Book Review: Wish, Miracle, Me! – A modern family love poem for donor-conceived children

Very few children's books on donor conception have been written by the donor-conceived person themselves. In fact, I can think of one, Different Just Like Us by nine-year-old Lexi Layton, and it might be the only one for the moment out of the 662 children's books I have discovered on assisted reproductive technology.

Although I initially thought that Wish, Miracle, Me!: a Modern Family Love Poem for Donor-Conceived Children was also written by a donor-conceived person from the blurb on the back of the book, it was not. Rather, it was written in the voice of a donor-conceived child, but written by the mother of that donor-conceived child. The book brings a different framework to most children's books about donor conception in that it does not adopt the tale of how a sperm and an egg got together in order to make a baby. These are concepts often broached with younger readers of children's books on donor conception. Rather, the book is a love letter to her single mother and to her sperm donor father. She writes:

The narrator is a teenager who shares her story in a long poem, spanning the 29 pages of the book. And unlike some recent and upcoming memoirs written by donor-conceived people (Brave New Humans: The Dirty Reality of Donor Conception by Sarah Dingle, and the forthcoming, Uprooted: Family Trauma, Unknown Origins, and the Secretive History of Artificial Insemination by Peter Boni), this child is clearly very happy to have been born and to have the love of her single mother.

Throughout the poem she expresses pride in her donor-conceived status, and looks forward to the day that she can meet her donor father. The poem also touches on the child's current relationships with her donor siblings.

The poem, narrated by the child, is beautifully written, upbeat, and positive, bursting with love between the mother who wanted her deeply, and the daughter who loves her equally, and they are both profoundly grateful to the 'special man,' who made it all possible. 'He helped her make me / A blessing so grand'.

Clearly this child has known since early childhood how she was conceived. She relates:

According to a 2001 article by Drs Ken Daniels and Petra Thorn in Human Reproduction, in which they discuss 'family-building' versus 'child-conception' approaches to disclosure, this book clearly takes a family-building approach as opposed to a child-conception approach. How this child was conceived is not the focus but rather the 'family, so precious' that was created between mother and child.

In addition to the family-building approach, the book also follows the 'labour of love' script as described by Kirstin Mac Dougall et al in their 2007 article in Fertility and Sterility. The narrator knows how much she was wanted and the extraordinary lengths her mother went to in order to have her:

The poem is rather sophisticated, both in the style in which it is written (it is not a simple rhyme), as well as the concepts communicated in both words and pictures. For example, one of the illustrations depicts the narrator researching photographs of possible donors on a laptop, with a pad and paper nearby. Another illustration depicts her talking with one of her donor siblings via the internet. Neither of these things a younger child would do without help from a parent, and in these illustrations her mother is not present. For this reason, this beautiful book, self-published and from Canada, is best suited for children aged 8-12.