I watched a documentary on Amazon Streaming the other day (free with Prime) called "Adopted." It follows two different stories: an adult Korean-born woman who was adopted into a white American family at the age of 4 months, and a white American couple in the process of adopting a baby girl from China.
I like reading blogs and watching documentaries that feature adoptees. While my brother Dante is the only adoptee I've been close to, we were never close enough to talk about it. I knew almost nothing about adoption before I found my biological father. What I think interests me most about adoption -- or, more accurately, adoptees -- is that, while it's distinctly different from my donor conception, a lot of adoptees and donor conceived people seem to share a lot of the same feelings of genetic bewilderment, wanting to know where they came from, and wanting people to stop telling them they should be grateful to be alive.
I know a fair number of donor conceived people who feel adoption is different primarily because the children exist before the "intended parents" find them, unlike in donor conception, but the more I read, the more I believe children (and often mothers) are commodified in adoption just like in donor conception. Most adopted children are not actually "saved" from some unspeakable fate (though some people like my mother like to tell them they were). The bigger difference, as far as I can see, is not between intent but between how many biological ties are broken at birth, and in some cases of donor conception and surrogacy, all biological ties are broken just as in a typical adoption. Lines start to blur. We have a lot in common. There are very few blogs by donor conceived people that have been updated in recent years, so I read adoptee blogs and breathe a sigh of relief that someone else gets it. Someone more daring than me is blogging the outrage I'm afraid to show.
I enjoyed the "Adopted" documentary. I don't share much in common with Jennifer, the Korean-American adoptee, but I related to her. She grew up with white parents who had been raised "not to see race" and refused to recognize that she was any different from them, as well as classmates who mocked her for her physically Asian qualities. As I've heard many transracial adoptees say, she felt white. She wanted her outsides to match her insides. She wanted blue eyes and blond hair and felt somewhat bewildered looking into the mirror as she grew up. As a white donor-conceived woman who has experienced this phenomenon -- aspects of my face and body looking "off" because I can't place them in the context of my family, long before I knew this was a phenomenon that existed -- I can only imagine how Jennifer must have felt. As she got older and attended a high school where she wasn't the only Asian student, she tried to pass as a "real Asian" since her new friends wouldn't immediately know she hadn't been raised in an Asian family. When she reached adulthood, she even moved to Korea for a time, but still she did not fit in. In Korea, where she'd been born, she was too American.
My best friend Jerry and I were talking about "Adopted" when she mentioned the fact that no one ever feels like they fit in -- that the very idea of fitting in is a fantasy that only makes people sad, like finding the meaning of life or finding one's soulmate. While I agree with her to a certain extent, I think there are different levels of Not Fitting In that we experience. I don't feel like I fit in most places or with most people -- I think I'm pretty common in this -- but I've got this Great White Halloween Costume I wear everyday that usually makes it look like I do. I think my problem is less serious in part simply because it's less visible. I don't expect everyone with "costumes" like mine to feel that way, but blending in has always meant a lot to me. I've been in situations in which I stood out uncomfortably because of my race, and I've been in situations (most situations) in which I blended, and having the option to blend in simply by changing my clothes or hair or behavior -- whether or not I feel like I fit in -- makes a pretty huge difference. This is only one of the struggles facing transracial adoptees, and it didn't even occur to me it existed until I started reading blogs in which people talk about it.
A lot of parents take their children's life challenges as personal insults. As a parent, I get that. It's annoying though, both for parent and child. It makes parents defensive and children either angry or overprotective of their parents' feelings or both. It creates an unhelpful barrier to communication. Jennifer wanted validation from her adoptive parents, who she loved and cherished and cared for both physically and financially, but they seemed to treat her problems as a transracial and transnational adoptee as made up problems she'd invented to garner attention and pity. What did she want them to do about it now? They'd done the best they could. They'd been raised not to see race and they never saw her as any different from them. How could she ask for any more than that? And these were good parents. Loving, adoptive parents.
