or colleague cheryl crisp sheryl's a relationship manager at one of the largest credit card processing companies in the world that being said we're here to talk about something completely different and something very personal and something that i know a lot of our audience has has struggled with and has been a part of in their own lives so we're going to talk about fertility but really fertility and extended families right that's really what it comes down to sheryl is writing a book where the moms in the story and it's going to i'm going to try not to cry during the show but why don't we start at the beginning you know we were we were talking about who you were at four years old at four years old i was the girl who always had the baby to all who always knew that i was going to be a mom and that i was going to have four kids and you know the white picket fence and you know and that was going to be my life you know my my grandmother had this antique doll that you know basically willed to me because i was the one granddaughter of seven who was you know the one who love the babies and so i always knew that that was what my life was going to revolve around was you know having a family and lots of children yeah  growing up is very close you're very close to your grandmother so family and children are important as they are to a lot of people and a lot of people kind of starting out getting married and saying this is this is you know what i life but it didn't happen exactly like now things sound always work out the way you planned so i i was twenty eight when i met my husband and we immediately started to try to have  children once we got married when i was thirty and it just wasn't happening and we had no idea you know why that was both my sisters would think about getting pregnant and got pregnant so we started to do some testing and determined that we had some fertility issues and that it was not going to be an easy thing for us to to have a baby and so we started treatments and when a couple of different routes i can go into all that if you want me to or i can fast forward well i mean it's well it's interesting because i mean i think their fertility route is is has a lot of different options and they and we use a lot of them yeah yeah so so we initially i used a sperm donor and had i you i which is an intra uterine insemination and we picked a donor from out in california they did a picture match and took us months to pick this donor and we had a successful pregnancy but ultimately at twelve weeks that ended in a miscarriage you know which was devastating for us and for you know our friends in our family so then we use the same donor again and we did another are you why we're pregnant and then that pregnancy also ended in a miscarriage so at that time we decided to take a break and we bought our first house and you know we just said we you know we need to take a step back but in that time procedure called  de which is i'm not even sure what it stands for anymore sayto plasma conjecture and but basically taking one sperm and injecting it into one egg was was developed and  perfected and was coming to a clinic in new jersey and we said ok you know maybe maybe it's time for us to start this quest again right and we we did we i went on the remove some sperm and we we're having issues you know i only i was twenty i was thirty three but i only produced like six eggs which is unheard of at the time the only need one yeah well that's true so you know several months in a long story but we ended up with only one perfect an embryo all of it all the others went south as they say we had one perfect embryo at nine cells and at thirty four years old they had no statistics of someone who only had one embryo and so we had a one embryo transfer and that  now twenty years old and living in misery and is really you know one of the pride pride enjoys of our life abbie you know she was a miracle right she was a miracle absolutely absolutely so and then you said let's try to work let's try this one more time so we we went i went to the same clinic and i went on the fertility drugs and they said no this is not going to happen for you so we thought our fertility issues was just my husband's what just john but it turned out that it was both of us at thirty four i was what they called peri menopausal and i was already in the stages of and they said we're not you're not going to be able to conceive using your eggs so i said ok i wasn't ready to give up that quest i wanted to have a sibling for my daughter i wanted to be pregnant again so we  went into their egg donation program and we were matched with an egg donor at relatively quickly and john went through the same procedure on the day of the egg  so we had to pick a sperm donor and literally fifteen or twenty minutes because we had sixteen viable eggs not embryos yet eggs that needed to be fertilized and we had no sperm so you know whereas three to you know to two years earlier three years earlier we spent months and months and months picking a sperm donor we had like fifteen minutes and so we picked a donor we had it couriered to the took two of those implanted two they didn't want to do more than two because i had you know successful one and rio transferred and pregnancy so and we froze the other six and you know the second one using an egg donor and a sperm donor and i have two beautiful girls that are my you know pride and joy of my life yeah yeah i mean so that's that's the first part of this story that i think a lot of people have especially in today's day and age with just a lot of different health issues and lot of different things i think in our environment that contribute to whether or not someone can conceive