In this episode, I am talking to the incredible Victoria Nino, author of Our Hearts Match, donor conception advocate, and mom of two about one of the most vulnerable moments in a fertility journey: what happens after IVF fails.
Victoria has lived through multiple failed IVF cycles, stage three endometriosis, years of heartbreak, and ultimately became a mother twice over through donor egg conception via two very different paths. Her story is raw, honest, and full of the kind of hard-won wisdom that only comes from truly living it.
We dive deep into the emotional rollercoaster of failed IVF cycles, the grief that so often goes unacknowledged, and what it really takes to open the door to donor eggs, not out of defeat, but out of empowerment. Victoria shares how education, community, and even a spiritual trip to Thailand helped her find her footing, and why she believes you don’t have to be 100% emotionally ready, you just have to be willing to take a peek.
In this episode, we cover:
- The grief of failed IVF cycles and why it deserves to be treated like any other profound loss
- The emotional tipping point between exhaustion and openness when considering donor eggs
- The difference between fresh and frozen donor eggs including cost, timeline, and access
- What an open donor relationship looks like and why Victoria wishes she’d had it from the start
- How epigenetics and bonding science can help shift your perspective on the mother-child relationship
- Overcoming shame, fear of judgment, and the “am I the real mom?” question
- Why Victoria’s one regret is that she didn’t do it sooner and what she’d tell anyone in the “what now” moment right now
Resources:
- Victoria Nino on Instagram: @expectinganything
- Victoria’s website: expectinganything.com
- Victoria’s support groups & classes: Infertility Unfiltered | @infertilityunfiltered
- Donor Nexus (frozen & fresh egg donation with open relationship options): https://www.instagram.com/donor.nexus/
- Book: Our Hearts Match by Victoria Nino
- Book: What Makes a Baby by Cory Silverberg
- The Egg Whisperer Show on YouTube and Spotify
Dr. Aimee: If you’ve ever wondered what comes after a failed IVF cycle or how someone finds the strength to explore donor eggs, this conversation is for you. IVF can be an incredible path to parenthood, but it’s also a journey that can come with unexpected turns. Sometimes the hardest moment isn’t the treatment itself, it’s the moment afterward when you’re sitting there asking, “What now?”
Today, we’re talking about that exact moment. My guest is Victoria Nino. She’s joined me before to talk about her book, “Our Hearts Match.” I’ll link to it in the show notes for you. Victoria has lived through multiple failed IVF cycles, and eventually became a mom of two through donor conception. In this episode, we’re going deeper into the emotional side of that journey. We’ll talk about the grief that can follow failed IVF, the pressure many patients feel when considering donor eggs, and how education and support can help people move forward feeling informed and empowered. We’ll also talk about options people may not realize even exist, including frozen donor eggs and having an open relationship with a donor.
Victoria, welcome back again. I’m really glad you’re here. Thank you for joining me. I love having you on, I always learn so much from you. I know that everyone who is listening is going to do that also today.
Victoria Nino: Thank you. I’m very happy to be here.
Dr. Aimee: For our listeners who may not have heard your first episode with me or been on your Instagram page, can you start by sharing a little bit about your fertility journey and what led you into IVF treatment?
Victoria Nino: I’ll try to give the Cliff’s Notes because it was a long one. Essentially, I always knew, I always had this feeling, even as early as in my twenties, before I was married, that there was something wrong. I knew that I had really painful periods. I knew they lasted a long time. I knew that I lost a lot of blood. I had constantly been to gynecologist after gynecologist saying, “What’s wrong with me?” They would just say, “You just have painful periods. You just have long periods. This is just what’s wrong.”
Eventually, fast forward, after I got married at 29 and we started trying to have a baby right away, nothing was happening. Years went by. I went to a fertility specialist, talked about my symptoms, and one of the first things she said was, “You might have endometriosis.” We did intervention. I did have it, Stage III. We did the surgery to remove it. Tried IVF multiple times, tried IUI multiple times, and could only ever get one or two eggs to grow. I finally did a retrieval with two follicles, two eggs, and neither of them fertilized.
