Talking With My Kids About Egg Donation

This weeks Motherlode blog by Lisa Belkins in the NYTimes takes on the topic of how to talk to kids about sperm donation.

I thought it was time for an update.My 7yo twin girls were conceived via anonymous egg donor. They have heard me talk about it many times to other adults in my life ie friends, family, and of course the community of third party reproduction and parenting that I am involved in. My kids dont really engage in the conversation about how babies are made or how they specifically came to be very much. When one of them finally did recently, she was making silly jokes, calling the donor ''donut'', something I would never do. I asked her about it when we had a private moment, why were you joking around, would you rather I didnt talk about this, do you have any questions, etc....and she said she doesnt care about the donor and I pressed on because thats also not how we talk at home and I asked does this bother her and she said "No, its just that I'm not ready to talk about it yet." Of course I nearly fell over. (footnote-A few weeks later she very clearly talked about when people are sad because they want a baby and need help from the doctor and jumped up and said, "and a donor"!!) So later the same (donut) day when I had my other daughter alone I asked her the same thing and she said she didnt really want to talk about it either Why not, I asked? She said because she just wants everyone to be happy.

A few weeks prior to this, one of them asked me how they got the sperm from the man to do IVF. I admit to doing pretty badly at trying to answer such an advanced question in technical terms for a 6.5yo.I am definitely getting better at saying things like, I'm not ready to answer that question, or I'm not sure and I have to think about that more to be able to answer you in the best way possible but I really do want to and will try to very soon, ok?

My parenting instruction manual didnt come with an answer for that one but I may have seen that in one of those "Its so amazing '' books about reproduction, written for kids. Back to the library....