by Nell Carswell
This is a really sweet little book, written by the mum of a girl conceived through egg donation. It’s written in lovely language that young children will find easy to understand and that parents will be comfortable reading to them and is the ideal length for a bedtime story. The illustrations are perfect to go along with the story, and while everyone going down the route of donor treatment will have a unique story, this introduces the concepts in a way that makes it easy to talk about the facts with your children.
I have read this to our little girls who are now four, as an example of how another family came to be, and have also taken some pointers from the way that it is written to create a personalised story for them, so they now have a book which covers their exact circumstances.
The specifics of this story are that a boy or girl (there is a version available for each) is conceived through egg donation where the donor isn’t necessarily a known donor, but they do know her name.
I imagine if you have conceived through anonymous donation, sperm or embryo, or any other variation of donor treatment, you would probably want to use this to introduce the concepts and then talk around it to cover the specifics for your family, but I really do think that this is a fabulous book for anyone with a child conceived through donation to approach it in an age appropriate, enthusiastic and very positive way.
Nic