and i think we don't even know half of them so i think a lot of people hearing the story going to say ok i mean i'm here i'm thinking about it i've been down this path as well i get your journey but there's another part to this story and this is where i think when we're talking about we are the moms of this story you realize that there's not one definition right so my daughter madeline is now is seventeen seventeen years old and she's applying for colleges and one of the questions on the college essays was what makes you unique unique and she wrote a beautiful essay about the fact that she was conceived using an egg donor in a sperm donor because we never hid that from her you know and we don't have enough time to talk about all of that but you know we never had that from her so she knew about her creation and but it's still left her a little bit wondering you know a little lost in her own words which is very hard to hear yeah as her mom yeah but you know she said that she has no idea where she came from she doesn't know where she gets her blonde you know straight blonde hair from or where she gets her size ten feet from you know she doesn't know where acne you know all of these things that a lot of people take as a given and then she's also very scientific she's about chemistry major so in her essay she went into the the science part of you know connecting two cells together and i have no idea what any of those terms actually mean but you know she used some terms in her essay that you know were very scientific but you know ultimately she just she doesn't really know where she came from and she wanted you know wish that she did know that so for her eighteenth birthday we gave her a subscription to twenty three and me and you know she was excited about that and she sent it off right away at about two months ago maybe or six weeks ago we got back her results and she was matched with her egg donor and it was you know really surprising to me i thought maybe there would be some siblings that we would find you know because of the fact that it was an egg donor and a sperm donor but i really didn't think that we would find the donor the egg donor who you know is he mom yeah and it was a little hard you know especially since my daughter was not very sensitive and just sent me a copy of an e mail which said we predicted that this person is your mom i was sitting in the car and i was like why your but we reached out right away i immediately went on facebook and i put the name into facebook we would talk about it first and that we would maybe reach out together but by the time we both came home which was only like two hours later they had already corresponded and you know interesting you know an interesting message you read to someone hey guess what you know and who knows what how that is going to land yeah so no you don't know and you know initially we thought that if someone puts their d n a on twenty three and me and has their profile public that they want to be found yeah and for a reason right now it wasn't the case you know her her brother was just a genealogy you know and sort of made the whole family put their d n a on twenty three me and she happened to make her profile public so she really had no idea the twenty three and me could do what it did and  gracious and you know i think a little shocked but excited in you know it's very on you know the territory you know in no nobody we have and none of us have gone down this road  and she is a mom of two young children and one of them looks like my heart or you know which is weird and she is she's a great person she has said she's going to be there for maddie any questions that maddie has she is more than happy to help her answer she's she and i actually have corresponded a lot so yeah and  yeah that's what i want to ask you about because your your relationship has really evolved yeah she and i have have talked a lot and not not talked in person yet or on the phone she lives in a different state  far away so we haven't been able to to see each other in person and we have not spoken on the phone it's all been via email facebook messaging and then we decided to to flip it over to email and  as she said a little more civilized i'm not quite sure why but it's been an amazing experience you know at first i was like a little you know i'm her mom i'm her mom yeah and not that not that you know not that the egg donor was saying that she was the mom either but you know it's it's just amazing how many ways yeah because it's so sensitive and we were talking about this with just even so many mixed families you know and the reality that you know indeed in divorced families and then you get remarried and all of a sudden you have this extension exten your mom who you grew up with who raised you no one can replace that good bad ugly right regardless of what that looks like you know i personally i grew up you know with my mom actually kind of single single family household my my dad was out in ohio and and then and then my dad came back and i and i had a step mom who i had was i had a very close relationship as well could never take the place of my mom my mom and i have a beautiful relationship but there's a but this was totally separate relationship right and she was an extension of my mom's right you know and so so just like expanding that and thinking about it here perspective it's you know it's been an amazing amazing journey and be even before this all happened you know whenever i would tell our story you know people to always say to me oh my gosh you should write a book because there's so much  i think that it's something that you know i've been i've been called but called to do and then when this all