Related known donor

MillBride2012

I would love to hear from people who used a known donor that is related to the non-bio mom. My partner and I are considering asking my brother to be our known donor (my partner would carry the baby). What were your experiences? How did your family react?

Two*True

Since you have 32 views and no responses, and are new, I thought I would answer.

As far as I know there is only one person here who used a related known donor. She doesn't post that often and I can't recall if she shares that part of her story on this site or just her blog.  

If you don't get any responses please still feel free to hang around and post on other topics.  :-)

thiswillbe

Nothing to add other than what T*T said, but welcome to the board!

jennicole85

My partner and I seriously thought about using one of her brothers as a donor. We thought it would be a great way to use both of our DNA for our child(ren). Long story short, we ultimately decided to go with a different known donor with similarities (physical and otherwise). 

 If you want any more details, just let me know!  I hope this helps. 

MillBride2012

Thank you for the responses. We are definitely still in the decision making process when it comes to the donor. I definitely plan to hang around as my partner And I begin this process. I look forward to learning a lot from those of you that have already been through this!

rgorenwatts

Hi there.  I'm the non-birth parent, but I can't seem to figure out how to post under my own name since it has us both under one account.

Anyway, we did use my cousin as a known donor, and my wife is now pregnant, due in September.  (Yay!!)  We thought about so many different issues related to different types of donors but in the end decided if we had the option of having one of my cousins so that it would be genetically related to both of us and both of our families, we would prefer that.  We weren't sure how my cousin would take it, so we approached it by telling him we were planning on trying to get my wife pregnant and in deciding on the donor we wanted to know what our options were so we were wondering what he thought of the possibility.  He was actually incredibly amazing about it and agreed immediately.  We made sure to give him some time to think it over anyway and discussed how we wanted to approach telling the potential children and our families.  We felt strongly that we wanted to be open about it, so we wanted to make sure he was comfortable with that, and he was.  He talked to his parents, my aunt and uncle, about it and while at first they questioned whether it would be simpler to use an anonymous donor, they came around quickly when my cousin pointed out that we had probably thought through all of the different options a lot more than they had.  So far, there have been more than a few somewhat awkward moments, but we are also so amazingly excited that our baby has the potential to really look like both of us and for whom we will know family and medical history, etc.

All of that being said, at one point when we were probably too young to be thinking about this, my wife asked her brother if he would ever consider being a donor  for me getting pregnant.  He was only about 20 at the time.  Bad choice.  He got totally freaked out and ran to his mom saying "they want my junk!!"  Hehe.  Yeah.  So anyway, I think the moral of our story is that it can be amazing if the relative you're thinking of is the right person, and if they are not, then you wouldn't want them to be the donor anyway because you REALLY have to trust them and their boundaries.  Clearly there are a lot of other legal and family conversations to be had as well if you do decide to go down that path.  Let me know if you have any questions!

hcpprincess

My partner is currently pregnant with our first child.  My brother is our donor.  I feel so honored that my brother was willing to do this for us.  It definitely took a lot of courage for me to ask him.  He said yes right away but I asked him to think it over for a few months and discuss it with his wife.  They both felt happy to help and we signed a contract to protect him and us.

I cant really answer to the question about how my family reacted because they don't know.  Which is complicated.  All they know is that we got a donor we know.  When our little guy makes his appearance, we may be "caught" because my brother's son looks just like him and I worry ours might also be a minature version of him,

Other people who are in the know about this have been very accepting.  There is usually a short pause and then they start listing reasons it is so awesome. 

I certainly think it is awesome.  I really didn't feel a strong pull to have a biological part in my child but I did want my child to have the option of knowing where he came from and knowing his ever evolving family medical history.

kendylann

We used my partner's brother as a donor... and I think I may be the infrequent poster Two was referring to. :-)  Feel free to send me a PM if you'd like a link to my blog with more details and processing than you could ever want. LOL! The most important piece of advice I can offer is to put a lot of thought into whether the relative you're considering is someone you can talk to about ANYTHING, because there is only so much you can anticipate. How rational do you think they will be IF there are complicated feelings that emerge after the baby arrives? It's one thing to feel like you've talked through every possible scenario - that is good and of course you should do that - but if, just IF, something comes up before or after the birth that none of you were prepared for, is this someone you feel will be a reasonable partner in that? Someone you'd feel comfortable having one or many difficult conversations with? I'm very happy we did things the way we did (and so are our families - we are 100% open about what we did with family, friends, etc.) so I'm in no way trying to talk you out of it. I think it's an awesome option if you have the right players to make it work. I just can't stress enough how important I think it is to honestly, deeply question how you think your potential KD will handle the oddest of bumps along the way, because let me tell you, it can become a very wild ride. LOL! Best of luck to you!