Was I afraid I would regret using an egg donor?

This post is part of the Ask Me Anything series I’m running on my blog. To submit your own question, use the form below. Here’s the original post that talks about what I’m looking for.

Here we go with another question.

As someone who is on the cusp of going down the donor route, I was wondering if BEFORE you did so yourself, you were ever afraid that you’d regret it, or that you were making the wrong decision? Of course you don’t think that now that you have Olivia, but I am just curious about your fears prior to taking that step.

After my second IVF failed, we started having the donor egg conversations with our doctor. I was suspicious that I had crappy eggs, and so I was already thinking things through all throughout my third IVF cycle. And when that failed too, we knew we were moving on and saying goodbye to my own eggs.

So, no, I wasn’t at all regretting moving forward. Because I had to move forward without my eggs, and I really wanted to carry a baby. I wanted to experience pregnancy and none of the testing or anything had ever determined there was something wrong with my uterus, or another reason why I couldn’t carry a baby. I just couldn’t conceive them. Chris and I briefly talked about using donor embryos—where we wouldn’t even use his sperm. And I know couples out there decide to do this. If one partner can’t use their genetics, then the other partner won’t either. This is why these decisions are intensely personal and unique to each couple—not something to be taken lightly. For us, I knew there wasn’t an issue with Chris, so I wanted his genes to be involved. Or, you know, sperm.

I never once regretted my decision through the process, but that’s not to say it didn’t come with a lot of difficulties. Choosing a donor was weird. I remember one time while looking through profiles, Chris offered to help, to sort through them with me to help me narrow it down.

“Here,” he said, pointing to an attractive blonde in a tank top, “What about her? She has blonde hair, too.”

I snatched the computer away, hissing through gritted teeth, “You just think she’s hot!”

Ten minutes later, after wrenching the laptop back from me and sputtering that that’s not why he liked that donor, we tried to look through the donor profiles together, studying cheekbone structure and eye color. However, it slowly dawned on me that this was going to be something I would have to do on my own. What is it about your husband looking at pictures of the woman whose eggs he’ll be fertilizing in two months that makes you want to sucker-punch him? The decision would be mine to make completely.

I dealt with insecurities, loneliness, anger at my body that we even had to do this in the first place, but I knew it was our best chance at having a baby, and along with that, a pregnancy, and a child that shared genes with my husband. But no, I was always confident we were making the right choice for us.

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