It’s National Infertility Awareness Week, and this year’s theme is #FlipTheScript.
I’ll be posting something here on OFT, as well as on Instagram (@OnFecundThought and @TheTryingTimes) every day this week. And because I’m “out-out” about our infertile struggles and how we came to create our family, I’ll also be sharing to my personal Facebook and Instagram accounts too. To kick things off, I’d like to start a week-long conversation about egg donation. (Because, duh!)
Did you know that the person who conceived via egg donation
is still considered the biological parent (just not the genetic parent)?
That because our bodies grow the baby, and our genes influence the expression of the baby’s genes—a field of science called epigenetics!
Here’s a quick example of epigenetics, taken from the PVED website:
In horse breeding for example, it’s not uncommon to implant a pony embryo into the womb of a horse.
The foals that result are different from normal ponies.They’re bigger. These animals’ genotype – their genes – are the same as a pony’s, but their phenotype – what their genes actually look like in the living animal – is different.
For more evidence on why we’re biological parents, read the rest of the PVED blog post here.
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