Being told that you are a donor child
My parents have never kept the fact that I am donor child a secret from me. When I was very young, they wrote a book for me – about me. It was composed like a goodnight story and a children’s book, and through this book they told me about how I was conceived. They read aloud to me for the first time when I was just 2 years old and since then they read it out loud as a night time story countless amount of times. In the book, my parents shared the story about the kind man who wanted to help them have me. In this way, there has always been a lot of focus on the positive story and that I was a wished-for child, who was born into this world in a very special way.

By having the book read to me again and again, it has been a gradual process in getting to know what it means to be a donor child. The older I got, the more aspects I understood and of course the more I understood, the more questions I had, which my parents were happy to answer. That is why it has never been a shock for me that I was a donor child. It has been a normal part of our family and our everyday life as long as I can remember. I have been incredibly happy about this and I think it has had a big influence on my understanding about being a donor child. I can therefore only advise to be honest from the very beginning.

Having an anonymous donor
Of course I have thought about whether I look like my donor. I think everybody has. That being said, I have never had the need to know more. It has been a curiosity but not a need. At the time when my parents chose a donor, it was not possible to choose an open donor so this has always been the circumstances. I have never been interested in looking him up or knowing his donor number, just like I have never been interested in finding out whether I have any half siblings. I was quite old when I first thought about the fact that there was a possibility that I could have half siblings. My two sisters are both my parents biological children and they are my family and I have not had the need for more than them.

I am sometimes asked if I would like to know the donor’s motive but the answer has always been the same. It isn’t important to me. I will on the other hand be forever grateful to him for wanting to be a donor and I hope he knows how much has helped me and my family. I think about him with gratefulness and in that way he has a place in my life.

Sharing it with the world
I speak about being a donor child very openly. Both because I feel like it makes things easier but also because I felt like my surroundings needed me to. People often don’t understand what it means to be a donor child and ever since elementary school I have told others about being a donor child. As a child, I experienced that other children didn’t understand what it meant – especially because there wasn’t a difference between me and the other children from the outside. I had a mum and a dad – just like everybody else. Even though it was something I explained, I was never teased about it and it has never been something that has been used against me. However, I have experienced that people didn’t believe me, probably because I was so honest about it and didn’t see it as a problem as they might have expected.