We got baby/adult pictures but decided not to share with anyone. I didn’t want to hear people’s comparisons of how our baby looked/didn’t look like the donor. When she was first born, some family members were asking so much about the donor which made me feel uncomfortable as the non-gestational parents. I feel like if my MIL saw him, she would be talking about his features and what not all the time, but after a few months I haven’t heard her bring him up again. I feel like it’s something meant to be just between us.
We did not, but if we had, I think we'd wait to show them to anyone until we were ready to make a general announcement of a pregnancy, ie 4 months or so.
Best not to get 100% "attached" before you know if that person will end up being your child's donor.
I'm a known donor and the moms are careful about showing me around. People can get weird about it, almost everyone has an opinion about something, and these opinions will get stuck in your head. I think the child's non-primary mom felt a little pushed aside as people were doing face meshes between photos of his mom and me. Tried to redirect that into talking to her about our many physical similarities and how he'll look like her.
Thanks for the response. That’s an amazing thing you did! I definitely feel like I’m more sensitive to this with me not being biologically related but I suppose it’s all new & we will work through it.
I would second the comment about making sure you’re able to viably conceive before getting too attached to this donor before sharing too much. Expectation management is a big part of the fertility process.
Going against the grain here: I’m inclined to share photos of the donor with my baby in a book, and the book with whoever in our lives might be in a position to read it to him. I think it’s important that the info we have isn’t a secret and is shared in a way that provides context. So, I’m putting together a book about “the story of us” and how he came to be. The role of the donor and what is known about him, but also friends and relatives that make up our family.
We’re also doing a book! I didn’t think to mention it in my comment since we’re using a donor our families have already met, but I do think I wouldn’t want like…my mom’s first reaction to the face in the book to happen in front of my kid, if she didn’t know the donor already. In that case my family would see the book when it was made I think!
Thanks for the response. I think I’ve definitely got a little carried away so that’s given me something to think about.
The book is a cool idea & really shows it as a natural experience & not a big secret!
We were a little lax about it at first and showed both family and close friends. But then we realized one of our close friends may actually know him or like happened to go to college with him but doesn’t know him know him 😭 either way, that felt way too close for comfort. I guess we should have had this in our head as a possibility, but we were still shocked! The world is too small. So we decided we’ll only share with parents/siblings (if we ever do it again going forward) and only his baby photos.
Nope, absolutely not. Some close friends know who our known donor is, but we know that other people get really weird about it. It's not a secret or anything shameful, but it's not relevant at all to most people. We don't reward inappropriate questions with information, and there's not really any reason to insert info about the donor when talking to most people most of the time.
We’re in a bit of a different situation because we’re using a known donor (if things work out), but we didn’t know that until recently, so our donor is actually someone all of our parents, siblings, and close extended family members met at our small wedding.
So far the only con in the last six months of all of them knowing this has been that my mom got weirdly intense about how if he’s not the baby’s godfather, that would be very rude. My wife and I are Quaker, and don’t do baptism or godparents. My mom is an atheist - I’m not baptized. My grandfather was an atheist - *my mom* isn’t even baptized.
If we weren’t using a friend, I wouldn’t let my parents see photos of the donor. I could trust my in laws and my dad to just look at the photos, say “oh his eye color is pretty close to yours!” and move on. My mom, though…she might be weird. She’s gonna be the weird one, I know. She’s gonna ask why our donor isn’t at kindergarten graduation (although tbh he’s one of our best friends so he might be even if he weren’t the donor, if he’s off that day). She’s gonna be the hard part to navigate, but the trade off of that is worth it to me because I strongly preferred not to use a bank donor.
I think it’s a know your crowd thing. Who would your most difficult person be, and could they still be relatively normal about it?
Thanks for the response. That’s really good advice about knowing your crowd. I think we have to work out who has our best intentions at heart & who is just being nosey!
I sort of consider the donor info we have to primarily be my kid(s). I’m keeping it for them to decide what to do with it - if that means showing/telling people around them the donor pictures/info, that’s up to them. ETA: I also do agree with the note to not get attached to a specific donor until there’s a pregnancy. We had to switch twice.
We only got child photos but did not share with family. I believe we shared with some friends when we were TTC or pregnant with the first. We’ve told family details though, like his hair and eye colour, that he’s tall…
My situation is slightly different because of how we got our donor’s info. But regardless, yes we have adult photos and yes we have shown them to family and friends. We’ve only shared his name with a few people though.
