She looks just like you…

A few people have said our daughter looks like my mother and my Uncle and what do I say? I say “you think so?” or rather I write that as it’s people who have seen photos of her. Of course I don’t mean our close friends and family, they all know we used a donor egg – these are the circle of people who we are not that close with. My husband and I decided we don’t need to explain to every person what we did or went through – the caveat being if we ever feel uncomfortable with what we are saying…in other words if either of us feel we are lying, or covering something up. My husband’s father asked us: do I tell everyone she is from a donor egg? And we said: only if you feel uncomfortable not telling them.

Has anything changed in perceptions of her in the last two weeks? Do I think “ what if she was my bio daughter? Am I missing out because she wont look physically like me?” And the answer is: she is my daughter, it’s really as simple as that. My husband says she sleeps like me and furrows her brows like me, I am reminded yet again that we take on our parents mannerisms and intonations and it is perhaps this that makes us most “look” like them…and again, it doesn’t matter who she looks like. It’s actually amazing to me that I ever thought it would matter, that I mourned the loss of my genetics at all (yes I cried and got angry)…of course that was something I had to go through to get to this place right now, this place of knowing it doesn’t matter how she came into this world, this little girl is our daughter .