Resemblance talk

Wow.  I thought i had lost access to this blog.  I'm signing on to this through my DS's computer account.  Mine automatically takes me to my un-anonymous blog.  And I'm not ready to "come out" yet.

But this has been on my mind for a very, very long time.  In fact, one of the first posts on this blog was on Resemblance Talk.  So, yeah.

Does DEMommy look like her twins?  Well, last weekend, a stranger said my twin son looks like me in the face.  Maybe.

But does DEMommy share an amazing resemblance with her children's personality?  Ab-so-freaking-lutely.  And I point it out all the time.  My twin son has a surprised scream that sounds just like mine.  He reacts so, so, so quickly just like I do.  My twin daughter has an empathetic nature and a humor and a type of hair that is exactly like mine.

I think it is absolutely important to point these things out and to have the family agree on them.  It's a bond, a connection that I can't imagine NOT actively promoting and sharing with your children. Do adopted parents and children do so?  I would imagine that the healthy ones do.  Why shouldn't DE and DS parents do it, too?

Can you imagine a child with some characteristic (especially a negative one) that isolates him or her from the family?  That the family doesn't help him or her see that it's normal and part of the family and something other people he/she loves has.

Now more than ever, I believe resemblance talk is essential for a family, no matter how they are put together.

I'd love to hear how others are dealing with this.

And I'm glad to find how to access this blog again!!!

Sherri Shepherd backs out of Donor Egg agreement

This is so horrible, I can't stand it.

From TMZ, Sherri Shepherd is backing out of a surrogate arrangement with an egg donor because the "child is not  her  own."  She filed for divorce in New Jersey  b/c they do not recognize surrogate agreements. 

This is going to set  back the donor and surrogate cause for years.  Who can participate in the infertility and  donor process without realizing:  YES THIS IS YOUR CHILD?

I do not have any positive thoughts for or about her in this situation. She's a horrible mother.  

5 Years Old

The twins turn 5 years old in one week.  That is crazy.

Their super cousin is over 2 years old.

How could have it be any different than it is?  These are our perfect children.  This is  our perfect family.  I love that all three of our children look alike.  I love that  my daughter is exactly like me.  I love that they know everything that has happened and it's "just how it happened for us."

The nice thing about this being an anonymous blog is that I can be openly judgmental.  Adoption and DE are not for everyone.  If you have issues of needing a genetic connection to your children, don't adopt and don't use donor gametes.  If you do not have time or the emotional insight for adoption or DE, do NOT do it.  We have people in our lives who should not have taken the path they took.  They have done their children no favors.

But if you have love and openness and know that space is  waiting to be filled by a child or children, then we highly recommend this path.

We check back in occasionally just to say there is not an atom of regret for us in our choices.  I hope it works out as  well for you.

Doing Something Right

Yesterday, my older son started talking about our family history.  He shared how he was born and then how we had lost so many babies and that we went to get some help from a doctor with more eggs and then we got the twins and how everything is perfect and wonderful and we have our family.

This is the "normal" of how we tell the story of creating our family within our family.  No one else knows that we did what we did.  But for us, it's completely normal.  I did push a little saying that  he was a little bit more like me because of my eggs, but that his brother and sister were so similar too that it was a bit shocking.  I think he understood enough and then changed the conversation to Power Rangers or something like that.

I continue to be amazed that all 3 of the kids have my unusual hair;  that my older son and my twin son look similar enough to be "twins;" and that my daughter is so similar to me that we could be a case study in epigenetics.

It was absolutely worth it to get to this stage of our journey.

I hope our story helps others along this path, too.

Three Years In

I am really behind on my work for today, yet I am here.  Just because I haven't written, doesn't mean I don't think of this space often.

So, how is it with three year old DE twins?

Fan. Freakin'. Tastic.

