Finding out you have more than one sibling you had no idea about can be shocking. A Maryland woman recently found out that she has more than 60 siblings through a genetics service.
Brenna Siperko first learned about her half-sister back in 2022. “I cried a little bit when I first met her because it was just like a whole part of me that I had never been able to touch,” Siperko said.
The tears were short-lived as the woman soon discovered she had more and more siblings. Mikey is a brother of Siperko’s and together the three of them are donor-conceived siblings. Each has a different mother but the same donor father.
“A lot of things connect us but we’re all different,” Mikey said. “The one constant thing is 2046. That’s our number.” Their father’s donor identification number is 2046 but other than that, the group has few other details about him.
Mikey added: “I had a baby picture of him. I had a voice recording about how much he loved skiing.”
When Siperko turned 19 in 2022, she submitted her DNA to a genetic service, which is how she discovered that she had 13 siblings. Siperko was later added to a group chat where she learned the number of siblings she had leaned closer to 20.
“The oldest is 27 and right now it seems like the youngest is 14,” Mikey said.
The siblings’ locations spread out all across the United States, from California to Maryland, and even reach as far as Canada. As for the actual number of brothers and sisters, that number continues to increase. Currently, Siperko has at least 60 siblings in total.
Wendy Kramer runs the Donor Sibling Registry, a website that has connected 25,000 people with either siblings or parents, including 38 siblings of donor 2046. “All donor-conceived people every single day for the rest of their lives will hold the possibility for another half-sibling to come along,” she said.