# 1 About Me and that word "Infertility"...

Like most young girls, I've grown up wanting to meet my Prince Charming, have a dream wedding, start a family and live happily ever after. Of course, life doesn't quite work like that though does it!? Everyone around you is getting pregnant, having babies and then even having their second and third babies. However, I did meet my prince charming! My husband has the ability to make me laugh when I don't even feel like smiling. This has come in particularly handy with the tribulations of infertility and IVF.

We were married in 2011, we more or less straight away took no precautions and said that if it were to happen then it would be amazing to start a family. Nothing came along, and in 2013 we started to get tested. In 2014 I had a laparoscopy dye test, this showed that there was a fill and spill into my left Fallopian tube but was no fill to my right Fallopian tube, I also had a visible corneal spasm during the procedure, which brought it to a stop of the rest of the investigation that day. My husband's sperm count was on the low side of average 9 million and with poor mobility. With this combination of my difficulty and my husband's samples, we were informed by our local hospital that the likelihood of conceiving naturally was extremely slim. In 2015 we decided to try IUI ( Intrauterine insemination, an assisted conception treatment, where selected and washed sperm is placed into your womb/uterus and near to your egg at your time of ovulation along with fertility drugs to increase the chance of conceiving). My AMH (Anti-Mullerian Hormone, a protein hormone produced by cells within the ovary) at the time was 18 and I was put on 6 days of 1 ampule of Menopur resulting in 3 ovulatory follicles. Once my husband's 9 million sample was washed, there were only 1 million strong swimmers that they were able to insert, sounds like a lot still right!!? Anything between 15 to 250 million is considered a normal amount. It was a very strange experience, the only way I could describe it was being inserted with the longest turkey baster and told to rest there for 30 minutes and at the end of it you can have a cup of tea! The IUI was sadly unsuccessful. I had a bleed 2 days before I was due to take the pregnancy test. After the initial tears, I did what everybody does (even if they don't admit it) and used google!! I had persuaded myself that it was just an implantation bleed and that it has worked! It was devastating to read on the test NOT PREGNANT.

At that moment we decided not to go through the heartbreak of IUI again and that maybe one day we would consider IVF. Just when we were considering looking into it again, my Dad was sadly diagnosed in 2016 terminally ill with bowel cancer and we took care of him for a year. In 2017 the same year that he passed away and was reunited with my mum, who I lost in 2007 to breast cancer, the stress and heartache took its toll on my body and I had issues with my gallbladder. Gallstones and a polyp caused me problems and I had my gallbladder removed. It's amazing what stress can do. I think it plays a massive part in my Infertility. I'm a typical stress head, I carry the weight of everyone's problems on my shoulders, or so it feels.

With years passing since the first investigations and time now ticking, early in 2018 at the age of 31 and my husband 37 we had to go through ALL the tests again. Things hadn't changed too much. My day 21 progesterone showed that I'm still ovulating. My AMH is now down to 11. My husband's sperm has increased to 19 million, 43% with slightly reduced morphology of 1%. So we may be recommended ICSI ( Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection, a technique in which a single sperm is injected into the centre of an egg) instead of IFV (In vitro fertilisation) when the time comes. My TSH (Thyroid stimulating hormone) has been in the upper range of a normal and high levels of thyroid peroxidase antibodies suggesting that I'm at an increased risk of developing clinical hyperthyroidism later in life...this being found because of that word "Infertility".

I have now given up my one passion in life, performing. I've been a dancer/performer for two thirds of my life. Time is not on my side now. I am putting everything I have into finding my inner strength to be able to create a new life and our new future together, me and my Prince! Fingers crossed for our happily ever after.

Laparoscopy operation