I feel guilty about what I wrote about Sadie's donor so I wanted to clarify. I haven't actually re-read what I'd written so this may feel a bit disjointed however it's how I feel NOW.
Basically, we hadn't seen an adult picture and when I'd purchased the additional images I wasn't expecting one. His profile clearly said "No Adult Picture Available"/"photo span unavailable" which I may e-mail the bank to complain about to let them know that they should have accurate information because not everyone wants to see an adult picture. Essentially, I think that if I had expected adult pictures I would have been more prepared. Instead I was suddenly staring at a shirtless adult picture of our donor and he looked nothing like I'd expected. I honestly felt like they'd sent the wrong pictures. There was a moment of denial. Who the hell is THAT? Well, it's the man you procreated with.
It's amazing how vividly we were able to imagine him and how completely wrong we were.
It's been a few days and I've settled into quite a fondness for him. There have been a few times that I have gone back to questioning whether it's him but I know it is, of course it is. My favourite picture is one of the shirtless ones (yes, there's more than one) because his face looks so familiar. Surreal. He looks like a genuinely happy person as both a child and an adult.
Ultimately, in the end we picked him because something about his profile was magical to us and it still is. It was more than the little boy standing in front of a Christmas tree overflowing with presents. Selecting him wasn't the same for us as selecting our previous 3 donors. We'd scrutinized everything about them. We'd picked them out of a large pile of "acceptable" donors (medical/Hair/Eye Colour) based on their looks. In a way it feels more ORGANIC the way we selected Sadie's donor. We hadn't reduced him down to parts and then judged him on his appearance. We overlooked his incompatabilities as if they didn't exist. So to say that I was surprised by his dark hair, dark eyes and tanned complexion is an irony. We HAD that information but we chose to ignore it. Instead of juding the cover we only had the inside of the book and we didn't read it (figuratively).
I'm glad we have these pictures and I think they're going to be very important to Sadie growing up. I'm happy she wont spend time imagining what he LOOKS like. No surprises there.
Your reaction was normal especially if you weren't expecting to see the pictures. And shirtless? I think that would have seemed surprising and weird to me too. Certainly wouldn't have been expecting that!
ReplyDeleteI find that my feelings about our donor have changed a lot since we conceived Erik and so have Kim's. Sometimes we'll feel strange about something and then a few days later it's okay. Don't feel guilty, you're allowed to have whatever reaction you have (not like you can control that anyway.)
very interesting comment about feeling sure they had posted the wrong photo. i had the same reaction about a year ago. we have lifetime pics of our donor, then suddenly the bank added a new one from his toddler years. it looked SO unlike his other photos i actually emailed the bank and told them they'd made a mistake! oy...they hadn't. oops.
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