The road to IVF - how did we get here?

Like most people I guess I perceived IVF as a last resort to having children. But after only 10 months of trying to conceive, here we are about to start our first IVF cycle.

The fact is that I am 40 years old and the chances of conceiving at this age are dramatically reduced. The statistics are a bit scary - by 36, the chance of conceiving per month is decreased by half and is around 15% per month, compared with 25% at age 22. At the age of 40, the chances decrease to somewhere between 5-10%. Translated into time to conceive, that means it can take a 40 year old about 2 years on average to get pregnant.

That would be fine, except that the biological clock keeps ticking down and the chances each month decrease. We want to have more than one child if possible so taking until I am 42 to get pregnant the first time feels like too long.

I can certainly say that as a trained scientist, I wasn't unaware of my declining fertility. The fact is that I just hadn't met the person I wanted to have children with until I was 38. We needed to be sure about having children together and by the time we organised our lives around which city to live in and jobs, I was turning 40 and we felt we couldn't wait any longer.

I had been taking the pill for nearly 20 years with two or three breaks of about 6 months. I stopped again in November 2007 and after about 6 weeks had my first 'natural' period. Although my period had been a bit erratic before I started the pill, my cycle settled into a reasonably regular 29-32 days with the odd one about 38 days long, which was a bit worrying.

At first, we just made sure we had sex regularly and hoped for the best. I had read some books on trying to conceive and knew about the temperature methods, and also using ovulation predictor kits. After a couple of months, I decided to start using OPKs and taking my temperature each morning.

I used the fertility friend website to chart my cycle, which was very informative and useful. After a month or two I could see signs of ovulation based on my temperature change but the method is so sensitive to the slightest change, it really can be very difficult to see temperature changes in response to ovulation. I was religious about taking my temperature at exactly the same time each morning but still there was a lot of variation in my charts.

I also tried to assess my cervical mucous, but that was a challenge as well, mainly because right about the time I should have been having the so-called fertile mucous, I was also having plenty of sex and found if difficult to tell the difference between sperm and mucous!

Ovulation predictor kits were also difficult because I seemed to need to test for days on end before I got a positive. Most of the time I was seeing something that might have been positive - ie. second line the same as the control line, or slightly less. Only on a few occasions I did see a really strong positive test line but it was hard to relate it to the temperature information.

After 3 months of trying to get pregnant, we were still feeling reasonably optimistic but mindful of my age and advice in all the books not to wait too long to get help at my age, I made an appointment to see my GP. In my next post, getting the medical profession involved.