r/donorconceived

I’m conceived from an egg donor and a surrogate, raised by a single father.

I’m asking this question because the person I ultimately got married to turned out to be my biological cousin. We didn’t find out until we already knew each other and had fallen in love, so we chose to continue the relationship.

Had anyone else had an experience like this? Maybe in small towns with multiple people from the same donor.

My parents recently told me that my dad is not my biological father and I was donor conceived in the mid-80s when donors weren’t really screened for heritable health problems. Since I’m in my 40s and have children, I’m worried about not knowing half of my family health history. I made an appointment with my GP to see what testing might be available to me, but I was wondering if there are any direct to consumer tests people have found useful? I’m not sure I want to know who the donor was, so I’m trying to figure out how much I can learn through genetic tests for health conditions alone.

I'm 16F and donor-conceived; however, I'm not allowed to tell any of my friends. As a minor, I adhere to what my mother tells me to do because I understand that there are a lot of ignorant/judgemental people in this world. Also, no one really needs to know. But when I become a young adult, I wonder if I should tell people, and if so, who? Does anyone have any negative or positive experiences? Also, my reason for telling people is that I don't like lying about things that I am not ashamed of lol. But I think I'm kinda naive, so idk.

Edit: I've grown up in a single-parent household, and the "my mom is ashamed" comments aren't very accurate to my situation; it's more about protecting me. I'm just trying to figure out if it is a good decision to tell people 🤔.

Also, thank you for the advice. I don't know anyone else in my life who may have a similar experience, so this is really helpful.

Personally I think since we are allowed to know our donors name we should also be given our donor siblings names or identification as well..it makes sense so people don’t have to spend the rest of their lives wondering about them and we would all be family kind of..

I’m just gonna start this off by saying I’m absolutely terrified of telling anyone i am donor concieved. I dont even know why. My parents are pretty open and I have known I’m donor conceived for a while now. I just feel like a lot of people just aren’t very educated and might assume things about me or think differently about me as soon as I tell them. I haven actually told anyone, none of my friends. I mean a lot of people in my family know but its not really something we talk about.

I dont even really know why I am posting this. I guess I am venting a little because it genuinely scares me to tell anyone about this. I know I shouldn’t be ashamed but sometimes it almost feels like I am?

I need some outside perspective on an ongoing dilemma. I’ll try not to go into too much identifying detail because the situation is pretty niche and there’s every chance someone could recognise me from it, but I also need to give enough context for any of this to make sense. This is a long one, apologies in advance, but at least it’s likely to be somewhat entertaining/dramatic.

I am no contact with my mother, and last year, after a dramatic slow drip-feed of information from her, I found out that I was donor-conceived. I have one full sibling who is also donor conceived and is very close with our mother, although our own relationship has become increasingly strained as we’ve got older.

I decided I wanted to find out more, so I contacted HFEA, did Ancestry, eventually used DNA Angels and earlier this year located our donor through paternal DNA matches. I did most of the practical searching but shared every update with my sibling as it happened, and we were approaching the discovery together.

We weren’t ready to contact him and were still processing what we’d found and deciding what, if anything, we wanted to do next.

My sibling asked me whether they could tell our mother that we had located him, and I agreed.

Within about two weeks, however, I noticed one of my maternal relatives had started following the donor on Instagram. Given the circumstances, it was pretty obvious where the information had come from.

This is where the disagreement started.

My position is that although I agreed to our mother knowing we had found him, details about who he is, his social media, etc. shouldn’t then have been passed around the wider family without our knowledge. We hadn’t even contacted the man ourselves yet. I felt like we should have had the opportunity to process the discovery and decide what we wanted to do before other people became involved.

My sibling sees it differently and feels that because our mother chose donor conception and this is part of her story too, it is also information she should be able to talk about. We fell out badly over this and haven’t spoken properly for several months.

There is a lot of difficult history between my mother and me that I won’t attempt to unpack here. I’m no contact for reasons unrelated to the donor situation and, in my experience, privacy and boundaries have historically been major issues in that relationship. So having this information travel through the family without my knowledge brought up a lot of old stuff for me.

My problem now is working out what happens next.

I have told my sibling that I don’t currently feel comfortable continuing the donor process together if our mother is going to be actively updated as things happen. My sibling has been honest that they don’t feel able to navigate this without talking to our mother because she is an important source of support for them. I actually appreciate their honesty about that rather than them agreeing to something they couldn’t realistically maintain.

