Our journey began in May 2019 with a normal yearly appointment. My doctor asked if my husband and I had started trying for a baby. I simply told her yes, that we had been trying for about 6 months. She told me that she would like to do some lab work just to make sure all my levels were where they needed to be.
A few days later a nurse called to tell me that my body wasn’t ovulating correctly. My doctor wanted to put me on Clomid (the gateway drug to infertility). I took Clomid for 3 months to try and get my body ovulating in a timely manner. Still no baby. I asked if we could maybe get my husband's sperm tested. The test came back not so good, so they referred me to their clinic in Birmingham. Ross and I talked it over and we decided to go to ART Fertility in Birmingham instead. I have known couples that have gone there and had success.
Photo and Post By: Emily Horstman
We had our first appointment at ART Fertility in Birmingham, AL on September 19th, 2019. Our doctor was Dr. Houserman. We met with her and she went over what they do there, both Ross and I had bloodwork done and I had an ultrasound (Hello Wanda!) and Ross sent off to have another analysis.
Turns out that my body seemed to be ovulating fine. But I have low AMH levels. I have what is called Ovarian Reserve. When a woman is born, she is born with all the eggs that she will have in her lifetime. I was running low. I was 28 and my AMH levels were showing me at around the age of a 35-40-year-old. Ross’ analysis came back still showing low. Our doctor wanted him to go see a urologist. He ended up having to have a surgery called Varicocelectomy in November. He also started taking Clomid and vitamins. We had to wait 3 months for him to recover before we could go back to ART. We would then decide if we would try an IUI or IVF.
Our appointment was at the end of February 2020. The results of the surgery were in and they were not good. Nothing had changed. The only option was to skip the IUI and go straight to IVF.