Written by: Julia Gytri
There is a quiet frequency that can be inadvertently silenced for one reason or another when you choose donor egg IVF, and that’s the grief over the genetic connection you imagined you would have with your child.
“Genetic grief,” as it is referred to, can start as a soft thrum of discomfort at the idea of your journey not quite resonating as neatly as you’d thought it would (and that’s after already recalibrating due to infertility). It can also be loud, an unrelenting clang, as if someone is following you around with a pair of cymbals, crashing them behind the nap of your neck, unwilling to give you any rest. And while the day your child is born will be one of the most monumental days of your life, it may not be the day that this frequency finally fades into silence. That’s because genetic grief, like all grief, is not linear. It ebbs and flows for many intended parents (especially mothers carrying pregnancies via donor eggs). It changes shape. It softens, dissipates, and then, on a perfectly ordinary Tuesday, unexpectedly crescendos once more.
That is not a sign your decision was wrong, that your bond with your child is insufficient, or that your love is incomplete. It is a sign that you are human, that what you’ve gone through to become a parent is unique, and that this frequency is simply part of your wavelength, usually riding with you in harmony, with a little clash of dissonance every now and then that you’ll have to work through.
In the end, you may just be stronger for it.
At Fairfax, we sit with intended parents in every phase of this journey, including the moments that don’t fit on a clinical timeline. In fact, many members of our team can speak on this topic from firsthand experience. This piece is for every parent who thought she’d “processed it” already, and then heard a stranger say, “She has your smile!”… and felt something she didn’t expect.
We get it.
Let’s unpack it.
Lisa Schuman, LCSW, one of the country’s foremost leading experts in family building who has counseled thousands of donor-conception families, makes an important distinction between genetic loss and genetic grief.
Loss is fact. Your genes are not part of your child’s DNA.
Grief is less black and white. Grief is what your body, identity, memory, and expectations do with that fact over time. Crucially, grief does not operate on a clinical timeline.
Genetic grief is the emotional experience of letting go of a version of parenthood you may have imagined for years: the aforementioned child with your specific eye color, or your grandmother’s laugh, your family’s signature curly hair. For intended parents using donor eggs, every form of genetic loss does not always become genetic grief, but for many it can, and that grief is valid even when the decision itself feels right. (Afterall, when most of us envision having children in our early adulthood, it’s safe to say that usually, those initial romantic notions of our little ones aren’t children without our own DNA.)
What surprises most parents is not that grief shows up. It’s that it shows up after the baby arrives, long after the part where one feels they should have come to terms. In a recent episode of Schuman’s podcast Building Your Family, entitled “Chosen Family in Donor Conception & Surrogacy: Grief, Genetics, and Defining Your Family”, she names something most clinics don’t address out loud: that grief about genetics and the bond with your child are two separate things, even though they are often viewed as one in the same. She stresses that learning to untangle the two is part of the work of donor-conception parenting.
Most popular fertility content implies that there is a resolution arc: you grieve, you decide, you cycle, you carry, you hold a baby, and poof! The grief is done. But real life rarely behaves that way, and the research on grief itself backs this up.
Family therapist Dr. Pauline Boss, who coined the term ambiguous loss in the 1970s, defines it as the loss of a person, a relationship, or even the desire for a relationship for which there is no possibility of closure. There is no physical sign of loss, no socially scripted way to mourn. Grief over an unrealized genetic child fits this definition closely. The loss is real, the dream existed, and yet there is no ritual society offers to mark it. (Boss, Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief, Harvard University Press, 2000.)
Boss’s point is not that “healing” is a tall order. Culturally, we are set up to fail. If we are supposed to feel like we need to have “gotten over it” by [X point on the timeline], when the pang of grief inevitably returns, we’re going to feel ashamed for backtracking into feelings that, realistically, can’t be fully resolved, if ever. For donor-conception parents, that misalignment can be especially painful: you can love your child completely and feel a small ache when grief surfaces. Both can be true in the same heart, on the same day.
Many intended parents quietly assume there will be a final emotional milestone where the grief is “resolved,” but ambiguous forms of grief rarely behave that way.
Yet, the return of grief does not mean you are back at the beginning. It means you are revisiting the experience from a new stage of parenthood, with a new version of yourself. It is, in many ways, the next phase of your own growth as a parent.
Below are five of the most common micro-moments that can catch intended parents off guard.
None are setbacks. All are normal. And nothing is necessarily wrong. Grief is just doing what it does best here: popping up in moments when you’re unprepared.
A well-intentioned neighbor peers over the stroller and beams. “Look at those eyes. Just like yours!” For some parents of donor-conceived children, this may land as a private joke they get to keep. For others, it lands like a soft punch in the gut, followed by a wave of guilt. Both responses are normal. The comment itself is not the problem. It’s that it opens the door that grief uses to walk back into your body.
A useful reframe many therapists offer: family resemblance is real, but it’s not merely genetic. Children inherit far more than DNA. They absorb cadence, rituals, humor, emotional regulation, language, traditions, posture, values, and the energy of the environment they are raised in. Family resemblance is not solely biological. It is relational. All of these are shaped by the parent who carries, raises, and loves a child. You are not borrowing your child’s features from your egg donor. You are co-authoring them.
