Building Your Family

Building Your Family is the first all-inclusive guide by experts to cover both the medical and emotional aspects of becoming a parent through donor conception. Once shrouded in secrecy, modern families built with the assistance of egg or sperm donation are growing in numbers and voice. As more people see friends, family members and celebrities use donor conception to build their families, the process has become much more mainstream and accepted. The number of donor sperm programs and egg banks have grown enormously in the past decade and the news is full of stories of athletes, journalists, and entertainers like Elton John, Anderson Cooper, Andy Cohen, Camille Guaty, and Natalie Imbruglia, who have used donor gametes to have their children. The authors, Lisa Schuman, a licensed clinical social worker and therapist, and Dr. Mark Leondires, a board certified Reproductive Endocrinologist, have decades of experience working closely with patients who have chosen to use donated eggs and sperm, as well as their own personal stories of fertility treatment and non-genetic parenthood. Together, they walk readers through the medical, emotional, and genetic aspects of donor conception, common ethical dilemmas, managing relationships with friends and family members, ways to tell donor-conceived children about their origins, and strategies to cope with the challenges of fertility treatment. In a compassionate and authoritative narrative, they help hopeful parents-to-be find their way forward with confidence and joy.