The Third Party in the Room: A Clinician’s Guide to Donor Conception

Donor conception — building a family with the help of donated eggs, sperm, or both — is more common than ever, yet many therapists enter these sessions underprepared. The clinical terrain is nuanced: it sits at the intersection of reproductive loss, identity development, relational dynamics, medical decision-making, and ethics. And the families navigating it deserve clinicians who can hold all of it. This one-hour training offers a focused, practical introduction to donor conception through a clinical lens. We’ll cover the foundational landscape of third-party reproduction, the unique psychological considerations for recipients, donors, and donor-conceived individuals, and the moments that most commonly surface in therapy — including disclosure conversations, identity questions, grief, and family-of-origin complexity. Whether you’re a generalist who wants to stop Googling mid-session or a perinatal specialist deepening your competency, you’ll leave with a clearer framework and greater clinical confidence when a client says, “We used a donor.”