If you need help having a baby, reproductive technology can supply the answer. But it also raises a host of questions that won’t arise until after the child is born: What will you say to “Where did I come from?” when the answer includes a donor or surrogate? Will knowing the truth about how you conceived make your child love you less? Will having a baby with someone else strain your relationship with your spouse or partner? What will grandparents, family members, friends, and coworkers think? Dr. Diane Ehrensaft--a developmental and clinical psychologist who’s worked with families formed using assisted reproductive technology for more than 20 years--helps you anticipate the big questions and find solutions that are right for you and your loved ones. Dr. Ehrensaft offers information, support, and straightforward advice for coping with private worries, confronting public prejudices, and raising happy, healthy children. Single or married, straight or gay, anyone looking forward to the joys and challenges of building a family with the help of a donor or surrogate will discover a wealth of thought-provoking ideas and fresh insights in this sensitive, practical, and positive book.

Drawing on the experiences of parents, offspring and donors and including her own and her family's story, this thought-provoking and informative book explores the process of donor conception. From finding out about an infertility problem, to considering whether - and how - to tell the children about their conception, and how those children feel as the adult offspring of a donor, she provides practical suggestions as well as in-depth consideration of the emotional and ethical issues involved. Lorbach takes the reader step-by-step through the process of deciding to use donor conception, choosing a donor, and discussing the decision with others - and considers the perspective of the donor alongside those of parents and offspring. Tackling difficult subjects such as disclosure and offspring's access to information about the donor, this important book is a much-needed resource for health, counseling and social work professionals as well as for the couples and families themselves.

Having Your Baby Through Egg Donation is a helpful, authoritative guide to negotiating the complex and emotive issues that arise for those considering whether or not to pursue egg donation. It presents information clearly and with compassion, exploring the practical, financial, logistical, social and ethical questions that commonly arise. This fully updated second edition also includes recent developments in the field, including travelling for egg donation and the emerging field of epigenetics. This book will be valued by all those considering or undergoing donor conception, as well as the range of professionals who support them, including infertility counsellors, psychologists, therapists and social workers.

In Surrogacy and Embryo, Sperm, & Egg Donation: What Were You Thinking?, an attorney who practices exclusively in reproductive law shares her expert guidance for those ready to create a family via third-party reproduction. Theresa Erickson, managing partner of Erickson Law, APLC, and the Founder and Chair of Conceptual Options, The Surrogacy and Egg Donation Center, educates and guides parents, surrogates, egg donors, sperm donors, and embryo donors through fertility, infertility, IVF, and third-party reproduction. Erickson includes a glossary of terms, a list of recommended reading for both parents and their children, and legal forms while covering a multitude of relatable topics such as the: Top ten myths of third-party family building History of reproduction technologies Ways to begin the process Ethical and legal issues Questions to ask when building a family the nontraditional way Methods to select a physician and attorney Four fertility options Infertility is a global tragedy that no one should have to endure alone. This guidebook provides valuable information for anyone ready to embark on the journey of becoming parents through third-party reproduction.

The ready availability of donated sperm and eggs has made possible an entirely new form of family. Children of the same donor and their families, with the help of the internet, can now locate each other and make contact. Sometimes this network of families form meaningful connections that blossom into longstanding groups, and close friendships. This book is about unprecedented families that have grown up at the intersection of new reproductive technologies, social media and the human desire for belonging. Random Families asks: Do shared genes make you a family? What do couples do when they discover that their children shares half their DNA with a dozen or more other offspring from the same sperm donor? What do kids find in common with their donor siblings? What becomes of these chance networks once parents and donor siblings find one another? Based on over 350 interviews with children (ages 10-28) and their parents from all over the U.S., Random Families chronicles the chain of choices that couples and single mothers make from what donor to use to how to participate (or not) in donor sibling networks. Children reveal their understanding of a donor, the donor's spot on the family tree and the meaning of their donor siblings. Through rich first-person accounts of network membership, the book illustrates how these extraordinary relationships -- woven from bits of online information and shared genetic ties -- are transformed into new possibilities for kinship. Random Families offers down-to-earth stories from real families to highlight just how truly distinctive these contemporary new forms of family are.

