Hi everyone,
I don't see too many posts on b&b about POF, so I thought I'd post my story.
We started TTC January 2007 -- I had just turned 27 and my BF was 26. I had gone off the pill in November 2006. I had one period after going off the pill, and then nothing for 5 months. I constantly thought I might be pregnant because my period never came, I read all about false negative HPTs but in the end nothing happened. I went to the doctor, who gave me a very general set of blood tests and told me everything would be fine.
At this point, I read up about temping and started tracking my temps. It soon became clear that I wasn't ovulating. I had 4 periods during 2007, but am pretty sure I only ovulated for 3 of those and had an LP of around 8 days. As we started into 2008 I knew we probably had a problem, but I didn't want to face up to doing something about it. I changed jobs, and focused on settling into my new career. Over the course of the year, I gradually started to feel worse -- I had less and less energy, started getting night sweats and hot flushes and became very down. Late in 2008 I found a new GP, explained the situation and asked for tests. She went straight for a CD 3 hormone panel. She called me the first week in January 2009 to say that my FSH was at 20 and I was in early menopause. I had just turned 30.
She sent me to a fertility specialist who outlined our treatment options: our chances of conceiving naturally were very poor at 5% - 10% over 10 years, if we wanted to get pregnant we needed treatment and our only option was donor eggs. I also went to see an endocrinologist, who confirmed the diagnosis. He ran tests to see if he could figure out a cause, but they were all clear so we don't know why this happened to me. At my request, he prescribed HRT - at that point, I wanted relief from the symptoms and the mental space to be able to think through our future. Our fertility specialist said that, given my age, waiting a couple of years to do DE was perfectly reasonable and I could just come off HRT when the time came. My wonderful BF didn't know what we should do either, we were both so lost, and so we decided to postpone all decisions and just go on with our lives for a while.
I took HRT from May 2009 until October 2010. I didn't feel perfect, but I felt far better than I had before so the HRT was a great relief. During that time we continued on with our lives, with a lot of emotional struggle in the background for both of us. We worried about DE - finances, practicalities, ethics, what to tell the baby, future ability to contact the biological mother, etc. We tried hard to figure out whether we could live happy, fulfilled lives without children. We discussed fostering and adoption. We didn't come to any kind of resolution, but we eventually (and at different speeds) came to realise that we just both felt overwhelmingly sad. I don't know if you've seen the film Up, but the sequence towards the start spanning the couple's lives is one of the saddest things I've ever seen. We agreed that 2011 would be the year we would decide whether or not to go for DE.
In August 2010, my endocrinologist asked me to stop taking HRT for 4 months so that he could run more tests. He mentioned that if I had any residual fertility then it was most likely to materialise during the 3 - 6 months after stopping HRT. He still didn't give better odds than 5% - 10% so I didn't invest any hope. At this point, I had pretty much accepted that I would never get pregnant naturally.
I was travelling during September and October, so I didn't stop taking my HRT until the end of October. I resumed temping because I didn't want to face months of no periods and the worry / hope that I might be pregnant. I wanted to know what my body was doing. Everything was as normal (which is to say, nothing was happening!) until late November when my temp went up. After 5 - 6 days, I knew I had ovulated - it was the most convincing set of temps I had had in 4 years. After 17 days of high temps without even a hint of spotting, my BF went out for a HPT. On Sunday December 12th 2010 I got a BFP!
Initially, we were too shocked to be happy. I don't think we really believed it - I started reading about rare conditions that could cause false positives, convinced that, knowing my luck, I had one of those. We did another test the next day, and then another at the doctor's office to confirm. We started to be a little bit happy
I think it was at the dating scan, when I was 8 weeks pregnant and we saw bubs wriggling around on the screen, that it became real for us and seemed like it might actually come true. At that point, we decided to allow ourselves to be happy - if anything went wrong, we wouldn't be any less devastated just because we hadn't been excited in the early weeks. Still, we didn't tell a single person.
It was a difficult wait for the 13 week scan, when we were given the all clear and past the scary first trimester. We told our parents first - both sides knew what we had been through and were over the moon. Then siblings were next. After every person we told I was hugely anxious, feeling like we had jinxed everything and it was going to be taken away from us. Gradually, as we told more people, I started to relax.
I am now 16 weeks pregnant. I had an ante-natal appointment yesterday, where they did another quick scan and everything looked fine. Finally, I feel like this is real and is really going to happen
And I feel strong enough to post my story.
Wow, this is a long post! Thanks for reading, I hope it's helped someone even a little bit. I've had so much good luck, I hope it continues, and I'm wishing the same luck to all of you.
