After learning she — and her triplet brother and sister — were conceived using an egg donor, Natalie Albaran’s world abruptly changed. But eventually, when she began to ask questions of the mother who had raised her, she was kicked out of her home.
In a personal essay for Cosmopolitan, Albaran defends the practice of IVF and egg donation, arguing that biology doesn’t make a family. Yet, she admits that the situation “tore our family apart.” Just after graduating high school, she learned her parents had used an egg donor after their first child was born with a “life-threatening disability” that any other children they had could also inherit. She also learned that her mother’s best friend was actually her biological mother.
“My life felt like a soap opera”
“In an instant, our older sister became our half sister. My mother’s best friend, a woman I’d considered an aunt, was now my biological mum and her children were my half siblings. I wasn’t 100 percent Filipino, as I’d always believed. I was half white,” she said.
“My life felt like a soap opera. For two months, I stared at my ceiling. I didn’t brush my teeth. I barely ate. I just wanted answers.”
She asked the mother who raised her why she waited so long to tell them that she was not their biological mother, but none of her mother’s answers were “satisfying.”
“The more questions I asked my mum about her fertility treatment, the tenser our relationship became. She accused me of being overly dramatic. We started arguing. She told me I wasn’t getting over the news fast enough,” said Albaran.
Among Albaran and her triplet siblings, she admits she was the most shocked by the news. Her sister said she had always known “something was off,” so the revelation meant her “identity finally made sense.” Her brother was more concerned with why it was kept a secret for so long. But Albaran said she was “sensitive” and had always been “[her] mother’s favourite.” Her life “suddenly felt like a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces.”
Albaran recalls that when she asked her mother more about how she was conceived, “she yelled at me to ‘go to your real mother!'”
Over the next few months, in dealing with the “mistrust, depression, anxiety, a feeling of betrayal,” Albaran continued to ask questions and her mother continued to push back. After a few months, Albaran said her mother “declared that she had ‘done her job’ raising me, and she kicked me out of her house.” Albaran’s last words to her were, “I still love you. Always will.”
“She didn’t even look at me as I walked out the door,” she recalled.
“What else could people hide from me?”
“After learning the truth about my origin, I lost the ability to trust my perceptions. If my parents could conceal this information for years, what else could people hide from me? I was sure that if I knew every minute detail of my conception, I could restabilise my life.”
A few years later, in an effort to learn those details, Albaran visited her mother’s fertility doctor at Michigan Center for Fertility & Women’s Health, Dr. Carole Kowalczyk, who called it “exciting to meet Albaran.”
But Albaran told her she was “angry” that her parents had waited so long to tell the truth, and that she was also “grieving.”
READ: Fertility industry ignores children’s rights, say donor-conceived persons and legal experts
“Nobody had ever looked at my face and seen my mother’s features in it. If I have children, they won’t resemble their grandmother. When I believed I was ‘full’ Filipino, I felt superior to half-Filipino people. I’m humbled and humiliated about that now. I am darker than my younger triplet sister and, growing up, we joked that my mum ran out of ink when she was printing us. Now, the old family joke lands differently,” she said.
Yet Albaran won’t disparage egg donation and says that donor conception would be better if fertility patients are “in therapy or actively dealing with the stigma and emotional fallout before they get pregnant.”
After dealing with the fallout of her parents’ choices, and being kicked out by the woman who raised her for asking questions about her conception. Albaran now says that more than she wants to know the details of her conception, she wants her “mother—and the world—to see me as her ‘real’ daughter.”
Knowing where you came from is important
It’s a heartbreaking turn of events that the woman who created her and raised her is now treating her so poorly for wanting to know more about who she is and where she came from.
Because while it’s true that the woman who raised Albaran is her mother, who carried her in her womb and gave birth to her, she’s not Albaran’s only mother. Albaran has a biological mother too, and no matter what any of them say about biology not mattering, the fact is that it does. Learning you aren’t who you thought you were can have lasting emotional effects.
According to the 2020 We Are Donor Conceived Survey, 71% of donor-conceived individuals surveyed agreed with the statement: “The method of my conception sometimes causes me to feel distressed, angry, or sad.” In addition, 47% said they sometimes feel sad, disappointed, or angry that their parents chose to create them using donor gametes. Nearly half sought professional therapy, with an additional 17% saying they wanted to.
The majority (89%) also felt that donor-conceived individuals should know the identity of the donor, and another 90% agree it’s important to know the identities of any siblings they have. In fact, 88% said it is a “basic human right to know the identity of both biological parents,” 77% said their donor is “half of who I am,” and 76% do not support the use of anonymous donor eggs or sperm to conceive a child.
Tell President Trump, RFK, Jr., Elon, and Vivek:
Stop killing America’s future. Defund Planned Parenthood NOW!