That was the moment of thinking there might be another way we have to go. Eventually, I was faced with the option of egg donation. My doctor brought it up to me and my husband at the time, and I was not open to it. He definitely wasn’t open to it. We both had our own individual thoughts and fears around this.
We did eventually get on board with the idea. Unfortunately, our first donor did not work out, so that was a big grieving period in our life where we had to take a break from all of it because it just became too heavy. The second round, a new donor, and actually a new doctor, I got pregnant with my daughter, who is now 7 ½, almost 8 years old, the love of my life. Literally, she is me, I am her, that’s what we say to each other all the time.
Then I had two more embryos from that same donor that I thought just were two more babies, of course, because I thought I fixed the egg problem, we should be good. Those, unfortunately, did not end in pregnancy. I did have a spontaneous pregnancy in the midst of all this, I miscarried. We thought that was it. We had conversations about being a one child family and were coming to terms with that. My daughter at the time, who was 3, was crazy to me that she was 3 and the things that she said to me. She was like, “You gotta do it again. You gotta get new eggs.” I was like, okay. I remember exactly what I said to her, “I can’t just go to Trader Joe’s.”
She was like, “Okay. What do you have to do?” I said it’s really hard, I have to find a new egg donor, and I have to go through a lot of procedures again, and medicine, and money. She was like, “You can do hard things, Mama. That’s what you always tell me.” So, I was like, she’s right. And she kept pushing. She was like, “You gotta get me a baby brother.” She was very specific, it had to be a brother, which I was like, I have no control over that, nor do I want control over that.
I remember being connected with Donor Nexus at the time, which was an agency that also had frozen eggs. The frozen eggs, they had open relationships with these women, which I had never heard of before. I knew that was something that I really wanted to do. If I had to do it over again, that was the one change I would make is to have a relationship or at least know who the person is, and I want them to know me.
It ended up working out. We got six frozen eggs from this woman, Chloe, who I email with now, who I know and she knows me, she knows of my kids, though she’s never met them. I now have my 3 year old son, the baby brother that she wanted.
I chose the frozen route because it was quicker, the eggs were there, they were available, I still got to have the relationship that I wanted, and it was way more affordable. I was 42 at the time, so I was like, I can’t go down that journey again with a fresh donor, all the waiting and the what-ifs, I have to move quickly. I knew I just needed one baby, so with six eggs, I thought those were good odds.
We actually ended up with two strong embryos. Now we have two children via two different women on two very different paths, fresh and frozen, one that was anonymous, one that’s open, and two siblings that although they’re half genetically related, they don’t have half of each other, they are fully, they fight like siblings and they love like siblings, they are siblings.
Dr. Aimee: In your first journey, did you ever think that you wanted a relationship with the egg donor and to know who she was?
Victoria Nino: I didn’t. I was like get this person away from me, I don’t want to know, I don’t want to see. I was deep in that grief, I was in denial, I didn’t want her to invade our life.
Dr. Aimee: I hear all those same things from my patients. Then once they have a baby, they start asking the questions.
Victoria Nino: Right.
Dr. Aimee: They start thinking about their donor-conceived child who will become a person who will ask these questions. I think it’s so wonderful that the fertility industry is moving in this direction. Donor Nexus has always been at the forefront and a leader of these things. Even before open donation was a thing, which it is more of a thing now, they’ve always been very open when I’ve had matches with them to introduce my families to the egg donor. And everyone has said yes.
Victoria Nino: That’s the thing. Can we just ask the donors?
Dr. Aimee: Exactly.
Victoria Nino: I think a lot of them are open to it. They’re just being told this is the way it works, it’s anonymous. You can’t even use the word anonymous anymore, it’s just undisclosed, or what is it, non-identified.
Dr. Aimee: Right. Exactly. Let’s talk about the emotional reality of going through failed IVF cycles. What you describe when you’re talking about your journey is not just one cycle, it’s years of literally suffering. Many people, when they start their journey, they think of IVF as a straight line toward success, but obviously, that’s not always the reality. What was it like emotionally for you when those IVF cycles didn’t work? I’d love to hear, how did you get through that all?
