38, Bad fertility results , bf of a year not sure re kids

[Rosie212]

I’m 38 and had a fertility mot which revealed AMH of 1.6 and AFC of 7 - the specialists said it doesn’t mean I can’t have children but have reduced ovarian reserve so need to get a move on . They couldn’t give me time scales at all.

I have a bf who I’ve been seeing for almost a year now. He’s 44 and not sure re children and feels that the relationship isn’t being able to move organically now. He said that he is trying to get on board and that he is 75% there and described a potential time line of getting engaged and living together, ttc from oct onwards and getting married later as time isn’t on my side. He said he can’t offer me 100% commitment to this now however and he’s said it’s not fair on me that he can’t and he’s saying letting me down after saying yes cannot happen. We discussed breaking up and him being able to get back in touch and maybe I’d still be single but every time we do this he says that he doesn’t want to break up and hates the idea of me being with someone else , that there’s something special and he loves me etc.

another added complication is the fertility docs suggested getting my eggs frozen (20k as would need several rounds to get enough eggs to get 30% chance of success with them ) and they also suggested finding a sperm donor and freezing embryos as a back up too (another 20k)

so I’m now in a situation where I am worrying that I may miss out on children , have a relationship that I feel could work but is being pressurised and I don’t know if I part with all my savings on fertility stuff I may or
may not need. I’ve also wondered do I need to start thinking about being a solo mum if it doesn’t work out with bf but this scares me a lot

I’d be grateful for any advise please

thanks so much

I feel he had a lucky break as you were steam rolling him towards something he just wasn't ready for. A year is no time at all. I suspect it is best of you just go this alone.

I absolutely think you made the right decision OP. A year isn’t long, admittedly, but when you know, you know. Even if you don’t manage to have a baby, if you are like me then you would need to know for your own sanity that you gave it your best shot.

Time isn’t on his side either.

The poor quality of his ageing sperm increases your risk of miscarriage. That won’t be a sentence he’s ever heard before, because this topic absolutely drips with misogyny.

Somoene who’s 44 and not fully decided is someone who doesn’t want children, in my view.

I think it’s reasonable to give it until October and focus on optimizing your health and fitness in that time so you’re as ready as can be. After that you need to decide to do it alone I think.

Unfortunately you’re facing a situation so many women navigate, myself included. I left a previous relationship because I knew I wanted children and he prevaricated about it for a good year before eventually having the guts to tell me the truth. By some huge twist of fate I started dating my fiancé not long after and we fell pregnant.

in your position I’d have a heart to heart with him. Explain that you’d love to walk this path with him but completely accept that he might not want to and he is free to leave basically. Then get donor sperm and freeze eggs. The reason I’d say do it that way round as opposed to trying to fall pregnant randomly is because if you decide you want a sibling the embryos are there waiting. I had secondary infertility and it nearly broke me.

Wow - I'm impressed by your decisiveness @Rosie212! You've done the right thing. Any 44-year-old man who still doesn't know if they want DC and feels he has right to dither and prevaricate and waste a woman's time and fertility is not worth the hassle. Good luck with having a baby on your own 🍀

Hi @Rosie212 I just wrote a long message but lost it!! Grr so annoying!

I'll summarise - I've been in exactly the same position as you re fertility results/bf unsure about kids etc. I was slightly younger but much worse stats - amh 0.8pmol and follicles ranged from 1-6 on diff scans.

I've frozen eggs with Create who specialise with women with low amh etc and older women and very happy with their medical service. (Admin/reception/replying to emails a bit slow but the main point is the end result).

The person who linked the Robert Winston articles is wrong - those stats are almost 10 years out of date. HFEA and other research I have done confirm it's similar stats to your chances of getting a baby from IVF with fresh eggs. 90%ish of eggs frozen (now they use a fast freezing technique) survive the thawing process now so if you freeze now and use at 40, you'll have similar chances of success as going to IVF now.

But you need a decent amount of eggs regardless so given your stats you might need more cycles.

I don't have many eggs frozen at all but it only takes one so it's all I could do. Am now back with the bf and TTC naturally so you never know...

Happy to answer any questions you have but I agree you've done the right thing with the ultimatum.

