Megan and Peter

My name is Megan and my husband’s name is Peter. We got married in August of 2017 and been trying to have our first child since May of 2018 with no luck. One thing I have known since I was a child was that I wanted to be a mom some day and that I would be great at it. It truly feels like my purpose in life. Every day up to the day that we started trying I had been impatiently waiting for the moment that my dream would finally be realized.

At the same time, I had a nagging feeling for years that I would someday be part of the 1 in 6 that would have difficulties getting pregnant. I had no reasons to believe this would be the case…I didn’t have any known genetic issues, it didn’t run in my family, and I lived a relatively healthy life. It was just a feeling. When we first started trying it was terrifying because it was the first time that my greatest fear was being put to the test. We tried for about 6 months with no luck and despite knowing most doctors say to wait for a year before getting help, I wanted to start the process early because I knew how long all the initial testing sometimes takes. We got all the usual testing done but my doctor also offered 2 blood tests that were an additional cost. One of them tested for AMH and that nagging feeling piped up again and told me I should get that one.

So, I did, and it was the only test that came back abnormal. At 28 years old, I was told my AMH (aka ovarian reserve) was equal to that of a woman in her early 40s and that I had diminished ovarian reserve. Since then, we started with 3 medicated timed intercourse cycles, attempted to do an IUI that ended up converted into a timed intercourse cycle instead and when all of those didn’t work, we moved right on to IVF. I knew time was not on my side, so I didn’t want to waste any more of it. Our first IVF cycle ended with 1 embryo that we did a fresh transfer with, but it didn’t stick despite being a beautiful 4AA embryo. That was probably the most devastating time for me because for the first time I had hope again since we were trying something new. Up to this point I had only told a handful of friends and family what we were going through but I had decided early on that I would go public with my story after our IVF cycle no matter what the outcome was. I was having a difficult time coping with everything which wasn’t made any easier by the fact that I worked in a preschool room in a daycare and did photography for births, maternity shoots, and baby showers fairly regularly.

Since then, I started a series on my YouTube channel to spread more awareness about infertility, created a website with a blog, and most recently, started a podcast where I speak to others that are still in the thick of it like I am to share their stories. It has been the most freeing experience being open with our struggles and helping to stop the stigma surrounding the topic of infertility and I was surprised to find a lot of people that I know reach out to me and confide that they have been going through something similar. It was only 2 months after our first IVF cycle that I got pregnant naturally during a cycle that I wasn’t even tracking. The happiness that I felt that day was only short lived however, as my second beta HCG dropped by half and I was told it was a chemical pregnancy only 4 days after seeing my first positive pregnancy test. I was miscarrying on my 30th birthday. We haven’t given up yet though and are gearing up to pursue IVF once again and hoping that this Christmas was the last Christmas we will have without a child.