Hello First Timers

Howdy out there.

I thought my comment on Alittlepregnant.com could bring some visitors. Yes, I am DE Mommy, a woman who used donor eggs to complete our family and ended up with the exact children I was supposed to have.

We are open to our children about their origins but not to too many other people. Like Julie on ALittlePregnant, it is hurtful to hear people outright say or imply that I am "not their real mommy," which is complete bullshit.

In any case, I appreciate that Julie does NOT make a big deal (or any deal at all) about how they finalized their family. I am surprised that others still remember it. That they do impresses me with how unfortunately tied up people are with the genetic origins of children.

Quite honestly, my children don't give a flying rat's ass about how they got here. I am their mother and DE Daddy is their father and there are no variance around those facts in their lives.

Ironically, I have been wanting to post about the twins' emerging hair because it is a big issue in our family. I have unusual hair. The donor does not share my type of hair. The twins, however, are developing hair very similar to mine--and to our older son. Come to find out, my hair type has hormonal origins. It appears that either through in utero exposure or through breastfeeding, their hair is looking more and more like mine, likely due to whatever wonky hormones give me this hair.

It makes us laugh to see them "looking so much like me."

Even if they didn't have hair like mine and instead had hair like everyone else in this world, it wouldn't matter. I am their mother. DE Daddy is their father. Not a thing in this world is going to change that.

Resemblance Talk

Well, DE folks out there, after speaking (emailing) with another DE blogger, I realized just how much I need to keep this blog going. I'm not sure I'll post often, but I have to post about the DE related issues that come up *and* that I can't talk about to my face-to-face friends. Certainly, getting pregnant had specific DE related issues, but being pregnant did not. However, I'm finding that being a mommy to newborn DE twins surprisingly does, too.

The one I've wanted to blog about is called by researchers "Resemblance Talk." The medical/psychological research I saw when we were pg said that it's stressful for DE families (especially moms) whether or not the couples are planning on telling their children. My plan had been to say "Why yes, twin daughter (TD) does have eyes like mine!" and "Why yes! TS does have legs like my brothers!" which is different than saying TD has my eyes and TS has my brother's legs.

What I wasn't expecting is the searching, searching, searching on the part of my family to find SOMETHING that looks like me or them in the babies. My poor mother. She looks defeated sometimes in trying to find some part of her appearance in the babies.

We have not told our parents basically because the fact that we're older means our parents (ansd their attitudes) are older, too. And yes, I've heard my mother say on more than one occasion about an adopted child "Is that her REAL mother?" (I was so proud of myself for answering Yes before I understood what she was really asking) And Mom made all kinds of negative comments about Michael Jackson's children who were born through DE, DS and surrogates. We will likely tell them when the children get old enough to talk to others about it, but we might not. I just don't want to be making attributions about the children ("That must be like the donor") or worse, not establishing a close relationship with the children, because they are donor inspired.

But yeah. My brother swore that TD looks just like our grandmother. My mother has stopped questioning and simply declared that TD looks "just like me." She doesn't. She's much, much cuter (and I'm not being modest--she has a much better nose than either DH or I).

Fortunately, DH has particularly dominant genes and a large, diverse family so many of the outstanding features of our children realistically look like him or one of the bazillion members of his family.

So writing this, what is my concern? I don't believe I have "perfect genes" to pass on to my children. (I heard someone say that once and it still drives me absolutely nutty) I also believe based on current research that genes do NOT lead to exact replicas. Instead, I believe based on this and other research that the incubator (i.e., me) and the physical and social environment play an important role in interacting with the genes to cause a person to "be" a certain way. Current examples: they now believe that intelligence is more related to how hard the mom works cognitively (i.e., thinks) during pregnancy than the child's inherited genes, schizophrenia is more strongly linked to mom's stress during pregnancy than to genetic disposition, and that genes for resilience turn on or off based on a child's early life experiences outside the womb. And most importantly, the most important genes for height only predict 2% of someone's height. That means the vast majority of someone's height--98%--comes from something other than those genes.

I know I've repeated this several times before, but there's a persistent and incorrect belief out there that Genes. Are. It. I'm not naive: I realize that if a child is given, say, a Beethoven sonata for their genes they are not going to come out playing Gershwin. Nonetheless, Beethoven sounds differently based on how and on what it's played: uptempo vs down tempo, with feeling or without, on a piano or on a guitar.

And did you know that most research on the effects of environment on personality, intelligence, etc. have been conducted in the US on relatively similar socio-economic status families? That's like comparing Baptists to Presbyterians and thinking they are very, very different religions. Once you start adding in Catholics, Orthodox Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, Wicca and even Atheism, that's when you figure out just how damn similar the Baptists and Presbyterians really are.