Victoria Nino: I don’t know. A lot of it is a blur. I do think the way it feels now that I am a mom and I have had a miscarriage, it feels like you lost a baby every time. Every time, you have in your mind a vision of this, not just a baby, a toddler, a teenager, an adult one day, their name, what they’re going to look like, their room in your house, all of that starts to play out in your head the moment that embryo, I would even argue before it’s placed inside of you, the moment you learn it’s there.
It’s like you’re identifying these embryos as parts of your family. When that doesn’t work, that embryo, even though it’s not a human yet, that vision of that person is real, and that person just died. When people reach out and they’re like, “How do we support someone who had an unsuccessful IVF transfer?” How would you support someone who lost their baby? It’s no different. You show up for them. You bring them food. You send them cards and flowers, and offer to help. It’s grief.
I think that’s what is so hard for those that experience this is when people don’t understand it that way and they say things that they mean well, but end up hurting us because they don’t see our grief the way that we do, it feels almost invisible.
Dr. Aimee: Absolutely. You’re talking about grief, but it sounds like you’re also a planner. You went right to decision making. You had endometriosis surgery, and then you started thinking about donor eggs. How did that look for you, that “what now?” moment when you’re dealing with grief and then you have to make a decision, how did you do that?
Victoria Nino: People say about me that I’m very quick to move on things. I’d argue I’m not quick. I did a lot of research. I had a doctor at the time who was very well-versed on epigenetics, and I talk a lot about this and how that was initially what helped me get over the hump. I think when you’ve had so many IVF rounds not work, you’re just exhausted, you’re beat up, and there’s just a part of you that feels like you want to put your hands in the air and say, “Okay, I’m done. I can’t do this anymore. What else?”
Sometimes that burnout is what helps to pivot. Sometimes it just takes a door creaking open with a little bit of light, here’s another option, here’s something that could work, take a look, take a peek. Then when you take a peek, you might think, “Oh God, no,” and slam the door. It’s this back and forth of I can’t do that, but maybe I could, that sounds terrible, but actually that could work, what if that is good. There’s this teetering. I lead support groups all the time of people that are in that teeter mode. One day it feels like I can do this and another day I’m so deep in my grief that I want to fall to the floor in a puddle of tears.
I think for me, when I initially said yes, I was probably not emotionally ready. I talked about that donor that failed. I think that was kind of the universe’s way of saying you’re not ready yet, you said yes, but you were faking it. It was brutal to have to go through that. After I finally said yes, for it to not work, I was like, “Are you kidding me?” In hindsight, it all makes sense. I will say the next time around, I did more of the work, I did the therapy, I did the soul-searching, I talked to other people.
No one will ever say you can fully grieve your genetics before getting pregnant, that’s just not realistic. I was probably halfway there, which I think is reasonable. Getting halfway there was what I needed to get to open that door to then become pregnant. Literally, the moment my daughter’s eyes met my eyes, I was fully there.
Dr. Aimee: I tell patients, and I’m sure you’ve had this experience leading support groups and talking to women on the other side, that grief over not having your own genetics could be long-lasting.
Victoria Nino: Correct.
Dr. Aimee: It doesn’t necessarily have to go away. You’re still going to feel so much love for your baby, even though your baby is from a donor egg, and you should just know that it’s normal to still have that grief.
Victoria Nino: Yes. It’s funny. My daughter and I talk about that stuff sometimes. My ex-husband is Columbian, and even though the egg donor had blonde hair and blue eyes like me, my daughter came out looking full Columbian, so we have different races. That comes up a lot for her. She’ll say, “Mama, do you sometimes wish we were the same color?” It’s a hard question to answer. I’ll say, “What do you think?” She says, “Sometimes I wish we were the same color.”
I tell people, your kids might have some grief, too. But who better to help them through that than you, their mom who literally went through that exact process? You can say, “I get it. I understand why you feel that.” Of course, we can feel the grief, but we can also then say, “But it’s so cool that you’re brown and I’m white, that we’re both so uniquely us.” We can have the joy live right alongside the grief, and that’s okay.
