A woman has found out she has 29 siblings after DNA tests revealed they were all related to the same sperm donor dad.
Shauna Harrison, from San Francisco, thought she was an only child but at the age of 27 learned her dad wasn’t her biological father.
She then decided to seek out more information about her health history to see if she was susceptible to certain illnesses, KGO reported.
Through the ancestry site 23andMe, she found out the sperm donor, who lived in the Bay Area, was Jewish and of Russian descent. The next day she was contacted out of the blue.
“Boom! Next day I get an email from one of the siblings. ‘Looks like we are related. Not sure if that’s a surprise to you,’” said Harrison.
But then more siblings kept appearing, and two-and-a-half years later, the number of siblings has reached 30, including Harrison.
The ages range from 24 to 41 years old and they have begun meeting regularly.
“It’s a very weird — is the only word I can come up with — feeling when you meet, because you know you share DNA with them. We bond in a very different way,” she told CNN.
Harrison and one of her siblings, Jodi Hale, have now even become good friends.
“It’s just nice to have someone else that is in sort of the same place. And you have a lot of the same history. It’s fun,” said Hale, who was the 15th born.
All the siblings stay in touch using a Facebook page and use a spreadsheet to keep up with birthdays, while some have now met the donor.
“The biggest thing is that it’s such an odd situation that there’s not a lot of people who can understand,” Harrison said.
“It’s nice to have people to go through this process with. It’s not normal.”
