Hanna (59): “I’m so glad I’m on vacation, I think when I sit at the breakfast table with red eyes. Again I feel tears prick my eyes. This can’t be true, can it?”
“’Does the name Wildschut mean anything to you?’, my thirty-year-old son Sander asked yesterday afternoon. I sat on the couch and looked up from my magazine. ‘That was my attending physician. It is thanks to him that you came into being’, I replied. What Sander said then still doesn’t really get through to me. “I just heard he’s my biological father.” The donor father, who would always remain anonymous, suddenly has a name and a face: the doctor himself.
donor father
To clear my mind, I rummage around the house. I’m bummed that my brother and girlfriend are both on vacation. I don’t want to disturb them, but other than my sons they are the only ones I can talk to about this. No one else knows my secret. Friends, colleagues, neighbours, everyone thinks that my now ex-husband Theo is the father of my sons. Even when we started dating, I knew Theo was barren. I was only eighteen and not involved with children. But when we got married, our desire to have children grew. In 1989 we reported to the Sophia Hospital in Zwolle, looking for a donor. At the time, sterility was taboo, especially in our village in the bible belt. Doctor Wildschut advised us to talk about it with as few people as possible. My parents supported us, Theo’s parents were absolutely against it. Yet we persevered and in July 1990 I became the mother of Sander. Four years later we completed our family with another son, Pim. I asked if he could get the same donor father as his brother. Doctor Wildschut said he couldn’t promise because of the maximum number of offspring per donor.
Wildschut children
Sander comes down the stairs. He has spent all morning behind his computer and says that he is in an app group with Wildschut children. He is match number fourteen, many more half-siblings could follow. He has also already had contact with the ‘real’ son of Wildschut. I can’t control my emotions, but Sander is, as always, peace itself. He has written a letter to Theo, he says. Do I want to read it? I think it’s great that he informs Theo, with whom he has had bad contact for years, in this way.
donate DNA
Sander was fifteen when he and his brother learned that Theo is not their biological father. When I think about how that happened, I get furious again. We had divorced a year before, after Theo fell in love with someone else he wanted to continue with. When the boys celebrated Christmas with them, they told them. Just like that, without consulting me. We had agreed not to say it until they were eighteen, together. Pim was sad, but did not feel the need to look for his donor father. Sander wanted that. When it turned out that the hospital could not help him, he submitted his DNA to FIOM, the foundation for parentage questions. It was silent for years, until a few weeks ago we received a letter asking if I wanted to donate my DNA. Of course, anything to help Sander. And then suddenly yesterday the phone rang.
Many questions
After lunch Sander and I go for a bike ride. As we kick the wind together, I think of the documentary we watched together recently: The children of Karbaat† Crazy maybe, but I never thought for a moment that this could happen to us. Along the way we rest on a bench on the heath. Sander has many questions. I never noticed anything, he wants to know. I explain to him that I didn’t see anything crazy and that because of ovulation I also thought it was quite normal that I had to go to the hospital in the evening or at the weekend. “I’m glad I exist, but what Wildschut has done is ethically irresponsible,” concludes Sander.
He is right. Most mothers live in the area, the app group even includes someone from our hometown. What if those kids get into a relationship unknowingly? We sit next to each other in silence for a while. I look at my son. Yesterday I googled a photo of the now deceased Wildschut and I immediately saw it: the same high forehead, that frown. “You know you were very wanted, right?” I finally ask. “Of course I know Mom, you’ve always said that,” he replies.
The names in this interview have been changed for privacy reasons.
Former patients (both parents and children) who were treated by Dr Wildschut in the Sophia Hospital in Zwolle (now Isala) between 1981 and 1993, can contact with questions via [email protected] and T 088-624 23 55.