The grief starts to die down and the joy rises, and it becomes a little flicker sometimes. There’s little triggers that will bring it up for you and for me, but it doesn’t mean that I would change anything. These kids are my kids. I always talk about how we say, “I am you, you are me.” There is no percentage of how much of me is in them, they are all of me.
Dr. Aimee: Totally. That’s beautiful. You mentioned how you’re known for being quick to make decisions. How did you give yourself space to pause and learn and process before deciding what to do next? And why do you think pausing is important to a person’s journey, and why is it so difficult sometimes to even do that?
Victoria Nino: It’s important because you don’t want to go into donor eggs feeling like you’re just beat up. You don’t want to have this defeat on you coming into this process. Sometimes you need a little space to just create some peace in your life, to try to balance your mental health and try to find more confidence or empowerment, something around us that feels like you do have a choice in this. This isn’t just you’re backed against the wall and you have to do this. That’s not at all the case. You shouldn’t do it if that’s where you feel.
That’s why I share my stories, to try to help people bridge that gap of I do feel like enough is enough and I can’t take it anymore, but open the door a little more, take a further peek, learn more about it, talk to people, join the groups, read the books, and start to just walk in the room a bit. You can come back out, but at least do that process before you just jump because you feel forced, because that’s not going to be best for your child either. They need a mom who has done that work.
Again, I’ll say this a million times. You don’t have to be 100% there. That’s not going to happen. Don’t put that pressure on yourself, but do some of the work because you’ll appreciate it later. Your kids will appreciate it, too. I did take a break. Even though I can make decisions quickly, we took an entire year off from fertility treatments and went to Thailand and I had a very spiritual experience that led me back to try again with a new donor. I do think that time off helped me. I know a lot of people don’t have a year. I still don’t know how I did that. Even if it’s just a month, just take a little bit of time to say, “I’m quitting it all. I’m going to just focus on me and the mental emotional side of all of this.”
Dr. Aimee: Right. What I tell my patients is you get to a point where the donor egg sounds exciting and you feel hopeful again because now there’s something that has a really high likelihood of working. It’s not a light switch, I can’t just turn it on right now. But if you look at donor eggs as something that’s bad and means failure for you, you’re not ready.
Victoria Nino: Correct.
Dr. Aimee: My patients share with me, “Aimee, you’re so right. All of a sudden, something just turned on. It wasn’t immediate like when you brought up donor eggs. Then I became excited and I felt hopeful again.”
Victoria Nino: Yes. And it’s such a beautiful pivot. When people go through my groups, I get emotional because I remember that pivot for me. It takes so much to get there, but once you’re there, and it doesn’t mean that you don’t teeter still, but it’s just the way you view this changes everything. Your perspective about it can truly just change everything for you.
When you meet others that have done this and you learn more about things like epigenetics, for example, that’s one thing, bonding and attachment, how it has nothing to do with genetics, these are all things that we talk about in our groups. I bring in medical professionals. We just assume a lot of things about the mother-child relationship that actually aren’t true. Once you get the science behind it, you can say these are facts, this could actually be a meaningful, beautiful mother-child relationship.
Dr. Aimee: I’m not very good at analogies, but one of the ones I use is, for example, let’s say you need an organ transplant. Your liver stops working, you need a new liver to live. I say frame it like that. Your ovaries aren’t working. For you, in order to live, you need an egg transplant, so to speak, and we need to get a donor. For you to live the happiest life that you want for yourself, we have to go to an egg donor, and that’s okay. That’s how you frame it.
Victoria Nino: I agree with that. I remember saying that my egg donor saved my life. I’ll get emotional, because I really thought I was dying. When you want it so bad, that’s what it feels like, that it’s happening for everyone else and not for you. Then to get something, a part that you need to fulfill that part of you, it can feel like it’s saving your life, truly.
Dr. Aimee: Thank you for saying that. Obviously, we’re talking about really complicated emotions. You’ve been so honest, and I’d love to have you share with us some of the fears or misconceptions you had before you started exploring that option.
