Stopping Fertility Treatments: When do you move on?

photo by Stephanie Himel-Nelson

Last weekend, I watched the movie Then She Found Me with Helen Hunt, Colin Firth, Bette Midler and Mathew Broderick. It’s about a woman (Helen Hunt) approaching 40 who is desperate for a baby and finds herself unexpectedly pregnant. Of course, this is right after her marriage falls apart, her adoptive mother dies and her biological mother reappears. The movie takes her through the beginning elation of pregnancy, the sorrow of miscarriage, the nerve wracking hopefulness of IVF and then, finally, to adoption.

It really made me think about how infertility changes so much of what we think and know about ourselves.

When my husband (T) and I started trying to have a baby in 2003, the possibility of miscarriage or infertility never occurred to me. Well, that’s not entirely true. I had already had one miscarriage a few years before, but never imagined it would happen again. After all, the doctors said it was just “one of those things.”

After we were faced with more difficulties than we had imagined and undergone all the tests, we had a decision to make. T and I wanted to decide, before we began treatment, just how far we would go. Was it simply medication? IUI? IVF? What would we do?

The first go around, we decided that IVF probably wasn’t for us and that we would adopt if less aggressive treatment didn’t work. But that decision was never really tested since we were successful.

This time, our expectations and our boundaries have changed. Without even discussing it, we both knew going in that we were willing to do whatever it took to have a baby and nothing, not IVF, not donor eggs or sperm, not adoption, none of it, was out of play. It made me realize that, although we decided in 2003 not to go through IVF, we might have anyway. We never really know what we’ll do until we’re in the situation.

In the movie, Helen Hunt’s character is adamant that she won’t adopt. As an adoptee she says she wants a baby that’s “really hers.” But as she goes through her own journey of personal discovery, she finally realizes that an adopted baby is still “really hers.” And you can guess how the movie ends. (Don’t forget your kleenex, I sobbed my way through the final scene of the movie. Oh and the miscarriage scene. Oh and the IVF scene. Oh and the funeral scene.)

The movie made me wonder how you know, how anyone suffering from infertility knows, when to say stop. When do you stop fertility treatments and pursue adoption? Obviously we all take input from our medical professionals, but I honestly have no idea how, once invested, I would stop and move on.

How about you? How far will you take your treatments? Will money or something else be your deciding factor? Will you adopt?