The Beginning
Ryan and I have been together for 7 years, and from our first date, I knew Ryan and I would be together forever. Much to the chagrin of our families getting married was not our priority. For the first three years we were together, he lived in Chicago, and I lived in Springfield. When I finally moved to Chicago, we prioritized buying a home instead of getting married to ensure we had a strong foundation for our future and for our future family. Neither of us had ever thought of our future without children, and we would often joke about our future children.
When tied the knot on January 1, 2018, the natural next step for us was to start a family. I was 34, and I did not anticipate having any problems conceiving. By the time August and my 35th birthday came and we still weren’t pregnant, I started wondering if something was wrong. I started buying every product on the market to help, and as I researched online, I just started to feel as though something was wrong. One product I researched, I couldn’t buy because my cycles were too short for it to work accurately.
After a couple of months of worrying, Ryan and I took a trip to London and Paris. While we were at the airport, my period started earlier than expected and it was much heavier than normal. It was at that moment I knew I needed to finally make an appointment with a doctor. At that point, I knew something was wrong. To say I was nervous is an understatement. Honestly, a large part of me expected to go in and have the doctor reassure us everything was fine.
We went in for our appointment, and we didn’t really learn much because both of us had to undergo testing first. After a month our results were in, and we anxiously attended our second meeting with our reproductive endocrinologist at the beginning of December 2019. I had done enough research before we attended the appointment to know the most common types of infertility as well as the most difficult types. I was not at all prepared for what came next.
As the doctor reviewed our test results for us, all of our numbers, except one, were normal. What was not normal was my AMH level. A normal 35-year old female has an AMH level of 5.5 – 37.4. My AMH level was .67, the normal level for a woman in her mid to late 40s. I instantly knew what this meant, and I could instantly feel the tears rushing down my face. I had few eggs left, and the eggs I did have left were not guaranteed to be able to make a baby.
As the doctor ran through her recommended treatment plan for us, I can vividly remember Ryan looking at me saying, “see, this isn’t going to be hard at all.” But I knew the uphill battle we faced. We left that day knowing we would start our first treatment cycle during my next cycle since time was very much of the essence. In the days that followed, Ryan and I both learned as much as we could about diminished ovarian reserve and how it lowered our chances of success. While we had a lowered chance of success, we had a renewed sense of determination. All we could do now was wait for my period and our first treatment cycle to start.
The last year and a half has been the hardest year of my life, but there were also so many silver linings. Infertility really teaches you to celebrate the small things in life. My hope is my blog will be a space for me to not only share my story, but share how infertility has forever changed me.
