Donor Conception Network - Stories
Becky’s Story
My parents separated when I was very young — still a baby — and I was brought up by my mother with very little financial or emotional input from my father, though I did see him regularly throughout my childhood. Nevertheless, by the time I was 18 I had pretty much written him off.
Then, six years ago, I was told I was donor conceived. I was 37 at the time, and the mother of a two-year-old child.
My mother told me about my conception against my father’s wishes. She came into my house in a very agitated state, closed the curtains (someone told me later that that’s what people used to do when someone had died) and told me, just like that. She said afterwards that she had thought it wouldn’t upset me that much, because my relationship with my father had always been a difficult one — I thought you’d be glad not to be his, she said.
In fact, it was a truly shocking moment. I was not glad.
Three things happened simultaneously.
First, there was a revelation: I thought, “That’s why my family are all mad and I’m not.” I’ve thought about that a lot since, and of course they are not mad, nor am I any more sane. But I was acknowledging a sense I had always had of feeling slightly different from my family. I had never acknowledged this feeling of difference before, I’d never named it, or consciously felt it even. And yet there it was.
The second thing that happened, simultaneously, was that my life really did flash before my eyes — again, that’s what people say when they have a near-death experience, and I think that, psychologically, emotionally, that is indeed what it was: I was experiencing the death of a version of myself and, in particular, the death of myself in relation to my father. The death of that relationship.
What flashed before my eyes was a series of episodes from my early life: stories I had been told, and memories I had, about my father. Stories and memories which I had always interpreted as evidence of the fact that my dad didn’t care about me very much. My father, I had been told, did not set eyes on me until I was three weeks old — he was having an affair and simply did not come home.
Or another story: when I was around 2, I had very curly hair. My father — who had straight hair, like my mother — declared my curls “unfashionable” and cut them off. I have photos of myself as a toddler with short, hacked hair.
Suddenly, the minute I was told about my conception, I saw stories like these in a different light. Perhaps the problem wasn’t me, or even him, but something that had come between us — maybe my father simply couldn’t bear the fact that I was another man’s child. This new information cast him in a better light — perhaps he was not so much a selfish man, as a tragic one. Perhaps, even, it was not too late for me and him.
So again, in that instant there was new understanding, another revelation, but it was very painful too — it was like a death.
What had died was a version of me that had a trustworthy mother, a full brother for a sibling, my cousins, aunt and uncle for extended family — and a selfish sod for a dad. In an instant, I had lost the lot: the loving parts of my family, and the only version of my father that I knew.
Which brings me to the third thing that happened in that instant after being told the truth. My third thought, simultaneous again, was this: I have absolutely no one in the world who is related to me apart from Morag, my little girl.
Factually of course, this was rubbish: I still had my brother, though he was now a half not a full sibling; I still had a half-sister (my mum’s child from her second marriage) whose relationship to me was as before. And I still had my mother. But that night, after I was told, I carried my sleeping little girl into my bed and cuddled her all night. Clung to her.
So that was me six years ago: I felt alone and without family. I couldn’t trust anyone, and felt estranged from everyone except my child. I also felt ashamed and humiliated. Like a freak, which I think affected my relationship with my partner. And I carried around with me a terrible sense of loss.
On the day my mother told me that my father wasn’t my father, she followed that immediately by telling me that I would never know who the anonymous donor was. The doctor, a woman called Mary Barton, was dead and she had destroyed all her records before she died. There was to be no search.
As a result, I never harboured a fantasy about meeting my donor, nor did I feel any conscious desire to do so. Not for a second. I was utterly lacking in curiosity about him. Consciously, at least.
Now, here my story gets a little hazy. It is as if there is six months that just didn’t happen — I went to work, and carried on with my life as before, I got pregnant with my second child. In general, I felt OK. But I felt little — and did nothing — about what I had been told. I was in deep shock, I think.
However, at some point I came to, and the first thing I wanted to do was to find out all I could about Mary Barton, the doctor, and to try to meet other donor concieved people. I wanted to make some sense of it.
