Jen’s Natural Pregnancy at 41 after Premature Ovarian Failure

On episode 82, Jen lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with her husband, Dave and their three children: Allie, her 11 year-old daughter, Taylor, her 8 year old daughter, and Dylan, her 8 month old son. She is a pediatric physical therapist. She specializes in treating babies and toddlers and young children with various conditions.

Jen had always wanted children. She always babysat, was a camp counselor, always loved babies and loved working with children. Jen had an amazing mother and was excited to be a mom someday. Jen’s journey to motherhood began when she was 28, four and half years after she married. She was very eager to get pregnant and thought it would work on the first month of trying. It took about seven months to get pregnant even though it felt like a long time. She was pregnant at 29, had a very wonderful pregnancy and long delivery of their first daughter.

Everyone told her the second baby comes fast, so she had it in her mind that’s what would happen. She didn’t want her kids too close together but thought a two-year gap would be perfect. When she was 31 and her first daughter was about 18 months, they started trying for their second child. Jen read Taking Charge of Your Fertility. She did the Mucinex, the ovulation timing and took her basal temperature. She tried everything but wasn’t getting pregnant. She went to see the doctor about a year after they started trying. The doctor suggested doing a fallopian tube flush to see if she had blockages. Everything was completely clear, and the procedure was painless. Her OB suggested that sometimes the procedure can spark a pregnancy, but the next month she still wasn’t pregnant. The cycle afterwards is when she was referred to a fertility specialist. Afterwards, she and her husband went out on New Year’s Eve and had a great time. Then, three days before her fertility specialist appointment, she found out she was pregnant at 33. She hadn’t done any of the special things she was supposed to do to get pregnant. It just happened. She had a pretty easy pregnancy and birth came 10-days past her due date.

At 35, Jen had always wanted three or four kids. When her second daughter was two and her first daughter was five, Jen had a strong desire to have a third baby. Her husband was an only child, so he felt pretty confident he wanted to stop at two. He ended up agreeing to see what happens. He didn’t want to do fertility treatments and wanted it to be natural. She was confident it would happen. A year goes by and she didn’t think much of it. Then two years go by which made her nervous. She talked to her husband about potentially looking into fertility treatments, but he wanted to hold off.

Ok, that’s our cut off. I’m 40.

She finally met with the fertility specialist. They have the blood tests done and ultrasound performed. The doctor diagnosed her with premature ovarian failure which meant she didn’t have very many egg follicles and her hormones were right on the verge of being too low. The doctor suggested a drug that creates hyper-ovulation in combination with an IUI. She talked it over with her husband, but he didn’t want to go that route. He just felt like their family was complete and wasn’t comfortable with the higher probability of multiple babies. She decided that they would keep trying on their own and see what happened. Four years go by and nothing. As she approached her 40^th birthday, Jen said that 40 was the cut-off. She would have her family of four and be grateful for that. Six months after her 40^th birthday, her husband planned to have a vasectomy to officially close the door on any possibility.

Jen was pretty consistently having her regular cycle until she noticed they shortened to 25, 26 days. This happened between turning 37 and 38 which happens as you go into perimenopause she was told. She assumed she was in perimenopause. She had a lot of the symptoms like some of the hormonal changes and sleep disturbances. She waited for her cycle to start on day 26 but it didn’t. Then 27 days, 28 days, 29 days and no cycle. On day 30, she was so surprised because she hadn’t had a cycle this long in years. She had a feeling she was pregnant but didn’t think it was possible. She told her husband she thought she was pregnant and needed to take a test as he rolled his eyes. Jen pulled him to the bathroom with her to take the pregnancy test which she had never done in the past. She came out with the stick and they sat down together to wait. After only 20 seconds it popped up pregnant. Her husband began to laugh hysterically while Jen began to cry. She was so excited but scared at the same time.

Medically speaking, Jen’s pregnancy went really well. She didn’t have any complications. It went as well as her first two pregnancies in her 20’s and 30’s. At 9 weeks, Jen had the NIPT test done to find out if there were any abnormalities. Jen didn’t have gestational diabetes, didn’t have high blood pressure, and no morning sickness. It was the horrible reflux that started at six weeks. Jen always carried a bottle of Tums in her bag, in the car; they were everywhere. She had backpain and a ton of hip pain which was different with this pregnancy. She couldn’t sleep on her sides. The acid reflux was so bad she would be sleeping, and then she would wake up choking. She couldn’t breathe. She knew she needed to talk to her doctor and get a prescription to help control that. She craved milkshakes and hamburgers. One of the first questions her husband asked her after they found out she was pregnant was if she wanted a milkshake.