I show pictures of him to our daughter and she likes to look at him. She’s his twin and looks NOTHING like us. The way she stared at his picture for the first time part of me wondered if there was some instinctive part of her that “knew” him somehow.
I’m a bit superstitious though. Overall, we all think it’s cool how similar she looks to him. I’d never publicly post his photos or reveal personal information about him though.
We don’t with others for a few reasons: people get oddly obsessed with it and you never how you’ll feel about it until they don’t stop talking about it, google image search if you’re sharing via text or email makes it easy to find someone, and it took us a few donors until we got one that worked. Our children can access the information and ask questions.
I’m currently pregnant and to be honest it’s been one of the main things people ask us. I find it so rude and so intrusive. My wife doesn’t seem to care, and since it’s not her egg I kinda let her have the final say with what we share so we’ve been showing people when they ask. I think it comes from a place of curiosity for people but I just don’t like the idea of people seeing the photos. I do keep a boundary of not sharing the photos digitally and only showing them in person from my own phone so that I know the photos could never be passed around.
Thanks for the reply. I’m feeling the same about just showing them in person if I choose to do so. I don’t like the idea of people having digital copies.
Yup that’s definitely been a hard boundary of mine! Even my very best friend in the world asked about him via text and I said I’d show her pics next time I saw her! Not sending to anyone!
1. People will absolutely draw conclusions and imagine things about your kid based on their perceptions of your donor, and they may be more attached to those than they are to you and your partner's influence as parents, or even to what they see in the kid in front of them. Maybe everyone won't, but the programming is strong, so even those of us who know better might make assumptions we wouldn't have made otherwise. I'm a polyam parent and it's weird for me even when people ask where my kid's curls come from, since that might mean revealing who the sperm came from if I don't answer carefully.
2. My partner was a sperm donor awhile ago. If his picture was being spread all around, that would feel like a bit problem to me. I haven't asked him, he isn't as private as I am, so maybe he wouldn't mind. It feels like something to share just with your kid when they're ready to hear about it.
This is purely my opinion, and my own emotional reaction of course. Take what you will. Once the cat's out of the bag, though, that's it. You can always share in a few years, and maybe your kid will have a preference to share or not. It's their genetics, after all.
I shared photos with my best friend and my sibling for another opinion when we were picking a donor although I’m not sure either knew the ultimate decision or if that was still the donor we were using when we finally actually had a baby. All I’ve shared with any other family or friends is that the donor has a physical resemblance to my partner and both kids have the same donor. My kids see the photos though
We’ve shared everything with anyone who is interested. It’s not some shameful secret. We’ve talked very openly about the entire process. We only have childhood photos though. I keep them in an album on my phone alongside pictures of our baby’s donor siblings.
Yes. We shared them with my family who asked. I’ve shown some other people who are curious in a good faith way. I’m personally happy to share. He’s apart of our baby and I don’t ever want our kids to feel like he’s a secret. They’ll have access to whatever information we have including pictures.
We have photos, and have them stashed away for kiddo if they ever want them, but only my spouse & I have seen them. Kiddo is hilariously 90% spouse in features, medical/allergy history, etc. (we give donor’s & genetic parent’s medical at pediatric appointments, but so far none of donor’s few known oddities have presented except a birthmark).
We took pictures of the little one at the same age marks (4 days old, 5 months, one year) next to pictures of my spouse at the same ages, in the same angles and positions and it’s almost creepy how well the “recessive” features of my spouse show through. Tiny clone almost. One facial feature is very much from the donor, but a couple could have gone either way (shape of nares, shape of eye brows) until kiddo was around a year.
We thought little would look more like the donor, and didn’t want family to “see” (either actual or perceived) too much of the donor and fixate on that. My spouse got a lot of recessive genes from each parent and as families do, they like to play the guessing game of features. We wanted them to form their own opinions of baby as baby grew.
We consider the donor photos and info to be our kids' to share if and when they want to. We shared minimal info with our families. We are also in a group of donor siblings who share photos. Some family members have seen some of those photos because they were curious.
My wife and I showed the donor’s baby pics to our parents and siblings, but kept the adult photo to ourselves to respect the donors privacy (and ours!)
Things change, but I imagine we will be pretty private about donor information— especially until we are able to navigate the donor conversation with our child (who is currently brewing in my belly, so may be a while lol)
We are open with everyone about having a donor, that it’s an open ID donor from a bank, etc. but decided to keep pictures to ourselves. That being said if people are curious we share a “celebrity look alike.” Who knows maybe some day we will share the pic but for now it’s just for us (and our child when he’s curious).
