College DD is Driving me Crazy

[Anonymous]

Why is a 19-year-old even thinking about having children? She should be focusing on college and career. There's always adoption if she really is infertile.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like all of her symptoms are from anxiety, truly! She should for sure get a medical workup to ease her mind though. But I would definitely be concerned about that level of fixation and try to get her to work with a therapist. Lots of reasonable OL options now.

I have PCOS and I had maybe four periods a year if I was lucky. Even then, I got pregnant easily once I took metformin. There are very few medicial conditions that prevent a young woman from conceiving.

She needs a medical workup for her diseased brain, not her fertility.

It is obvious she has a phone / social media addiction.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I truly appreciate the thoughtful responses.
She has struggled with anxiety since early childhood (around age five). When she was younger it didn’t always present as constant worry and felt more manageable, but it intensified during her teenage years. At that time, therapy was helpful and gave her some solid coping tools. Over the past year, things had improved significantly. Recently, though, her anxiety has resurfaced and is now centered almost entirely on fears about infertility.

She isn’t always able to articulate exactly why she believes she may be infertile. At times she references possible hormonal or autoimmune issues, but the symptoms she describes are fairly nonspecific: fatigue, occasional late periods, appetite changes, and sleep disruption, etc. These are concerns that could be evaluated fairly simply with a blood test and could stem from a wide range of causes — many of which would have nothing to do with infertility. Despite that, she remains reluctant to pursue medical evaluation or testing.

She’s also hesitant to re-engage in anxiety treatment because she worries that addressing the anxiety will inevitably lead to medical work-ups, and she fears that testing could confirm her worst assumptions. From the outside, it appears that her current distress is being driven far more by anxiety than by any confirmed medical condition.

Most of the information hers seems to come from online articles and social media. She will also be home this summer, but not for more than a few weeks in total.

PP. As someone who was treated for unexplained infertility and who has read a lot about it, this symptom summary doesn't sound like a common set of symptoms for someone who would end up pursuing infertility treatment. What's common is having severe issues with your period that require hormonal birth control.

Now is a good time to book a visit in summer. Fancy doctors often have six month waiting lists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does she think she has PCOS?

Have her visit a higher tier gynecologist and have them assess her and talk with her about her fears. They may be able to advise.

Buy her a copy of this book.

Toni Weschler
Taking Charge of Your Fertility (Revised Edition): The Definitive Guide to Natural Birth Control, Pregnancy Achievement, and Reproductive Health

I ran across this book after I no longer needed it and I wished I had read it while trying to resolve my infertility.

To be honest, the early steps of infertility treatment do not involve things that your daughter can be doing now because she is not trying to get pregnant. Things like taking daily medicine.

If she has issues like anorexia, irregular periods, fibroids, PCOS, those can be addressed now. Or if she caught an STI like chlamydia (I'd assume she's been treated if so).

There may be some scientific research out there that would be helpful. But you'd need to know what her symptoms are.

This treats her dead as rational, which it isn’t. Treat the anxiety, not the current fixation.

[Anonymous]

PPs seem to be dismissing this, but the period issue and fatigue could be something, depending on how often she has a missed/irregular period.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Without a gynecologist telling her that she’s not infertile she will continue to believe it. Ask her where online did she read this?

My gyn did tell me this when I was around her age based on endometriosis. It turned out she was right, and after many years of failed fertility treatments I was able to have two kids via IVF. I would insist that she go see a GYN if she hasn't already and then get her into therapy. There are lots of ways to become a mother.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PPs seem to be dismissing this, but the period issue and fatigue could be something, depending on how often she has a missed/irregular period.

That's her biggest concern. She has 12x cycles a year, but the cycle length changes constantly. It will be 28 days for a few months, then change the next month, then stay on that schedule or change again the next month, and repeat.

[Anonymous]

I don't think an OB visit will cure this. If she is anxious by nature, she will find a new fixation. Also, threats or saying "you'll figure it out" may be seen as invalidating and she will stop telling you anything.

