Donor sibling!

Last year I attended a Birth Without Fear meet up. BWF is a blog/facebook page that I've been following since 2010 when Makena was first born. It was largely because of BWF that I realized how lucky I had been with Makena's birth experience. I read so many stories from women who were unsatisfied and even traumatized from their births. The page exists to offer inspiration and support for women throughout their journeys of conception, pregnancy, birth, and beyond. And it's become this sort of movement as it gained popularity, a push to find support and become informed of your choices in birth. There was an event held in Oakland last year, when Hadley was just 6 weeks old. I wanted so badly to attend but couldn't justify the cost of the ticket. I applied for a scholarship ticket but didn't get one, so I sent an email to the founder explaining my desire to attend and talking about my fearless births and asked if there were any volunteer opportunities in exchange of admission. She wrote back and gave me a ticket! I was thrilled! But I needed a ride, since Pam would need the car for soccer all day.

On my local attachment parenting moms facebook group someone posted that they were attending the meet up and asked if anyone wanted to carpool. It worked out perfectly! While there someone asked the group for encouragement on getting pregnant, she said she and her wife had been trying to conceive for a while. I waited until there was a break and introduced myself and said something cheesy about how I can totally relate to their struggles and that my babies were donor conceived and that I hoped they'd succeed soon.

Fast forward a bit to a few months later when I attended MommyCon in SF, and met up with several of the same BWF gals. We had become friends on social media and now were going to meet for lunch in the city while we were at the conference. Much to our delight M & H announced that they were pregnant! Yay! Pregnancy announcements are always so fun. I was thrilled when I got an invite to their baby shower, and brought a few of our favorite children's books.

Their baby was born around Hadley's 1st birthday, and it was such a joy to see their beautiful professional birth photos! Waking up to brand new baby photos is one of my favorite ways to start a day! Knowing that friends are finally experiencing those precious first hours and days with their newborn after waiting so long to hold their baby in their arms just gives me so many warm fuzzies!

Fast forward again, a few months later, to when we had plans to meet up at Boobiepalooza. A few nights earlier M had posted on facebook a baby photo of H and a baby photo of their donor, comparing who baby S looked like. I literally gasped out loud, my jaw dropping. Pam asked what was up, and I showed her the photo of their donor. She didn't have the same reaction I did. I pulled out our file of donor info and the photo wasn't there. I went through old emails and found a copy. And there it was, the exact same baby photo. I immediately messaged M & H and told them the news that we had used the same donor for our babies!! Lots of "OMG!!!!" and "THIS IS SO CRAZY!" ensued!

After the excitement passed Pam and I realized we needed to figure out how to address this with Makena. We discussed again how babies are made and explained that the donor who gave the sperm that made Hadley also gave his sperm to M & H, and so that means baby S and Hadley are considered donor siblings, since they are half-related. We made sure to stress that Makena and Hadley are sisters, and belong to the same family, but that Hadley and S share some DNA and that's kinda cool. She seemed to take it well, I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I was hoping she wouldn't feel left out. It's pretty special and awesome that we have this link to another family, made even more awesome that we are friends! And it's a little bit of a bummer that we don't have that same sort of link for Makena, though I'm positive she has donor siblings out there. I don't know know exactly much she really grasps about the whole thing. It's an ongoing conversation, the story of how she and Hadley came into our lives.

So a couple days later we took a photo of the girls together and made the announcement that they are donor siblings. I wish we could see each other more often, but thanks to FB it'll be fun watching them get older and seeing if they look similar! We don't live far from each other at all, just a matter of scheduling a time that works!

Anyway, so that's a totally unexpected interesting little twist. :)