Meet our patient advocate, Katie Bliss, representing all patients struggling with infertility

My name is Katie Bliss and I am honored to be a fertility advocate for Fertility Answers.

At 32, I was diagnosed with primary ovarian insufficiency and was told menopause could be just around the corner. With this diagnosis I was given 0% to 2% chance of conceiving on my own, and potentially not much higher with the assistance of in vitro fertilization.

It turns out I was likely suffering from POI for many years undiagnosed (as for many, such as myself, there are no symptoms) and because of that, at the ripe age of 32 my body was producing very few eggs, if any at all, and the eggs it was producing were the “bottom of the barrel” and thus of extremely low quality.

Without wanting to crush my husband’s and my own dream of having biological children, we immediately dove into IVF knowing the odds were against us. After our first failed round of IVF, my sister graciously offered to undergo an egg retrieval to donate her eggs to me. With extreme gratitude, we accepted her offer, but even with her efforts and healthy eggs, we did not end up with a healthy embryo. I went on to undergo 4 more rounds of IVF, 3 of those 4 rounds were failures.

However, my husband and I did receive the unimaginable gift of healthy embryos from my one and only successful IVF round and I am currently 18 weeks pregnant. IVF with donor egg gave my husband and I a chance at growing a family that we otherwise may not have had. We are forever grateful for the miraculousness of modern medicine and the amazing doctors at Fertility Answers that facilitate miracles every day.