Why Did Dylan Donate?
Dylan studied psychology at Georgia State University right after high school. While enrolled, he was unfortunately arrested for underage drinking.
Source: @donordylan/Instagram
He needed money to pay his lawyers fees, but the strapped college student simply didn’t have the cash and his parents refused to cover the costs. That’s when Dylan decided to donate sperm. He got paid a whopping $100 for every donation at the popular sperm bank Xytex in Atlanta.
Giving Permission for Contact, But Only After a Child Turned 18
When Dylan donated, Xytex gave him the option as to whether or not he was willing to be contacted by any children who may share his DNA.
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At that time, Dylan decided he would allow the sperm bank to release his personal details to the families, but only after the child had turned 18. After college, Dylan moved on with his life, got a job, and essentially forgot about the possibility that he may have children he would never meet.
The One Child that Changed Everything
One day, out of the blue, Dylan received a message on social media that read, “I really hope you don’t feel violated in any way, but it’s Canadian Thanksgiving and I wanted to tell you how grateful my family is to you.”
Source: @donordylan/Instagram
The message was from Alicia Bowes, the mother to one of his sperm donation children. She had figured out his identity with the little information included on Stone-Miller’s donor card, which stated his first name and that his father worked as a forensic psychologist.
Figuring Out Just How Many Children He Has Out There
After receiving Alicia’s kind message, something shifted in Dylan and he realized he desperately wanted to find out how many children had been born from his sperm donated nearly a decade earlier.
Source: Wikipedia
Thanks to social media, as well as information from 23andMe, Dylan deduced that there were 96 children living around the world with his DNA. And with this information, he also realized how much he wanted to meet them.
Difficult Times Lead to Beautiful Discoveries
When Dylan first read Alicia’s message and found out about his almost-100 children, he was going through a particularly difficult time in his life.
Source: @donordylan/Instagram
He wrote on his Instagram page, “I was coming off a divorce, betrayal, estrangement from my almost-adopted son, and was mid-career change. The first donor mother, now a close friend, reached out thanking me for the gift of children while I was in the office on the first day of a new job. I saw pictures of my biological daughter and changed profoundly.”
Taking on the Task of Finding the Rest of His Children
Just a few months later, Dylan quit that job and dedicated his time to finding his biological children. He found out that there was a private Facebook group made especially for families with children from Xytex sperm donor ID 5186, Dylan’s ID number.
Source: @donordylan/Instagram
When he joined, the group already had 20 members. However, that number soon grew as soon as Dylan could offer more information about himself and the exact timeline of his donations.
Dylan Has Met 25 of His 96 Children
Since Alicia’s original message six years ago, Dylan has traveled around the county and the world meeting the children his sperm donations created.
Source: @donordylan/Instagram
He has an entire spreadsheet of his lost children, including their names, where they live, and their parents, and he hopes to eventually be able to meet every single one of them.
Experiencing Both Love and Loss
While much of Dylan’s story is inspirational and full of love and connection, he has also experienced loss through his journey to meet his long-lost children.
Source: @donordylan/Instagram
One such story is about a baby named H, who “died because of medical negligence.” Dylan told the world via his Instagram that “his mother spent two and a half years searching for pieces of him before she found me, his donor. I learned of his little sister’s existence, another little sister on the way, and his death within a matter of minutes on the day his mom reached out to me.”
Sharing His Medical Information with Donation Recipients
After losing H, Dylan realized that his medical records were crucial information for parents caring for his biological children to know. But Dylan reported that “the sperm bank made it incredibly difficult to share [health and ancestry] information with all of the recipient partners who had births using my genetic material.”
Source: @donordylan/Instagram
So he decided to use the site 23andMe to do so. Dylan stated that they should absolutely know “things like my carrier status for certain diseases and whether or not I have predispositions to diseases like diabetes or certain types of cancers.”
Not Everyone Thinks Dylan is Doing the Right Thing
Although Dylan has received overwhelming support from the public for his undertaking, there are some who don’t agree that Dylan should be attempting to contact the children born with his sperm donations.
Source: A Donor Conceived Adult/Facebook
Some say that once donated, his sperm was used to create families that he plays no real part in, and that by attempting to contact them, he is breaking the trust of sperm banks.Specifically, the U.S. Donor Conceived Council is baffled that one person was allowed to donate enough sperm to birth almost 100 children and said that Dylan’s story is “open to misinterpretation and misunderstanding.”
Many Donor-Conceived People Support Dylan’s Quest
With some backlash, many donor-conceived people and recipient parents are outwardly supporting Dylan’s choice and who he is as a person.
Source: A Donor Conceived Adult/Facebook
One of the recipient parents of Dylan’s sperm told the world that “Dylan is a very thoughtful man who was pulled into the world of sperm donation while in college and was misled about the number of offspring he would have.”
Dylan’s Children and Their Parents Have Every Right to Deny Contact
It’s important to note that while Dylan has looked for and attempted to contact many of the families of his biological children, they have every right to decide whether or not to respond, let alone allow their children to meet him.
Source: @donordylan/Instagram
So while some will say that Dylan is acting disrespectfully to the families who used sperm donations to make a family, that’s simply not the case.
Expressing Gratitude for the Time Spent With His Children
While understanding that some parents will choose to refuse Dylan’s request for contact, he has made it exceptionally clear just how much he values time spent with the children who share his DNA.
Source: @donordylan/Instagram
His visits with the 25 children he has met, playing games with them and simply getting to know who they are has been a life changing experience for the 32-year-old software engineer.
There’s No One Way to Make a Family
What Dylan really wants to share with the world is that there is no one way to make a family.
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Sperm donations are an incredible asset to those families who need them to have children, and by sharing his story, Dylan hopes to ensure the system functions properly, safely, and allows for more beautiful children to bless parents around the world.