In the begining

In June of 2003 I had a diagnostic laparoscopy because I had been having pelvic pain and dyspareunia (pain with intercourse). At that time I was diagnosed with endometriosis. The doctor removed some of the adhesions with a laser and said the damage was pretty minimal and my fallopian tubes were unaffected. She was very positive about future fertility.

That fall my husband and I both started grad school, not our ideal time to get pregnant, so we waited. After all, I was only 23. We knew we wanted kids at some point, but felt like our lives were full and happy without them for the time being. It really wasn't until last fall that I started getting a little anxious about my fertility. This was largely precipitated by a lunch program at work. A local Reproductive Endocrinologist came for a continuing ed. program and kind of scared everyone who was over 25 and didn't have kids. I had my 3 day FSH (follicle stimulating hormone) level tested and it was 10.8, which is pretty high and signals some type of decreased ovarian reserve and/or egg quality.

I was shocked, usually women with this level of FSH are 37, not 27. I didn't want to believe it. "Maybe the test isn't predictive in women who aren't infertile. Maybe if you randomly tested 100 healthy women some of them would have elevated levels and it wouldn't effect anything," I thought. After all, we hadn't even tried. Maybe I would get pregnant right away. So we decided we'd better start trying.

We tried without intervention for the next 6 months. In May I had my initial appointment with the Reproductive Endocrinologist. She went over my history and all my lab tests and said I likely have diminished ovarian reserve or premature ovarian failure and would need treatment if I wanted to get pregnant. She went over all the options while I was crying in her office. I knew it was coming, but I really wanted to believe it wasn't true. So began our journey to conception.