Victoria Nino: I think my biggest fear was what other people would think. Are they going to look at us differently? Are they going to not see me as the real mom? What is my kid going to think? Is my kid not going to see me as their real mom? Because to me, I had done the work, there was no question that I was going to love my baby. A lot of people struggle with, “Will I bond?” I think I thought that in the very beginning, but once I was pregnant, there was no question, I’m attached and I’ll do anything for this baby, this is my baby.
I was just more worried about society, friends and family, and my parents and my close family. A lot of that was just stories that I was making up in my head. There are people in my life, I will say, that did say some hurtful things, unknowingly, because they didn’t have the education either. A lot of people don’t.
I think back to when I first was introduced to donor eggs, I ran home and Googled, “Who will be the real mom?” That was what I typed into Google. Now, I’m just like there’s nothing more real than me. I am the one who does all the things. I am mom. Again, that’s another reason why I share openly, because I want people to see that it is real.
It’s funny. My kids and I were just watching that movie, The Wild Robot, last night. It’s about a robot who finds this goose egg and nurtures the egg, hatches the egg, and mothers the egg. It’s a robot, and she literally reprograms herself to figure out how to mother a goose. That’s part of this. It’s like we do have to reprogram ourselves to be more than we were meant to be, which is beautiful if you think about it. Friends that have watched that movie have reached out to me and said everyone should watch that movie because it even helps society understand more about our role as a mother and what the role of a mother is outside of genetics.
Dr. Aimee: Right. You mentioned a number of things that helped you feel more informed and supported. Can you just share some of the ones specifically for you that helped you learn more about donor conception and the different paths available?
Victoria Nino: In the beginning, there wasn’t a lot. This was 11 or 12 years ago when I first started this, so there were no support groups, there were no blogs and podcasts and all of that. At the time, I leaned on my doctor quite a bit. Since then, with the journey to my son, there were a lot more things available. I think I was never even told about frozen donor eggs when I first approached this. It was just here’s what you do, you pick a donor, you find her, and you don’t know her, and just sign here. Whereas, the second time around, I had a lot more education on the facts. I also wasn’t in a vulnerable place anymore. The first time, I was like, I’ll sign anywhere, just get me pregnant, whatever I have to do. The second time, it was like, hold on, I need to know who she is, I need to know these things about her family history. I also wanted a certain timeline because I was older and it was my second baby.
I would say now there are a lot more resources out there. There are groups. There are even a lot of kids’ books. Read some of those. Even if you don’t have an embryo or an egg donor yet, if you’re just in the process. I actually have some of them here from my group the other night. This one.
Dr. Aimee: I love that book. I read that book to all of my kids when they were babies.
Victoria Nino: Right? Adults should read this. There’s a lot of people out there that don’t even know how babies are made, I’m like, “read the book.” What I love about this is there’s no mother or father, it’s just these are the parts. When you read books like this…
Dr. Aimee: For those who are listening and not watching, you’re showing us the book “What Makes a Baby.”
Victoria Nino: Yes, by Cory Silverberg. It’s gender-neutral, there’s no pronouns, there’s no titles, it’s truly just here are the parts you need, some bodies have these parts and some bodies don’t. Once you start to put this in the mind of a child, when you’re like this is so actually easy to understand and for me to explain to a child, it starts to feel less scary. That’s one of the homework assignments I give people in my groups, read the kids’ books. You’re going to start to realize this isn’t as scary as it has to be.
Now there are so many podcasts and Facebook groups. I will say that it’s a little dicey when you join some of the IVF and fertility groups, when they’re on the same donor conception journey. A lot of the women who come in are like, “I didn’t quite fit in.” You do really need to find that donor conception community, because those are your safe people. They truly get it. They’re not going to say the wrong thing because they’ve already felt it and heard it. I think that if you can start there, they’re strangers essentially, but they become like your closest, safest people. You’ll start to get a lot of resources even from them. They’ll say, “I read this book,” or, “I heard this podcast the other day.” Just getting your village, I think, is the most crucial part of all of this.
Dr. Aimee: How did that process look for you with Donor Nexus connecting you with a donor, can you share with us how that happened?
