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Donor Decisions
Considering Donor Egg & Sperm By Michele St. Martin
This decision was easier for Paige than for Jim, who still struggles with his emotions. "What made me change my mind was seeing the way my wife glows when she's around children," he says. "I realized that the most important thing was to have a family."
However, Jacob encourages her patients to consider telling the child. "If you are not going to tell the child, you should not tell others, because it increases the chance the child will learn accidentally," she says."If you are going to tell the child, telling others can stem from that in a way that feels right for the couple. Keeping secrets is hard and most people are lousy at it. Most couples do not anticipate how many lies must be told in order to do so. Couples must ask themselves if they can pull it off."
Should Jean and Bill conceive a child through donor egg, they will tell their child. "Why wouldn't we tell our child?" Jean asks. "There's nothing to be ashamed about. If anything, our child should feel very special and very loved to know how hard we struggled to have him or her." Jean and Bill were concerned about what the reactions of family and friends would be. To Jean's delight, "We have received nothing but the utmost support and love."
As technological advances in the field of DNA continue to evolve, will it even be possible to keep this information from a child? As Jacob points out, "High school kids are just now learning to do simple DNA testing. It's going to be harder and harder to keep this information private."She feels that genetic information is important for another reason: "Truth telling allows a child to have its accurate medical history," she says.