@Rosiestraws thanks so much for your advice. How much did it all cost to do the egg freezing at create ? Did you have consultations anywhere else? Also you split with bf over this? Did he change his mind and come back? How soon after? Hope he’ll come back to me with an epiphany he wants kids but I don’t think he will🙁

@RudsyFarmer i already told him the other week that I didn’t want the relationship to end and if he wasn’t ready for children the relationship could continue and I could get a sperm donor as I simply don’t have much time. I said he’d have no responsibilities etc. He wasn’t up for that

Well common sense must tell you he’s not going to be up for that. You are essentially telling him that his girlfriend is going to have another mans child but he’s welcome to come along for the ride. No one I’d going to say ‘crack on’. Still doesn’t mean he’s going to suddenly want to fertilise your eggs instead.

Honestly, I wouldn't be set on the bf coming back. I think you make your plans and move on for yourself... if he comes back then maybe you consider it but just don't do anything like "ok let's wait a few months" or anything that endangers YOUR chances of having children. I've wasted [my most fertile] years hoping that a partner would change their mind about kids. He's sort of changed his mind - he's ok with is happening naturally but he isn't as desperate to have kids as I am and it's not happening naturally so soon I'll be sadly doing the ultimatum of "IVF now or we're over" as obv with my stats I imagine I'll go through early menopause and I've no idea how long until that happens.. if you want children and you're a woman in your 30s, especially late 30s there's no time to waste :(

I have one failed cycle at London Womens Clinic also and a few attempts again but I really don't recommend them. Then moved to Create. Sadly it's taken me 4 cycles to get just 5 eggs so it's hard going. A statistic I saw was that you need at least 7 eggs frozen at under 35 to have a 50% chance of one baby. So not ideal but better than none. I'm doing another couple of cycles soon if I don't get pregnant naturally. Interest free credit card is the way to go ha but hopefully you'd have much better success if you've got 7 follicles on your scan. I've usually only had 1 or 2 follicles growing each cycle and I've also had issues with premature ovulation twice.. Create are very good and on top of things medically but the prices do all add up ,especially for the blood tests they do at each scan but it's so important to know if your follicle is likely to have an egg. The other clinic I was at didn't do these and so I went into an egg collection with 5 follicles and got no eggs...if they'd done the oestrogen tests we'd have known before they were going to be empty.. but that's another story!!

Cost depends on the amount of medication you need and depends on what they recommend. I'd say my medication and blood tests are usually £1k ish a cycle. A three cycle package was about £10k. Expensive. But not the £20k you mentioned previously! And you might be fine with one cycle anyway.. I'd definitely contact them.

if you'd consider having a baby with a sperm donor I would actually do that though, as others have recommended. As you've got no way of knowing if your eggs are any good until you try to fertilise them! For me it's not something I'm comfortable with right now so I haven't gone down that route.

He needs to be straight with you in or out you don't have time to fanny around with this bloke

IMO ultimatums are never a good idea.
He's as much right to not want to have children as you do to want them.
Unfortunately men don't have such a short biological clock as women it's a child's life here and if he feels its not for him right now that's his choice to make

I have two donor conceived children. I had very low FSH & AMH results when I was 36. I was told not to waste my time with egg freezing and to just crack on. So glad I did because it took 5 rounds of IVF before I conceived, and that was after I'd moved onto double donor.

You might find in this country that any clinic will want you to have been single for a certain amount of time. You could also look at going abroad.

Have a look at the fertility friends forum. You'll get tons of advice on there.

Good luck x

The grade is very important with that info.

Actually, when I was on my own solo journey, there was a woman in a new relationship of about 6 months. And the new bf agreed to stick around and they were trying to make a go of it, on the basis that she wanted a child so having a relationship the only way wasn't to him any different to if she had already been pregnant or the child was already born.

Do look into IVF abroad - there are some great clinics out there. Also check out fertility friends website if you haven’t already. PM if you want a clinic recommendation.

@loneparent1 sorry I don't understand your message? was it to me?

90% of eggs vs 95% of embryos survive. Plus the embryos lead to more pregnancies as they’re already fertilised.

You’re doing the right thing OP, there are approx 3 billion men in the world, your DP is certainly not the only man you could be with. Being tied up in a relationship where you don’t want the same things long term is a huge waste of your time. Even if the relationship is a good one and they are a good person, fundamentally if you’re not on the same page with the vision of your future - what’s the point?