I got the impression what might have helped was if they'd recognized that any daughter who loved them and cared for them as much as theirs always had was not baring her soul to hurt them. She loved her parents and wanted to feel seen by them in her entirety. She wanted them to understand and love her for all of who she was, and that included being Korean and an adoptee and not just a chameleon who could and would change who she was to gain their approval. I get that. I'm a chameleon too. I think it might have meant a lot if they'd said, "I had no idea. I'm sorry you've felt so much pain. I did the best I could, and it's hard to hear you felt this way, but I understand that you didn't have the words to express these feelings earlier. Thank you for trusting me with this now. I've always loved you as my daughter, and it didn't occur to me that you might still feel adopted or want to know about where you came from. Is there anything I can do to help?" Empathy is important. Validation is 50% of every cure.
Showing posts with label embryo adoption. Show all posts
Showing posts with label embryo adoption. Show all posts
Friday, March 18, 2016
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Why Doesn't Juliana Look Like Her Parents?
One of my fears leading up to my daughter's birth was that she would accidentally be switched in the hospital and I would only realize it after months or years, when I'd have to decide whether to continue raising the baby I knew or to trade her for my biological baby who grew in my womb. That sounds like a terrifying sort of Sophie's Choice to me, and people like to make TV shows and movies about it, so I worried about it. As far as I can tell, newborn babies look more like each other than they resemble their parents, so I spent the first few weeks of Eliza's life staring into her tiny alien face, looking for someone familiar. Thankfully, after a few weeks, she started to resemble both my husband and myself, and my worries abated. Sometimes people say, "She looks exactly like Michael," but people most often say, "She looks like a perfect blend of her mom and dad!"
No one says that about Juliana.
Juliana was born the same year as Eliza. She is the daughter of my college friends Julio and Isabella. Julio and Isabella look a lot alike, with the same medium pink complexion and dark brown eyes and dark brown hair, so it came as a surprise to their Facebook friends (and probably their families, but I only see their exchanges on Facebook) when they started posting photos of the startlingly pale Juliana. "She's beautiful, Julio! Whose eyes are those?" people asked, referring to the bright blue color that never faded to brown. "Love those golden curls! Where did she get that hair?" they continue to post. Julio doesn't acknowledge the questions except to occasionally post links to articles explaining how two brown-eyed people can have a blue-eyed child.
He is right, of course. Genetics is far more complex than our seventh grade science classes led us to believe. It is entirely possible for two brown-eyed people to have a blue-eyed child. Still, if there is one thing I've learned from being donor conceived, it's that children inherit features from their parents. When they look nothing like one or both parents, there tends to be a reason. And Juliana looks nothing like her parents.
Here are all the possibilities that went through my head:
1) Maybe they used a sperm donor. After all, Isabella has curly hair too, and Juliana smiles sort of like her. They don't look particularly related, but that doesn't mean they aren't.
2) An affair? I don't believe this though. I include it in the list because it's possible in the most literal sense of the word, but I give it a 0.5% likelihood tops.
3) Maybe Julio and Isabella used IVF and used gamete donors or "embryo adoption," or one of their gametes or the entire embryo got switched with someone else's. I would put more weight behind this possibility if it had taken longer after their wedding for them to get pregnant. I currently have no reason to believe they used IVF at all.
4) Maybe Juliana was switched with another baby at the hospital. ::shudder::
5) Maybe a variety of mutations and long dormant traits have caused Juliana to look different from her parents, despite being their biological daughter. She doesn't appear to have any sort of albinism, but something like that might at least explain the difference in coloring, though not the difference in her other features.
About a year and a half ago, Julio and Isabella announced that they were expecting their second child. I waited anxiously to see what she would look like in a way I wouldn't admit to people I know in real life. I wonder if anyone else was doing the same. If she resembled Juliana, I felt I could rule out the "switched at birth" scenario, which I personally think is the most scary and upsetting. If she looked like Juliana, either they were using a donor who was passing on a lot of physical characteristics, or they were somehow passing their long dormant traits along themselves. Though I admit "long dormant traits" are something I stopped believing in when I found photos of my biological father.
Emilia was born a few months ago. She is beautiful. She has both her parents' dark brown hair and eyes. Her face looks so much like a tiny, fat version of Julio's that it makes me laugh. There is no question of who her parents are or where she inherited her features. Juliana stands out more than ever now.
