My Donor Egg Pregnancy Experience Jul 13, 2023 | by Victoria Nino, Guest Author

Blog originally published July 13th, 2022

My Donor Egg Pregnancy Experiences

As I write this, I am currently 5 weeks pregnant with my second donor egg pregnancy. I can’t believe I’m even typing these words - pregnant! We have been trying for almost three years to give my daughter a sibling and have exhausted all the embryos we had from her egg donor.  We were faced with the hard decision to stop trying or start all over again with a new donor  - and I am so glad we did. 

**UPDATE: Baby Vaun was born on February 26th, 2023!**

My Experience Leading Up to My First Donor Egg Pregnancy

My first journey to pregnancy was very different from this one. My husband and I had been through four years of treatment with multiple IUIs, IVFs, surgeries, and even multiple egg donors with various agencies. 

Back then, infertility was my life and it had infertility grief had consumed every piece of my being. I didn’t go to parties or plan vacations. I didn’t eat certain foods. In the summer, I drank warm drinks and wore UGG boots, because someone told me these things would help me get pregnant. I did everything humanly possible to get pregnant, meanwhile, friends and family were getting pregnant left and right. I had gone to a very dark place mentally.

I could feel everyone walking on eggshells around me and all I wanted to do was run and hide. Crying in my car became the new normal.  The fake smiles were wearing out. It was a dark place to live. I lived there for about three years. We took a year off from fertility treatments and traveled the world. I started to find myself again. I was able to get myself to about 50% back to who I was when we decided to jump back in. We found a new doctor and a new egg donor and got pregnant on the first try.

 Mother via egg donation shares her donor egg pregnancy experience as she is pregnant with her second child!

That pregnancy changed my entire life. 

My Donor Egg Pregnancy Experience

From the moment I saw the picture of my embryo, it was like I knew it was my baby. I was so worried for so long about connecting or bonding to a child via someone else’s eggs, and here I was swooning over a black-and-white photo of a bunch of cells. It was the first time I could actually see myself as a mom. 

I know bonding happens differently for mothers and their babies, but my bond with my firstborn was like nothing I’ve ever experienced. Being pregnant with her was such a huge honor. We got to go everywhere together! She got to learn my voice, my laugh, and my inner energy for nine whole months. I got to bond with her from the moment she became a life. 

My Daughter Took Away All My Fears

Using donor eggs to get pregnant isn’t something you can understand until you have gone through it. I worked myself up so much about a bunch of fears and lies I was telling myself, and my daughter took all those away. 

I went from feeling like the most unlucky person in the world to the absolute luckiest. I wish I knew back then that the hardest thing I was going to experience in life was going to lead me to the absolute best.

Pregnancy via egg donation

My Second Donor Egg Pregnancy

Now, with my second pregnancy via egg donation, I am not worried about the same things. I’m not worried about the bond or attachment due to the lack of DNA connection. Instead, I’m worried about things I think most pregnant mothers of their second child worry about - like how will I ever love my second child as much as I love my first? Or, how will I ever take care of a newborn and a 4-year-old at the same time?  

What to Expect From an Egg Donation Pregnancy 

I get a lot of questions about what to expect in a donor egg pregnancy, but I don’t think it’s any different than any other type of pregnancy! Every pregnancy is unique, and when it comes to nausea, bloating, sore breasts, ankles on swole, etc., it doesn’t matter whose eggs you used to get pregnant. Pregnant is pregnant!

Donor egg pregnancy experience

The Emotional Aspects of a Donor Egg Pregnancy

With that said, I do think what is different is how you feel emotionally. When you finally get pregnant after struggling with infertility for so long, it can be a huge mental undertaking. It’s an identity shift, and it takes time to transition.

I remember in my first trimester feeling like I didn’t know where I fit in. I didn’t fit in with the fertile pregnant women, but I also didn’t quite fit in with the infertility community either. It was really important for me to find others who had been through pregnancy with donor eggs, to lean on and feel supported emotionally. 

I had to constantly remind myself that this was my pregnancy and it was different from everyone’s else, and that’s what makes it special.  

I’m not a “normal” pregnant woman, I’m an extraordinary pregnant woman! Hear me roar!

Establishing Connections Throughout Your Donor Egg Pregnancy 

I don’t know about you, but I wholeheartedly believe that babies choose their parents. Creating the right mental space and energy for that soul connection to come in is way more important than most might think. There are a lot of very powerful ways to start connecting and communicating with your baby, whether it be through visuals, music, sounds, symbols or just speaking to them directly. 

Epigenetics using donor eggs

The Power of Epigenetic Connections

The biological connection I had to my daughter and now my growing fetus, by carrying them, is something I will never take for granted. My womb is the first place they both lived. My body gave both of my baby’s embryos signals as to which genes to turn on and off, otherwise known as epigenetics: Epi “on top of” genetics. This means my womb (the environment they both grew in) can change the way their genes are expressed. 

My body gave my daughter’s body everything she needed to be welcomed into the world. 

Pretty cool, right?

A Donor Egg Pregnancy Mindset

Donor egg pregnancy experience

I feel quite grateful that I have been able to expand my ways of connecting to my pregnancies, ways I might not have even known about had my babies been created from my egg. I have gotten to love my soul babies way before they were even in my womb or my arms. 

If you can open your heart and mind to all of the beautiful connections that exist outside of DNA, there is a whole world of beauty out there waiting for you, and it just might lead you to your soul child.

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