"Advanced" Maternal Age

What ugly words.

In a few weeks time, this Mama will be 35.  The dreaded age in the fertility world.  Is someone going to flip and switch and overnight, my ovarian reserve will decline and my chance of having a child drop dramatically?  Somehow, I don't believe it'll be that sudden, but 35 is the age when pregnancy and live birth rates drop. 

I certainly don't feel old or "advanced".  Most days, I'm still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.

At 20, when I was struggling with absent menses and the inability to conceive (because, duh, ovulation is a requirement), I never really thought of it as a permanent problem.  I certainly didn't have the emotional upheaval I've had this time around.  Perhaps that's because for the vast majority of those cycles, I didn't ovulate so I never had to POAS and hope for two lines.  I simply went in for a blood draw on CD21, got the news I hadn't ovulated and was started on Provera to get menses flowing.  Repeat. Repeat.  Repeat. 

Once I was switched over to an RE. . . we had a backwards cycle of suppression to knock the clomid out of my system.  It seemed odd, but it worked.  I didn't do blood draws, instead I was told to monitor my cycles (my education wasn't very good, but thankfully I'm neurotic and visited the library checking out every book on BBT charting I could find).  Dr. RE told me to chart my temps and if I had a rise in temp for 18 days, I was likely pregnant and should test.  I did exactly that. . . so I didn't test until Thanksgiving 1999 when I had a BBT rise for 18 days.  It was positive.  It was only my 4th ovulatory cycle, but of course, I'd had an HSG the cycle before (who knows if it helped?), we were young, my husband had great swimmers, etc. . .

Anyway, the point is. . .back then, with primary infertility and age on my side, I didn't really worry so much.  I was naive enough (and wasn't on the computer sharing stories) to assume it would happen eventually.  Thankfully it did.

So, now the question is. . . are we not conceiving merely because I am 34 years old and hubs is 41?  Are my eggs old and not easily fertilized?  Is it just because my lining is too thin that we aren't implanting (hence the longish LPs)? Is it because we can't get our timing right and so we don't have enough swimmers on fertile day?  Is is because my cervix is still too damaged from the surgeries?  Is it because I don't have much in the way of CM?  Is it a combination?  Ugh. . .

And now, I feel old. . . and yet, I don't feel old at all.  Weird, that.