As much as I wonder what the truth is behind how Juliana came to be Juliana, I hope she doesn't take a DNA test before she is eighteen because I feel 86% certain Julio and Isabella are not her biological parents, and I feel 75% sure they believe they are, in spite of any nagging thoughts that might linger at the backs of their minds, and nagging questions from oblivious and sometimes tactless friends on Facebook. I am afraid there is another little girl who was born on or around the same day at that same hospital in Queens, who has beautiful dark brown eyes and hair and doesn't blend in with any of the strawberry blond, Irish-looking people in her family. And I hope none of those parents have to come to terms with the realization that their biological daughter -- the one who inherited their looks and some of their personality and some of their mannerisms and intelligence -- is living in someone else's home and calling someone else "Mommy." If there were such another little girl and they found out she existed, then all the parents involved would have to figure out what to do about that. At eighteen, I feel like the girls will be grown and probably in college and able to associate with whomever they choose -- ideally all four of their parents. It wouldn't make coming to terms with the truth any easier for them -- harder probably, based on every person I know who has found out hidden truths about their parentage -- but at least it would be more an existential problem than a logistical one at that point.
Of course, if she is DC and they are simply hiding it from everyone, I hope she finds out sooner rather than later. Because if there isn't another little girl in another house, there won't be the question of where Juliana will live or who her "real" parents are, even if Julio and Isabella aren't biologically related to her. If she is donor conceived, Juliana will have to deal with the brunt of that reality alone because she is the only one who will have lost family in that equation.
Unless of course the IVF accidental embryo switch scenario is the one that happened, in which case Julio and Isabella's biological child might exist somewhere else, born sometime else to someone else, and they will never find her or even know if she exists unless she takes a mass market DNA test. Now I can't decide which scenario sounds worse.
No one says that about Juliana.
Juliana was born the same year as Eliza. She is the daughter of my college friends Julio and Isabella. Julio and Isabella look a lot alike, with the same medium pink complexion and dark brown eyes and dark brown hair, so it came as a surprise to their Facebook friends (and probably their families, but I only see their exchanges on Facebook) when they started posting photos of the startlingly pale Juliana. "She's beautiful, Julio! Whose eyes are those?" people asked, referring to the bright blue color that never faded to brown. "Love those golden curls! Where did she get that hair?" they continue to post. Julio doesn't acknowledge the questions except to occasionally post links to articles explaining how two brown-eyed people can have a blue-eyed child.
He is right, of course. Genetics is far more complex than our seventh grade science classes led us to believe. It is entirely possible for two brown-eyed people to have a blue-eyed child. Still, if there is one thing I've learned from being donor conceived, it's that children inherit features from their parents. When they look nothing like one or both parents, there tends to be a reason. And Juliana looks nothing like her parents.
Here are all the possibilities that went through my head:
1) Maybe they used a sperm donor. After all, Isabella has curly hair too, and Juliana smiles sort of like her. They don't look particularly related, but that doesn't mean they aren't.
2) An affair? I don't believe this though. I include it in the list because it's possible in the most literal sense of the word, but I give it a 0.5% likelihood tops.
3) Maybe Julio and Isabella used IVF and used gamete donors or "embryo adoption," or one of their gametes or the entire embryo got switched with someone else's. I would put more weight behind this possibility if it had taken longer after their wedding for them to get pregnant. I currently have no reason to believe they used IVF at all.
4) Maybe Juliana was switched with another baby at the hospital. ::shudder::
5) Maybe a variety of mutations and long dormant traits have caused Juliana to look different from her parents, despite being their biological daughter. She doesn't appear to have any sort of albinism, but something like that might at least explain the difference in coloring, though not the difference in her other features.
About a year and a half ago, Julio and Isabella announced that they were expecting their second child. I waited anxiously to see what she would look like in a way I wouldn't admit to people I know in real life. I wonder if anyone else was doing the same. If she resembled Juliana, I felt I could rule out the "switched at birth" scenario, which I personally think is the most scary and upsetting. If she looked like Juliana, either they were using a donor who was passing on a lot of physical characteristics, or they were somehow passing their long dormant traits along themselves. Though I admit "long dormant traits" are something I stopped believing in when I found photos of my biological father.