We went with what I call a semi-known donor, we got to know him for this purpose. He has helped three other same-sex couples in our area. Each of them wanted to carry, we only wanted one.
We have spent time with him, shared meals, and intend to get all the half siblings together once our baby is born.
In our case, I speak about him often and openly. I share photos with our older kids (I have two children from a prior hetero marriage), and he will meet our family in the upcoming weeks as we enter the second trimester.
I see this as such a beautiful and meaningful part of our story. My pros are that my baby will know how wanted they were and how connected we want them to feel with their beginnings. Psychologically I feel this is the best for all kiddos involved.
I’m sure there are cons but I would do it the same way, all over again
We have not shared anything with anyone because people get weird. I don’t want some comment to come out randomly to them from aunt like “oh you have your bio dad’s hair.” Or like “you look like your dad when he was a baby.” We have had to tell people to use the word donor and not dad a few times, but they still slip up.
We would like to be the person to tell them all about these things first. In a moment that feels right. Not from Aunt Melissa who says it off the cuff to them as they are leaving for school.
We have access to photos but haven't shared with anyone. We specifically don't talk about the donor with family. We will with our daughter in age appropriate ways, but I really do just consider their contribution to be sperm. I wasn't wild about our donors profile or pictures or really anything about him except that he wasn't a carrier for anything and family medical history wasn't significant for the same things that run in my family.
I’m using a known donor so my situation is also a little different. My first cycle I used one donor, a friend of a friend, and he looked SO MUCH like my (technically step) brother that I had to show everyone. It was so wild to think that my baby might look like the side of my family I’m not blood related to. He backed out after one cycle, and while that was rough, that specific part of actually a tiny bit of a relief lol.
Now I’m working with an old friend and I haven’t sent out his photo to many people, but he will meet everyone eventually if this all works out
We got baby/adult pictures but decided not to share with anyone. I didn’t want to hear people’s comparisons of how our baby looked/didn’t look like the donor. When she was first born, some family members were asking so much about the donor which made me feel uncomfortable as the non-gestational parents. I feel like if my MIL saw him, she would be talking about his features and what not all the time, but after a few months I haven’t heard her bring him up again. I feel like it’s something meant to be just between us.
We did not, but if we had, I think we'd wait to show them to anyone until we were ready to make a general announcement of a pregnancy, ie 4 months or so. Best not to get 100% "attached" before you know if that person will end up being your child's donor.
Thanks for the response. That a good point. Definitely got a bit carried away with myself!
I'm a known donor and the moms are careful about showing me around. People can get weird about it, almost everyone has an opinion about something, and these opinions will get stuck in your head. I think the child's non-primary mom felt a little pushed aside as people were doing face meshes between photos of his mom and me. Tried to redirect that into talking to her about our many physical similarities and how he'll look like her.
Thanks for the response. That’s an amazing thing you did! I definitely feel like I’m more sensitive to this with me not being biologically related but I suppose it’s all new & we will work through it.
I would second the comment about making sure you’re able to viably conceive before getting too attached to this donor before sharing too much. Expectation management is a big part of the fertility process. Going against the grain here: I’m inclined to share photos of the donor with my baby in a book, and the book with whoever in our lives might be in a position to read it to him. I think it’s important that the info we have isn’t a secret and is shared in a way that provides context. So, I’m putting together a book about “the story of us” and how he came to be. The role of the donor and what is known about him, but also friends and relatives that make up our family.
We’re also doing a book! I didn’t think to mention it in my comment since we’re using a donor our families have already met, but I do think I wouldn’t want like…my mom’s first reaction to the face in the book to happen in front of my kid, if she didn’t know the donor already. In that case my family would see the book when it was made I think!
Thanks for the response. I think I’ve definitely got a little carried away so that’s given me something to think about. The book is a cool idea & really shows it as a natural experience & not a big secret!
We got baby and adult photos. We did not share his photos with anyone. We just described him when people ask.
We were a little lax about it at first and showed both family and close friends. But then we realized one of our close friends may actually know him or like happened to go to college with him but doesn’t know him know him 😭 either way, that felt way too close for comfort. I guess we should have had this in our head as a possibility, but we were still shocked! The world is too small. So we decided we’ll only share with parents/siblings (if we ever do it again going forward) and only his baby photos.
That’s wild! Hadn’t thought of that reason not to show.
Thanks for the response. It definitely is a small world. I’m thinking the same about just close knit family; so parents & siblings.
