To Families with Children Born Through IVF and Donor Assistance

Pat yourself on the back, you've committed to create an atmosphere of open communication with your child. We are so happy that you have found our site. How We Became a Family is dedicated to helping families open up communication with their children about their donor conceived origins. It is our hope that families who have used third party donors will feel completely understood, able to be themselves, and feel comfortable in their immediate family and in society.

A Little Bit About Us. We are a family, seekers of truth and beauty, parents to three children, all conceived through egg donor in vitro. Our first-born (singleton birth) and our second (boy/girl twins). Bernard is a physician, Teresa is an artist. We are a family of art and science. Photos and more information about us here.

Why are we doing this? We are doing this to be part of, and to help create an open dialogue in a growing community of parents like you, like us, who have traversed the infertility landscape, and have successfully built a family through the process of donor assistance and now parenting after infertility. Those of you who are on this path, or those who have traveled this path before us, please feel free to advise and share! Do you have lessons learned that could help us all? Your willingness to share helps us all gain more comfort with this complex topic.

What are we offering? We want to help. We had limited resources 10 years ago when we began parenting. We can empathise with the process, the challenges and joys of a donor conceived family. We are offering our family's personal experience on this subject as a blog to share this journey with you as our children grow and ask more questions. What they wanted to know at age 6 is much different than at age 10. This blog is for you. Beginning to tell our children about their donor origins was a tepid task at first. So, we wrote and illustrated a children's picture book titled "How We Became A Family"  to help us tell our own children and support other parents too. Beginning a dialogue with children through the simple act of reading together makes everything easier and more fun.