Every year, thousands of British children
are conceived with the help of donor sperm.
But few ever meet their siblings.
Kate Burt hears the story of three families
who discovered their daughters were sisters
Caroline Pearson, a podcast producer from London, was a few days into her
maternity leave when she discovered that her unborn daughter had two
sisters. She had visited a website a friend had told her about, which allows
recipients of donated sperm (such as her ) to search for families who have
used the same donor. If they’ve registered with this website, they could
be anywhere in the world, since the US sperm bank chosen by Pearson and
her husband, Francis, ships internationally, and the website, Donor Sibling
Registry (DSR) , is also US-based with an international reach. Pearson couldn’t
resist, and typed in the donor’s reference number.
“Suddenly, I was overwhelmingly curious,” Pearson says. She didn’t expect
to fi nd anything – let alone two families living within a half-hour radius.
The fi rst profi le was a single mother to a two-year-old girl, living nearby
in London. It seemed an extraordinary coincidence. Caroline was “totally
giddy”; her partner Francis, a photographer, was cautious. “I tried to rein
things in,” he says. “Caroline was pregnant and we were already dealing with
becoming parents , and the donor process. But all this other stuff , it was so
unknown. I’m practical and you think: yes, that could be amazing – but what
if they’re awful people?”The ties that bind
Illustration by Ngadi Smart