Emilia was born a few months ago. She is beautiful. She has both her parents' dark brown hair and eyes. Her face looks so much like a tiny, fat version of Julio's that it makes me laugh. There is no question of who her parents are or where she inherited her features. Juliana stands out more than ever now.
As much as I wonder what the truth is behind how Juliana came to be Juliana, I hope she doesn't take a DNA test before she is eighteen because I feel 86% certain Julio and Isabella are not her biological parents, and I feel 75% sure they believe they are, in spite of any nagging thoughts that might linger at the backs of their minds, and nagging questions from oblivious and sometimes tactless friends on Facebook. I am afraid there is another little girl who was born on or around the same day at that same hospital in Queens, who has beautiful dark brown eyes and hair and doesn't blend in with any of the strawberry blond, Irish-looking people in her family. And I hope none of those parents have to come to terms with the realization that their biological daughter -- the one who inherited their looks and some of their personality and some of their mannerisms and intelligence -- is living in someone else's home and calling someone else "Mommy." If there were such another little girl and they found out she existed, then all the parents involved would have to figure out what to do about that. At eighteen, I feel like the girls will be grown and probably in college and able to associate with whomever they choose -- ideally all four of their parents. It wouldn't make coming to terms with the truth any easier for them -- harder probably, based on every person I know who has found out hidden truths about their parentage -- but at least it would be more an existential problem than a logistical one at that point.
Of course, if she is DC and they are simply hiding it from everyone, I hope she finds out sooner rather than later. Because if there isn't another little girl in another house, there won't be the question of where Juliana will live or who her "real" parents are, even if Julio and Isabella aren't biologically related to her. If she is donor conceived, Juliana will have to deal with the brunt of that reality alone because she is the only one who will have lost family in that equation.
Unless of course the IVF accidental embryo switch scenario is the one that happened, in which case Julio and Isabella's biological child might exist somewhere else, born sometime else to someone else, and they will never find her or even know if she exists unless she takes a mass market DNA test. Now I can't decide which scenario sounds worse.
Thursday, July 2, 2015
Weird "Donor Conceived" Plot Ideas
People talk a lot about the danger of donor conceived people who are unwittingly half-siblings getting married and/or having children together. I don't think that is the weirdest thing that could happen. Here are some story ideas I have:
1) Incest Schmincest
A woman grows up knowing she was conceived with anonymous donor sperm. As she gets older, she decides she wants to conceive her own child with anonymous donor sperm. Unwittingly chooses her biological father to be the donor (she intentionally went to a different cryo bank than her mother, but he donated all over the place) and births her own half-sibling. Only finds out the truth later when DNA testing in an attempt to find each of their fathers gets super confusing.
2) Snowflake
A child created through embryo adoption takes an autosomal DNA test and has a 100% genetic match with another person in the database. Immediately assumes he is a clone. Then wonders if his future self traveled back in time to contact him. Ultimately finds out he was part of a fertilized egg that split in two and that he has an identical twin brother old enough to be his grandfather (this would have to take place several decades in the future obviously, simply because we don't have any frozen embryos that old yet). They meet up and cause twin shenanigans in spite of the age difference. It's kind of sad though because he finds out his biological parents and multiple other siblings all lived together as a family and that most of them died before he was born. Spoiler: The kid goes all Chuck Palahniuk on the storyline and blows up the cryo bank in a confusion-fueled rage, only for his much older and -- surprise! -- dying identical twin to voluntarily take the fall. And he can because they have DNA evidence linking him to the crime scene!
3) Snowflake 2 -- The Avalanche Begins
A law passes in the US stating that, because life begins at conception, all embryos have a right to be born. Women in need of money in this dystopian future sign up to be gestational surrogates to the thousands (millions?) of cryogenically frozen embryos currently in storage, some of which were abandoned nearly a hundred years ago. The "snowflake children" are simultaneously seen as a solution to the dwindling number of newborns up for adoption, and they are doled out to waiting families, foster homes, and orphanages. Some might be sold on eBay. I'm not sure where this plot would go, but it would have to follow one of the snowflakes as an adult or it would be just too sad and awful to be endured. This one has a very Brave New World / Children of Men vibe to me.
