I went through the exact same thing, my gf and I was on search for a donor for years it was a joke. We had the same thoughts as you, we wanted our child/children to know their donor and also wanted the chance of biological siblings. We thought it would be great to not just take their sperm and cut them off especially if they also wanted involvement as a co-parent. We made it clear we needed no kind of financial assistance towards the child and upbringing, just having the ability for the child to know their biological dad was all we wanted.
We signed up with a few sites that allow for you to meet like minded people, paid for memberships and got to sending messages and got lots of responses however we obviously had a criteria we was trying to meet and for the ones that did meet it, they wasn’t interested.
I joined a discord group for the same thing but this time free and found someone that was willing to work with us and after lowering our criteria as it was semi gross like we wouldn’t find anyone, decided to work with him also but almost immediately I knew it was a mistake! We agreed on conditions before I gave him our number to whatsapp and he said it would be fine. AI, co-parents, biological siblings etc. almost as soon as he got our number and started messaging us he was trying to change up the agreement like we didn’t have our limitations! Now he wanted AI as without it he would feel “left out” (I had more of a issue with it than my gf and felt I was being guilt tripped into NI), he agreed with being a co-parent because he was busy with work and didn’t want to fully commit and so wanted to be a back seat parent but then all of a sudden he kept speaking about a throuple!
We expressed many times we had our agreement and didn’t want to change what we are comfortable with but he wouldn’t let it go and was acting like a spoilt child. He would say if we have any questions to feel free to ask him but as soon as you ask him baby related questions he would palm it off saying we didn’t need to think about those things yet as it will take a while before we even get to that stage!
I was feeling more and more uncomfortable but overall my gf had the mindset that we only wanted a child so let’s just do that and leave it, I reminded her he didn’t want to be a sperm donor but a co-parent and just taking the child afterwards seemed wrong even though he didn’t care. I felt like regardless of what we did it would be hard to get rid of him so I wouldn’t want to mess around like that.
He was very inconsistent, told me not to look for others as he will do it, told us he would come down shortly as he was always near us but that time never came. When we called him up on it he would be coming the next day but not come. I would say I’m not interested anymore and he would apologise and say he can come over the weekend then he disappeared for 6 months without warning! He randomly comes back expecting to pick up where he left off! I gave him a piece of my mind, told him he has been changing things from the start and instead of saying he wasn’t happy would say the opposite and keep pretending he is coming through but wasn’t. (He even got to a point in saying he wanted sex with both of us even though only one of us was getting pregnant at the time and he would play it like it would “set the mood and make me feel more comfortable 🧐”).
I finally cut him loose giving him the whole piece of mind I needed to give him, told him for once and for all we wasn’t interested and ignored him from there!
it caused so many arguments In our relationship because I felt so unstable and uncomfortable with the whole situation! I even said I didn’t even want to bother with the whole thing anymore because everything was so extreme and dragged on for a year!
we left it a few months before even considering talking about it again as I was so annoyed and adamant I am done. The only way I would agree with it again would be to have no involvement from the donor (I’m not falling for that anymore) and if we are to agree with something between us we need to stick to that and not have a stranger change it, we need to support eachother!
We chose ultimately to use our savings and go to a fertility clinic, that way there would be no ability for them to change their mind and once we are ready we can go. We paid for 3 IUI cycles and hoped for the best! We didn’t need to think hard on what we wanted from the donor as we always wanted, we had only 3 we could choose but one was CMV positive and I’m negative so we only had 2 to choose from and we made our pick and started treatment! First cycle didn’t work but 2nd was a success and I am now 8 weeks.
None of this seemed like it would be possible if we didn’t take that gamble and choose to bite the bullet and use a clinic (we didn’t want to use a clinic at first). I was getting tired of going through all these profiles and talking to all these strange men who all seemed to have some other agenda (it honestly started getting depressing!)
If you can afford it I would honestly recommend searching for a clinic near you. What you look for is up to you but we looked for the cheapest clinic with a multi cycle package which claimed to have a diverse range of donors (that didn’t turn out to be true as like I said we were left with 2 donors out of 3). We wanted it to work on the 3rd time as the first means we wasted money on 2 extra cycles we didn’t need but 3rd means if it didn’t work then gave over! Second means it was a even balance and should the pregnancy not be viable we still have 1 cycle left.
I have my first scan tomorrow and should all be fine I am able to secure more sperm for future siblings which I think is exciting! Honestly you may waste your time being messed around. Many clinics do payment plans also now so if you cannot save the money up then you can pay in installments and if all that is still not do-able I heard Denmark is really cheap and other European counties and their care is pretty good!
sorry this got long but my experience was similar to your but stretched out longer and just felt so familiar and I wouldn’t be here waiting for our little one now if I had just continued with these time wasters (there were other donors also that I said I would pay their travel, board and keep and it was the same story all over)!