Name: Liz
Born: 1975
Where Conceived: Dr R Newill, Harley Street
On 7th July 2023 (aged 48), during at a hospital appointment with my Mum and her dementia consultant:
Dr: Do you have any questions?
Me: I was wondering, as Mum has Alzheimer’s and Dad has Frontal Lobe Dementia and Parkinsons, what are the genetic implications and risks for myself and my son?
Mum: Oh, don’t worry, you won’t get it. Your Dad isn’t your Dad.
And that’s how I learnt that I was a DCP. It was a demonstration of the progress of Mums dementia, that she was finally revealing it. The woman who had never been able to keep a secret in her life, who told everyone about my first period and the date of my driving test, had somehow managed to gate-keep information which belongs to me, for almost half a century.
I will never forget the consultants face, his mouth forming a perfect O and his eyebrows disappearing into his hairline. There was nothing except the consultant, looking increasingly uncomfortable, and my Mums voice explaining that Dad is “like Uncle Fred”. It took minutes to extrapolate from her euphemisms that she meant Dad is infertile.
Mum begged me not to tell Dad that I knew, that he only agreed to it on the condition that I must never know. The most important thing was not to emasculate Dad. My initial instinct was to protect the consultant’s embarrassment, and I told Mum it didn’t matter. I just wanted to escape.
From day one, I kept a diary. My first entry says “I was turkey basted into existence from a stranger and no-one thought to tell me”. My birth certificate lists Dad as my Dad, which feels dishonest. Does it constitute fraud?
Mum didn’t remember much, beyond believing he was a medical student, and that she asked for a blond-haired blue-eyed man. The subject was so alien I didn’t even know which search terms to use. I found the DCR, which post-dated my conception by decades and offered little resource for my situation. By degrees, I found reports and articles, mostly aimed at families conceiving now, or centred the rising risk to sperm donors’ anonymity as the main feature.
I read books, reviewed research and learnt to check the small print on genetic health kits. But I also kept asking myself if it really mattered? Wasn’t my being here and having loving parents the most important fact? As a family we had rubbed along in supportive disharmony, ignoring our differences for the most part. I had learned to present the version of myself that my parents seemed to want me to be. In my youth, a boyfriend commented that I was the antithesis of my parents and was I sure I wasn’t a changeling? My parents quickly manipulated him out of my life. But with Mums revelation, my childhood had disappeared into a sink hole. We shared a family house with my maternal grandparents and they knew everything. Every memory became tainted by the knowledge that my childhood world was one big conspiracy about me and everyone who populated that world knew. I felt like a dirty secret.
Just 6 weeks after Mum told me, I watched the Netflix documentary “Our Father”. My reaction to it was visceral and it spurred me on to send off a DNA test. I was already troubled by the eugenics aspect Mum had mentioned, now I was alert to much bigger risks.
I took a deep breath and chose to tell my in-laws first. Saying it out loud was, very briefly, a cathartic experience. But they asked me “what difference does it really make? Aren’t you just making it into a stick to beat yourself with?” I was crushed. Eventually I took another deep breath and asked my ex-husband if he’d consider doing a DNA test, in the best interests of our son. He didn’t believe me. A friend asked how it’s any different from an unknown one-night stand type conception, or being the result of an affair? My answer, that these weren’t transactional conceptions and likely don’t leave anyone feeling like a traded commodity, was met with silence.
Defending my right to know my origins and my identity quickly became exhausting. It took me months to tell anyone else. Now I don’t mention donor conception to most people. I say I’ve learned Dad is not my biological father and it was a shock to find this out. If people push for more information, I say that’s my parents’ part of the story to tell, not mine.
Less than three months on from Mum telling me, Ancestory.com matched me with 3 DC half-sisters. I don’t call them half-sisters; they are simply my sisters. Whilst knowing little about each other, I immediately felt supported and a sense of belonging. They are the blessing which has come out of the duplicity. One shares a birth date with me and we just celebrated our joint 50th Birthday. Another had already discovered the sperm donor’s identity, and was in early tentative contact with him. I met with him, alongside her, a year later. Two others have elected not to meet him. His family have given their blessing for “occasional contact”, although his own children have no interest in a relationship with us.
He seems pleasant, if a little reserved. He says he views himself as a supportive uncle type figure; not overly present in our lives, but pleased to be able to share them a little and offer insight into his own. We share many interests, but seem to come at them from different angles – shared passions for art, reading and theatre but totally different tastes; we wonder if this is where nature & nurture collide? As a retired doctor (he was the medical student he was purported to be) he seems to have an almost scientific interest in us and I feel a little like he may be reviewing the results of an experiment?
18 months in, I dislike the term “Sperm Donor”. Nothing was donated or altruistic in my case. I call him the “sperm contributor” in my head. I still wake up worrying that I may’ve slept with my brother or cousin and that my son may be genetically compromised. I still can’t get a clear legal answer if my birth certificate is fraudulent. Mum and Dad are still my Mum and Dad, but now they are the parents who lied to me and our relationship is irreparably damaged. I still feel like a dirty secret.
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