Love,
Veda
I don't see too many posts on b&b about POF, so I thought I'd post my story.
We started TTC January 2007 -- I had just turned 27 and my BF was 26. I had gone off the pill in November 2006. I had one period after going off the pill, and then nothing for 5 months. I constantly thought I might be pregnant because my period never came, I read all about false negative HPTs but in the end nothing happened. I went to the doctor, who gave me a very general set of blood tests and told me everything would be fine.
At this point, I read up about temping and started tracking my temps. It soon became clear that I wasn't ovulating. I had 4 periods during 2007, but am pretty sure I only ovulated for 3 of those and had an LP of around 8 days. As we started into 2008 I knew we probably had a problem, but I didn't want to face up to doing something about it. I changed jobs, and focused on settling into my new career. Over the course of the year, I gradually started to feel worse -- I had less and less energy, started getting night sweats and hot flushes and became very down. Late in 2008 I found a new GP, explained the situation and asked for tests. She went straight for a CD 3 hormone panel. She called me the first week in January 2009 to say that my FSH was at 20 and I was in early menopause. I had just turned 30.
She sent me to a fertility specialist who outlined our treatment options: our chances of conceiving naturally were very poor at 5% - 10% over 10 years, if we wanted to get pregnant we needed treatment and our only option was donor eggs. I also went to see an endocrinologist, who confirmed the diagnosis. He ran tests to see if he could figure out a cause, but they were all clear so we don't know why this happened to me. At my request, he prescribed HRT - at that point, I wanted relief from the symptoms and the mental space to be able to think through our future. Our fertility specialist said that, given my age, waiting a couple of years to do DE was perfectly reasonable and I could just come off HRT when the time came. My wonderful BF didn't know what we should do either, we were both so lost, and so we decided to postpone all decisions and just go on with our lives for a while.
I took HRT from May 2009 until October 2010. I didn't feel perfect, but I felt far better than I had before so the HRT was a great relief. During that time we continued on with our lives, with a lot of emotional struggle in the background for both of us. We worried about DE - finances, practicalities, ethics, what to tell the baby, future ability to contact the biological mother, etc. We tried hard to figure out whether we could live happy, fulfilled lives without children. We discussed fostering and adoption. We didn't come to any kind of resolution, but we eventually (and at different speeds) came to realise that we just both felt overwhelmingly sad. I don't know if you've seen the film Up, but the sequence towards the start spanning the couple's lives is one of the saddest things I've ever seen. We agreed that 2011 would be the year we would decide whether or not to go for DE.
In August 2010, my endocrinologist asked me to stop taking HRT for 4 months so that he could run more tests. He mentioned that if I had any residual fertility then it was most likely to materialise during the 3 - 6 months after stopping HRT. He still didn't give better odds than 5% - 10% so I didn't invest any hope. At this point, I had pretty much accepted that I would never get pregnant naturally.
I was travelling during September and October, so I didn't stop taking my HRT until the end of October. I resumed temping because I didn't want to face months of no periods and the worry / hope that I might be pregnant. I wanted to know what my body was doing. Everything was as normal (which is to say, nothing was happening!) until late November when my temp went up. After 5 - 6 days, I knew I had ovulated - it was the most convincing set of temps I had had in 4 years. After 17 days of high temps without even a hint of spotting, my BF went out for a HPT. On Sunday December 12th 2010 I got a BFP!
Initially, we were too shocked to be happy. I don't think we really believed it - I started reading about rare conditions that could cause false positives, convinced that, knowing my luck, I had one of those. We did another test the next day, and then another at the doctor's office to confirm. We started to be a little bit happy
I think it was at the dating scan, when I was 8 weeks pregnant and we saw bubs wriggling around on the screen, that it became real for us and seemed like it might actually come true. At that point, we decided to allow ourselves to be happy - if anything went wrong, we wouldn't be any less devastated just because we hadn't been excited in the early weeks. Still, we didn't tell a single person. It was a difficult wait for the 13 week scan, when we were given the all clear and past the scary first trimester. We told our parents first - both sides knew what we had been through and were over the moon. Then siblings were next. After every person we told I was hugely anxious, feeling like we had jinxed everything and it was going to be taken away from us. Gradually, as we told more people, I started to relax.
I am now 16 weeks pregnant. I had an ante-natal appointment yesterday, where they did another quick scan and everything looked fine. Finally, I feel like this is real and is really going to happen
And I feel strong enough to post my story.Wow, this is a long post! Thanks for reading, I hope it's helped someone even a little bit. I've had so much good luck, I hope it continues, and I'm wishing the same luck to all of you.
Love,
Veda