Let's Talk About Egg Donation was written by, for, and about families built through egg and embryo donation. It takes the reader on a journey--from infertility diagnosis, to pregnancy, to how to talk to your child about egg donation. Let's Talk About Egg Donation tells true stories of real families who are parenting via egg and embryo donation. Their stories are woven throughout the book to craft an informative, easy-to-read narrative that focuses on positive language choices. This is the first book written by parents through egg donation that gives you age-appropriate scripts for how to take the scary out of talking to your kids about the special way in which they were conceived.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Each year, tens of thousands of children are conceived with donated gametes (sperm or eggs). By some estimates, there are over one million donor-conceived people in the United States and, of course, many more the world over. Some know they are donor-conceived. Some do not. Some know the identity of their donors. Others never will. Questions about what donor-conceived people should know about their genetic progenitors are hugely significant for literally millions of people, including donor-conceived people, their parents, and donors. But the practice of gamete donation also provides a vivid occasion for thinking about questions that matter to everyone. What is the value of knowing who your genetic progenitors are? How are our identities bound up with knowing where we come from? What obligations do parents have to their children? And what makes someone a parent in the first place? In Conceiving People: Identity, Genetics and Gamete Donation, Daniel Groll argues that people who plan to create a child with donated gametes should choose a donor whose identity will be made available to the resulting child. This is not, Groll argues, because having genetic knowledge is fundamentally important. Rather, it is because donor-conceived people are likely to develop a significant interest in having genetic knowledge and parents must help satisfy their children's significant interests. In other words, because a donor-conceived person is likely to care about having genetic knowledge, their parents should care too.

No federal law in the United States requires that egg or sperm donors or recipients exchange any information with the offspring that result from the donation. Donors typically enter into contracts with fertility clinics or sperm banks which promise them anonymity. The parents may know the donor’s hair color, height, IQ, college, and profession; they may even have heard the donor’s voice. But they don’t know the donor’s name, medical history, or other information that might play a key role in a child’s development. And, until recently, donor-conceived offspring typically didn’t know that one of their biological parents was a donor. But the secrecy surrounding the use of donor eggs and sperm is changing. And as it does, increasing numbers of parents and donor-conceived offspring are searching for others who share the same biological heritage. When donors, recipients, and “donor kids” find each other, they create new forms of families that exist outside of the law. The New Kinship details how families are made and how bonds are created between families in the brave new world of reproductive technology. Naomi Cahn, a nationally-recognized expert on reproductive technology and the law, shows how these new kinship bonds dramatically exemplify the ongoing cultural change in how we think about family. The issues Cahn explores in this book will resonate with anyone—and everyone—who has struggled with questions of how to define themselves in connection with their own biological, legal, or social families.

Drawing on the experiences of hundreds of real parents and the expertise of doctors, midwives and other birth and baby pros, this indispensable resource is filled with the most accurate and up-to-date information about having and caring for a baby, including: Decisions, Decisions: A judgment-free breakdown of every major choice, including prenatal testing, natural vs. medical childbirth, circumcision, breast or bottle feeding, and work/life options The Endless No: What not to eat, take, and do when you’re pregnant-get the real facts behind the prohibitions I Want My Life Back: Anxiety, regret, ambivalence, and other rarely discussed postpartum emotions Parents and partners: A look beyond the one-size-fits-all approach to family, with strategies for minimizing perfect-parent pressure and managing your real-life relationships through the changes Sorting Through the Voices: A user-friendly guide to the dueling gurus, trendy techniques, and conflicting theories that confuse new parents A forward-thinking book that includes a wide range of voices and approaches, From the Hips reflects the many ways of being pregnant and parenting without suggesting that there is one right way.