The fears were intense in the beginning of the pregnancy. Jen was really nervous and really fearful and thought something was going to go wrong because of her age. They had told her premature ovarian failure meant she didn’t have great egg quality, so she assumed there was no way her baby was going to be healthy and there would be complications. She had worked herself up so much, she spoke to a mental health professionals that she works with. Anxiety can sometimes result in antenatal depression and things like that. Jen felt so ashamed that those feelings were in her. She worried non-stop. She felt lucky she had a support system until she worked through it which was about midway through her pregnancy. She felt a lot better assuming her body started adjusting to the hormones. She felt that the baby would be okay. She wanted to protect yourself from the possibility of feeling horrible if something went wrong. Throughout her whole pregnancy, her doctor was supportive and didn’t see any issues with her age. The only difference she felt was the doctor strongly felt she should be induced at 39 weeks.

She didn’t find out the gender during pregnancy. She and her husband had always wanted to not find out for one of their pregnancies. Jen strongly did not want to find out and learned the gender in the delivery room. The only thing she cared about was that the baby was healthy and doing well. She wanted to focus on that. She wanted to find out who her baby was when he/she came into the world.

To prepare, Jen worked with a physical therapist. She went through all of the labor positions and taught Jen and her husband different ways her husband could help decrease back pain during labor. When it came to getting the baby essentials, after five years she got rid of almost everything. The one thing she saved was a stroller. She remembers thinking it better be a boy because she sold all of her daughters’ clothes.

Jen was scheduled to be induced at 39 weeks because of her age despite wanting to go into labor naturally. She also trusted her OB, so agreed to it. She went in for an ultrasound at 38 ½ weeks for a sonogram and a stress test. Her baby had flipped breach which was the pain in her ribs she was feeling. She couldn’t believe he flipped. The induction was changed to a c-section for that Monday. She went home to do more research and did all the things: spinning babies, she had acupuncture, saw a chiropractor and did inversions to get the baby back to being head down. Saturday morning she woke up to the baby kicking her ribs. She called her OB and had an ultrasound to confirm he was head down again. Her OB insisted she try to stay upright as much as possible to keep him there.

The first 30 seconds after birth, I remember breathing a sigh of relief. We did it.

She went in Monday morning to be induced and luckily the baby was still head down. She was started on a low dose of Pitocin. They started slowly and gradually increased the dose which made contraction come quickly. She was progressing fairly well, so they decided to go ahead and break her water which got things moving quickly. She went from 4 to 10 cm in about 45 minutes which was painful. She had gotten an epidural at that point. Two hours of pushing but the baby wasn’t coming close to crowning. After ten hours of labor, Jen was getting tired. That’s when the nurse suggested the baby wasn’t in the right position. The nurse turned Jen on her left side which enabled her to make some progress. 30-45 minutes of pushing and her son was born. Jen was so glad her baby was out. As she’s laying on her side, she looks over her shoulder to see the baby’s gender, but all she could see was a butt. It was her husband’s job to announce the gender of the baby. The baby was screaming and she asked what the gender was. No one said anything, so she asked again. Her husband told it was a boy very calmly because he was so overwhelmed by emotion that it took him awhile to get it out. Jen describes it as the best feeling in the world. They put her son on her chest and she couldn’t believe he was finally here. She wanted skin-to-skin right away and had a 2-minute delayed cord clamping.

Jen’s describes her recovery as pretty good even though she did experience pain afterwards. It was a little bit longer of a recovery. She had joint paint afterwards. She doesn’t believe she was in as good as shape as she was with the first two pregnancies which she believes played a role in her recovery. Overall, it was a smooth recovery, there was just a little big more postpartum pain that she was expecting. Mentally, postpartum was good because she had so much anxiety in the first 4-5 months of pregnancy. She knew she was at a higher risk for postpartum depression because of that, but she didn’t experience depression. She believes having a really great support system helped her through it. Her husband had four months of paternity leave this time which made a world of a difference she explains.

Her son is eight months old during the recording of the show. She nursing about three times a day and ready to ween her son off. She breastfeed right away after he was born. She had trouble at the beginning. His latch was ok, but had some lactation support come to her house a few times that helped. Her son’s neck was tight and had a preference to lay his head a certain way that wasn’t helping him to get milk. She sees babies with this issue all the time, so she knew how to help and thinks that’s why she had trouble at the beginning. It took about six weeks before breastfeeding felt comfortable. She breastfed both of her daughters each for a year and thought this third baby would be easy. She started supplementing with formula at about five months because she was back to work which made it hard to keep up with the demand.

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