Blah, blah, blah. What's my point here? That's what I keep asking myself and I keep babbling around in circles just like I have above. My deep, down, middle of my soul fear is that my children will reject me because the genetic link is not explicit.

I told DH that the other day and he replied "Did Nicole* reject her mother?" Nicole is adopted and one of my advisors during this process. No she didn't. Not at all. Never. It's not even an issue because she knows her mother is her mother. Rejection doesn't work that way with good parenting.

I do worry rejection could come from one's obsessing over the genetic link (or lack thereof) with one's DE children. And really my worry is their obsession over it later. But I can't control that, can I? I can say what I've just said (which is probably why I say it repeatedly) and I can help our children find the most recent academic research in the area.

Maybe that's it, the lack of control over an issue that may or may not arise sometime in the future. Will TD be upset that she doesn't have my hair? If you could see it right now, probably not. Will there be some other feature that TD or TS wishes they had of mine or my family? Do you long for that or are you more like me and worry that you actually DID inherit some annoying trait or another from your mother, I mean, family.

I'm sure I haven't said this as articulately as I'd like to. And I'm sure I'll say it again. But I have been surprised at the amount of resemblance talk I've heard and the persistance of my family to find something, anything, that looks like me or them in the children.

These are my children. These are my perfect twins. And these are exactly the children I've been waiting for for the last 4 years. Really, the rest doesn't matter.

Diddly Squat

Fortunately, I have nothing new to report.  The donor has not balked or tested positive for an STD.  I am just living life and waiting for the "real" part of the cycle to start.

I have told a few more people in my world what is going.  99% of the people who know are people 1)  whom I trust to not tell a soul, 2) who don't know anybody in my day-to-day world, or 3) who don't give a shit.  There is only one person I've told who I think could say something, but I've given her the story of what to say:  she can say she  knows "somebody" who has used DE, but she can't say it's me.  I think it's wrong to not let others know thatDE  is a viable option.  Nonetheless, there's that one neighbor of mine who has already stated her discomfort with a friend who used a surrogate.  I do not want her to EVER know we've used DE.  We might as well write it in neon around our city and have her comment that it's not our "real child" as a subtitle.

One thing that is funny is that since we seriously considered adoption, I don't worry about thinking a DE child will be mine.  It is so not even a part of my mindset that sometimes I don't understand it.  But I fully realize that when DE Daddy and I were dating we never expected that we would be able to conceive on our own.  So our son is ths shock, not that we're on some other path to finish building our family.

I still need to post on the spate of twins in Hollywood for the 40+ women.  Bleah.  I was all worked up when I read it.  Now it's late and I want to go to bed.  

We have a Date!

So, everything is moving along. Our donor has officially agreed to the cycle and is available at exactly the time I'll be in the California conference. I spent most of last night dreaming about arriving in CA, which days it would be best to be there and how we'll see everyone and, in my head, emailing my donor to say Thank You. I also spent some of my dream yelling at my MIL, so let's hope not all of that is predictive.

I really do not feel anxious about this process right now. I am learning to trust my intuition which indicated a real fear that the first donor would say no and that something was off with the second donor and, now, that things are really going to work out with this donor.

Maybe now I can spend some time on this blog writing about why we are choosing DE over adoption and why we plan on disclosing to our child (but not necessarily to our families at this point) and what we are going to do if we should be so fortunate as to have leftover frosties from this process.

But right now, I feel happy and even keeled and I am following the other DE blogs to see how their stories turn out, too.

Passing

After figuring out that Dr. Thera Pissed was talking out of her asshat, I decided to do a little investigation on my own to determine the pros and cons about disclosure to DE children. To be honest, there is not a lot of academic research out there and I have not had a chance to really evaluate it.

However, I did find an interesting article on "resemblance talk" and DE families. Resemblance talk the normal chit-chat from people when they see a new baby with his/her family ("She has your nose! He has your eyes!"). This, obviously, can be quite stressful for parents of DE babies, but for the mothers in particular.

I realized that after reading this article that I had always assumed we (or at least I) would always let the child(ren) "pass" should strangers say to me "Oh! She/he looks just like you!" My thoughts have been that if someone notes that we share the same chin, well, honestly, I believe there are only a finite amount of chins in this world and why as a matter of fact, we DO share the same chin. But there will also be talk about "Oh! His/her personality is just like yours!" and that is much more murky.

