u/Ok-Struggle-5227

My husband and I are starting our fertility treatment journey and our only option is ovulation-drug assisted IUI.

We’re trying to decide how many rounds we’re willing to go through before throwing in the towel.

My biggest fear is that we won’t know when to quit and will end up draining our savings, putting ourselves through years of stress and grief, and still not end up getting pregnant.

Our doctor is pretty blunt and has basically said our changes are slim and although this is something we both really want, we’ve already made peace with the potential that this might just not be in the cards for us. We’re definitely not in the headspace that we will do whatever it takes for as long as it takes.…But it’s been very very hard to decide where we would draw the line.

How did you all decide how long you would try, how much money you would spend, or how much you were willing to put your mind and body through?

When I was 21, I lost an ovary due to a burst endometrioma and the remaining ovary wasn't in great shape either. My doctor told me I need to have kids ASAP if I want them at all. Since then, I've been in a rush to find the right partner and have kids without really ever thinking critically about whether I WANT kids or not.

My fiance and I (I'm 29, he is 31) tried to get pregnant for a year with no success until my doctor warned me that there was a high chance my remaining fallopian tube we blocked and suggested we hold off until she could check so I didn't end up with an ectopic pregnancy.

So a few months ago, during endometriosis surgery, my surgeon was going to see if my remaining fallopian tube was open and if it wasn't, she wanted to know if she had my permission to remove it. Which would permanently close the door on our chances to get pregnant naturally.

At first, I was heartbroken. I've always desperately wanted to be a mom and felt like that was my calling in life. I'd always said the only way I'd have regrets at the end of my life was if I didn't have kids because I couldn't imagine having purpose in my life unless I was living it for my children.

But because I had to give her an answer on whether she could remove my fallopian tube; for the first time in my adult life, I actually pictured what life would be like if I never had kids.

My husband and I are both creative, ambitious people who have plenty of hobbies to occupy our time. We love to travel, we are rarely bored, we have a ton of ideas of things we'd love to do in the future. I'd always pictured us having kids, but when I started to think about not having kids, I realized our life would be so so fun.

I told my surgeon she could remove my fallopian tube and really started to make peace with the idea that kids just aren't in the cards for us and that's okay.

After surgery, she told me my fallopian tube was open and she was very excited to tell us that we still have a chance to get pregnant but we need to act fast.

Honestly, my heart sank. I had gotten really excited about the idea of having that decision made for me so we could just move on with life without wondering if we should have tried to have kids. I was excited to not have to face all the stress and uncertainty of fertility treatments and pregnancy. And I'd gotten really excited about what our life would look like without kids.

She sent us to a fertility clinic and that doctor said the same thing, we have a slim chance but we need to start trying to get pregnant NOW. He put in the orders for oral ovulation drugs so we can start IUI on my next cycle.

And now I'm PANICKING. We're not even married yet, we don't have a house, we just moved to this city and we don't have a community, and I had JUST started thinking critically about whether I really want kids or whether I'd just felt pressured into having them quickly.

But it's literally now or never. My ovarian reserve is close to 0, all of the cards are stacked against me and they're only going to get worse. If I turn down this fertility treatment, we will miss our shot.

I feel like I'm speedrunning fencesitting. I'd been so firmly in team parenthood for years and then felt so so happy and at peace once I thought I needed to cross over to team childfree. I truly think I will be happy either way but now I'm fencesitting and need to make a decision within the next month. HOW DO WE DECIDE??

(Ps. my fiance is truly letting me make this decision. He's always said he'd be fine if he had kids, fine if he didn't, fine if we had biological kids, fine if we fostered or adopted. He knows that I'd be putting my body through a lot (and my body has already been through a lot). So while he is here to support me in making this decision, he's ultimately leaving the pregnancy decision completely up to me.)

I feel like I'm constantly in this limbo: my long-distance friendships stop feeling close because I can't see them and they move on, and the friendships I have wherever I live feel too new to feel close. And then if I move again, they don't last because they never had time to get deep enough. So I just feel so so alone. And it gets more exhausting every time we move.

I've had a tight-knit group in every city I've lived in and throughout the years, I've felt like "yeah, it's a bummer that I don't get to see these friends in-person anymore, but we still talk sometimes! We still get together when I visit! We still have meaningful conversations! When I see them, we pick up where we left off like no time has passed! I think that means we're still friends!"

But now I'm getting married, and planning our wedding has really made me come to terms with the fact that just because these friendships feel close once every 5 years when we get together, that doesn't mean they are close friendships.

I just want to hear from other people who have moved frequently: Does it feel like you have to start from scratch with making friends every time you move? Have any of y'all successfully been able to maintain multiple groups of long-distance friendships? If so, how??

I feel like I'm constantly trying to maintain my existing friendships, constantly reaching out to people, constantly checking in, constantly trying to get a trip together or plan a time to visit. But people are busy. Life moves on without me when I move from somewhere. It's easier for them to just all stay friends without me than to try to make me feel included when I don't live there. I totally get it but I don't want to just abandon these friendships. I don't want to start from square one every time I'm in a new city.

I’m 3 weeks post-op from my second laparoscopy. I have stage 3, deep infiltrating, one ovary removed, as well as adenomyosis. My most pressing symptoms are constant pelvic pain, pain with sex, brutal menstrual and ovulatory pain, GI symptoms, and low back pain.

My husband and I want to try to have kids in the next year (I have an AMH of 0.4 and only one ovary so we're aware that there's a low possibility and we're fine with that, but we also know if we want to try, we need to do it soon.)

My surgeon did an amazing job, she removed endo from 10 locations, confirmed that my remaining tube was open, was able to remove some excess scar tissue from my first lap / ovary removal. I'm really hopeful that I'll have symptom reduction once I recover.

HOWEVER. I know these results won't last forever and want to explore my long-term management options. I have my post-op appointment in a month so I'm very interested to hear: have y'all tried anything that managed your symptoms and disease growth that did not suppress ovulation or fertility?

I’m 3 weeks post-op from my second laparoscopy. I have stage 3, deep infiltrating, one ovary removed, as well as adenomyosis.

My post-op appointment is in a month and I want to talk to my surgeon about long term management. I’ve been on all different types of birth control and Orilissa and not only were the side effects horrible, they did nothing to reduce my pain / symptoms.

I’ve heard many people say they’ve had significant symptom reduction with GLP-1s but I am already incredibly underweight and have a really hard time gaining weight as it is. I don’t even want to consider it if it’s going to make it even harder for me to gain weight.

Has anyone here with similar weight issues tried GLP-1 medications for endometriosis?