How Did We Know We Were Done? In the Wake of IVF
Originally published at Coming 2 Terms by Pamela Jeanne
Sometimes I’m asked why we stopped pursuing infertility treatment. For
those looking for easy answers you won’t find them here. There was no
epiphany, no dramatic denouement. We were not driven there by a
deadline or a master plan or even an entirely drained bank account.
(Even today, resisting the ever-beckoning siren song of the fertility
industry’s latest advancements has not been particularly easy.)
Our
move away from treatment was a long, slow often circuitous process that
sometimes led us back like a junkie in need of a fix to the
reproductive endocrinology clinic for one more attempt. A little voice
in my head kept egging me on (no pun intended): just one more IUI; one
more round of acupuncture; one more laparoscopy; one more blood test to
determine if there’s a new factor we hadn’t considered or addressed –
all the while the doctors scratched their heads with no clear
explanation for our infertility, dampening our hopes further that we’d
ever succeed.
Strung-out and wondering how we would possibly
cope with another failed cycle, I started to allow myself to imagine a
life not driven by 28-day cycles and endless associated vigils. With
the benefit of lots of exhaustive and exhausting conversations,
and after consuming huge amounts of reading material on coping with
infertility, my husband and I finally began to loosen the tight grip we
had on our increasingly fragile dream.
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