I suggested a compromise where my sibling could still share things with our mother, but we would have a period of time after significant developments to process them ourselves first and decide what we wanted to do before anything went wider. My sibling wasn’t comfortable agreeing to that because they don’t want to be in a position where they potentially have to withhold something from our mother indefinitely.

And honestly, I can understand both needs. That’s why I’m stuck.

I want to navigate this with my sibling. This is an incredibly strange shared experience and in an ideal world I’d love for us to be able to do it together. I also understand that my sibling needs support and that I don’t get to dictate their relationship with our mother.

But I still have a very visceral reaction to the idea of my mother having ongoing access to something so personal while it is happening. I don’t trust that information will remain with her once shared, based both on this incident and my previous experiences with her.

Doing the donor process completely separately sounds cleaner, but even that isn’t particularly straightforward. We are full siblings and this is our shared biological history. If one of us discovers biological relatives, medical information or information about our donor, much of it inherently relates to the other person too. We could also end up separately contacting the same people. In some ways, navigating it separately could actually mean having less communication and coordination around what is happening.

I’m also worried that if I override my discomfort now because I desperately want to preserve my relationship with my sibling, we’ll simply end up having the exact same argument again later when the stakes are potentially much higher, for example if our donor responds or a relationship develops.

So I suppose my question is: what is actually reasonable here?

How do I respect that this is my sibling’s story too and that they have every right to seek support, while also protecting my own privacy and deciding what access my estranged mother has to my personal experience?

Is there a compromise here that I’m not seeing? Would you continue navigating it together knowing that some information may eventually be shared with someone you don’t trust, or accept that the difference in boundaries means the donor side of the relationship needs to be separate?

I’m genuinely interested in perspectives from people who disagree with me too. I’ve been sitting with this for months and I’m too emotionally involved at this point to know whether I’m protecting a reasonable boundary or letting my history with my mother dictate too much of what happens next.

TL;DR: I’m estranged from my mother and recently discovered, alongside my full sibling, the identity of our sperm donor. I agreed my sibling could tell our mother we’d found him, but she then shared identifying information with other family members before we’d even decided whether to contact him. My sibling needs to involve our mother for support; I no longer trust her with information and don’t feel safe having her updated in real time. I’ve suggested delaying what gets shared so we can process developments first, but my sibling isn’t comfortable agreeing to that. I want to continue this journey with my sibling, but our biological information is so intertwined that separating completely is complicated too. Am I reasonable to prioritise privacy even if it means doing this separately, or is there a compromise I’m not seeing?

is this only me or do any of you have become suspicious too since you found out you are a dcp?

I’ve known a family for 1.5 years through my child preeschool. I thought the mom was younger than me to be honest, because her kid is 2 years younger and she just had a baby. I found out recently she is older than me and had her 2nd baby at 49 and the first one at 45. I can’t help but think they must have bought eggs? now every time I see her with the eldest, can’t help to try to find similarities between them.

also it happens to me very often when friends or acquaintances don’t look like their siblings or parents, that I get really suspicious. I feel like I’m always on the lookout or maybe like a veil has been removed and I see clearly.

Just curious what your experiences have been. I’d hope there wouldn’t be judgement or stigma but I know it can be deemed quite taboo.

Sorry if it may come across insensitive I am DC myself and I wondering if this will impact how others act or treat me.

If this is the case how do you navigate this?

Yesterday, I got my ancestry.com results back. I had braced myself for so many things, but not this. I opened it up and she was just there, perfect 50% match. I found her name and looked her up on Facebook, she's dead. Everyone named in her obituary is dead as are many of the people who commented on the page. Her Facebook is public but her friends list is private:,) her husband is dead, he remarried but who knows how she felt about his ex wife. She was in the donor sibling registry group on Facebook, wanted to be found. Kinda devastating

Anyway, her and most of her relatives have died quite young and I have a ton of unknown medical problems so that doesnt bode super well for me and I'd kinda like to know what's up there. Im from the US, she stayed living in my state and my state allows children to access medical records if the spouse has passed. Is there like any way I can possibly have access to any records at all? Even a death certificate to know how she died? I obviously have no documentation except a literal dna test and know that isnt a legal document. The 3 people able to access records are spouse, child, parent. All 3 are dead or dont exist (except for me). Am I just screwed and that information is lost forever? This sucks lmao

