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What's Next?

Making Crucial Fertility Decisions

By Teri Brown

"I endured a nuclear meltdown and remember screaming: 'If I'm going to pay that much money, by God I will have a baby in my hands,'" Dower says. "That's when we turned to adoption. Once we realized we could switch our plans around, go ahead and adopt (a simple adjusting of our mindset), it was very simply liberating. We realized we didn't want to be pregnant as much as we wanted to be parents."

Iris Waichler, author of Riding the Infertility Roller Coaster: A Guide to Educate and Inspire (Mackenzie-Wyatt, 2006), also had a point in her fertility quest where a decision had to be made. She started treatment when she was 42 years old, and had no real choices except egg donor. "It took us nine months to find a donor and when we were ready to go, she got pregnant and we had to start all over again," Waichler says. "My first attempt at IVF failed. We had a limited number of eggs and had decided the second attempt would be our last. I didn't feel at my age it was wise to continue to try after that because of the emotional toll the losses were taking on us. We didn't have an infertility counselor and my husband and I had been in agreement that after we tried transferring the last embryos we would not attempt to find a new donor. We were prepared to live our lives childfree at that point. We were incredibly lucky and I had my daughter Grace one month shy of my 46th birthday."

Stepping up the fertility battle can be a difficult decision if you have been doing it for several years. Dr. Andrea Braverman, director of psychological and complementary care at Reproductive Medicine Associates of New Jersey, says many factors play into whether a couple should move forward or consider other options. "In most decisions, we have to weigh the pluses and the minuses," she says. "Women who are pursuing pregnancy also have to weigh whether the decision that enough is enough is one that can last a lifetime. If she isn't ready to make that move, then the woman can work on getting the support and finding coping strategies to help her pursue her goal of parenthood."

Want to see more?

• Priced out of Family: Facing the High Cost of Infertility Treatments
• Helping Hands: Groups That Navigate the Infertility Roller Coaster
• Difficult Decisions: Adoption After Infertility
• Check out our Article Library.
• Talk about it!