Knocked Down

as you can tell from yesterday's charming post, things are bad here. The Boy and I are both reeling from what appears to be, if not the death of our fertility hopes, then at least their transfer to hospice care.

From what the doctor told me, there's still a chance I can get pregnant with IVF. Why, she knows at least one woman who's pregnant right now, and her AMH levels were even lower than mine! And it only took her a few cycles! Excuse me for a moment while I break out my party hat. But honestly, things don't look good. I've spent a fair amount of my time since getting the call yesterday online, asking Dr. Google what she thinks. And what she thinks is that I should be reevaluating my "parenting plans" and perhaps seeing a counselor to deal with the grief.

I feel like I'm the butt of some huge cosmic joke. I have two completely unrelated fertility issues, and they just happen to be the combination most likely to mean I can't have kids. See, women with prematurely old ovaries are still producing (yes, I know, not actually producing, but I can't think of a better word) eggs and ovulating normally, so they can get pregnant spontaneously, but only if there are no problems with their tubes (well, drat). And women who have tubal issues are the reason that IVF exists, but low ovarian response is pretty much a guarantee of IVF failure, since the success of IVF hinges on the woman being able to produce several healthy eggs at one time.

Right now, I'm in a state of shock and sadness. This AMH test was supposed to be just a formality -- in fact, the doctor wouldn't even have ordered it if I hadn't told her I was worried about my short cycles. So good an IVF candidate was I supposed to be that the clinic hadn't actually planned on ordering any pre-IVF tests for me -- no Estradiol, no FSH, nothing. Just the usual HIV, rubella, etc. So I'm not kidding when I say this blow came out of left field.

At this point, we're just trying to process things and think about next steps. We're going to go forward with IVF (at a higher dosage of the drugs), because there's nothing else we can do. But we're trying to absorb the idea that IVF us b longer our saviour, but rather a last-ditch hail mary.