I got on the internet and typed “Mary Barton” into Google. In amongst thousands of references to some Victorian novel, I found two or three references to Mary Barton’s fertility clinic. A couple were references to back issues of obscure medical journals. One was an interview with a Canadian called John who had been conceived at the clinic and had been trying to trace his donor. I emailed the journalist who had done the interview; she forwarded my email to John; and he emailed me straight back. “Another of Barton’s Brood!” he said, “How exciting!”. He was coming to London in a few weeks; he would love to meet me.
So, within a few hours of trying, I had made contact with another donor-conceived person who had been conceived at the same clinic as I had. That seemed miraculous enough.
It seems even more miraculous now — because John, the first donor-conceived person I ever made contact with, was, I was later to discover, my half-brother.
We met in London, six months or so after my initial discovery. So, my first meeting with a half sibling took place without me knowing that’s what it was. In fact, I met two of them — John bought David along, who — he had discovered was his half brother (and therefore, though we didn’t know it then, mine too). I liked them both very much: they were charming, funny, clever. I felt exhilarated, thrilled by the meeting. We talked and talked and they understood! That was the overriding feeling. Delight in their company and in their empathy.
But even then, at that first meeting there were some tensions. The two of them were very close. They referred to each other as “my brother”. They shared jokes, and exchanged glances. At every opportunity they asserted their relationship: brother, brother, brother. At times, I felt uncomfortable, excluded. A gooseberry.
With hindsight, I think it is interesting that neither they nor I noticed what I now know is obvious — David and I look alike. So much so that when when Olivia [from the DCN} first met me she gasped, “My god! You look just like David!”. But at that first meeting, John and David discussed my looks in relation to the men among Mary Barton’s donors that they had identified: did I have such and such’s nose? No. So and so’s eyes? No. But despite the fact that they were studying my face, neither noticed that I looked like David, who was sitting at the same table, and neither did I. Far from wanting to see that we were half-siblings I think all of us resisted the idea.
At that first meeting, John mentioned the possibility of me having a dna test, but neither they nor I followed it up. I wasn’t ready. Perhaps nor were they.
This meeting was the beginning of a new stage in the whole business for me. I got a therapist, who has been very helpful, and I got to know David. I liked him enormously, we met often, and we talked for hours. I was amazed by how similar our experiences had been, by how much we had in common simply by virtue of the fact that we were both donor conceived (remember, I had no idea at this point that he was my half brother). The shame, the aloneness, started to shift.
Eventually I did a dna test. The DNA process was a long drawn out one, and it was some time before I knew exactly who my siblings were. At first, it appeared that I was related only to John and David. It was a little while after that that Shirley and some others turned out to be siblings too. Then — thanks to John’s tenacity — we discovered who our donor was: a scientist, who had been in his 60s by the time I was conceived. Some months later, a couple more siblings turned up.
During this period — let’s call it the “Middle Period” — I felt great excitement. It really was thrilling and I experienced a fantastic sense of connection to people.
But again, there were difficult feelings too. I resented the lack of control terribly. I felt distrustful of some of the others, and I resented the fact that John held all the strings. It’s mad, because rationally I should have felt grateful to him for unlocking all the secrets of my genetic history — and recently I have started to feel immense gratitude for that — but at the time it was too much, too quickly. I was angry with John for finding stuff out. Within the space of a couple of years I went from not knowing I was donor-conceived to having 12 siblings and a dead biological father whose name I knew, and whose photograph sits inside the flyleaf of my photo album (where are you supposed to put your donor’s picture?). It was disturbing.
And what a strange bunch my siblings were.
My oldest sister is in her mid-80s. Forty-two years older than me and 2 years older than my dad. That was wierd, to have a sister who is older than my dad.
She is our donor’s first child — his “full”, or “real” daughter. He has a “real” son too. That feels odd, including them in our group at all — they are not donor-conceived, and yet they are no more related to their dad than I am. They are my donor’s “chosen” children, who generously allow us to share their dad. That is odd, too.
The youngest is one year younger than me — and how pissed off I was when she turned up, and I was not the youngest any more. Sibling rivalry of the most basic kind. That is disturbing, to feel jealousy like that in one’s 40s.
There are several I haven’t met, because they live abroad or because they don’t want to meet. I have trouble remembering their names. That feels odd too.
