Using a de-identified donor to conceive

I'm interested to know if anyone else has thought about their approach to their child or future child knowing about how they were conceived.

We spoke about the implications of using a de-identified donor (basically unknown but identifying info is available once our future offspring turns 18) during our counselling sessions and we feel we would be honest with our child at an age appropriate time. Something along the lines "Your Mummies really wanted you in our lives and love you so much but needed some help to make you. He is called your donor" etc.

There's also a donor sibling registry here in Aus that you can potentially meet up with other families who have used the same donor. Has anyone done this or think they are willing to?

I've never heard that term before, "de-identified" but that sounds like what ours is. We chose donor sperm through a clinic and identifying info can be requested by our children once they are 18.

We plan to do similar to you, gently explain the term donor and a how he helped. From what I've read, explanations really only need to be very simple when they are young. Obviously when they start asking more specific questions they would require much more detailed explanations. There are a few children's books that tell the story of donor assisted families. We would like to have them for Oscar as well just to make it easier for him to understand what we are telling him.

We haven't joined a donor sibling registry and don't plan to. The only reason we would sign up to a registry to find out, is if Oscar requested to.

I hadn't heard of de-identified either until we started our journey and went to our clinic. They said they can't call it anonymous anymore since the laws here changed and information legally has to be passed on / available once the child is 18 and requests for it.

I think it's a good approach to gradually tell them things and answer questions when they ask them. I suppose it stops the "shock" or feelings that 'my parents are keeping something from me'. Our counsellor explained children are generally not phased by something when they are familiar with the idea.

I'm not sure how we feel about the donor registry yet. It's definitely not something we'd rush to do but would help our child on that journey if they requested it.

We thought long and hard about our decision to use a known donor/family member. Everyone in our family knows who the donor is, my wife's younger brother, and we plan to let Jude know when she starts asking.