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It happened once - it's bound to happen again (October 2001 - August 2002)
'Come and see me if you're not pregnant in three or four months,' said the GP, 'and I'll send you to see an obstetrician.' Ok, I did that. In May 2002 I finally had an appointment. The obstetrician looked at my charts. 'You're still ovulating - that's good'. He said, 'You should have no problems getting pregnant. We'll do a progesterone test just to be sure. Your partner had better have a sperm analysis, too. Come back and see me in September.' That was a whole year since the miscarriage.

The progesterone test was normal, which was great news, but by August I was becoming fed up with it all. After making several enquiries and talking on the net to women in a similar situation, I thought it was time to contact a private fertility centre. I was nearly 44 and time was running out.

The fertility centre advised me to get more blood tests - something called a day 3 FSH test seemed important. It measures ovarian reserve, in other words, it finds out how many eggs I have left and whether they are any good. The GP took my blood and a few days later I went into surgery for the results. 'Twenty-three,' said the receptionist, reading from the computer screen, 'I don't know if that means anything to you.'

Peri-menopause
Next visit to the obstetrician. 'Don't worry,' he said, 'FSH is meant to be high at the start of your cycle. The lab report says peri-menopause, but that's wrong. Go home and keep trying.' I wasn't sure about that. I'd read up on the subject and thought that anything over 10 was bad.

October 2002
I got an appointment at the private fertility centre. It turned out my obstetrician was wrong. A FSH of 23 is bad. Very bad. I was in peri-menopause. I had some eggs (due to the fact that I regularly ovulated), but they weren't viable. My chances of conceiving naturally were less than 5 per cent and, if by some miracle I did fall pregnant, the miscarriage rate was 90 per cent. Devastated is too small a word to describe how I felt at this point.

My best option was to go for donor eggs. That is the procedure when a healthy, fertile woman donates some of her own eggs, which are fertilised with my partners sperm and then put inside me. 'NO WAY!' I said. 'It wouldn't be my baby'. 'That's what everyone says at first,' said the doctor.

ivillage uk

Dino's fertility story: part one