Saw A. and M. today, this gorgeous couple who’s been seeing me for about almost three years. They’re young. They’re only 31, 32. When they first came, they had a desire to have a big family. Neither of them knew that they had issues. They started trying. Things didn’t happen for six months. They decided to see their GP. Baseline investigations from the GP was all fine. The GP gave them a referral, saying, and I remember reading this note from GP, saying, “They’re not really keen on doing anything exciting or IVF. They just want some general advice about fertility.”
I remember seeing them after reading the GP’s note and reading between the lines, and knew that this is a young couple who was not keen on IVF treatment, which is absolutely fine, because IVF is usually used as a last resort, but sometimes IVF is essential. You can’t move forward without it.
With that in mind, I remember doing some investigations for both of them. A. just was perfect. Everything was fine, fit, healthy, beautiful, just had a very low AMH, or anti-Müllerian hormone, in other words. It’s a test for ovarian reserve, or how many eggs that there are in a ovary for any given age, which was the first indication of something being not quite right. M. just had some issues with the semen analysis, other than that, was a perfect bill of health.
They walked out of the office today very happy because they are pregnant and they are ever so grateful. It’s taken them three long years to get here, and during the three long years’ journey, they have tried everything that was not IVF. It didn’t work. They eventually resorted to IVF treatment and it worked.
For a lot of people, when it’s absolutely unexplained or some minimal issues with their fertility, it’s just really hard to know what’s going on. The the eggs are released in the body. The sperm finds the egg in the body. There’s no way of putting a real time camera in the uterus. I sometimes wish I could invent that, put a camera inside the uterus and see what’s going on with those two. What’s the egg doing? Is it accepting the sperm? Are they fertilizing? Are they lodging back into the uterus for implantation?
There is so much that we do not know. We’re all learning as we go. If you are having difficulty falling pregnant, and you spend a lot of time wondering about what to do next, it’s best to make an appointment.
