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New Siblings

A California woman took a direct-to-consumer genetic test to learn about her health risks, but instead found out she had a number of half-siblings, the Sacramento Bee reports.

Jaclyn Baxter was interested in learning whether she might've passed on any disease risk genes to her young son and so sent off a saliva sample to 23andMe, it adds. But her familial results were the more shocking ones, she tells the Sacramento Bee. Baxter, who'd grown up as an only child, learned that she had three half-siblings, who'd been conceived through a sperm donor.

While Baxter initially thought that her father might have been the donor, she realized that a cousin on her father's side who'd taken a 23andMe test previously didn't show up as related to her, indicating her dad wasn't her biological father. The Bee adds that when Baxter asked her estranged mother about the results, she didn't get much of an answer.

"And while of course I'm very happy about my brothers, the first thing I felt was that my dad isn't biologically mine," Baxter says. She also adds that she "felt invaded."

Still, she and her half-siblings have been exchanging emails and she and two of them have even had a family reunion.

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