We Chose a Donor, and We'd Choose Her Again

When the doctor first said the word "donor," I went very quiet. In my head I had imagined a baby with my eyes, my mother's nose, the family resemblance everyone fusses over at weddings. It took me some weeks to understand that what I actually wanted was not my genes in a child. It was a child to love.

We did not tell many people at first, and I will be honest about why — I was afraid of the comments. The whispers about whether the baby would be "really" ours. The relatives who measure belonging in blood. But my husband held my face in his hands one night and said, "This child will be ours the moment he arrives. Let them whisper."

I carried him. I felt his hiccups at midnight and his kicks during my favourite serial. I sang to him the same lullabies my mother sang to me. He did not grow from my egg, but he grew under my heart, for nine months, and there is no part of him I do not claim as completely my own.

We have decided we will always tell him the truth, gently, in pieces he can understand as he grows. There will be no shameful secret in our home, no story we are afraid of him discovering. He will know he was wanted so badly that we accepted help to bring him here. That is not a lesser story. It is a bigger one.

Sometimes, late at night, I think about the woman who helped us. I do not know her name and I never will. But I send a small prayer of thanks toward her, wherever she is. She gave a part of herself to strangers so that our home could have a heartbeat in it. I hope life is gentle with her.

Our son is asleep in the next room as I write this, one fist curled by his cheek exactly the way his father sleeps. He is ours, fully and without question. We chose a donor, and if we had to choose all over again, we would choose her without a single moment of doubt.