Victoria Nino: I reached out to them because they were local. I was like, “Hey, I noticed that you have frozen and fresh. Is there any chance some of your frozen donors would be open to an open relationship?” Their first answer was, “Let us check. Who are you interested in?” I was like, oh my god, you’re flexible? I’ve never heard that. There were multiple banks that I called and they were like, “Sorry. You have to wait until the kid is 18,” etcetera. I was like, that’s not what I want.
I chose a donor, literally the first one I chose was Chloe, and I said, “What about her?” They said, “Let’s call her and we’ll find out.” I was like, oh my god, they’re going to call her. They called her, they said yes, she’s open to it. I was like, “Really?” They said yes, once you’re pregnant, after the first trimester, she’s willing to start communicating with you. I was like, that early? Oh my god. I literally had chills. I was like, okay, yes, yes, yes.
We did, we started corresponding. We’ve never met, I’ve never heard her voice, but I’ve seen pictures of her and we email. That’s our relationship. There were a couple of medical things for my son, he had some ear issues and had to have a surgery. There was one moment in time that I’ll never forget that was the biggest, most grateful moment of this whole thing to have this relationship with her. I was literally sitting in the waiting room about to go into his surgery with him when he was 2, and it dawned on me when they asked me the question, “Has anyone in your family ever had issues with anesthesia?” I was like, oh my god, I don’t know. My husband at the time, I knew his history, but I didn’t know hers.
Dr. Aimee: Right.
Victoria Nino: So, I emailed her from the waiting room, “Urgent question.” Normally, it would take her three or four days to get back to me. I was like, there’s no way. Literally, within 30 seconds, she responded. She said, “This is something me and my family have talked about. None of us have ever had any issues, nothing to be concerned about.”
Dr. Aimee: Oh, good.
Victoria Nino: I literally went into the bathroom and cried. Yes, this is what it’s about. Right? I was confident to say to them no, there’s no issue, and I could breathe easier knowing he’s going in and under for the first time at 2 years old.
There’s things that pop up that you don’t think about until you’re in that moment, and you want to be able to reach out and ask. I don’t have that with my daughter. Luckily, I haven’t had instances like that, that are emergencies that I’ve had to ask about. Also, now there’s a lot of genetic testing and things that you can do if you don’t have that relationship with your donor. I don’t want anyone to feel shamed by that or stuck, because there are a lot of other ways to find medical history.
Dr. Aimee: You brought up shame. Earlier, you shared that one of the things that you were worried about is how other people would perceive you. What I’d like to know is how did you move through those feelings and see this as moving forward rather than giving up? I think that would help a lot of our listeners who are in this position of considering egg donation.
Victoria Nino: I think initially it was like, “What is my goal? My goal is to be a mom.” It could help me get there. I want to be pregnant. That was something I wanted to try to do. My eggs didn’t work, so I got this part that I needed. At some point, it just became like a math equation. I need this part to do this. This is my goal. I know that sounds very simple and just cliché.
Dr. Aimee: It’s complicated, but yet you’re breaking it down in a way that it’s the reality of what it is.
Victoria Nino: Right. Back to your kidney example, it’s like I needed that part. That’s how I talk to my kids about it. This part of me didn’t work, so I got it from someone who helped, and then it worked, and now here you are.
I will say the shame lasted quite a while. I think, honestly, at some point with that pivot, you dance with shame. Eventually, once your children are here, I literally will have these talks with people and they’ll say, “What if people don’t see me as the real mom?” I say, “What do you think about me? Do you see me as a real mom?” They’ll be like, “Oh my god, of course, yes. You guys are so close.” I’m like, “Okay. How are you any different than me?”
That’s why I share, because I want people to see yes, I’m the real mom, just like you will be. It’s funny. If you ask my daughter or my little guy, “Who is your real mom,” they’d say, “What do you mean,” like it’s crazy to even ask them that. They know both of their donors. I eventually did find the anonymous one for my daughter, we know her name. They’re privy to that. They know who those people are and those people helped make them, but I’m their real mom. There’s no question.
