An earnest and loving picture book that explains sperm donor conception in a two-mom family. (There are also nearly 30 other versions in this series, covering two-mom, two-dad, single-mom, single-dad, and mom-dad families that used embryo donation, dual egg and sperm donation, surrogacy, and more, which you can find at the Amazon link above. This is why I am tagging this entry for various family types and methods of family creation, although this particular title focuses on a two-mom family.)
A young girl named Maisie walks with her two moms to her first day of school. Along the way, the moms, both architects, point out a house that they designed. Maisie explains to readers that being an architect means using one’s imagination to create instructions, called “blueprints,” for a house.
At school, Maisie encounters a classmate who has a new baby sister. She asks, “Where did you get the baby?” and the child responds, “My mommy and daddy made her.” She later asks her moms if one needs a daddy to make a baby, and they tell her there are actually many ways to make a baby, including by using a donor, which is how she was made.
Making a baby requires two tiny parts made inside the bodies of grownups, an egg and a sperm, they explain, noting that usually women have eggs and men have sperm (“but not always”—a nod to trans and nonbinary identities). Maisie’s moms combined an egg from one of them with sperm from a donor (“a special helper who wants to help others grow their families”), to create “a tiny baby called an embryo.” (This phrasing feels questionable given the danger to assisted reproductive rights when courts view an embryo as a child; saying “a cluster of tiny parts called cells that will grow into a baby” might have been better.)
Regardless, we learn that the embryo grew in Mommy’s uterus (“like a cozy room right below my tummy”) until Maisie was ready to be born. We never learn which one of them provided the egg, which leaves room both for families that did reciprocal IVF and for those where one parent provided both egg and uterus.
Mommy further explains that sperm and egg have “special instructions” for how the baby will look, how tall they will be and “where all the parts should go.” Maisie smartly equates this with the blueprints that her moms create.
Importantly, Mama then tells her that although Maisie got some of her blueprints from the donor, “who you are is so much bigger than your blueprints. You have my smile and Mommy’s laugh and you love science just like your Grandpa.” That’s a critical thing to remember in families where one or more parents is not genetically connected to the child.
At the end, Maisie and her moms hug as they reassure her that love is how to build a family, and that she can always come to them with questions about how babies are made or about their family story.
This is a sweet book that may help some families find the words to begin having conversations about donor conception with their children. Potential readers should note that while the book is listed in online bookstores as “A (IUI/IVF/ICI) Donor Conception Story for Two-Mom Families,” there’s nothing in it specific to IUI/IVF/ICI. How egg and sperm get together is left vague. That’s not a criticism; in fact, it may be a strength. This is just a heads-up to guide you in what you may be seeking.
Maisie and one mom are White; the other has light brown skin.
See also Hudson’s Blueprints, a version starring a boy with two moms.