You want to help her build resilience. Validate how stressful this must be for her. Maybe she is infertile? By the time she is ready to have kids there could be new advances or not, but there will always be challenges in life and we need TOOLs to manage. Approach therapy and a psychiatric evaluation as something positive that many people she knows and admire also do, but they just don't share it. Don't make her feel crazy (not that you would). Empower her. Help her see this as like working out to build muscles. It will help her be stronger and build new cognitive muscles because life can be brutal sometimes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: I don't think an OB visit will cure this. If she is anxious by nature, she will find a new fixation. Also, threats or saying "you'll figure it out" may be seen as invalidating and she will stop telling you anything.

You want to help her build resilience. Validate how stressful this must be for her. Maybe she is infertile? By the time she is ready to have kids there could be new advances or not, but there will always be challenges in life and we need TOOLs to manage. Approach therapy and a psychiatric evaluation as something positive that many people she knows and admire also do, but they just don't share it. Don't make her feel crazy (not that you would). Empower her. Help her see this as like working out to build muscles. It will help her be stronger and build new cognitive muscles because life can be brutal sometimes.

"You'll figure it out" or some variation of that is actually an important part of treating anxiety. Not in a dismissive way, but in a confidence-building way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Without a gynecologist telling her that she’s not infertile she will continue to believe it. Ask her where online did she read this?

My gyn did tell me this when I was around her age based on endometriosis. It turned out she was right, and after many years of failed fertility treatments I was able to have two kids via IVF. I would insist that she go see a GYN if she hasn't already and then get her into therapy. There are lots of ways to become a mother.

Dp. PP is correct. A gyn can tell you that you may have difficulty getting pregnant due to endometriosis or PCOS. They cannot tell if a woman is infertile until thet try and are unable to get pregnant. This is because some women with endometriosis or PCOS do have kids without IVF. They have no problem getting pregnant naturally.

I have two IVF babies as well. I also have two cousins who said they were infertile because of PCOS. Both went on to have kids naturally. They have PCOS, but unlike me, they are not infertile.

[Anonymous]

Clearly the anxiety is the thing that needs to be addressed, but I second the recommendation that someone put in for reading taking charge of your fertility early in life if becoming a mother is a priority at some point. Before I read it I thought of my cycle as just the period part. Teaching her to identify the other phases in her cycle might help her confirm that she is (or isn't) cycling and see that some variations are actually normal. If/when she does go see a Gyn or RE, having information about her cycle can be helpful.

Also, I'd encourage her to check her iron and vitamin D levels whenever she next sees her doctor. A lot of people have low vitamin D, especially in winter, and that can cause fatigue.

[Anonymous]

She needs to visit a doctor if she’s that concerned, not much else there is to do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Without a gynecologist telling her that she’s not infertile she will continue to believe it. Ask her where online did she read this?

My gyn did tell me this when I was around her age based on endometriosis. It turned out she was right, and after many years of failed fertility treatments I was able to have two kids via IVF. I would insist that she go see a GYN if she hasn't already and then get her into therapy. There are lots of ways to become a mother.

Dp. PP is correct. A gyn can tell you that you may have difficulty getting pregnant due to endometriosis or PCOS. They cannot tell if a woman is infertile until thet try and are unable to get pregnant. This is because some women with endometriosis or PCOS do have kids without IVF. They have no problem getting pregnant naturally.

I have two IVF babies as well. I also have two cousins who said they were infertile because of PCOS. Both went on to have kids naturally. They have PCOS, but unlike me, they are not infertile.

Unless OP’s kid had had exploratory laproscopy, no doctor can say she has endometriosis or to what extent it will affect her fertility. I would think OP would have mentioned this if it was the case.

[Anonymous]

She needs to psychiatrist, not a gynaecologist. If not infertility, she would likely be ruminating about something else.

[Anonymous]

1. She sees a gyn to rule out obvious issues.

2. Regardless of what the gyn says, she sees someone about her anxiety.

She could be having gyn issues AND have general anxiety.

And the one PP should stop diagnosing autism all the time. It’s offensive.