4) The Twin Project
Scientists discover how to make fertilized eggs split, creating sets of identical twin embryos in petri dishes (this can't be manipulated yet, can it? I'm under the impression it currently just happens when it happens). The doctors at one Assisted Reproductive Technology center do this with every fertilized egg created for IVF, implanting one of the embryos in the intended mother and freezing its twin to be sold through embryo adoption. Basically a few years pass and lots of people find out they have identical twins in other families. We also find out some of the sets of twins were kept by the hospital and used for research, hence the name. If you want to get just a shade darker of a plot than this, read Never Let Me Go. It's actually about cloning, but it hit home for me in a lot of ways as a DC adult, and it's a beautifully written book.
I think #4 is the only one we don't currently have the technology to make happen (I don't think we do anyway). It's actually possible #1 has already happened in the US and no one knows yet. It may not be likely, but I think the fact that there is no record keeping preventing it is food for thought. Can a woman even request her DNA be tested against her chosen donor sperm before insemination to ensure they aren't closely related? That should come up in one of those comedy films about donors having hundreds of offspring -- the prolific donor who has kept his secret so well finds out his sister's child was conceived via anonymous sperm donor too and it's his!
1) Incest Schmincest
A woman grows up knowing she was conceived with anonymous donor sperm. As she gets older, she decides she wants to conceive her own child with anonymous donor sperm. Unwittingly chooses her biological father to be the donor (she intentionally went to a different cryo bank than her mother, but he donated all over the place) and births her own half-sibling. Only finds out the truth later when DNA testing in an attempt to find each of their fathers gets super confusing.
2) Snowflake
A child created through embryo adoption takes an autosomal DNA test and has a 100% genetic match with another person in the database. Immediately assumes he is a clone. Then wonders if his future self traveled back in time to contact him. Ultimately finds out he was part of a fertilized egg that split in two and that he has an identical twin brother old enough to be his grandfather (this would have to take place several decades in the future obviously, simply because we don't have any frozen embryos that old yet). They meet up and cause twin shenanigans in spite of the age difference. It's kind of sad though because he finds out his biological parents and multiple other siblings all lived together as a family and that most of them died before he was born. Spoiler: The kid goes all Chuck Palahniuk on the storyline and blows up the cryo bank in a confusion-fueled rage, only for his much older and -- surprise! -- dying identical twin to voluntarily take the fall. And he can because they have DNA evidence linking him to the crime scene!
3) Snowflake 2 -- The Avalanche Begins
A law passes in the US stating that, because life begins at conception, all embryos have a right to be born. Women in need of money in this dystopian future sign up to be gestational surrogates to the thousands (millions?) of cryogenically frozen embryos currently in storage, some of which were abandoned nearly a hundred years ago. The "snowflake children" are simultaneously seen as a solution to the dwindling number of newborns up for adoption, and they are doled out to waiting families, foster homes, and orphanages. Some might be sold on eBay. I'm not sure where this plot would go, but it would have to follow one of the snowflakes as an adult or it would be just too sad and awful to be endured. This one has a very Brave New World / Children of Men vibe to me.
4) The Twin Project
Scientists discover how to make fertilized eggs split, creating sets of identical twin embryos in petri dishes (this can't be manipulated yet, can it? I'm under the impression it currently just happens when it happens). The doctors at one Assisted Reproductive Technology center do this with every fertilized egg created for IVF, implanting one of the embryos in the intended mother and freezing its twin to be sold through embryo adoption. Basically a few years pass and lots of people find out they have identical twins in other families. We also find out some of the sets of twins were kept by the hospital and used for research, hence the name. If you want to get just a shade darker of a plot than this, read Never Let Me Go. It's actually about cloning, but it hit home for me in a lot of ways as a DC adult, and it's a beautifully written book.
I think #4 is the only one we don't currently have the technology to make happen (I don't think we do anyway). It's actually possible #1 has already happened in the US and no one knows yet. It may not be likely, but I think the fact that there is no record keeping preventing it is food for thought. Can a woman even request her DNA be tested against her chosen donor sperm before insemination to ensure they aren't closely related? That should come up in one of those comedy films about donors having hundreds of offspring -- the prolific donor who has kept his secret so well finds out his sister's child was conceived via anonymous sperm donor too and it's his!
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