This may be unstructured - a bit of a blurt as I found out in the span of about an hour. I was doing birth technologies as a unit for a Law course, and knew that my sister was IVF concieved (I had assumed through my mothers egg). I went to speak with my mother (quite inconsiderately) and asked her straight up whether she was conceieved with a donor egg or with her egg. My mother got incredibly agitated and deflective (fair enough), and stormed off. During her quip she mentioned that I was IVF conceived aswell (which I had never known). Her reaction to me asking about the origins of the eggs and her subsequent spiel about how she had carried us for years and lost multiple babies led me to believe that both of us were born via donor eggs, meaning neither of us have a genetic relationship with our mother. I regret immensly the manner in which I approached my mother, and having read a few of the posts I understand what a traumatic and painstaking experience IVF is for mothers. Again as I said, I had a thought and instantly went to ask. My sister is much younger and doesn't know. I don't really know what to think or what to say. Of course this won't change my relationship with my mother who does so much for me and who I love very much, but my questions are huge as to who my genetic mother is. Not to mention how weird it is to think that my uncles and grandparents aren't actually my uncles and grandparents. Obviously everyone on this subreddit has been through this and knows how to approach finding genetic parents and trying to keep life the way it always has been, so any advice would help.

TLDR: I found out I am Donor Conceived, any advice helps!

Thanks!

Does anyone else get so excited every time they get this email notification, even though 99% of the time it’s like 0.4% shared DNA 😩

Im in the prosess of getting the needed paperwork to get my donors information but my older sibling got theirs first.

We started doing this search at the same time by accident and my sibling through dna test and i by contacting the clinic. My older sibling didnt bother contacting the clinic because it was once said that in the 90s donors didnt give out any information. I got a more positive answer when on the phone with the clinic assistant and started searching for the right legal paperwork to proceed in this case. I have to wait around a month to get the information and its killing me inside. And on top of that my sibling has found out that they have many half siblings and a donor who is willing to meet.
Biggest fear is that what if my donor isnt willing to meet or hasnt even told their name or anything? What if i dont have half siblings and my sibling does (honestly i would be jealous for life…) and also what if my sibling will have better bonding with the new sibling rather than with me…

I have always felt pretty lonely living with this thing because i have not never ever in my life met another person born from donor egg or even sperm, except my sibling. And now when they have their thing going, planing meeting etc. I instantly started feeling really lonely. There is no one else anymore who i can talk to because we are keeping these things as a secret from our parents and not a lot of people know this thing about us anyways or understands.

Everyone i have tried to tell this donor egg thing doesnt get it and many times not even healthcare workers because its so much rarer than donor sperm for example. I tried anonymous chatting platforms to find similar people but all i get is just troll comments.

Just tell me im not alone here pls…

Seeing a lot of posts lately from people who have just discovered they're DC and want to hear similar experiences, so I thought I'd share my documentary-style podcast again.

It follows my journey of finding out at age 13, but more importantly, I also speak to DC people around the world about their experiences of finding out, coming to terms with it all, as well as all the emotional and complex moments in between.

I hope it's helpful!

Not sure if this is the correct subreddit to post on but I heard about this subreddit on Smosh Reads Reddit Stories Podcast so I thought it’s a good place to start.

Anytime I brought up Ancestry or 23andMe, my parents would always say it was so stupid and they could tell me anything I wanted to know about our family history. Despite all that, back in December 2022, I thought it would be fun to surprise them and do Ancestry to see where my family was truly from. They always told we were 100% French, but I know that couldn’t be entirely true….

Well, when the results came back, and I’ve only found out that I wasn’t 100% French, but I also found out that I wasn’t related to anyone on my dad’s side that I know had also done Ancestry. The real shock is when I got a message from a random guy, who I’ve never heard of or met, saying that he was my biological 1st cousin and that his uncle was my biological father. In our messages back and forth he explained that his uncle had passed away in 2014, but through Ancestry they gad just found out that he donated sperm.

I was blind sided. I was 27 and as far as I knew my dad was my biological father. Now I have multiple half siblings and a family I know nothing about but want me to be happy about all of this. I went through so many emotions of denial, anger, confusion, and now I’m 30 and I still don’t know what to do. I feel so stupid that I’ve held onto this for almost 4 years and I haven’t confronted/asked my parents but I’m scared of how they will react.

