Donating your eggs is not a decision that anyone makes lightly — but donating them to your parents? Well, that's a whole different ball game. One woman was seriously freaked out after her stepmother asked her not only to donate an egg so that she and her dad could have a baby but wanted to use her father's sperm to conceive the child. "I know I have the right to say no, but am I overreacting by blocking [my] stepmom?" she wondered online.
It all started at the beginning of the year, when the Original Poster's (OP) stepmom called her to lament the fact that she didn't have kids.
Specifically, biological kids with the OP's dad, she wrote in a post on the subreddit Am I the A–hole. She explained that after many failed attempts at getting pregnant, her 44-year-old stepmom had recently learned that she was infertile and called the OP to say she was "heartbroken cause she can't have bio-children."
The OP is close with her dad and stepmom -- but not that close.
She felt like the call was sort of an over-share, but then the call got even stranger. Her stepmom told her that they were considering in vitro fertilization and told the OP "she’s always wanted a child like me."
"I don’t consider myself special, but she wants me to be a mold for a biological child," she wrote.
Her stepmom then made a strange request: Would she consider donating an egg?
Part of her stepmom's plan was to also use her dad's sperm "to make a child with the closest DNA match to them," the OP explained. "I don't understand her logic."
Her dad is against the whole thing, as is her biological mother, "but stepmom doesn't think it's wrong because it's not like we're [expletive]."
For sure, it was slightly awkward when her stepmom asked her to use her egg with her dad's sperm. "Then it reached inappropriate when she insinuated that sex even crossed her mind," the daughter explained.
The OP was reluctant, but her stepmom wouldn't take no for an answer.
She even roped her dad's family into the whole mess, and they took her stepmom's side.
"They're religious (old beliefs) and believe in patriarchal [lineage]," she explained. "[They believe] Dad doesn't have an heir to take the family name because they don't see me as worthy of being the head of the household."
Now her whole family on her dad's side is pressuring her to say yes.
Her family has been "bombarding" her with messages and called her "selfish" for not going along with the stepmom's plan. They told her that she's depriving her stepmom of becoming a mother "and denying my father's right to have an heir."
They've even stooped so low as to accuse the OP's biological mother of "shoving her western independence view on me when I was a child." But that's far from the truth.
The whole thing eventually became too much -- so the OP decided to cut off contact with her extended family and stepmother.
Just because things are very awkward right now, she's decided to go "low contact" with her dad too.
"Now, I'm starting to think if I'm making a big deal out of it," she posted. "She's right, we're not doing anything incestuous."
Not to mention she'd feel pretty guilty for crushing her stepmom's dream.
People in the comments were on the OP's side: Her stepmom was crazy.
"Ewww, this is so [expletive] gross," one person commented. "Your dad's seed is supposed to impregnate an egg whose genetic material is already half his? I know infertility can drive people crazy, but Jesus Christ. What medical professional would even entertain the possibility of doing this?"
"In-vitro Incest is still incest at the end of the day," someone else agreed. "I get being distraught that she cannot have children, but your stepmother's behavior is irrational and gross. She really needs to see a professional who can help her make sense of her situation and help her move forward in a healthy way."
"The kid will be OP’s dad's kid AND grandkid … the whole idea is so … weird," a third commenter added.
The OP later wrote that her part of her stepmom's plan was for her "child" to have citizenship from the same foreign country that she's from, so she's not even sure if it's legal. But there is one thing that is still crystal clear: "She's not letting go of the possibility of me," she wrote.