I ended a relationship at 36 for exact same reason, I looked into doing it alone. Had all the tests etc. Started dating and ended up meeting future DH who I now have children with.
but if I hadn’t have met him then I’d have done it alone.

everyone’s experience is different and I can’t speak for all women but what I can say is now I have children there’s no contest between how much I love them versus any of the men I’ve loved - and I’ve had some great relationships. Absolutely adore my DH but it’s a drop in the ocean to the love for my kids.

If it’s truly something you want then go for it and do not compromise your future happiness to satisfy his

Funnily enough I was on the “doing it alone” route when I met my now DH.
He knew and accepted that I was preparing to go through IVF in the following 1-2 years and was willing to support me in whatever guise it took (maybe as a father figure and partner, maybe just as a boyfriend, maybe just as a friend). We dated for about 6 months with this understanding and fell in love and I actually fell pregnant naturally.
However I have zero doubt that if I hadn’t, I’d have gone through IVF with him by my side even if it hadn’t been his biological baby.

Sometimes people surprise you! Although he’s a particularly good one 😀

Yep I'm aware of that. Hence me saying in my follow up post that if OP is willing to have a child on her own she should go to ivf and do it! If I had been comfortable with that decision (at all) then I would have probably frozen embryos with donor sperm, whilst still holding off on going directly to ivf as I didn't at that time want a baby on my own. I'm still not at the stage where I feel comfortable and willing to do it on my own hence freezing eggs only in the hopes of if/when I need to use them I can fertilise with my partners sperm. It's a gambling act I guess but better odds of having a baby having got those eggs frozen than not!

Hi,

I’m not going to comment on your relationship…. It kinda sounds (or reads) like a rubbish situation for you both. You’ve said you love him, no matter what loosing someone you love is hard.

However re; fertility - I’ve recently read ‘it starts with an egg’. It’s about improving your chances and has a focus on IVF. In essence eggs start developing about 3 months before one (or two) is released (the others are absorbed into the body). In IVF more of the developing eggs in the cycle are forced to mature so you release more than one (or two). Actually getting to the point of ‘harvest’ could take a little time so you could read the book, implement some strategies, and give your eggs the best start on their journey… the more quality eggs the better (fewer rounds cost less too)

You also spoke about how this will use all your savings. I do appreciate that for a lot of people it’s important to have a biological child. However… if that’s either not possible or you just want to consider options, there are other options. My DP’s brother isn’t biologically his Dads but they are SO close! They even look like father and son! A guy I work with wanted kids, but was single/early 40’s (‘renting a womb’ and getting an egg is FAR more expensive and complicated than sperm!) so he adopted his son. He is such a lovely Dad to this little boy! And guy at work now has a lovely lady in his life too (and rightly so, he’s a lovely guy …. Probably just a bit too nice at times!). Someone else I work with has a foster daughter who she can’t fully adopt due to some complexity with her parents, she brings so much joy to work colleagues life. This colleague would adopt anyone and anything if they sat still long enough and needed help (it’s how she ended up with both her dog and her cat)… fostering a child in need was more importantly to her than a genetic link. And oh my word her her daughter has a lovely mum!

I really do get the want for a child who shares your dna (I want one, and my best friend just send me a message of a video with her babies heart beat… her ivf alone baby!!) however none of us are just our dna, and I guess what I’m saying is that there are ways to have a child of your own without the child having a biological link to you….. if your plan now doesn’t work out, you can still be a brilliant mum.

he said he wasn’t convinced breaking up was the right thing to do for him

but it is right for you. And for you it matters. He can change his mind about children for decades yet

@Cally70 Can you remember what your results were like ? Mine was AMH 1.6pmol and AFC of 7. Did you freeze embryos or have fresh transfers ? I’m not too familiar with any of this stuff , trying to get my head around it!

@Rosie212 I remember that my AMH was <1 & my FSH was >10, and being told that there would be little point in me egg freezing, and that if I wanted a baby, I should try sooner rather than later. Each round of IVF I did produced fewer eggs and I never had any embryos to freeze. After several rounds of own egg IVF, I made the decision to switch to donor egg. That was what worked for me.

I had no problem with making the jump to DE but it's not for everyone and you should think about having counselling before you do it.