Oprah, the future and the past

It's clear to anyone who watches Oprah that she's not really a fan of assisted reproductive technologies. She recently had a show featuring Martha Stewart's daughter, who has been undergoing repeated IVF treatments without success. Last week, she had a show about sperm donors, who she kept referring to as "fathers."

Honestly, I wasn't nearly as offended by it as others on some of the discussion logs I've read. Let's face it, IF I get pregnant and IF I have a baby, we won't really know how that child will feel about being the biological product of a known father and some randam anonymous woman. Ideally, we will have a second child. And that child will feel as much a part of me as my first child feels. But I have to agree with Oprah: There will always be a curiosity about the woman who laid the egg. Heck, I'm curious about her. So it's only natural that her biological offspring would be curious. Then there's the whole question about half siblings. We know that there are at least 6 from this donor, I believe. Maybe more from frozen cycles.


This led me to make a phone call today to our attorney. I asked some big questions:

* Is there a way to work out some arrangement to make it known that I'd be willing/interested in meeting other families built by the same donor? I have this great image of some kind of fantastic summer picnic with all these half-siblings from different families. Crazy, I know.

* What about those half-siblings? Were they all born healthy? Have they ever developed any kind of terrible disease that could possibly be traced back to genes?

* Our donor has indicated that she'd be willing to eventually be contacted by the children she helped produce. Do we need to put anything in the contract to say we'd be happy to do that?

Well, ultimately, my lawyer said it is probably best to talk to the agency about the things regarding the families from the previous donations. She said the agency's contract with them is done, so anything would have to be arranged informally.

Some recipients put statements in their donor agreements regarding meeting the children in the future. Those are met with mixed reviews sometimes. Our donor said in her psychological evaluation that she'd be willing to meet the family in the future. So I figured that was good enough.

Until then, I'll just be dreaming of coming out on the positive end of that 65 percent chance of success.

And I'll be dreaming of that fantastic family picnic that would bring together five families built by the same generous woman.