So after reading the previous article, what has come first to my mind is what comes from the donor, what is shared between the real mother (me) and DE child and what is really important. First, physical characteristics are most definitely inherited. Height, eye color, hair and bones are inherited. However, we know from current cloning studies is that clones don't look alike. That is, identical twins gestating in different mothers are born looking differently. One thought is that the gestating mother influences what genes are turned on or off during the pregnancy thus having some influence on the child's appearance.

But physical inheritance is one thing. It is important and we know about tons of research that shows that how people look affects how they develop (particularly for attractive people). But what about "personality?"

Well, to be honest, personality does have some genetic roots, but it's much less than people think. The same is true with intelligence. For example, psychologists think that the most inherited personality characteristic is extroversion and that, at most, 50% of extroversion from the genes. What kills me is that people get soooooo excited that extroversion can be explained by 50% of the genes. Great! Yippee!! Guess what?! The exact same amount, 50%, comes from the environment! That's the MOST inherited personality trait and its 50:50 nature vs. nurture!!

Even more so, in our case, of the 50% inherited, 50% of that is from dad's genes and 50% are from the donor's genes (which I will influence having inside of me).

So, back to the original issue here, Dad will account for (at most) 75% of the child's personality trait of extroversion and I will account for at least 50% of the personality traits. I say "at most" and "at least" because psychologists believe that mom's have more influence on the home environment than dad's do. I also want to point out that the 50% estimate is the minimum amount of influence that mom has on the DE child's personality because most personality characteristics are caused more by the environment and less by genetics than extroversion. For example, it is believed that intelligence is 30% inherited. You can do the math yourself, but to me, it says that the donor's genes has a less than a 15% role in the "intelligence" of a DE child. (There's even new research on adopted kids that shows a very strong relationship between adopted parents' intelligence and their children's intelligence. That really challenges the genetic links of intelligence.)

So I really don't believe it's "passing" when someone is going to tell me "Oh! Your child acts just like you!" It's more than likely the absolute truth! I don't think our child(ren) will inherit my hair nor my feet (THANK GOD!), but I do think they will inherit the core me, the inside me, my way of being and thinking. Oh, and I guess DE Daddy, too. I guess he does play some role in all this... :-)

And I don't think that's rationalization. I think it's the truth based on what we know about know about personality. And I think that's just fine.

How Paranoid Are You?

I want to talk about our decision to disclose the origins of our next child(ren), should we be so lucky to get pregnant using donor eggs. However, I don't want to write some long preachy blog post about why we think what we going to do is the right thing. First of all, I fully believe that everyone has to make decisions that reflect what is best for their family. If I believed that my choices were the Best Choices To Be Made to make then pretty much the whole world would be sitting in my (wonderful) house in my (fantastic) city and we'd all be content knowing that my decisions are best for all. And although I believe that my house is the best house in the world and I wouldn't live in any other city, yet I sit here alone not judging you for not being here, I'm going to say that others have to make decisions that are right for them.

Second, I don't want to write a long preachy blog post on disclosure because I am too freakin' tired. That is my main side effect of lupron, well, fatigue and bitchiness. Hooray!

So here is what is most on my mind with disclosure: our clinic's therapist (Dr. Thera Pissed) wants us to be as paranoid as possible in thinking about how someone might find out about us using donor eggs and how that information could get back and hurt our child. She does not want us to tell the pediatrician or my OB or anyone except for her, our RE and each other. She believes that people in the offices will talk about it and the word will get out and someone will come up to our child in middle school and tell him/her/them that he/she/they are not really my child and ask where their "real" mommy is.

First, might I suggest a review of the governmental policy HIPAA? Second, really? My life is that interesting that, in a metropolitan region of over 1 million people, multiple people are going to keep track of our lives and then tell their children who will then find our child of whom they will not know their last (correct) name and then taunt them. Really?

Thera argues that DE is so unusual that people will notice it and talk about it and because they are not as informed as we, they will same stupid things. I do agree with that part and it's one of the reasons we've decided not to tell our neighbors or even our family. There is one judgmental, hyper neighbor of mine for whom I can see that scenario playing out nearly exactly. But we shouldn't tell our pediatrician? Really?

I think Dr. Pissed is paranoid about the wrong things. They are now taking the DNA from all the children in foster care from the Mormon sect in Texas. DNA is going to become the first choice for medical and law officials in the not too distant future. Prescriptions could even be tailored to your specific DNA. My paranoid mind takes me down a variety of paths in which someone is going to be in for a nasty shock and I really don't want it to be my children.

More later, but I really am pooped. And I want to stop thinking and go watch some mindless TV.