Sibling registry and the like?

YBnormal85

I am just curious for those who have used cryobanks do you plan to, or have you registered your little ones with the sibling registry? We most likely will not register this little one once it arrives, however I made a post on our cryobanks fb page asking if anyone has had a successful pregnancy with our donor. I was very curious especially after my miscarriage if anyone had a healthy pregnancy.anywayssss I just received a message last night from a girl who is 4 months pregnant with twins and she used our donor! I sent her in the direction of this forum and told her it is a very supportive group. After chatting with her I was curious if anyone else is in touch with people who also conceived using your donors sperm?

JGY

S and I don't feel any strong urge to connect with other parents from our donor (and from what I can find out there, there are a number of them).  Our donor was discontinued at the bank after our last purchase, but prior to our pregnancy, due to reaching his maximum number of allowed pregnancies.  So there are certainly (many) half-siblings out there. 

We will most likely leave it up to Gabe to decide if he wants to connect.  We purposely used an ID Options donor to give him the choice (at age 18) to reach out to the donor if he chooses.  DSR would give him the option/ability to connect with other kids earlier than that if he is really feeling that need.  I know I was a curious and pining teen, he very well might be interested.  We will definitely have some long conversations about it first though, starting very young.

What are other peoples' thoughts?  Has anyone on this board already registered their child(ren) on DSR?

2MamazInSeattle

We absolutely registered when I was pregnant. For us it was more about our kid having access/information about potential genetic siblings should they want it at some point in their life. While we expect to give them a fulfilling life, I know people who were adopted who had a crazy drive to find a genetic link despite having very happy family upbringings, so we want to make it easy. After our loss, I never went back to check - but we will definitely re-register!

How exciting you found someone also pregnant with the same donor! I think that would be kinda cool. Our donor was very new, and while he had pregnancies there were no births yet as of when we were pregnant. Good question/discussion!

ATXmommas

I haven't yet, but plan to.  After the loss of our first son, I did sign up for the private forum for our donor - mostly to see if there had been successful pregnancies or if anyone had had a similar experience (even though we were told that it was likely my egg that carried the extra chromosome).  I think I counted at least 10 siblings.  I haven't been back to the forum, but will at some point.  Our donor is ID Option, so if our children are interested in reaching out to him once they are 18, they will have that ability.  I wouldn't mind developing some connection to the other families who also created a little one using our donor, but I think we'll just take our time and when the time feels right, we'll reach out.

YBnormal85

This is the second woman I have connect with. The other woman and her wife are still TTC although I believe they are taking a break until after the new year. This woman i just connected with last night also conceived on the first try, however she had IVF whereas I has IUI.either way...seems like pretty good sperm! Haha

2MamazInSeattle

YBnormal85 said:

This is the second woman I have connect with. The other woman and her wife are still TTC although I believe they are taking a break until after the new year. This woman i just connected with last night also conceived on the first try, however she had IVF whereas I has IUI.either way...seems like pretty good sperm! Haha

well if this one doesn't work we're switching donors...maybe I can get his number???? Kidding

Manada

H and I haven't really talked about it but I am pretty sure we would register any LOs we have with it.   I sort of feel like there is no hiding for us that our kiddos will be donor conceived, and knowing about any donor siblings out there is just another way for us to potentially expand our queer family and acquaintances.  

ThatWasAHoot

We did!  We actually have become somewhat close with the parents and have met up once.  We talk and share things.  ie: our son has alopecia, etc.

clairmeij

Right now I don't have an urge to connect with any donor sibling's families, but I am interested in staying aware of any genetic illness that might present. Our donor was new with no pregnancies when we chose him, but he has since had 'more than 5' pregnancies according to a CCB message board that I lurked on. I will probably sign up for the DSR purely to keep aware of any trending problems, and who knows, perhaps in the future we might want to get more involved and meet some of them. We deliberately opted for a donor that was 'open' and willing to receive contact at least once from our baby once he turns 18. I hope that will satisfy any need for a genetic link, but if not, I'd happily connect with donor siblings then on his behalf.

redrockmama

We haven't really talked about whether we will sign up or not. I don't have any interest in know other families and kids that used the same donor, but if our kids want to then we will support that. It's interesting that some banks have message boards, ours does not so the only way we could find other families would be the DSR. 

StacyLH24

I asked C about this last night. We both agreed that we would want to register our kid(s) and find other families.

healz413

Like @Manada said we haven't actually talked about the donor sibling registry. But I used to babysit for the kid of a single mom who used donor sperm to get pregnant. She had connected with a few families who used the same donor and once a year a group of three or four families with donor siblings would get together for a vacation. This was my relationship with one set of my cousins growing up (once a year get togethers) and it seems like a pretty ideal relationship to have with our future kids' donor siblings if they have some and we like the families.
Also watching "delivery man" made me even more interested in finding donor siblings if we ever have babies.

ball.and.chain

@YBNormal85, thanks for reminding me I wanted to check out the sibling registry for our donor.  There was nothing for our donor on the Donor Sibling Registry, which I later learned is probably because CCB has their own private sibling registry (you have to get approved by them to register and log in).  I registered this week and just received my approval and logged in.  I was surprised to see two things:

1) there are only 4 children registered from our donor.  I know not everyone registers and that there are still vials/frosties out there yet to be used, but I love that the number I do know about is not super high.

2) They are all girls!  I have been told -- don't know if this is true -- that a tendency to have boys or girls comes from the sperm, so this is kind of exciting (I'm rooting for girl, my wife is rooting for boy -- we'll be thrilled with a healthy baby, but I can't help being a little biased)!

I don't know that we'll ever connect with siblings (one of them is in our state), but I was just curious to see who was out there (and secretly hoping there would be pictures of them, but there weren't).

YBnormal85

So interesting hearing everyone's opinions on this! I have been enjoying keeping up to date with the pregnancy of the twins that were conceived using the same donor as us. They are due just a month after our little one..but seeing as its twins we may have the babies right around the same time. I'm not sure if we will actually register the baby on the sibling page, but it's neat to know of a few who are TTC or who have already conceived w our donor I too am interested in seeing the pictures lol