It was absolutely the right choice for us to have made.  And as the twins get older, I continue to wonder whether I mis-remembered and we used donor sperm instead of donor eggs.  They are so much like me, but they also have ginormous feet like DE Daddy.  So I guess it really was donor EGG.  ;-)  Again, I cannot help but laugh because on a recent trip involving several flights, Every. Single. flight attendant commented on how my children and I all have the same hair.  We do.  And there is no good reason for it. (The donor did not share my hair characteristics)

Epigenetics, people.  The more I know, the more I don't believe in the direct genetic effects of diddly squat.

So apart from the surprising hair, what else occurs to me about our process?  There are some physical differences: my daughter is very, very pretty (we didn't select the donor for this, but somehow that emerged) and the twins have more of a V-shaped body than DE Daddy.  But otherwise, they look an awful lot like us.

Personality-wise, I can't see much that is different than we are.  My daughter is loud and bossy, and pretty much, every person I knows looks at me when they make that attribution.  My twin son is as sweet and gentle as his older brother and everyone looks at DE Daddy to make that attribution.  All the other variance seems like normal stuff in a family.

Disclosure-wise, we are open.  We tell them about mommy's eggs being messed up and a doctor having some extra ones.  And JUST AS I EXPECTED WHEN I WAS PREGNANT, my twin daughter is the only one of the three kids to ask "where the eggs came from" and "who it was."  We gave brief answers and she was fine.  We are treating the creation and completion of our family as normal and that is how they are seeing it.

Adoption-wise, the kids' super cousin was born in January, and his Mom is busy being his Mom.  We haven't heard a lot from her since he was born and it is exactly how we expected that to turn out.   We have one other person mind to donate the eggs, but if that doesn't work out, we're going to wait and see what our final decisions for the rest of the embryos are.

So our advice to others coming down this road  continues to be: If adoption really, really bothers you, don't use donor eggs.  If you absolutely crave a genetic connection, I  think there will be problems using donor eggs or sperm.  But if you can mourn what you thought was going to be your path and try this new one, we recommend it.

We have our children.  There is no bigger statement  I can make about this truth to us.  The exact three children who are supposed to be our children are here.  Our real children are really here.

I hope the path you are on, dear reader, is clear and open to you.

Moms after 40

This series of pictures gives such false hope to women out there; it's celebrities who have had children after 40. Of the 20 celebrities they list, I suggest that the following used donor eggs. Oddly, the only person who is suggested to have used donor eggs was Elizabeth Edwards, probably because Real People analyzed her life (not just celebrity gossips)

Probably used Donor Eggs:

Kelly Preston

Jayne Seymour

Susan Sarandon (??? Can't tell. Could have used FET from her first IVF)

Beverly D'Angelo

Holly Hunter

Marcia Cross

Marcia Gay Harden

Elizabeth Edwards

Geena Davis

So why am I so sure? It is highly...HIGHLY unlikely that anyone over 40 gets pregnant using IVF, much less has twins. I know, from friends, that it happens. But the odds are that none of those women, who had twins or got pg after 46 used their own eggs.

There is nothing wrong with that---obviously!---but be honest 1) to use your "power" for destigmatizing donor eggs and 2) to take always false hopes from regular folks.

Just my kvetching.

He's Here!

Our friend's son, from our frosties, arrived a few weeks early in January. He is wonderful and beautiful and our friend is high on being a mommy!

Things are going extraordinarily well, should you think there might be problems. Our children understand about their "super cousin" with our oldest child's concern that he is still the oldest of everyone. Old is Big for kids.

Even more crazy, I think the super cousin looks more like our older child than the twins.

And craziest, we are nothing but excited that we could help our friend start and finish her family. This is not our children's sibling. This is a super cousin. More than a cousin, but not a sibling.

I don't think that everyone can do what we have done. One of my strengths is the ability to draw and maintain very strong boundaries. I fully understand how adopting a FET to another family could be hard and confusing. But it doesn't have to be. And it can be quite fulfilling with some substantial positive emotions.

We are thrilled for our friend--even the children who pray for her and her child every night. They confuse Baby ***** with Baby Jesus, but that is a whole other story.