happened and the way that it's playing out i'm thinking you know maybe you know that i'm going to write a book you know i don't know if it's going to be published but i'm going to write it all down yeah and one of the one of the e mails that we're going back and forth with with the with the egg donor i'm not going to say her name right now but she come up with a different name you know donor egg donor donor but you know we were talking about her she had mentioned something  you know about all of this you know and and you know what is the definition of a mom and enjoy you know and she said you know at first i was thinking that like you and my mom meaning the egg donors mom we're the moms and she goes but then i'm like wait a minute you know sheryl and i are the moms in this story and which is we're getting the title of my book because you know it was so powerful because h yeah and again i think the motions in this are so are so deep and but but again i feel like it's if you can if you can bring your heart forward right right and look at all these things i mean you have now developed such a beautiful relationship with this person and her expectations are are really are really nothing right or to be to be somebody who is  reachable approachable i think that number one you have to be a very special person to be an egg donor yes and i don't think that i could ever do that and i don't think that it's good or bad or indifferent but i think you need to be able to separate yourself which you know she said she has wondered over the years you know did it work yeah yeah yeah i know what story right she she she remembers the day and she remembers reading your letter yeah i wrote her a letter i wrote the donor a letter i had no idea who it wise or who i was speaking to but i just wrote her a letter thanking her for this completely self blessed donation and and telling her you know what it really meant to us and that we were you know hopefully going to be able to complete our family and have a sibling for abb and you know that it was just how much it meant to us and she said when she read it on the way home from the hospital that day which we were all there the same day and you know it she she cried reading it because until she read that letter she didn't realize you know the impact of what she could have been could be doing and you know now obviously she truly knows because you know she's seen pictures of my daughter and i just sent her maddie's high school graduation invitation not expecting her to come but just so she could see the invitation and you know it's but she has no expectation you know she doesn't expect anything from me or from maddie you know i i'm not quite sure where maddy is right now with with all of this and it's going to go and  you know but i think it's one of the funny things that she wrote which i thought was just awesome was you know she feels like she has i feel like i let mattie down a little bit because you know she was searching for you know where she came from come to come to find out that she came from a middle class family in new jersey just like the one that she actually has she got you know like i should be an award winning author are in for so you know i just thought that that was was awesome that shoot that she wrote that but you know so i think that i definitely don't think it's closure i think this is really just the beginning but for maddie you know she now knows why she has the little you know little eyes and you know where she gets her nose from and definitely not her blond hair because the donor has dark hair so it's very strange to see my daughter's face a dark dark hair right but identical everything else is really very very close so you know it's it's an amazing experience it's odd you know with the twenty three and me and ancestry dot com you know i think stories like these are going to start to come out more and more i think maybe all those stories are not going to have a happy ending i think ours is going to have a happy ending and you know the donor had said you know she's not quite sure what she's going to tell her children right you know because her children have you know sort of a sibling that lives in a different state with a different family yeah you know and just what you said before you know there's a lot of different families out there made up a lot of different ways yeah yeah you know in my family my family is completely is very unique you know there's not you know many people that have you know one biological child technology and god yeah yeah absolutely and there's a whole other element to this story which will be in any follow up that we do i'm also be part of the the book eventuality but yeah it's it's it's absolutely incredible i mean it's all by the grace of god yet though so you know and you've been there the whole way it's i mean i think it's absolutely amazing so cheryl i know that people hearing this i mean this is again a topic that i think maybe on some levels isn't talked about enough and certainly i thinking through things like twenty three million ancestry dot com and and having these now you know unbelievable search form so you crisp or my e mail which might be the easier route is sheryl thirty three at comcast dot net and i'd be more than happy to talk to anyone i have actually some of the fertility clinics and different doctors have given my name to some of their patients over the years because i'm not afraid to talk about this i'm very you know proud and in awe of how both my girls came to be and it's never been taboo we've always talked about her freely so i'd be more than happy to talk to anyone about you know whatever journey they may be on yeah yeah that's awesome because i think