Then there is David, who I got to know first, and Shirley who I got to know a little later — both before there were too many to get to know. Of the brood, I see most of them, and they are the ones who feel the most like siblings. Sort of.
So yes, we are an odd bunch. And yet when we have met in a large group, I have been bowled over by the similarities between us. What we share is not so much a nose, or eyes, or whatever, but something much more significant that that: an essence, if you like. We are all garrulous, extrovert; we share a particular type of intelligence, we are all quite funny and rather cross and very competitive.
As a result of these striking similarities, I went through a phase of thinking everything was inherited. I had always been a pure nurture person; now I was a biological determinist. My most basic beliefs and values, the thing that define a person, were shifting. It was like I’d put myself back together but I didn’t recognise myself. I wasn’t even sure I liked who I was becoming.
But, significantly, it was only after I found my siblings that I felt able to tell my daughter about my conception. I felt a lifting of shame and aloneness, but also I had something to tell her. What had once been an empty space — the anonymous donor — was now full of people: I had a story and I had characters. So I was able to be honest with my five-year-old daughter in a way that my parents had been unable to be honest with me. Morag listened intently and said: “That’s very confusing!” Then a pause. “I think we should call them your Sort Of brothers and sisters”. That felt — still feels — about right to me. In the absence of a word for what they are, Sort Of brothers and sisters is what I call them. (Unless I am talking to my “real” brother and sister, in which case I call them my Sort Of siblings — sounds less threatening).
This period, the middle period, culminated in the extraordinary boat trip Shirley has mentioned. About seven of us met in Norfolk and went down the river in a boat. The sun came out after days and days of rain, we made a fire and cooked on it. It was pure Swallows and Amazons. It was one of the happiest days of my life.
Since the boat trip, we were in touch less for a while. I think perhaps we didn’t know where to go from that high point, how to develop the relationships. We are in uncharted territory without a map, and sometimes we get lost.
But recently one of our number suggested that we set up a website, and we’ve started communicating more again.
So what do I feel about my siblings now, as I move into what feels like a new phase? Well, there are too many of them; my heart sinks when a new one turns up (not least because I know new ones will keep on turning up), and yet I know that I must welcome them. We are part-family, part self-help group, and I think we have a duty to help one another if we can.
In practice, I have made deep relationships with a few, am on friendly terms with most, and don’t know a couple. David and Shirley feel like sort of siblings, but others are becoming closer as I get to know them better.
But it’s not easy: I sometimes think that the problem is that each of us is a proxy father to the rest — the closest we are going to get to our biological father. So the feelings are intense sometimes, and complicated. There is a certainly a real bond between us, and an intimacy, and yet no shared history. We have very warm feelings for one another, and we have a lot of fun together. And we hurt each other’s feelings easily and often. But when I’m upset or have some big news, some of my new siblings are among the first people I turn to.
And what of the impact on my “real” family? My mother has welcomed my discoveries, and my relationship with her has recovered. She bought me up. I always knew she loved me. In the end, the shock of discovery, and my disappointment in her could not last. My brother and sister feel a little uncomfortable about my other siblings, I think. We don’t talk about them.
And my dad. He died three weeks ago. In the six years between being told about my paternity and him dying we became much closer. He was not a responsible father when I was a child, and there is no making up for lost time, but I do know now that he loved me, always. I think he was relieved that the secret was out, and he was able to become a very loving grandfather to my two daughters.
But what struck me more than anything when he died was how strong the bond between us was, despite everything. When he was terminally ill, and dying, I was surprised by the strength of my love for him — my feelings were unequivocal. And as me and my brother went through this experience — the loss of our father — together I was struck by how strong the bond between me and the brother I have shared my life with is. Nothing could compete with that.
So I have come full circle, I suppose: once again, I believe that family is about so much more than blood. Dad was my dad, warts and all; my mum is just that; my brother is my brother, my sister is my sister; and Shirley, David and the others — they are my sort of brothers and sisters.
Working out what that means is difficult; sometimes painful, often immensely enjoyable. And always a privilege. As I see it, it’s about trying to develop a new language of family, a new sense of what it means. It has been the most interesting journey so far, and it’s not over yet.