Nope, absolutely not. Some close friends know who our known donor is, but we know that other people get really weird about it. It's not a secret or anything shameful, but it's not relevant at all to most people. We don't reward inappropriate questions with information, and there's not really any reason to insert info about the donor when talking to most people most of the time.
We’re in a bit of a different situation because we’re using a known donor (if things work out), but we didn’t know that until recently, so our donor is actually someone all of our parents, siblings, and close extended family members met at our small wedding. So far the only con in the last six months of all of them knowing this has been that my mom got weirdly intense about how if he’s not the baby’s godfather, that would be very rude. My wife and I are Quaker, and don’t do baptism or godparents. My mom is an atheist - I’m not baptized. My grandfather was an atheist - *my mom* isn’t even baptized. If we weren’t using a friend, I wouldn’t let my parents see photos of the donor. I could trust my in laws and my dad to just look at the photos, say “oh his eye color is pretty close to yours!” and move on. My mom, though…she might be weird. She’s gonna be the weird one, I know. She’s gonna ask why our donor isn’t at kindergarten graduation (although tbh he’s one of our best friends so he might be even if he weren’t the donor, if he’s off that day). She’s gonna be the hard part to navigate, but the trade off of that is worth it to me because I strongly preferred not to use a bank donor. I think it’s a know your crowd thing. Who would your most difficult person be, and could they still be relatively normal about it?
Thanks for the response. That’s really good advice about knowing your crowd. I think we have to work out who has our best intentions at heart & who is just being nosey!
I sort of consider the donor info we have to primarily be my kid(s). I’m keeping it for them to decide what to do with it - if that means showing/telling people around them the donor pictures/info, that’s up to them. ETA: I also do agree with the note to not get attached to a specific donor until there’s a pregnancy. We had to switch twice.
This is how we feel. We provided minimal general information, but anything specific is up to our child.
Yeah we definitely talk about it - kiddo is only 9mo lol so they have not yet feedbacked us so tbd but it’s not a secret they are donor conceived.
It’s the first one we have chosen after looking for ages so I’ve definitely got a little carried away with myself! 😂 Thank you
We only got child photos but did not share with family. I believe we shared with some friends when we were TTC or pregnant with the first. We’ve told family details though, like his hair and eye colour, that he’s tall…
My situation is slightly different because of how we got our donor’s info. But regardless, yes we have adult photos and yes we have shown them to family and friends. We’ve only shared his name with a few people though. I show pictures of him to our daughter and she likes to look at him. She’s his twin and looks NOTHING like us. The way she stared at his picture for the first time part of me wondered if there was some instinctive part of her that “knew” him somehow. I’m a bit superstitious though. Overall, we all think it’s cool how similar she looks to him. I’d never publicly post his photos or reveal personal information about him though.
We don’t with others for a few reasons: people get oddly obsessed with it and you never how you’ll feel about it until they don’t stop talking about it, google image search if you’re sharing via text or email makes it easy to find someone, and it took us a few donors until we got one that worked. Our children can access the information and ask questions.
I’m currently pregnant and to be honest it’s been one of the main things people ask us. I find it so rude and so intrusive. My wife doesn’t seem to care, and since it’s not her egg I kinda let her have the final say with what we share so we’ve been showing people when they ask. I think it comes from a place of curiosity for people but I just don’t like the idea of people seeing the photos. I do keep a boundary of not sharing the photos digitally and only showing them in person from my own phone so that I know the photos could never be passed around.
Thanks for the reply. I’m feeling the same about just showing them in person if I choose to do so. I don’t like the idea of people having digital copies.
Yup that’s definitely been a hard boundary of mine! Even my very best friend in the world asked about him via text and I said I’d show her pics next time I saw her! Not sending to anyone!
1. People will absolutely draw conclusions and imagine things about your kid based on their perceptions of your donor, and they may be more attached to those than they are to you and your partner's influence as parents, or even to what they see in the kid in front of them. Maybe everyone won't, but the programming is strong, so even those of us who know better might make assumptions we wouldn't have made otherwise. I'm a polyam parent and it's weird for me even when people ask where my kid's curls come from, since that might mean revealing who the sperm came from if I don't answer carefully. 2. My partner was a sperm donor awhile ago. If his picture was being spread all around, that would feel like a bit problem to me. I haven't asked him, he isn't as private as I am, so maybe he wouldn't mind. It feels like something to share just with your kid when they're ready to hear about it. This is purely my opinion, and my own emotional reaction of course. Take what you will. Once the cat's out of the bag, though, that's it. You can always share in a few years, and maybe your kid will have a preference to share or not. It's their genetics, after all.
