We are in the beginning stages of sharing our children's donor origins with Them, and I'll share our experiences with you up to this point. Our children's ages are six years (next month), four years and 18 months. We did start off by talking about their donor with them when they were preverbal, mostly to help us become comfortable with the words and actually saying them. Let's face it this is fairly unique territory, and there isn't exactly a large selection of how to books on the topic of talking with your children about their donor origins! We don't have the amount of resources available to us like adoption for instance, and although there are a few books, hopefully there will be many more in the near future!

We started reading a couple of the children's books on DI to out two oldest when they were around two to two and a half years old. But they didn't really ask questions or show any interest. So when we were expecting our third child we used that opportunity to talk about how babies were made and used the DI books as well. There was more interest in how the actual baby was made and growing in my tummy. The kids would pull out the books & ask us to read them, but at this time the book they really liked was called Being Born by Sheila Kitzinger with photographs by Lennart Nilsson. The book has awesome pictures and simple text about how babies are made and grow. I would highly recommend this book.

The first conversation!
When our youngest was about four months old the kids wanted to read the DI books one evening, and we actually had one of our first conversations about DI and their donor. I had posted this to the group at that time, but the gist was that they were curious about what he looked like, asked if I had any pictures of him, and my daughter wanted to tell him that she loved him because he helped us have our baby. It was a very special moment for us. Since then the kids pull out the books every once in while, and we've let them take the lead pretty much in bringing the topic up. Several weeks ago our oldest surprised me when he brought up some of the conversations that we had about DI and their donor from a year earlier. They do remember!

Asking questions
Lately our daughter has been asking more questions about the donor and she's really into a curiosity about babies. She plays with her dolls, sticks them under her shirt and says she's going to have one. She wants to be a mummy and have babies when she's grown up! She also pretends to breast feed her dolls (I'm still nursing our youngest), and has been wanting to read the DI books more than her older brother. The other day she absolutely floored me when I was reading My Story (the simple book on DI for the three to seven-year-old group), and when we were at the page with the picture of the three donors sitting on chairs she asked me: "Mummy, I have a question. Why do the sperm donors give away their sperm to make a baby? Don't they want to keep it to make children with their own wives if they have them?" This is from a four-year-old! So we talked about how some donors may not have families and their own children yet, but that they want to help other mummies and daddies like us have children. And then she said: "And make their dreams come true!" She must have remembered this comment from one of her books, or Disney tapes...She's a very mature four-year-old at times. So for us the books that we are presently using, My Story and Mommy Did I grow in your Tummy, have been helpful.

A few weeks ago they were playing doctor, and when I went in to check on them, my daughter's bunny was laying on the bed and she pronounced that the bunny was going to have a baby. She held up a plastic toy egg and a beaded necklace that she called the sperm from the donor, and on they played. I don't know if this type of play happens in pre-school...but I don't think so at this point. And I'm really not worried. I guess we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. We're talking about privacy issues with the kids now too. Keeping their private body parts covered except from their parents or doctor's if they are having a check up, you don't go running around showing them to everyone, and hope to talk a bit about private family information and use their DI origins as an example. I'm not sure how that will go, but I don't want to give them the impression that to talk about DI is negative, just that it's not something we talk about to everyone.

Comfortable terminology
The other thing I'd like to mention is the issue of comfortable terminology. This is a tough one, as we all have different comfort levels, and our own personal feelings as to what a name means to us. We are using donor, or sperm donor for our family, and it's OK for now. Because we use Dad, Daddy and father for the relationships that a parent has with their child, as well as their teachers, friends and so on. Father would not be a choice I would be comfortable with for our family. Perhaps donor father would be more comfortable when they are older. I don't know, and I know that this is something we'll be talking about with them as we grow together as a family. You never do know what kids are going to say...Our son was eating broccoli and pulling apart the florets, when he commented on how the tiny pieces looked just like sperm! We look forward to more comments & continued conversations with our kids. As well to the stories that this group would like to share with the rest of us.

Best of luck to everyone as they find what is comfortable for their own families!

Irene