My Infertility Story As a Fertility Doctor - Trying to Conceive, Miscarriages, and More

My infertility story as a fertility doctor.

My babies are pregnancies 5&6. I am a physician. I am a fertility doctor. I had infertility. 3 miscarriages and an ectopic. Isolated and alone, questioning the future, wondering what I did wrong, searching online, and telling nobody - I know *exactly* how that feels. As a medical student I knew I wanted to have a family. I listened when people told my careers were “not family friendly” and I counted the years to add up how old I would be when I completed training with different career paths.

If you are an OG - you know I matching into Emergency Medicine (which is a great field) but not the right one for me. I left EM after a year and completed an OBGYN residency and then an REI fellowship. That very very hard career move was absolutely the right one as I love my job as a fertility physician. But I also took a 3 year post graduate training program and I turned it into 8 years. I was 34 when I finished my medical training.

Egg freezing was not an option to me. Talks about checking an AMH or starting to get pregnant sooner were never discussed. Residency was not a supportive environment for parents. And in fellowship I had to use all my vacation for my maternity leaves. And only had 6 and 5 weeks to recover after c/s so that I would not break ACGME rules of missing more that 12 total weeks in fellowship.

Times are changing. I am so thankful for that. People are sharing. Communities are forming. Facts are easier to find. And egg/embryo freezing and fertility preservation is an option. Do we still have far to go? YES. We need better coverage for fertility and we need more advocacy. We need to break further barriers and expand the conversation around third party reproduction. So this week - support your fertility doctors, advocates, patients, and more as we share and support.