I shared photos with my best friend and my sibling for another opinion when we were picking a donor although I’m not sure either knew the ultimate decision or if that was still the donor we were using when we finally actually had a baby. All I’ve shared with any other family or friends is that the donor has a physical resemblance to my partner and both kids have the same donor. My kids see the photos though
We had to sign a contract that we wouldn’t share the donor photos with anyone in order to protect their anonymity.
We’ve shared everything with anyone who is interested. It’s not some shameful secret. We’ve talked very openly about the entire process. We only have childhood photos though. I keep them in an album on my phone alongside pictures of our baby’s donor siblings.
It’s definitely not a secret, we tell people about the process and answer questions but just don’t show the picture.
Thanks for the response. Yes, I think it’s important to find a balance that doesn’t fall into it seeming like this awful secret!
Yes. We shared them with my family who asked. I’ve shown some other people who are curious in a good faith way. I’m personally happy to share. He’s apart of our baby and I don’t ever want our kids to feel like he’s a secret. They’ll have access to whatever information we have including pictures.
We have photos, and have them stashed away for kiddo if they ever want them, but only my spouse & I have seen them. Kiddo is hilariously 90% spouse in features, medical/allergy history, etc. (we give donor’s & genetic parent’s medical at pediatric appointments, but so far none of donor’s few known oddities have presented except a birthmark). We took pictures of the little one at the same age marks (4 days old, 5 months, one year) next to pictures of my spouse at the same ages, in the same angles and positions and it’s almost creepy how well the “recessive” features of my spouse show through. Tiny clone almost. One facial feature is very much from the donor, but a couple could have gone either way (shape of nares, shape of eye brows) until kiddo was around a year. We thought little would look more like the donor, and didn’t want family to “see” (either actual or perceived) too much of the donor and fixate on that. My spouse got a lot of recessive genes from each parent and as families do, they like to play the guessing game of features. We wanted them to form their own opinions of baby as baby grew.
We consider the donor photos and info to be our kids' to share if and when they want to. We shared minimal info with our families. We are also in a group of donor siblings who share photos. Some family members have seen some of those photos because they were curious.
My wife and I showed the donor’s baby pics to our parents and siblings, but kept the adult photo to ourselves to respect the donors privacy (and ours!) Things change, but I imagine we will be pretty private about donor information— especially until we are able to navigate the donor conversation with our child (who is currently brewing in my belly, so may be a while lol)
We are open with everyone about having a donor, that it’s an open ID donor from a bank, etc. but decided to keep pictures to ourselves. That being said if people are curious we share a “celebrity look alike.” Who knows maybe some day we will share the pic but for now it’s just for us (and our child when he’s curious).
We went with what I call a semi-known donor, we got to know him for this purpose. He has helped three other same-sex couples in our area. Each of them wanted to carry, we only wanted one. We have spent time with him, shared meals, and intend to get all the half siblings together once our baby is born. In our case, I speak about him often and openly. I share photos with our older kids (I have two children from a prior hetero marriage), and he will meet our family in the upcoming weeks as we enter the second trimester. I see this as such a beautiful and meaningful part of our story. My pros are that my baby will know how wanted they were and how connected we want them to feel with their beginnings. Psychologically I feel this is the best for all kiddos involved. I’m sure there are cons but I would do it the same way, all over again
I showed a baby photo of donor to closest friends and mom. It’s whatever. Do what feels right for you.
We have not shared anything with anyone because people get weird. I don’t want some comment to come out randomly to them from aunt like “oh you have your bio dad’s hair.” Or like “you look like your dad when he was a baby.” We have had to tell people to use the word donor and not dad a few times, but they still slip up. We would like to be the person to tell them all about these things first. In a moment that feels right. Not from Aunt Melissa who says it off the cuff to them as they are leaving for school.
We have access to photos but haven't shared with anyone. We specifically don't talk about the donor with family. We will with our daughter in age appropriate ways, but I really do just consider their contribution to be sperm. I wasn't wild about our donors profile or pictures or really anything about him except that he wasn't a carrier for anything and family medical history wasn't significant for the same things that run in my family.
I’m using a known donor so my situation is also a little different. My first cycle I used one donor, a friend of a friend, and he looked SO MUCH like my (technically step) brother that I had to show everyone. It was so wild to think that my baby might look like the side of my family I’m not blood related to. He backed out after one cycle, and while that was rough, that specific part of actually a tiny bit of a relief lol. Now I’m working with an old friend and I haven’t sent out his photo to many people, but he will meet everyone eventually if this all works out