Diminished Ovarian Reserve

Diminished ovarian reserve (DOR) means a woman has less eggs than an average woman of the same age.  Not much is known about how or why certain women have DOR, but around 10% of couples seeking infertility treatments have DOR.  Age, genetics and environmental factors affect a woman’s ovarian reserve, but pinpointing a reason a woman has DOR can be next to impossible.

I beat myself up wondering what I had done to cause my DOR.  By the time we had started trying to start a family, I had become very health conscious, but I hadn’t always been.  Was my DOR caused by a lifestyle choice I had made in 20s?  Was I born with less eggs than a normal woman? If I had tried to start a family earlier, would it have been easier? I drove myself crazy trying to find an answer, but as my doctor told me, enough just isn’t known about DOR for me to ever find an answer. 

In the days that followed our diagnosis, I cried every single day.  I cried because I morning the loss of my reproductive system.  I cried because I felt like a failure as  woman.  And I cried because I felt like a failure as a wife.  My body was defective, so it was hard not to think about Ryan and how he was only going through this because he married me.  My husband is the most amazing person I have ever met, and he never once made my DOR feel like it was anything but OUR problem. And for that I will be forever grateful for.

There is no magic pill you can take to come to terms with all of the emotions you feel during infertility, you just learn to accept the things you cannot change and focus on the future.  Infertility changes you forever, and it becomes a part of who you are. We started our first treatment cycle less than three weeks after our diagnosis, and I truly think starting our first cycle helped me come to terms with having DOR. I was able to focus on my treatment instead of focusing on how and why I had DOR.