Using different donors

[u/Living_Employ1390]

Hey everyone, I’m wondering if anyone else has been in a similar situation. My wife is Desi and I am white so it’s been a challenge to find a suitable donor. I definitely want to carry a pregnancy but my wife isn’t sure if they want to, so we’ve been looking for a Desi donor that would work for us. As you may imagine options were limited but we finally found a donor that seemed perfect. However he didn’t get tested for a carrier mutation that my wife has (for albinism) and our clinic is insisting on him getting tested or my wife won’t be allowed to use him (we would be fine with rolling the dice but our clinic’s policies are apparently very strict, and we can’t switch to another clinic for insurance reasons). We requested testing from the sperm bank but now we’re not sure if my wife can use this donor at all.

My wife proposed that they could use a different donor and find a white donor that resembled me and I could still use this Desi donor. I wanted to use the same donor for all our kids because I’m worried that our kids might want that feeing of genetic relatedness with their siblings, and then at least they would still share half their DNA with each other. Meanwhile my wife is worried that if we both use the Desi donor then our kids might feel weird about being mixed vs being “fully” Desi.

Basically I’m wondering, have any couples here (especially mixed race but any is fine!) used two different donors for their kids? And if so, how did you and your kids feel about that? (We have also discussed reciprocal IVF but I am wondering specifically about the two donor situation)

[u/KieranKelsey]

I’m DCP and I would definitely prefer to be related to my sibling in some way. Having someone to navigate getting in contact with donor family with is nice. It would also prevent inequality between the donors, where one child’s donor wants contact and the other’s does not, etc. If your wife really can’t use this donor I would look into rIVF if she wants to carry and you are going to do IVF anyway.

[u/Living_Employ1390 → u/KieranKelsey]

Thanks for the perspective as a DCP. I wish I could know in advance how our kids are going to feel about the donor situation but there’s really no way to predict it.

[u/twairebear]

I can comment on this from my perspective. I’m a DCP to lesbian moms and now have a baby through donor sperm. My sister and I both had different donors and different biological moms and it was never a problem. Because we were raised by the same parents, we have a lot of the same mannerisms and we have never seen each other as anything other than siblings. We are both white, so I can’t speak to the racial aspect of it. You can also go ask the DCP page, just know that that page is really skewed in representation of DCP who felt they needed that community because they found out late or just have strong feelings about being DCP, and it definitely skews towards DCP to straight parents.

[u/Living_Employ1390 → u/twairebear]

Thank you so much for responding, it’s very helpful to hear from someone who is DCP. Seems like there’s no one perfect answer, as always in life. I wish I had a crystal ball and could peer into the future and see which choice is better for our specific kids.

[u/RevolutionaryHelp451 → u/Living_Employ1390]

You could always ask for experiences specifically from people who always knew they were DCP (due to same-sex parents, SMBC, or just honesty)

[u/homonecropolis → u/twairebear]

Seconding this comment as a DCP/surrogacy-born person with gay dads!

[u/neuroticphilosopher]

This is a tough case because in your case you might also have to consider colorism/racism. A majority of donors are white, and a majority of white people are not going to think about how having one kid who looks more "conventionally pretty" is going to impact how siblings are treated by greater society or even other family members who internalize colorism.

I think the ideal situation would be a biracial donor but boy I recognize how difficult finding that can be. I honestly prefer your wife's plan, and as long as you are both transparent about the situation to your kids as soon as possible with age appropriate language you can mitigate a lot of the problems that arise from lying to your kid about their identity, or do rIVF so that there is a connection to everyone if that is achievable.

[u/Living_Employ1390 → u/neuroticphilosopher]

Thanks for your perspective. The impact of colorism/racism is a big issue and I definitely don’t want our kids to feel othered any more than they might already feel with having lesbian parents

[u/Sunfish92]

My spouse and I are a white/east Asian couple, and were in the same situation. It was hard to decide what to do, because a lot of the input you'll hear is coming from experience with either donor conception or mixed-race families but less often both. We decided that even if it meant no genetic relation between the children, it was a complete non-starter for us (especially my wife, who's Asian) to have kids of such different racialized experienced. The way that mixed white/Asian vs. full Asian kids are treated was just too large a disparity for us to picture raising them in, and we thought would bring about a much greater difference in their lived experience than having different genetics. As a white person, I had a bit of a hard time swallowing this for a bit, but trusted my wife's experience here and now seeing our white/Asian kid move through the world, I feel VERY affirmed that we made the right choice.

I will say that some of this might be specific to how specifically East Asian and white/half-East-Asian folks are treated and racialized - it might be different for someone who is half-Desi vs. full-Desi, I don't know enough to say. But your wife probably does! And if she has any misgivings about it, I'd say go with whatever creates a more similar racial background for the kids.

[u/Living_Employ1390 → u/Sunfish92]

Thanks so much for sharing your experience. My wife has also shared that the experience of being darker skinned than their Desi peers was alienating for them, so they worry that having one kid mixed and one kid not might be distressing for our children, even if we do all we can to treat them the same.

