Fertility specialist Dr. Kolbe Hancock of Spring Fertility covers everything you need to know about diminished ovarian reserve (DOR), including causes, symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment options.
By OBGYN and fertility expert Dr. Kolbe Hancock of Spring Fertility
Diminished Ovarian Reserve might sound scary, but please know that a DOR diagnosis does not mean that you’re infertile. If you are young (under 35 years old) and regularly ovulating, your chance of getting pregnant is similar to someone with a “normal” egg reserve. If you are undergoing fertility treatments with DOR, you have options! Let’s break it down below.
What exactly is ovarian reserve?
Your ovarian reserve refers to the number of eggs you have remaining in your ovaries.
Females are born with all the oocytes (aka eggs) that we will ever have. When we are in our mother’s belly, our own little baby ovaries have the maximum number of eggs. We are then born with about two million eggs, and by the time we get our first menstrual period, this number has dropped by about 75% to 500,000 eggs.
Throughout our reproductive years, we progressively lose eggs each month to the point where there are around 1,000 eggs left by the time we reach menopause. How fast we lose eggs during our reproductive years can be unpredictable, but we know for certain that progressive loss occurs.