Dr. Aimee: When patients tell me, “I’m scared my child is going to say to me one day, ‘you’re not my real mom.’” I’m like, every kid says that.
Victoria Nino: I said that to my mom.
Dr. Aimee: Every kid says that. That’s normal.
Victoria Nino: Right.
Dr. Aimee: Now you’re a mom of two. When you look back at the difficult what-now moments, what would you want someone going through that stage right now to hear?
Victoria Nino: I think I would say just because this wasn’t your first choice doesn’t mean it’s not the right one. I think a lot of us get hung up on this isn’t my plan, this wasn’t my vision, this isn’t what I wanted, this was the easy path. Just because it’s hard, just because it wasn’t your first choice, that doesn’t mean it’s not going to be the right one that leads you to the children meant for you. Sometimes the hardest paths are the ones that bring the most value, purpose, and joy.
I always tell people I’m glad my eggs didn’t work, which I know some people want to slap me for saying that. But I have learned not just because these kids are my kids and I wouldn’t have them any other way, had these babies grown in their donors’ bodies with my ex-husband’s sperm, it wouldn’t be those two kids, they’d be different kids. This is the only way these two kids could have existed. Thank God for that. Yes, of course, always.
I also think that I’ve learned a lot about myself, I’ve grown as a human, and with this invisible illness, I have a new empathy for others that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. I’ve experienced grief deeply in ways, now I can understand other people’s grief and help them, and help my children. I’ve grown. I’ve grown as an individual, as a friend, as a sister, as a daughter, as a mom. I’m really grateful for that.
Dr. Aimee: I’ve learned so much from my patients and through the years of experience I’ve had. One of the things that they’ve shared with me, and I bring this up often in the conversations I have with my patients because they’re worried that they’re going to regret doing donor egg, and I say the one regret my patients have shared with me is that they wish they had done it sooner.
Victoria Nino: Yes.
Dr. Aimee: If I were to ask you, is there anything that you regret about this journey that you’ve been on, what would you say?
Victoria Nino: That would be one, I wish I had done it sooner, because that would mean more time with my children. Two would just be that open relationship. I’m not saying they come to birthday parties. It’s just knowing, having access to that person the way we do with Chloe through Donor Nexus. That would be it. Then again, I go back and if I changed that, I wouldn’t have my daughter, so I don’t regret it, I need it to be her. But I do wish I had more time with them, I wish I had done this sooner. Again, I wasn’t ready, but I wish I had done this at 30 instead of 38 with my daughter and 42 with my son. It would have meant more time with them. Looking back, I also mentally wasn’t there, and that wouldn’t have been best for them either. So, I guess I have no regrets.
Dr. Aimee: Good. For listeners who want to learn more about donor conception, or hear more about your story, where can they find you and connect more with your work?
Victoria Nino: I share our family’s story on @ExpectingAnything on Instagram, or ExpectingAnything.com. The support groups that I lead, they’re really classes, people always say, “I’m going to class,” because I bring in speakers and we do a lot of education. The partners come to, so there’s a lot of men in the group. I love hearing from the men, they always give such beautiful perspectives as well. That’s @InfertilityUnfiltered on Instagram or InfertilityUnfiltered.com.
Then also Donor Nexus, I want to give a shoutout to them because, again, I wouldn’t be here with this beautiful story with my son without them. I believe their Instagram is just @Donor.Nexus.
Dr. Aimee: Is there anything else that you want to add today?
Victoria Nino: I would just say I’m here. I’m a stranger, but my DMs are always open. If you’re in a dark place, please reach out to me. I always respond. It might take me a little while, but I will always respond.
Dr. Aimee: Thank you. Thank you for sharing your story with us. I always learn so much from you, and I know our listeners will, too. Thank you so much for coming back on the show and for sharing your story so openly. Conversations like this help so many people feel less alone in their fertility journey.
For everyone listening, you can find links to everything we talked about today in the show notes. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe to The Egg Whisperer Show on YouTube and Spotify so you never miss an episode. Remember, your fertility journey doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s. You’re allowed to pause, learn, and move forward at your own pace. Keep believing in your path, keep asking questions, and above all, keep sparkling.
