No obligation to tell
Egg donation is anonymous in Russia, and many of our patients prefer to keep the matter entirely private. You will be the person who knows your child the best, and you will no doubt yourself feel what is best in terms of whether to inform him or her as and when it feels right to do so. If you prefer not to disclose his or her origins, this is your choice and you have the right to decide it for yourself.
In Russia, we are more conservative than people in Europe or the US. Our people do not even tell their own parents or closest friends that their child has been conceived via IVF with their own egg and sperm!
In my daily practice, I combine a conservative and delicate respect of a person’s privacy, anonymity and autonomy with the European manner of giving clear explanations and definitions about chances, treatment and expectations.
It is important for the future social well-being of your child and yourself that your egg donor is a good choice or match, in terms of her physical, medical and social background. If the egg donor-recipient matching procedure has been carried out with skill and care, your child will resemble you and/or your family very closely. This means that you will not be forced to tell your child about the circumstances of his or her conception because of your child having a different appearance, but will instead have the option of telling or not telling.
I believe that the “tell-everyone-strategy” about egg donation originates from the parallel to adoption, where it is impossible to conceal this fact. This makes it better to tell people yourself then to have others swapping tales or making unpleasant comments. The majority of parents who favour “disclosure” also often compare egg donation to the adoption of a child who is already in the world.
But the difference is huge! In the case of adoption, a child enters your home and your life as an already formed individual, with an established appearance and character. You know, the child knows, and everyone knows about the fact that the child is adopted. You need to establish a connection, communication, attachment and love.
In the case of egg donation you “adopt” one single cell. The baby grows inside you, being nourished by your body, absorbing your voice, your habits and your feelings, is born to you, is breastfed by your milk, behaves like you, looks like your husband, and enters the world with a huge attachment to you and the strong belief that you are its only mother, which grows every day. Parents who favour keeping the circumstances of the conception private often ask themselves, “Why should we shake or destroy this belief?”
Egg donation is anonymous in Russia, and many of our patients prefer to keep the matter entirely private.
You will be the person who knows your child the best, and you will no doubt yourself feel whether or not it is a good idea to inform him or her as and when it feels right to do so. If you prefer not to disclose his or her origins, this is your choice and you have the right to decide it for yourself.
What do my patients think about telling/not telling people/child about egg donation?
We'd never really told many people about our battle to have a baby, we always used to shrug off those who asked us the dreaded question about having kids. In a way we were glad to have kept it this way simply because now no one apart from us will know how our little baby boy was brought into the world, for us this is something that we felt very strongly about and maybe when the time is right and he's old enough to understand we'll tell him but for now we just want to enjoy being parents.
We will never forget the wonderful girl back in St. Petersburg, who so kindly helped us to have this dream come through by donating her eggs to us. She will always be with us in our hearts and thoughts. When the time is right, our little guy will get to know the story about our romance in St.Petersburg.
Our family and nearest friends know that we used an egg donor to become pregnant, but it`s not something we think about in the daily life. If people think that he looks like me, I just smile and say thank you. Our son is a healthy and happy little boy, he is developing just like he should and has just started kindergarden. He is the joy of the family on both sides, and he know how to use his charm J
We had very many long discussions about the question of egg donation. One issue in particular was whether such a donation would be accepted in our partly very devout environment. But the discussions also focused on concerns about the woman donating the eggs and if we would ultimately really accept the child as our very own. Another issue was if and when to tell the child about its origins. But only our parents and two of our closest friends each were involved in these discussions. The thought that an egg donation represents an adoption at the earliest possible moment helped us a lot in our decision for such treatment.
At the time being, we are quite sure that we do not want to tell our child about the egg donation. Therefore, no one else but the two of us and AVA Peter the clinic knows about it. We think that the only reason to tell her, would be if we believed that would do her/us something good. And for now, we are not able to see what “good” that might be. Having a child growing up almost certainly will involve episodes and periods of more or less serious problems and challenges. In these situations we believe that information about egg donation would be no good. Rather, such information may possibly affect the mother-daughter relationship in a negative way. However, if information about egg donation will become necessary for medical reasons, as in a serious accident and/or illness, we will of course tell our child. We will then do it as careful as possible, explain why we have chosen not to tell her before, and hope our child will understand. This is what we think of this question now, but of course we will reconsider it as time passes, and we can not say for sure that we will not change our opinion later.
I know that for many couples like us, raising a child conceived from an donor’s oocyte may bring various questions which may arise in relation to the child’s future… Should one tell everything about to our child about the way he was conceive, if yes, when, how when...
All these questions came to our minds several time during the pregnancy, but since the birth, I just want to start my life mom, take care of one thing at a time without asking myself thousands of questions.
I am thinking as our sons vocabulary is slowly growing how we will tell him his story one day. This story will be suited for different stages of his development. I am thinking about making him a picture book, since he already loves his books. Openness is to me key and the point is that he is no different from anybody else. In the meantime we take turns in looking after our son – we have a wow of trying not to have him killed.... after all we have been through to have him in our lives, it makes a lot of sense ; )