by Olivia King
I’ve always known I wanted to be a mom and not being able to have kids was always my biggest fear. So when my husband and I got married, starting a family ASAP felt like the natural next step. We had already been together for nine years, and we didn’t want to wait.
But things didn’t happen as easily as we’d hoped and all my fears started creeping in.
After nine months of trying with no success, I started looking into fertility testing. Everything came back “normal,” which was a strange mix of comforting and frustrating. It meant nothing obvious was wrong—but also, no one could tell us why it wasn’t working.
We tried three rounds of IUI. All were unsuccessful. So we moved on to IVF.
I went into IVF thinking it was the big fix—that we’d walk away with multiple embryos, freeze the extras, and be set up for future kids too. But that unfortunately is not how it went. Our first cycle gave us 15 eggs, but only one fertilized, and it didn’t make it to a blastocyst (an embryo you can transfer). We were absolutely heartbroken. I thought IVF would give us answers and fix all of our fertility hurdles, but instead it gave us so many more questions. The emotional toll of that failure was heavier than I ever expected. It hit a fear I had carried quietly for years: what if I couldn’t have kids?
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At my lowest, my husband suggested I try a support group. I didn’t want to at first—I didn’t think it was for me to be honest. But he convinced me to join an AllPaths virtual group. It turned out to be exactly what I needed. Hearing other people share what they were going through made me feel less alone in my journey and in my heavy feelings. The group leader had been through it too and even gave me ideas on what might have gone wrong in our cycle and how we could work to have more success in the next cycle.
I ended that virtual group feeling lighter than I had in weeks and even though I broke down while sharing my story, everyone made me feel validated and that I wasn’t on this journey by myself.
The next obvious step for us was switching doctors since the stress of our first cycle was made worse by poor communication from our doctor. The next cycle gave us 16 eggs, six fertilized via ICSI, but once again—none made it to blast. During our follow-up, our new doctor basically told us there wasn’t much hope. She said we had a really tough case, that the cause was probably genetic, and that my egg quality was poor. She didn’t offer much else.
We left that clinic feeling completely drained—but we knew we weren’t even close to ready to give up. Hope was the only thing keeping us moving forward and we needed to find a doctor who truly believed they could help us.
Through the help of my mom, we found a new doctor who took a much more personalized approach. Around that same time, I started experiencing constant nausea and pain in my upper abdomen. Months later, I learned I needed my gallbladder removed. That surgery and recovery took up all of 2024, and everything had to be put on hold.
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In January of this year, we felt ready to try to conceive again. But during one of my final ultrasounds, the doctor spotted a cyst on my right ovary that didn’t look normal. The cycle was canceled, and I was sent for further testing. Turns out, it was two endometriomas—signs of stage 3 or 4 endometriosis.
I’d been asking doctors for years if I could have endo. I’ve had painful periods for as long as I can remember. But every time I brought it up, I got brushed off. Finally getting the diagnosis brought a strange sense of validation. It was frustrating that it took this long to be taken seriously, but at least now we had some clarity as to why it’s been so difficult for us to grow our family.
I met with a Minimally Invasive Gynecologic Surgery (MIGS) surgeon, and she said I could do one more IVF cycle while waiting for surgery. So we did. But the endometriomas were in the way, and not all follicles could be accessed during retrieval. We ended up with five eggs, three mature, two fertilized. Then on day five, we got a crazy surprise—one more had fertilized late and was growing rapidly, even passing the other eggs who fertilized before it. For the first time, we allowed ourselves to believe this may actually be our miracle baby.
But by day six, all the embryos had arrested, including the miracle embryo. No more growth. Again, we were crushed.
That was the moment I knew, I couldn’t keep going without addressing the endo. I felt strongly I needed to move forward with the surgery and get it removed.
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In March, I had excision surgery. What should’ve been a 90-minute procedure turned into nearly four hours. I was officially diagnosed with Stage 4 endometriosis. My rectum was fused to my uterus, my uterus was folded over and stuck to itself, and both fallopian tubes were blocked. Physically, there was no way I could have gotten pregnant without medical intervention.
On the drive home from surgery, I started getting super emotional. Not because I was upset, but because I finally had answers. After years of confusion and “normal” test results, we finally knew what we were up against, and I felt a sense of relief knowing my body was now finally in a healthy place to be able to get pregnant.
The plan is to try on our own for 4 months and see what happens. If it doesn’t work, we’ll go back to IVF—but this time, we’ll be going in with actual answers and an actual diagnosis to hopefully yield a better result.
This journey has been so heavy. It has consumed me and tested every part of me. But it’s also changed me. I’m not the same person I was when we started this. I’m stronger. I speak up and advocate for myself and my health more. I trust myself and truly feel so much more compassionate and empathetic. I know this is my journey for a reason, and I will do everything I can to help others who are going through the same thing.
Singer/songwriter Olivia King has teamed up with Play it Forward Music, a non-profit organization helping fans and musicians come together to raise money for charities, to support AllPaths Family Building. Donate to AllPaths through Olivia’s Play if Forward fundraiser and receive a free download of her first single, “In My Head,” while ensuring that people everywhere can have access to fertility and family building support.
Want to hear more of Olivia’s story? Do a deeper dive into her journey with Emily and Kate on the AllPaths Podcast!