Free to a Good Home

November 11, 2010 7:05 AM

Mr. Leezie and I are seriously considering donating our remaining frozen embryo from an IVF cycle to an infertile couple through an open adoption. I'm looking for any experiences that anyone has had donating embryos, or receiving them. What are some of the things that we should be thinking about and planning for? Besides the obvious result of our child possibly being out there in the world, what are some ramifications of this decision?
posted by Leezie to human relations (2 answers total)

I'd recommend either asking via Lost and Found Connections or maybe looking at the blogroll and contacting some individuals directly to see what experiences they might have to share (recipients and donors).

If you really want to do this through an open adoption, I'd think through what level of relationship you would want to have, with the child as well as the parents, and how you would feel if you weren't able to achieve that. And if you have other children, how would you handle that aspect.

If your donation did not result in a positive outcome, would you be okay with knowing that?

I don't mean to question it, and I think it's a wonderful gift - I am mainly just thinking through how the open adoption part would work.
posted by mrs. taters at 8:04 AM on November 11, 2010

We are hardcore fans of open adoption in this house, so if you want to donate an embryo, you'll get big cheers from me for doing it that way. I'm assuming you're familiar with open adoption, and are really wondering about what might be different in this situation that you may not have considered.

The thing that occurs to me is that the child born of the donated embryo may wonder about the twist of fate that saw them born into Family A (the recipients) instead of Family B (yours) in the same way a traditionally adopted child typically questions these things, but there are so many books and resources on dealing with that and so much depends on how they build the narrative of their family story anyway.

It's always going to be complicated and rewarding and hard and joyful to watch other people raise this child, but I don't know that I can think of any aspects that are specific to the embryo donation aspect that are not part of open adoption already.
posted by DarlingBri at 8:44 AM on November 11, 2010