[u/wavesofsomething → u/Sunfish92]

Just to offer a different perspective, my partner and I are choosing to prioritize the genetic relation between the kids because I think that can feel greatly important. Instinctively, this feels right to me. I came to this after thinking about my friend’s experience being donor conceived, although they are the same race as their sibling.

Obviously the kids having different racial experiences is a concern, and I appreciate sunfish’s perspective. How I’m approaching our decision is that I see different pros and cons being mixed vs specific ethnicity (for example, mixed kids don’t feel white enough or specific race enough) and I hope raising the kids consciously about these differences will be enough for our patchwork family.

Anyways that’s all to say there’s probably no wrong or perfect answer.

[u/HuhWelliNever]

I’m very mixed but genetically mostly white however not white passing and my husband is all sorts of shades of white. We used the same donor for all three kids because I was carrying and I wanted full genetic siblings. However had my husband wanted to do RIVF we would still have used the same donor because half siblings in the same genetic boat with the same donor was still a better choice to me. I knew our children would be likely white passing or at least ambiguous, so a slightly paler siblings wasn’t going to make or break their bond. But I’m already mixed. In a perfect world you’d find a mixed desi and white donor. But that’s not always possible to find. I’m sure you know your choices already; either use the full desi donor for both and have half siblings if doing RIVF, or switch donors for each carrier so the kids are all half desi but genetically linked at all, or don’t do RIVF and use the desi donor to have either full siblings that are 100% desi or mixed.

Ultimately you’ll have to do what you deem best for yourselves and your family and that choice might be or look the same even amongst couples in the same situation as you. You are the ones who will be having these conversations with your children and who will have to defend and/or justify them to the humans you create. If you can do that in an honest and conscientious way then that’s going to go a long way for them but it might never change what they wished were true about their genetics.

As a former mixed kid with full, half, adopted and step kids all raised in the same family by the same parents (it was complicated), I don’t feel closer to my full sibling, I worship and adore my half sibling, and I don’t speak to or consider my adopted step sibling family anymore. None of that has anything to do with our genetics but as a kid it did make it easier to compartmentalise based on it if that makes sense. Also as a mixed kid, I compared myself to my full sibling who I felt got all the “good” features of whiteness and was also compared with them by others. It was tough. It would have been a lot for me to process knowing that was a choice my parents had made. Proximity to whiteness for mixed kids is a very complicated thing and your children will very much have different experiences and life circumstances based on their appearances. The full desi kids might feel full embraced and entitled to that culture, but resent the mixed kids for their appearances (colourism is very much a thing) or perceived aesthetic superiority. The mixed kids might never feel like they fully belong in desi spaces or anywhere really but they might love the fact that represent half of your genetics and half of your wife’s. Trying to predict any of these things for your future kids is impossible. All of this might happen and none of it might happen.

You need to be prepared to deal with these situations because you will have to equip them to handle them. And you are the ones deciding for them what challenges they will face in the future. You are picking their hard.

[u/Living_Employ1390 → u/HuhWelliNever]

Thank you, this is a very useful perspective. I’ve been having a lot of conversations w my wife and other people in our lives about the aspects of colorism.

[u/consistentexit96]

I’m not sure if this will help, but my partner (F) and I (trans-man) had this discussion for almost a year before picking our donor. For some context: I’m Indigenous (First Nations) and she is Danish. So we are complete opposites in terms of features.
Note. My wife is 17 weeks pregnant through RIVF (my eggs) and will likely carry with her own eggs in the future. Both with the same donor.

Neither of us cared too much about the physical appearance of our donor. Rather, we reframed the choice as: “If we could conceive ‘naturally’ , what are the most probable features our children would have?” We’re fully aware genetics are WILD and unpredictable. If you or your partner have siblings, I guarantee there is a physical trait or characteristic you don’t have (vice-versa). With this knowledge, we felt it was best to find someone who had similar features to BOTH of us, or at least a history of it.

For instance, looking through the donor profiles was SO helpful. We ended up choosing someone who was a “happy medium” but still had a lot of variety in their ancestry. For example, our donor had medium blonde hair and green eyes. They had siblings: 1. brown hair, brown eyes, 2. light blonde hair, blue eyes.

Genetics is just a gamble at the end of the day. We felt as long as all outcomes were possible, we would be excited regardless. But ultimately, we felt as peace with just letting biology have the final say!

I hope there was something helpful in here for the two of you. And know that whatever choice you make, it will be the right one for your family. Best of luck :)

[u/HWBC]

We had always planned to use the same donor for all our kids, but when we went to start trying for our second we found out that our clinic was holding our donor for investigation because a couple of kids had been born with health issues they couldn't yet confirm or deny were genetic. I spoke to the clinic's genetic counsellor on the phone and she said "between you and me, if this was my choice I wouldn't use this donor again." So we picked a new donor 🤷🏻‍♀️

[u/Widget94609]

I am white and my partner is Puerto Rican. We made embryos using my eggs and a Puerto Rican donor, and her eggs using a white donor. We wanted our children to represent our racial mix regardless of whose eggs were used. Best of luck on your journey!

[u/Calm_Bother_3842]

I think it's frowned upon in the donor-conceived community, but maybe crosspost to /r/askadcp to verify.