at my clinic they match you and can decide to accept or decline. you only see a few baby pics and read the history. so obviously we felt zero connection. i have a beautiful 5 1/2 month daughter that is a mini version of my husband. once that baby is born you just fall madly in love and you dont remember that the eggs didnt come form you. and fyi...people that dont know she is from DE tell me she has my lips or she looks like me:)
wishing you the best of luck and feel free to message me with any questions

I don't know think you will feel like you found "the one" because she isn't you. We were able to choose any agency we wanted so we looked at three based on suggestion from our RE and questions that we had the agencies answer. Out of the hundreds of women we only found one that met our criteria. I didn't think it would be so hard as there were only a few things that were really important to us but I guess I was pickier than I thought. I was pretty happy with the donor but was relived to find someone since it was so hard but definitely didn't have a "shes the one" feeling. After about 3weeks the donor backed out and we were devastated. We had already signed an agreement with the agency so if we chose to go elsewhere we would lose our $$$ deposit. Luck, for once, was on our side and there was another woman who met our criteria that was just about to be put back on the list. The agency contact asked us if we wanted to use her before she was added to the list and so far it has worked out. She wasn't out first choice but I feel very relieved that we finally have someone and excited about what's to come. We got to choose from hundreds and I still don't feel I found "the one" even though she meets my criteria. She isn't me and it's not my egg and that hurts. I also know that I might finally get pregnant and have the baby I have always wanted. Remember if you get pregnant you'll be doing all the hard work of creating a person and then raising them! Best of luck, I am keeping you in my thoughts!

Thanks for the responses! So the girl we decided to choose ended up being picked before we had the chance to which we are completely upset about now. I have yet to have a smooth ride on this journey though so I don't know why I thought this would be any different! We are keeping our fingers crossed that someone will pop up that we like. We shall see. You have both made me feel a lot better about making a choice though. You are right though, once the baby is born I won't even remember that I used a donor!

DH and I decided that since the donor was "my genetic input" I'd get to make the decision on whom to select with some input from him. He was interested in educated donors and donors who were allergy free etc. I found a donor who I felt "connected" to, she seemed to have my spirit and build and similar coloring to me along with great health and being educated. Well, she totally flaked out. She wouldn't return my RE offices calls at first and when she finally did, said she'd be a donor only if she didn't get a job she'd applied for etc., and it was going to be more of a waiting game for DH and me. Also during this time, I'd been on Daily Strength getting excellent advice from my DS sisters, the one piece of advice that kept coming up over and over was to select a "proven" donor. The donor who was making us play the waiting game wasn't proven (new to the donor pool). I got cold feet about using her (with good reason) and selected our second choice donor, she looked a lot like a few of my family members, I liked everything about her and most importantly she was proven. She was almost 29 at the time of my cycle but had had 5 previous BFP donations (one a month before my cycle). Once I selected her, I felt relief and a bond with her. Our first DE IVF cycle worked and I was initially preggo w/ twins but lost one very early on. I am now the mother of a darling five year old daughter from that cycle. I think about my donor periodically and always with fondness. I sometimes pray for her that things are going well in her life and with her daughter (she had a daughter conceived at my REs office due to male factor infertility, I think that's what led her to becoming w a donor, because she and her DH had experienced (male) infertility). I am truly thankful to her for her selfless gift. But, I can relate to the roller coaster that selecting a donor can be, I'm just very blessed to have selected the one that I did.
Also, like sltoddy said, most people don't know that we used a donor, and it's amazing how many people tell me my daughter looks like me, in fact, she gets called a "mini me" all the time!

Good luck in your selection process, I know it will all work out in the end and you'll be so thankful. My only regret is that I wished I'd gone the donor route sooner.

That really stinks you did not get your first choice. That happened to us too, but because she decided she was done after 3 or 4 donor cycles.

I never felt a connection with my donor. I looked at it all very methodically. But did say, I could see us being friends with someone like her. She fell under all or most of our criteria as well as far as looks, education, blood type, health etc.

