{"id":74997,"date":"2016-11-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fertilitysmarts.com\/2016\/11\/01\/the-surprising-fertility-advice-i-got-from-my-ivf-doctor"},"modified":"2023-11-08T21:02:04","modified_gmt":"2023-11-08T21:02:04","slug":"the-surprising-fertility-advice-i-got-from-my-ivf-doctor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fertilitysmarts.com\/2\/938\/difficulty\/advanced-maternal-age\/the-surprising-fertility-advice-i-got-from-my-ivf-doctor","title":{"rendered":"The Surprising Fertility Advice I got from my IVF Doctor"},"content":{"rendered":"
The moment my first child was born, I wanted another one. Sleepless nights, blowout diapers, and hormonal mood swings did nothing to calm my baby fever. My husband thought I was crazy, but he went along with my plan to try to conceive a sibling right away. Unfortunately, my body had other ideas.<\/p>\n
It took us about six months to conceive, and then I promptly miscarried. A few months later, I had another chemical pregnancy: lather, rinse, repeat. The simple explanation was my advanced maternal age. At 41, I was lucky to already have one baby. Having a second child was far from guaranteed. But I didn\u2019t want to give up; creating a sibling for my daughter and completing our family was too important to me.<\/p>\n
I sought the help of a reproductive endocrinologist recommended by my OB. After a full work-up, I was pronounced healthy and fertile\u2014for my age. I could keep trying to conceive, but my miscarriage rate would be about 40%<\/a>. What worried me about that statistic is all the time I would likely waste trying to get pregnant, only to miscarry. I wanted to increase my odds and speed up the process before I got any older. To me, that meant in vitro fertilization (IVF)<\/a>.<\/p>\n The fertility practice was so confident in their IVF success rates that they offered three tries for the price of two. I figured we couldn\u2019t lose. The next few months were filled with blood tests and ultrasounds (not easy while schlepping a toddler), expensive trips to the pharmacy, and painful shots to the abdomen. As anyone who has tried IVF knows, it\u2019s a huge commitment, physically, emotionally and financially, but there was nothing I wouldn\u2019t do to increase our chances of having another baby. At the end of the first cycle, the doctor transferred four embryos, making me worry\u2014and, okay, fantasize a little–about multiples. I needn\u2019t have worried. None of the embryos implanted. So I pressed forward with our second cycle. Lather, rinse, repeat.<\/p>\n After each failed cycle, our doctor met with us to discuss his findings. Each time, he tweaked the medications. Each time, I held out hope. But after the third failure, I was devastated. Out of 10 embryos (across three cycles), I hadn\u2019t even had one positive pregnancy test. Given our total lack of success, I was certain the RE would tell us to give up or move on to donor eggs. What he told us next was totally surprising.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you want to try another cycle, I\u2019ll do it,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I don\u2019t recommend it. If I were you, I\u2019d keep trying the old-fashioned way.\u201d His reasoning: my older eggs were fragile. They didn\u2019t \u201clike\u201d being removed from my body and manipulated in a lab. The IVF process may have been damaging them, and limiting my chances of a successful pregnancy. Conceiving naturally would be the safest course for my older eggs. So if I had the emotional fortitude to endure the additional miscarriages I would likely face, there was no physical reason I couldn\u2019t keep trying.<\/p>\nThe Surprising Advice From Our RE Was…<\/h2>\n
How I Finally Got Pregnant at 43<\/h2>\n