Little back story: my mom is very secretive about family drama. Almost like she doesn’t want anyone to know her family isn’t perfect. Examples: I didn’t know her and my dad were married to other people before each other until I was a senior in high school. I didn’t know my mom had an older half-brother from her dad’s affair in the military until I was in college. I didn’t know that her “1st cousin” is actually her half-brother (who was a product of her mom being rapped and my grandad sister just adopted the baby) until THIS YEAR. Her sister was just diagnosed with schizophrenia and she doesn’t my want anyone to talk about.

Also - I love my dad. I really don’t care he isn’t my biological father, and It hasn’t changed how I I see him or how I feel about him. I just don’t want to bring all this up and have things get weird.

I am getting married to the love of my life in October 2027 and we want to have kids shortly after. I just want to make sure all genetics are ok and that there is nothing to worry about in that aspect.

I know I’m dumb for waiting so long to actually do anything with this information, trust me the anxiety about it is through the roof. But I will accept any advice or words of encouragement!

Thanks in advance:)

i’d really appreciate any advice and support and empathy 🖤

i recently just randomly remembered the fact that im donor conceived and that my dad isn’t my biological dad. (that’s crazy to think about. all my life i thought we shared the same DNA and all that. but for some reason it kinda makes sense.) my mom told my sister and i so casually. this happened a couple years ago. we were 13. it wasn’t even a discussion. it felt like she just revealed this huge thing that i didn’t even process when she told us. i guess my brain blocked it out. i keep forgetting. but now i suddenly remembered again and now i feel like im going crazy.

i literally texted my sister: “is it real or did my brain make up the fact that we’re donor conceived.” cause it feels like it never happened cause it was such a short and nonchalant thing. i felt like i wasnt allowed to react strongly. i still cant wrap my head around it

i love my dad. my dad is and will always be my dad. i’ve never even talked about this with him. not even acknowledged it.

i already struggle with identity issues and this isn’t helpful at all lol. who is my biological “father?” do i have half siblings?? that’s insane to even think about. why did my mom just suddenly decide to tell us at that random moment. why was it never brought up again. i feel so many emotions. i made a post about this on different subreddit but all anyone said was basically that it’s not a big deal and if anything my mom should’ve waited longer to tell me.

i feel like i can’t talk about it or even have questions and have all these feelings about it. i really need help

To keep a long story short my mom and dad had me using ivf as my dad was infertile. My dad died when I was 5 and at 14 I found out he wasn’t my biological dad. What I know is that they went to Cyprus for IVF and my moms told me that due to laws (I’m not knowledgeable on the laws there) that I can’t legally contact or see him. In all honesty it doesn’t bother me that much about contacting him but I’m more curious about what he looks like and where I’m from. Is there anything I could do to help get any information about him?

Recently I found out how many donor siblings I have and now I'm not sure how to tell my mum or brother about it because its quite a big number and to go from thinking u only had 1 sibling and then u find out you have a ton more how do I tell them about it

Hey all! A bit about me - always known I was DC and i was on the sibling register as soon as I was able, had 1 sibling come up when we were 18. We’ve met a few times and we get on. Speak occasionally. Everything has been quiet on that front since - it’s been 4 years since I’ve had a match, which I thought weird as we would all be in our early 20s now and I would think some would be curious about their background, providing they knew.

Fast forward to last month- I had another sibling come up on ancestry. I sent sibling (no. 1) I’m in contact with a screenshot and we were excited to speak to them, we also saw that they had put their details on the sibling registry, which would come through in 20 days. The details finally came through and it turned out it was a new sibling! So I’ve had 2 new ones in the last month.

I’ve messaged them both but neither of them have replied yet. The waiting game to get the ball moving with them is driving me insane!

I completely appreciate we’re all different and they may have mixed feelings about the whole thing, maybe they hadn’t known until recently. For me, it’s always been hugely exciting and within 20 minutes of connecting me and DC sibling no. 1 were talking and getting to know each other! It’s been about a month since the 2nd came through and a few days since the 3rd but the last few days have been a bit of a weird feeling. DC sibling no.1 reached out to DC sibling no.3 and they replied to them, but not me yet.

Again, I completely appreciate that I am very spoilt for choice and I’m really lucky to even have 3 names known. I just can’t understand why they aren’t as excited as me lol. I’ve been struggling to sleep at the moment, waiting and hoping for an email to come through. Just wanted to get it off my chest!

I also just wanted to say thank you to everyone on this sub - throughout the years when I have had conflicting thoughts, feelings and emotions that have arisen on my DC journey, this sub has always been a clutch for me so I feel less alone, so thank you.

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