Lexie Stewart, Briley Lewis and Katee Kemether spent their first vacation together, and it won’t be their last. The half-sibings are united by the sperm their mothers used to conceive them.
Lexie was brought up by her single mom, Kim Stewart, an Ottawa-based public servant. A single mother, she always told her only child that she’d moved heaven and earth to bring her into the world.
New kinds of families
In her determination to have a baby, Stewart didn’t spend much time considering her future child’s eventual curiosity about where she came from; why her hair was blond or her eyes almond-shaped, and if indeed anyone else shared her DNA.
But as Lexie grew so did her curiousity. Last year she registered on a privately run Colorado-based online service, called Donor Sibling Registry. It unites donor-conceived children with half brothers and sisters around the world.
With her unique donor code, the sequence of letters and numbers in the donor file her mother received when she conceived Lexie, the young woman discovered she had 14 half-siblings, at least.
“I was just so excited because I’ve always wanted to have siblings and finally, there’s all these families. I’m reading their biographies and learning about them and what they look like. I wondered, do they look like me?” Lexie told CBC reporter Julie Ireton.
This get together demonstrated that indeed they do look alike!. According to Ireton, most of the donor’s offspring have blonde hair and blue eyes, and all have a love of and talent for music.
“We know that he’s a music teacher, which is pretty funny,” said Lexie, who specializes in vocal performance at her arts high school.
“it was like my birthday 10 times over.”
For Briley Lewis, the self-desribed “Best brother from another mother” he said his whole world changed after registering on to the donor registry.
“I was really overwhelmed … When I got on the website and saw all those entries, it was like my birthday 10 times over,” says Briley.
He plays trombone, piano and cello, and like Lexie, he told Ireton that he’s the “lone wolf” when it comes to musical talent in his home. The 16 year-old is the pride of a loving two-mom family in a conservative Kansas community in the United States.
Meanwhile in New Jersey, 15-year-old Katee Kemether and her moms, were looking into the Donor Sibling registry. Coincidentally they signed on within a couple of days of Lexie’s registration.
They later discovered the two half-sisters were born just days apart. The girls look so alike with similar round faces, almond-shaped eyes, straight blond hair and the same facial response when they arch their left eyebrows.
The three half-siblings formed an immediate bond when they started messaging, emailing, and communicating via Facetime. The plan to get to get together with their mothers soon developed.
In spite of all the social media communication, the mothers blindfolded the kids for their first meeting at Katee Kemether’s beach house in New Jersey. Led into the room, when the blindfolds came off, all three screamed and hugged, ecstatic to finally meet.
And a new extended family was born.
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