‘I found my biological father’
Louise Mcloughlin spent years trying to track down her sperm-donor father and, during lockdown, she started a podcast to document her search.
‘I discovered I was conceived with the help of a sperm donor when I was 13. My parents told me, but as it was incredibly upsetting for them, I kept it a secret. As a teenager, trying to develop my own identity, I found it difficult to accept that I had no idea where half of me came from. It wasn’t easy getting answers because all records of my donor had been destroyed. When I was born in the early 1990s via IVF, the process was just over a decade old, and donation was still anonymous. In 2016, I took two DNA tests and through ancestry.co.uk, found my first half-sibling, a sister who is eight months older than me. I wrote an article about it online and was amazed by the positive messages I received from other donor-conceived people. Their response prompted me to launch my podcast, You Look Like Me.
I’d been thinking about doing it for ages and finally had time during lockdown. I wanted to give a voice to the thousands of donor-conceived people who are still legally not entitled to their family history, medical records, or donor’s identity. In the UK, the law changed in 2005 and donors can no longer be anonymous, but in the USA there are still no laws governing it. I started by sharing other people’s stories, including a woman who discovered her history at the age of 56 and a boy who has over 200 siblings. I also documented the joy of finding my half-sister, and our continuing search for our biological father. Then, while recording it, I got a distant DNA match for him and we searched Facebook for people who we thought could be members of our biological family. We found a man of the right age who looked like us and decided to take a risk and call him. He reacted with such joy and kindness that we met up for a picnic outside when restrictions were lifted last autumn. I recorded and shared our emotional reunion (with his permission) on the podcast and I’m so pleased it has given hope to other people who are still looking for their donor family.’ Listen to You Look Like Me on most audio streaming apps, and follow @Youlooklikeme_
‘I’M SO PLEASED THE PANDEMIC INSPIRED ME TO DO SOMETHING POSITIVE’