The sperm donor met for the first time with 19 biological children at once
57-year-old sperm donor Mike Rubino met his 19 children from all over the world for the first time: he had never seen most of them before. He called the event "very exciting" and "a little unreal."
Mike Rubino is an artist. In 1985, he got married, and a few years later he and his wife wanted a child, but they did not succeed even with in vitro fertilization. Then the couple began to go to a support group for childless couples, where Rubino learned that half of the men in the group had a problem with sperm. Around the same time, he learned about the California sperm cryobank and decided to become a donor to help others have children.
His profile attracted many women: a slender blue-eyed artist without genetic diseases and with an education from the University of California at Berkeley. He got pregnant women from California, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Louisiana, New Mexico, New York, Arkansas, Ohio, Colorado and Maryland.
Usually donors remain anonymous, but he chose a different path: "I wanted to add an item to my questionnaire that you can always contact me. I was looking forward to meeting the children."
The age of his children is from 16 to 21 years old, but he did not bring up most of them: according to the donor's contract, he could not meet them until they came of age. However, in 2004 he met and became friends with his six-year-old son Jake.
Rubino invited the children to his house in Los Angeles (and at the same time joked that he needed a bigger house) and showed everyone his printed photo in a frame. He easily lists the names of all the children and calls them his clan — however, he asks not to ask him the dates of birth of all 19 people.
The donor's children were glad to meet and immediately began to notice what they had in common: one of the girls said that energy was boiling in all of them. In addition, 11 out of 19 teenagers inherited blue eyes from their biological father, and four of them are also artists.
Rubino was happy to see the teenagers: "Being a donor, I was glad if I met at least two or three of my children. I liked them all at once, at first sight."
Keywords: Brothers | Meeting | Donor | California | Sisters | Sperm | Usa | Artists