MY WIFE'S PERSPECTIVE

Jenny and Erin, my chosen embryo recipients, had some questions for us. They needed to know us well enough to make an informed choice to accept our embryos.

My wife had been avoiding writing to the recipients, preferring to wait to involve herself until they were pregnant. But she had the experience that Jenny and Erin needed to hear so she wrote to them on her own to share her thoughts on possibilities for the donor-recipient relationship. They had asked about my health and personality and that of my relatives. It is hard to describe yourself so I asked her to do it:

"This is Katherine's wife, Sonia joining in this incredibly interesting discussion. Katie is right that we are making this decision together, but I'm letting her make the initial contacts and see how she feels about people before I get involved. The embryos are legally both of ours, but I give Katie the lead in this process, as they are her "blueprints."

I am actually very happy that you prefer "knowable" (however we end up defining that) donors; years ago, before I met Katie, I donated eggs to 2 friends of mine (hetero): they had boy/girl twins and live in a neighboring state. My friend is completely open about the egg donation with friends, family and her own kids, and it has been incredibly fulfilling to see the children grow over the last 6 years and to know that they think of me as sort of an extra-special aunt.

I agree with you that children are driven to know their genetic origins. I myself am adopted and found my birth mother when I was 18. We have been quite good friends ever since, though it is sometimes years between visits. I mention all this to say that Katie and I are fairly proficient at negotiating the waters of being related to people but not in their family, or of having "family" include some pretty low-key, far-flung relationships.

Since I have family in near your home it might be convenient to meet up every now and then when we bring the kids to see my relatives (usually no more often that once every year or two), but of course that would be totally up to you. I think it would be great for our kids and the recipients' kids to be sort of like cousins and you know that relationship can be close or far, depending. The point is, we're flexible, but I think it would be great to keep in touch.

About our family: Katie is an avid cyclist, and has completed many 100 and 200 mile day-rides and long tours when she lived in the West. She tries to fit biking in whenever she can in our city, though it's not great biking territory. She's healthy, and comes from a healthy and long-lived family. I've become quite close to that family. Katie's mom was a great beauty and Katie inherited her fine bone structure, perfect eyebrows, and beautiful eyes.

Oh pshaw! Sonia had more to tell our recipients but this was enough for them, and you, to think over for now. More tomorrow...

DID THEY REALLY WANT THREE KIDS?

I wanted to donate my embryos to Jenny and Erin but only if they knew all the reasons not to take them. One possible problem was their desire for three children, all genetic siblings, and our almost certain inability to provide that with only three embryos to donate.

It was also important that we were all on the same page about the ideal relationship between the donor and recipient families. We had also started to share more information about my wife's background and my own. Here was their response.

"That is insane that your wife grew up so close to Erin and is also Episcopalian...Anyhow, we are definitely interested in hearing your wife's perspectives.

Relationship with donor: Erin and I have talked about this quite a bit since finding out that there is actually the option of knowing our donor. This is exciting to us. Although we would raise the children as our own, as we have said, we would be honest with the children regarding where/how they were created.

We had actually talked about what interaction the children would have with the donor. We plan to be open with them from the beginning, explaining that the donor gave part of themselves so that they could be here with us. To be honest, like you said, this is all new to us, and we completely think that interactions should be a mutually agreed upon decision.

For us, an ideal relationship with our donor would be one that included updates on the children (both ours and theirs) and visits. For us, the advantage of having an open donor is that it will benefit the children by giving them the opportunity to have relationships with their biological family. What do you plan to tell your children about their biological siblings if there are any resulting from these embryos?

If one child was born from these embryos, we would consider other options to have a second child. If two or three children were born from these embryos, we would consider our family complete. Erin has always definitely wanted more than one child. She and I both feel that it is important that the child(ren) have a sibling (biologically related or not).

Hope you are having a great evening"

I had thought they might not want to go ahead unless they had a better chance of getting two or more children from the same embryo donor. They knew that they might get one, or no children from this donation and they were still interested in proceeding.

Their ideal embryo donor-recipient relationship was flexible and within the realm of our preferences. We were toppling obstacles to the donation. A major hurdle remained: would they respect my concerns about children from these embryos knowing their genetic heritage?

It was time for my wife to chime in. Like Jenny and Erin she was not Jewish. What was her perspective on raising children whose cultural heritage did not match her own? I was keeping her up to date but she preferred not to get involved with this couple unless a pregnancy resulted from our donation. On this topic my wife was willing to make an exception. She would join the dialogue.