This is a place to come if you are thinking of -- or have had -- a baby through a donor.  I did, 22 years ago, and it's taken me about that long to believe I am truly his mother.  An experience with a college roommate freshman year who was a drug dealer convinced me that I am. 

I've recently published a memoir about my experience, "Counterfeit Mother," about finally believing I am his mother, counterfeit-mother.com.

Please let me know how you are feeling.  This is such a common experience for those of us who had gone through childbirth this way.  And the happy ending?  You love him like yours, from the beginning.

 

 

 

     I'd like to tell you about how I became a mother. Not in the usual way. I used a donor. Now, this is not something that's all that unusual today. But my story is about how long it took for me to feel like his “real” mother.   

    As women are having children older and older, many, like me, are having to turn to donors to conceive.  From 2000 to 2010, the annual number of donor egg cycles increased, from 10,801 to 18,306, according to the National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine.

     And 68% of women over 44 who tried to get pregnant (I was 47) used donor eggs in 2018, according to the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, dedicated to the practice of in-vitro fertilization.  

      A recent University of Cambridge study showed that scientists found “subtle yet meaningful differences” in the ways egg donor mothers interacted with their children, compared to mothers who had children using their own eggs.

     Another study in 2021 found that women who got pregnant this way had a very hard time establishing their identities as their child’s mother.

       I never felt Phillip moving inside me. Four other women in my department at work were all pregnant at the same time.  They raved about how their babies were kicking and stretching and waking them up.  I never felt any of this.  Is it because I wasn’t pregnant the “right” way?  (The reality is, he was swimming in so much amniotic fluid that I never so much as felt a splash.)

       But I did feel like I finally joined the club.  A mother.  I can't tell you the number of people who asked how old my grandson was. Even though so many of us are doing it later in life, you still get looks of disapproval. I admit it was weird receiving my first social security check as my son graduated from high school.

     You think about death differently too. I'm a cancer survivor, as is my husband, and I've never really worried about dying.  Of course, we all do but that seemed so far off in the future. These are things you don't think about when you're finally, joyfully pregnant at 47.

     Which brings us back to the donor. I didn't tell many people that's how our son came into our lives, though they probably could guess, looking at my dark brown hair and skin and his platinum curls and skin pale as milk.  

     He's the spitting image of my husband, and that hurt in the beginning. He sat through most of my c-section like he was at a ballgame.  Then Phillip cried, and “He got the donor’s nose,” he exults (he’s never liked his), and I feel a little stab in my heart, something I will feel every time someone comments on their likeness. 

Five of the women in my department at work were pregnant along with me.   They all raved about how their babies were kicking and stretching and waking them up.  I never felt any of this.  Is it because I wasn’t pregnant the “right” way?  But the reality is, he was swimming in so much amniotic fluid that I never so much as felt a splash. 

I always felt he was the donor’s child.  His fingers were long and slender?  His father’s.  His ability to smash a tennis ball?  His father.  His genius at math.  His father.  Well, his father’s mother.  I didn’t want to think about what came from the donor.

The night after he was born is a haze of painkillers and a crashing thunderstorm. Car alarms go off under my window, but I just want to sleep. Then a nurse wakes me and asks if I’ve been tested for strep. 

“I don’t think so,” I say, struggling to come up from the haze. “Your baby stopped breathing,” she says.  When I wake up, I wonder if it was a dream.  The nurse who brings me breakfast says, in the kindest way possible, that Phillip might have to go to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. There’s a problem with his heart. 

I don’t visit Phillip all day, though the nurses bring him to me for his bottle. I hold him but feel very far away. I am determined not to get too attached if he’s going to die.

A young, single friend comes to visit.  “So, what’s his name?”

“Phillip Randle Hirsch,” and it’s the first time I feel a lick of ownership.  “Randle” is my mother’s maiden name. 

Later that afternoon, almost as the sun is setting, the nurse comes to me with good news. The doctor has just circumcised the baby and he would not have done that if there was any chance Phillip wasn’t going to be all right.  It was a small hole in his heart, between the major vein and artery.  It’s not uncommon in newborns.  But would this have happened with his biological mother?

What I feel for this baby is love, certainly, love.  But it’s almost like I’m feeling it for  someone else’s child, a niece or a nephew. 

They keep bringing me this baby who now will not latch on.  We have no choice but to switch to a bottle with formula—he has to eat.  I even work with a lactation consultant. But still, no latching. Can he tell I’m not his real mother? I feel it again when I can’t pump.

But what is a mother?  People tell me it’s more than genes.  I see mothers who look just like their children and I’m not sure they love their children more, but it’s been hard to really believe that I am Phillip’s true mother. 

And yet.  When you are about to turn three, there’s a boy at daycare with disabilities, possibly autism. “Everyone is mean to him,” you tell me. “Well, you be nice to him. You teach them,” I say. A couple of weeks later, I see you and Alex together, sitting under a tree, drawing with acorns in the dusty soil. “Phillip,” Alex says.  It is one of the words he’s learned to say this summer.

You may not have my genes, but I am molding you.  That’s what a mother is.