I have been blessed to work with and know other women who deal with POI and in turn infertility. We have been able to form a great community and I’m happy to be able to share their stories. This is the story of one of the women in my support group Kaiya. ❤️ – Lindsey
Alright. So, my journey starts when we started TTC after 5 years of being married (NEVER would have waited so long had I known what I know now).So I was diagnosed in august of 2020 at 28. My periods had been sporadic since I hit puberty, and sometimes we’re super heavy. I had hot flashes starting at 18 on and off, but every doctor I ever shared my concern with, brushed it off and just said it was “stress” because I was in nursing school, and I was never tested for anything other than my thyroid, which was always on the low end of normal. 5 years into marriage, my husband and I decided to start trying. I had my Skyla IUD removed, and after several months, we finally got pregnant that October in 2017. Unfortunately we lost that pregnancy at 7 weeks, one day after seeing the heartbeat 😢. We then got pregnant again in March 2018, which was my son Carter who is 3 now. At that time I still had no idea about my diagnosis, and my periods continued to be heavy, painful, and very irregular.
Prior to this, I had the skyla iud, and always blamed my weird periods on that for about the 3 year span I had it in.
Once my son turned one, we decided to start trying again. I had been breastfeeding, so I hadn’t gotten a period that entire time for 12 months. I always had trouble with supply but never really understood why (I know now that I had low hormones). I weaned, and got a sporadic and heavy period. Then, I got pregnant again after a couple months in February 2020, miscarried extremely early at about 4 weeks, and then again in March of 2020, and lost that pregnancy at 12 weeks. That one hurt the deepest because I could feel the little flutters and had seen the heartbeat a couple times. I felt gutted. It was then that I finally got tested because after my d&c they did testing on the fetus and found our daughter had turners syndrome, due to my poor egg quality. They then found my FSH was 120 and my AMH was 0.03. I was devastated, because they told me I’d never get pregnant again most likely, and that I had a less than 1% chance of having IVF work for me. They said my left ovary is nonfunctional at this point, and I only have 2-3 follicles on the right side. They told me my best chance was to turn to donor eggs. So I did some reading online and I discovered a book called “it starts with the egg” and started taking all the supplements from the book for the advanced plan.
A couple months later, I convinced my RE to at least try a round or two of IVF with us, because I HAD to at least try. Our first round with just gonal f and menopur failed. I didn’t make one follicle.
I then did another round after they induced a period with progesterone. (They induced me the first time too because I hadn’t had a period in several months. My FSH had come down to in the 40s.)
The second round we did a micro dose lupron protocol, along with the stims, and I produced ONE follicle. It luckily had one egg in it! We had to do ICSI, because my husbands sperm isn’t the greatest, and it fertilized, we transferred it, and now I’ve got my miracle little girl Eleanor Jane! I prayed the whole time for a miracle, and I truly believe the only reason I succeeded was because of a miracle from God, seriously. My daughter is 8 months and thriving.
LindsOnTheMove 