Don't Count Your Eggs

"Three person baby"

So I think a better term might be called for here because "three person baby" just sounds... bizarre, but the science behind mitochondrial donation is pretty amazing. 

There's an article on bbc.com today about the first baby born with the DNA of three people. This techniques allows parents to have genetic children and avoid known genetic defects by using the mitochondria of a donor. That's a very, very basic description. 

I think I kind of take all the science stuff for granted until I read something like this and then I take a moment to let my mind be blown away. A cell is microscopic and somehow people much smarter than myself have figured out how to take tiny drops of genetic information and swap it out? I learned a lot about the human reproductive system during my years on IF Island and while I had moments of being amazed at how doctors can create a baby from scratch, my focus was much more on my emotional landscape at the time. But OMG, right? 

People ask, 'what does this mean?' and I think they mean ethically, or for the child born-- What I gather it means is that the baby will have 0.1% of the DNA from a donor and will have dodged some genetic bullets that can be life threatening. But I get that there is more to think about.

When science blows my mind, I often think of my grandma. She passed away just before my sister donated eggs to us and I remember trying to explain the process of IVF and egg donation to her. My grams was very open minded about all of this stuff, but she honestly did not know where babies came from. My grandparents got married, they spent the night together, my grandpa went off to war and nine months later my aunt was born. That's where babies come from. When I tried to explain what a  follicle was and what the injectables were supposed to do and how I was hoping to carry a baby created from my sister and my husband, my grandma thought nothing of it. Her mind was boggled by the science of it, of course, but really all she thought about was when I'd finally have my baby. 

So I guess when I read this stuff I just see the potential and what it can mean for struggling families. It will be exciting to see what the next 10-20 years brings. 

The Language around Non-traditional families

So the other day, I found myself reading a NYT article about the Brangelina split-- I don't read this kind of stuff, like ever-- I hardly have the time to read the mail these days, but I started reading and got stuck on one line about their wedding: "The couple's six children, three of them adopted, attended the bride and groom."

Why was it important for the writer to highlight that three of their children are adopted? Later in the article the writer describes where each of the adopted children are from, which, ok, that I can wrap my head around I guess, but why in this line about their six children being in their wedding, is it important to separate or distinguish or differentiate the adopted kids from the biological kids? They have six kids, right? Do they go around introducing the adopted ones as such, Royal Tenenbaum style? "This is my adopted daughter, Margot?" NO! Of course they don't. So why the need? 

Perhaps there is a certain mentality about traditional families vs. non-traditional families that is in the process of changing but isn't there yet. Even that language I don't like. I have a very traditional family, my child just happens to have come out of my body but not be related to me. Is that what makes us "non-traditional?" 

Finding the right words to describe things that are a little different is kind of a newish thing. Birth mothers, egg donors, sperm providers-- I get it. There can be a lot of cooks in the kitchen these days. But the end result is a child. And where that child comes from doesn't need to be an identifier, does it?  

By the time Momo is a grown up, I really think a lot of these kinks will be resolved. I think non-traditional will be closer to the norm and the more we can all be aware of how we talk about things the easier it will get. Just a few thoughts on a Saturday morning. 

Wishing everyone a beautiful weekend!

Coping with the unknown and unexpected on IF Island

One of the hardest things to deal with on IF Island (and in life) is the unknown. I've written about this before, but the idea of not knowing what to expect in a situation has been coming up for me lately (for example every night I go to bed I have no idea if Momo is going to sleep "like a baby" or like an agitated pterodactyl-- I don't know where I came up with that image but that's what she sounds like sometimes). It's been coming up in other ways too, but in terms of the impact the unexpected or unknown has on IF Island, I think it really is one of the hardest things to wrap your head around.

What will happen during this next cycle or procedure? When will something work? How much longer will our "journey" be? Will we need to move to donors? How will we pay for this? Will this pregnancy last? Should we... Will we...Can we...???????

Most things on IF Island are up in the air. There are no guarantees. There are few refunds or do overs. While doctors are amazing at creating life from scratch, they don't have all the answers. Situations change, the body changes, our own ideas about how to move forward can change-- it's emotionally exhausting. And all we want to know is how and when, right? 

The truth is most things in life are up in the air, we have just created some order, some consistencies, some schedule to help us not feel like things are total chaos. We know how to plan our day, the hours we work, the places we need to be, and when we get thrown a curveball we generally know who to turn to for help or support and how to cope. What many struggle with is being thrown multiple curveballs and not having the same support team or not having coping tools that seem to work for this one. The mind can be very powerful and obsessive, the heart can feel shattered after loss, the spirit can feel batshit crazy jacked up on hormones. It can leave an individual pretty haggard and beat down. 

So what can we do to stay grounded and able to handle the IF Island curveballs?

I'm throwing this one out to the community because I think sharing coping tools can be really helpful. My personal ones were writing, sharing my feelings, yoga and meditation, yelling at my husband, finding a way to be open about how our baby would come to us while setting some boundaries about how long we would endure the lifestyle of an infertile couple, and ice cream. Lots and lots of ice cream. 

Others? How do you cope with the unknown and the unexpected?

What do we want our donor conceived children to know?

I just made a little book for Momo about her very special origin story. I've been thinking about this a lot lately because she is now almost 18 months old and is understanding books and concepts more and more and I wanted to start planting the seeds about the unique way she came to be. The more I thought about it the more complicated it seemed to get-- how do I describe an egg donor and a sperm provider in an age appropriate way? Do I include a photo of the egg donor as a child--that's all I have but it's kind of weird.  What will she really understand? What am I trying to say with this book? 

Once in a while (ha! all the time), my mind gets away from me. It's in these moments I refer back to a poetry assignment I had in the 6th grade called a "Don't Think See" poem, where rather than think and plan and obsess we were instructed to just do it. Write what we see, write whatever comes to mind. So I did that. I sat down with my computer and the zillion pictures I have of Momo and I asked myself what it is I want her to know.

What I came up with was a little photo album about her. It included the things she is into these days (climbing, riding her bike, going to the beach), the people who love her, and a few pages about how she came to be. It was simple. I included a picture of her as a hatching embryo with a caption that read, "Momo (I used her real name though) came into this world in a very special way." And then a Google image pict of sperm and an egg with a caption that read, "Momo was made with the egg and sperm of two kind people who were willing to help Mama and Dada have a baby, because Mama and Dada couldn't make a baby on their own." 

And that's it. There were a few picts of her growing in my belly and then most importantly, pictures of us all together as a family. 

I want Momo to know her story and I want her story to be part of her identity from the get go. But I also don't think that's the most important thing about her. Our fertility journey was a HUGE part of our lives for so long, so it has a lot of weight. But our journey and what we went through to have Momo means very little to her. What matters to her is that she has a little bike she can ride.  That she gets to run on the beach and play at the park. That she can meet other kids and try new foods. That she can learn new words and figure out how different things work.  And most importantly, that she is loved and cared for by us. That's what matters most to her. So the bulk of this little book for her is about her and her interests and hobbies and her family, and a few pages of that book give a shout out to the helpers who allowed us to have her. 

I'm wondering if anyone else who is a parent through third party reproduction has good tips or ways that they have talked to their kids about this? It's nice to hear how different people do things.