I always kind of had a feeling that getting pregnant would be difficult for me. So as soon as my husband and I got married we started trying to get pregnant and then promptly requested the referral for a fertility doc at the 6-month mark (apparently with advanced maternal age, when 35 and over, you get to fast track this process). My personal diagnosis is Diminished Ovarian Reserve (DOR). Which basically means the used by date on my eggs has mostly passed and I am working with the bottom of the barrel on my egg supply. It is not that I can’t get pregnant, but the chance of one of my last few good eggs getting released for the major leagues becomes ridiculously small. At our first meeting with our infertility doctor to discuss treatment plans, my husband and I started the conversation by saying we did not want to hear about donor egg or adoption. We wanted to do all we could to try and have our own biological children despite the odds. 3 years and 6 IVF attempts later we had four canceled cycles and two early miscarriages.
So, we set off down the donor egg path. We found her and she seemed very sweet and hardworking. Since we had chosen the frozen egg donor route we purchased two egg lots in hopes of using the second egg lot for a genetic sibling. On the thaw date, we were so excited, until we got a call later that the eggs did not thaw well and out of 7 eggs only two fertilized. Ugh! Here we go again. Sadly, our one viable embryo did not result in a pregnancy.
Are you kidding me?! We were on our second donor and now down to our last donor egg lot, oh and of course out of pocket ridiculous amounts of money… We took an impromptu vacation to clear our heads and decide what we wanted to do with the last donor egg lot. Were we strong enough to sign up for a ninth failed attempt?
We decided to go for it and wait the two weeks for my beta test. The beta confirms a positive pregnancy, but I had been here before. At each doctor visit, we miraculously progressed nicely despite always being scared there was new devastation just around the corner. It wasn’t!
9 months later we welcomed our healthy little boy!!