Usually starting in elementary school, children may come home with assignments asking them to map out their family trees. Sometimes it’s an artistic, emotional exercise, asking for favorite pictures and keepsakes, conscious of the fact that family compositions vary wildly in this day and age. Sometimes it’s a little more old-school, genealogically oriented with the whole “squares-for-the-boys-and-circles-for-the-girls” structure, asking probing questions about the phenotypes of every aunt and uncle and second cousin. For donor-conception parents, this is often the first-time questions move from theoretical to literal. Your second grader could be asking you to help them fill in a chart that does not match your family’s actual shape.
This moment is not a problem to solve in five minutes. It is an invitation to revisit your family’s disclosure narrative. Many families add a second branch (a “donor” branch) or simply update the language to reflect the truth your child has known for years. The grief that surfaces is often less about the family tree and more about a renewed awareness that your family’s story is not the default that the project revolves around. Your family has never been the norm, but that’s what makes it beautiful. Schuman and other experts advise talking about your family’s origin story early and often, so this could actually be the perfect moment to take stock of the language you use with your child (and your world), and evolve it to your family’s current needs.
Few documents reopen genetic grief as quietly as a standard medical questionnaire. “Family history of: hypertension, diabetes, breast cancer, mental health conditions…” For donor-conception families, half the list is not yours to fill in. Many parents describe a brief, complicated pause at the receptionist’s clipboard. Part of it is logistical, part of it is grief, part is a reminder that your child’s genetic story is real, but may always feel a little abstract.
Practically, this is also where Fairfax’s rigorous donor screening and expanded genetic testing becomes useful long after the cycle is over. Your donor profile is part of your child’s medical record, and updating your pediatrician with that information turns a hard moment into an act of advocacy. The grief may still surface, it just does so alongside something useful you can do.
We rarely realize it, but offhand comments about genetics launch in random places like soccer game sidelines, daycare drop-offs, and over the charcuterie board at a baby shower.
“All of my kids look exactly like my husband, it’s wild.”
“It’s amazing how much of personality is just genetic, isn’t it?”
For most, these are normal, innocuous observations. For you, they land sideways. Many intended parents confess this is the moment they most need a phrase ready in their pocket, not in retaliation or as a defense mechanism, but as a comfort for themselves.
“We are a family through choice, because of love. Not coincidence.”
Said internally, and repeated like a mantra, a phrase of this nature is a tiny boundary that protects you from grief masquerading as comparison.
And crucially, as Schuman often notes, privacy and secrecy are not the same thing.
Privacy allows families to share their story thoughtfully on their own terms. Secrecy, by contrast, is often rooted in fear or shame.
Donor-conception families deserve privacy, space to decide how, when, and with whom they share their story. But if you’re feeling the need to lean into secrecy or feel pressured to conceal your situation, seeking professional help could be worthwhile.
Genetic grief tends to revisit at thresholds moments and firsts: a first birthday, the start of puberty, the first time your teen argues with you in a tone you swear sounds exactly like… well, who? Each milestone is a tiny re-rupture of any peace you’ve made with the genetic story that did not happen and the genetic story that did.
Mental health professionals who specialize in third-party reproduction often note that milestones can also be moments of healing: every birthday is also evidence of a family that exists because you made the choice you did. The grief is not erased by the milestone. It is held alongside it. Having a handle on those developmental milestones for donor-conceived children before they happen can make all the difference.
For many intended parents, the hardest part is not the grief itself, but the shame that follows it:
I thought I was past this.
Does this mean something is wrong with me?
Does this mean I’m less connected to my child?
Shuman is very clear: recurring grief is not evidence of failed bonding. It is evidence that this experience mattered deeply. And, she stresses, the peer-reviewed evidence supports this.
A long-running study published in Human Reproduction followed identity-release egg donation parents and consistently found that the great majority were psychologically well-adjusted in the early years of parenthood (Imrie et al., Human Reproduction, 2019). A separate 10-year follow-up of donor-conception families (Blake et al., Human Reproduction, 2014) reached the same broad conclusion: donor-conception parents are, on average, doing well, and notably, parents who plan disclosure early (and often!) tend to report lower parenting and family-related stresses than those who do not. Translation: revisiting the story, openly and over time, is associated with healthier outcomes for parents.
So, resurfacing grief is not regression. It is integration.
Unfortunately, there is no formula that minimizes or eradicates the waves. But there are practices that make them shorter and more manageable. A few that intended parents and the clinicians who work with them tend to come back to:
Genetic grief that comes and goes is expected. Genetic grief that pulls you under, interfering with sleep, bonding, and daily functioning deserves more than tools and reframes. It deserves a clinician. Fairfax keeps a curated set of emotional and educational resources for intended parents, and our coordinators can point you toward fertility-informed mental health providers in your network.
If you are considering donor egg IVF and want a private, no-pressure conversation that includes the emotional realities (not just the clinical ones) our team is here for that, too.
If grief about genetics has shown up again a year in, three years in, ten years in, nothing has gone wrong. You are inside a deeply modern, deeply human love story that does not get talked about often enough: one where the person carrying it is brave enough to feel the loss and the love at the same time. That is not failed processing. That is parenthood.
And at Fairfax, we are here for the whole arc of it, not just the egg.
Julia Gytri is a multidisciplinary writer and healthcare advocate bridging the arts and public health through a hybrid career rooted in education, communications, and collaboration. Her mission is to improve the standard of care for those living with rare, stigmatized, and/or under-researched conditions through storytelling in every project she undertakes.
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