DH actually had the harder time when picking a donor. none of them were me, so none of them were good enough. I used to check that the supermodel, genius, cancer curing, rocket scientist, professional athlete he was looking for was probably not in our donor program lol.

Now when I think of my donor, I think of her with fondness. I hope she got into the graduate school she had been applying to and that she hopefully somewhat understands how amazing her gift was to us.

But I never felt like, "She was the one!".

I didn't feel a connection to our donor but I was so excited when we finally picked one. I only saw one person I would use the first time we went into the database and I remembering feeling discouraged. We waited too long on 2 different people and lost them, someone else choose them before us. Then I found our donor who fit almost every criteria we had listed, she didn't even have any adult pics, only childhood pics and I remember feeling a bit uneasy about that, I guess because almost everyone else on the site that I looked at had adult pics too. She was a proven donor also and had a child of her own, and I really liked her essay - it seemed genuine. The more profiles I looked at and read through, the more confident I felt when finally choosing the donor we used. I don't think there is a perfect person, no one can replace you or be as good as you but like others have said none of that will matter in the end.
I have to say also, when we were doing the embryo transfer, yes I knew we were using a DE but honestly I was so unbelievably invested in the process at that point, that was my embryo and my baby. Yes, DE got us started but we did all the rest!
Good luck with finding your donor. Its not always the first person you pick as you can see from others comments too so don't worry too much. And after our donor was picked and we were moving forward it became all about the baby (to be) for me, not the donor.

Thank you sooo much everyone! We chose a donor last week and found out yesterday that we have a complete match!! We are sharing our donor with a second person. Although she is not a proven donor, which I heard we should do. I honestly liked this donor the best out of everyone and didn't want to just settle on someone due to them being a proven donor. I hope this doesn't bite me in the end, but we shall see. We are incredibly excited to get the process going! I'll keep everyone posted! Thank you so much for the support!!

BecMarie, Great news that you have selected your donor. I understand your excitement, once we selected our donor DH and I went out to eat to celebrate - it's a big thing. Congrats! And please do keep us posted.

Our first donor I was so excited about - I felt like she was great! She didn't work out (we did a retrieval and the transfer didn't result in a pregnancy and we were left with no frosties). The second donor I felt NO connection with. I strictly went based off success. Even when I got pregnant I told my therapist I was so worried because I never felt a connection with this girl. Well, I now have the most perfect and handsome one year old son....You will never find you. It's a hard journey for sure. I couldn't 'get myself to look at her pics after I became pregnant but I called my Dr.'s office and asked them to mail me her pics and info so that my son has them if he asks. They just sit in my safe. Good luck!

Hi everyone! It’s nice to see so many stories with happy ending on this forum. I’m lucky I found this thread as I had de ivf a couple of months ago. It was interesting to read about good and bad aspects of clinics which you used. First of all I should say when I first read about a clinic we used I was 90% sure we won't go there. The country has unstable situation, problems with economics, etc. Also it's far away from our home. I had no clue how good(or bad) its medicine is. So I automatically crossed it from our list. My husband and I continued our search. I was surprised because I was facing reviews about it all the time. Most of them were positive. I sent private messages to a couple of women who used it. We discussed the clinic, all pros and cons. I really liked that the clinic has lower price, uses fresh eggs and provides with all needs which are necessary for foreign clients. Also I googled this clinic and it turned out it has high success rates and it takes first places in international rankings of clinics all over the world. I discussed everything with my husband and we decided give this clinic a chance. We sent them an email. They responded very quickly and appointment date of our first meeting with their doctor. I want to advise everyone out there, who is looking for a fertility clinic, not to jump to conclusions too fast. Option which may seem not suitable at all can turn out to be the best one for you. I've got pregnant from the first attempt. Now I'm pregnant after many years of infertility. Though there were some inconveniences, I think the most important is final result.

Good luck on your pregnancy krystalV4 and welcome emmillia!