was one week before the Oct 4 Toronto DC Ethics conference when I met Walter Merricks of the Donor Conception Network. For goals of openess and disclosure to increase in the United States among heterosexual couples there must be local support groups set up to connect donor conception families.

Internet groups and connections are a giant step forward to disseminate information and to get men to start addressing fears and open questions but until there are meetings that wives can drag men to where they can see other men like themselves and as individuals and couples to start discussing the topics of disclosure openly it will always be easier to hide the use of donor conception and for individuals not to be told their donor conception stories.

So again I am hoping to start Donor Conception New York off the ground with this goal as one of several purposes. Hopefully this lunch is a start to that path. For now it is simply a lunch between two dads. Next time maybe more folks can join and meet.

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If there are any donor conceived individuals in the NYC area who would be interested in an informal meeting please let me know. I know I have spoken about planning a larger "gathering" but I am now thinking smaller more intimate meetings are a way to start and connect. My goals for Donor Conception New York are not for only hetero families but to be open to all DC individuals and families.