My road to infertility...

I started having irregular periods when I was in college.  I had missed my period for 3 months and went to the doctors. I was told that I was too skinny or under too much stress and that it was normal.  She gave me some pills, which kicked started my periods again until it stopped again several months later.  

I went to a different doctor and I was told the same thing...I was too skinny  (I was 115, 5' 5").  I was given the pills again and repeated the whole process.  This time when my period stopped I waited about a year to go to the doctors.  (By the way, I've never really been on birth control of any kind - so I can't blame any of this on that.) I was 26 and wanted to know what was going on.  I went to another doctor.  I told her my history and that I wanted to figure it out what was wrong.  She did too. She actually had my blood tested.  My numbers were way past those of a normal woman in menopause.  I was referred to a fertility doctor to check me out.  He did a sonogram to look at my ovaries to see if there was any activity.  There was a little.  He told me, I had premature ovarian failure (POF) and I had maybe a 5% chance of it reversing or fixing it with medication.  I was not married or even in a relationship at the time...so I held on to hope that one day I would be able to have a baby on my own.

Now, I'm 34, and want to have a baby with my husband of 2.5 years.  Luckily, I knew about this when we were dating and I told him it would be unlikely for me to have a baby on my own.  We had discussed our options early on in the relationship, making going through all this now a lot easier.

The one positive thing about all of this is for the past 8 years I  have not had periods, PMS, cramping, etc. We never had to schedule around them, too bad that is bad for me health wise.  I have to worry about my bones losing calcium, heart disease, brain weakening, etc... I wonder what effects the hormones are going to have on me now.  I will soon find out and oh have those dreaded period again.

I haven't had a period in 8 years!

I have not had a period in 8 years and I'm only 34 years old!  I've been diagnosed with Premature Ovarian Failure. This year my husband and I want to have a baby.  The only way to have a baby is with IVF (In vitro fertilization), which means, I need a donor egg fertilized and then transferred into my body.  Sounds crazy and is all very overwhelming. 

I knew for a long time that I would not be able to have my own biological child, but had always hoped that there would be some way to fix me.  Turns out there is no hope for me.  My husband and I are working with Shady Grove Fertility.  We've started a couple months ago, but I wanted to start this blog to document the process and hopefully help other women like me.

So far, we have completed:

1) The initial consultation

2) Prescreening blood work for both of us - (they took a lot of blood for all the tests.)

3) A test to see if my tubes are blocked.  I did not look forward to this at all. I took some pain relief medicine before the procedure, so it did not hurt that much.  The night before the text, I scoured the internet to find out all I could about the procedure.  

4) The easiest step by far:  Test husbands sperm

5)  Meeting with a social worker - (paid for separately)  I was really nervous before this appointment as I did not know what to expect.  It was us pretty much asking the questions and letting her know what some of our concerns are.  She was very nice. She mentioned some group therapy classes she has and hopefully, I'll go to some.

6) Financial consultation - Cost, big concern.  We are leaning towards using a shared donor to keep costs down.  We would split the eggs with another couple and have some eggs left over for freezing (hopefully to have baby #2).  The cost for this is $37,000, but it's more expensive because we are opting to do their shared risk program.  If we are unable to have a baby in up to 6 tries, we get all our money back.  The only other cost is for my injections, which is about $400 per cycle.

7) Injection Class - Yeah fun stuff...NOT!  My husband learned on the way to the class that he was going to have to give me shots.  He was not happy with that at all.  He doesn't want to give them, and I really don't want to get them.  It's going to suck, but hopefully we'll get a baby out of all of this.

Now we are caught up to where we are today. The next step is to start the hormones & have a mock cycle to run some more tests. They need to determine if I am a candidate for the shared risk program and if it will even work at all.  BTW, we have yet to hear about any of the results of the testing above.

Hopefully, this will be the longest post.