iVillager Dino and her partner Martin tried to conceive naturally for over two and a half years before opting for fertility treatment. Here's part one of her story. Follow this by reading part two.

The beginning (January 1st, 2000)
Where did it start? It's hard to say really. Was it New Year's Day of the new millennium when I decided to stop taking the contraceptive pill I'd been using for so long? 'Let's just see what happens,' we said, 'no big deal'.

Was it the day in August, 20 months later, when I realised that my period was a bit late? I was due to go into hospital that week for a D&C (womb scrape), to cure a few problems I had been having with irregular bleeding. 'I'd better do a pregnancy test - just in case', I said.

Was it that day in September, when we went for a scan to finally prove that there really was a baby in there? There was. It had died two weeks earlier.

The missed miscarriage (September 14th, 2001)
The scan was at 12 o'clock on a Friday. I thought we were going to be late as we stayed to watch a memorial for the victims of the Twin Towers attack in New York three days earlier. It was a very poignant moment. We drove in silence to the hospital. It was probably due to world events, but we both felt oppressed and pessimistic.

The sonographer's face said it all, really. She looked worried. She told me she couldn't see a heartbeat, and the foetus looked about nine-weeks old, even though I was nearly 12 weeks pregnant. I had an internal scan and the consultant confirmed the sonographer's diagnoses. I'd had what's known as a 'missed miscarriage'. The baby died, but for some reason hadn't been expelled.

I'd been carrying a dead baby inside me for around two weeks. I wasn't shocked by the news - somehow it seemed inevitable. I still felt a huge sense of loss and sadness, though. I felt that this was my last chance. I was nearly 43.

After a few days I started to feel hopeful again. Maybe we could keep trying. The desperation to conceive became the major focus of my life. I had a lot of help and support from the web community I belonged to, so I knew I wasn't alone in my feelings and hopes. I got very little support from the 'real' world, as we hadn't told many people about the pregnancy or miscarriage. We said at the time that we wouldn't ever consider fertility treatment if it didn't happen naturally.

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.

The decision
So that's how we came to the decision. I thought about it a lot and my partner and discussed it together. Martin thought it was worth giving it a go. He had far fewer qualms about it than I did. I wonder how he'd have felt if it was donor sperm we were going for. Then again, it was his baby I wanted. I already had two children of my own. He had none. So, though it may not be my genetic baby, it would be his. And I'd be carrying it, helping it grow, feeding it through my bloodstream and of course giving birth to it. I felt it was the nearest I was going to get. It was a compromise, but not a bad compromise. I didn't have time to wait for a natural pregnancy, especially if it wasn't likely to work out anyway.

We had the money. Martin's mother had died the previous year and he inherited a fair amount. We couldn't think of a better legacy. She would have been so happy to see her grandchild.

Continue Dino's story through her fertility treatment

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