do you know when you'll call it quits?

[Anonymous]

I'm in the early rosy stages where I can hope that after a round of treatment, I'll have a baby. But I've seen many women just get so sucked into infertility that years down the road it almost seems to be destroying their happiness. One woman I know has been at it for 5 years, she's now 46, 10 retrievals (!!), many failed transfers, over $100k invested, constant strain on her marriage / her career / her friendships / and a life and identity that almost feel entirely oriented around infertility. And from an outsiders perspective, it seems far past the time to throw in the towel given her age and how much its consumed the last several years of her life, but instead, she's now seeking international options and going deeping.

I can totally see how the emotional rollercoaster of hope and disappear, the endless ways a protocol can be tweaked, the escalation to different clinics etc can just keep propelling you forward with hope.....but I don't want to end up like her. So I'm curious how to draw a line in the sand now while before I get sucked in so deep its all emotion vs logic driving the decision.

[Anonymous]

How old are you abs realistically how much do you have to spend? Do you live in MD?

[Anonymous]

Please do the mental exercise to decide how far you'll go in advance. We said 3 IVF cycles and no donor eggs. That's what we did, but didn't count on natural conceptions and recurrent miscarriages after stopping treatment. It really does suck you in and destroy your happiness. It's terribly consuming and emotionally devastating.

One thing I would advise is to consider now whether you'll do donor eggs, donor embryos, or surrogacy. That may be a financial question, or it may be an emotional question. MOST fertility issues can be "fixed" if you give up on your own genes and/or carrying the pregnancy yourself. If you're okay with donor, then don't spend more than 2-3 cycles on own egg IVF. I've seen it all at this point, and almost without fail you have success by your third cycle if you're going to have success.

[Anonymous]

I'm at the beginning too, just waiting on an official diagnosis of unexplained secondary infertility. The doctor pretty much told me as much at my HSG but we haven't had the official appointment to get the diagnosis and go over a treatment plan. I'm 38 and a few months. I figure I'll call it quits when any future baby would be born at 41 or older. So that gives me about a year to do ERs and FETs. I do already have one child who was conceived without intervention and I expect I would feel differently if I didn't already have one.

[Anonymous]

The lines in the sand we had drawn for ourselves kept shifting. At each step we thought we’d be done it was impossible to pull the plug and realize we’d be childless.

[Anonymous]

When I started, I said I'd keep going until I had a baby or ran out of money.
I eventually gave up when I had no more embryos and my doctor advised that doing another retrieval would be futile. I had no problem with using an egg donor, but it sort of felt like going right back to the beginning. It had already been about four years at that point, I'd even used a surrogate for my last embryo. I was tired. I wanted to get on with my life; it had been in limbo for so long. (Of course, then Covid happened, so it's still in limbo anyway).
It's actually a lot less awful than I imagined. I remember once, at the very beginning, I told a friend that I didn't think I could go on with life if I didn't become a mother. But I'm okay. When I was trying to conceive all that time, it was so painful to be around children. Even TV commercials with kids in them made me sad. But now when I see kids, I smile.

I went through all of it as a single, using a sperm donor, if that matters.

[Anonymous]

I think it is important to have a realistic plan that both you and your spouse agree on. Things can change, but knowing how much time, money, and cycles you want to put yourself through when you first start out is hugely helpful. I also found it very reassuring when I had a BFN to know we had a roadmap already laid out for what came after that. We had unexplained infertility, were older, and our insurance did not cover treatments so we’re completely self-pay. All of those things factored into our plan as your personal factors will for your plan.

Ours was:
x3 IUIs
x3 IVF egg retrievals with as many transfers as necessary

If we got to the end of those cycles without a baby, we would regroup and discuss whether to do another retrieval or move on to something else (adoption etc).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When I started, I said I'd keep going until I had a baby or ran out of money.
I eventually gave up when I had no more embryos and my doctor advised that doing another retrieval would be futile. I had no problem with using an egg donor, but it sort of felt like going right back to the beginning. It had already been about four years at that point, I'd even used a surrogate for my last embryo. I was tired. I wanted to get on with my life; it had been in limbo for so long. (Of course, then Covid happened, so it's still in limbo anyway).
It's actually a lot less awful than I imagined. I remember once, at the very beginning, I told a friend that I didn't think I could go on with life if I didn't become a mother. But I'm okay. When I was trying to conceive all that time, it was so painful to be around children. Even TV commercials with kids in them made me sad. But now when I see kids, I smile.

I went through all of it as a single, using a sperm donor, if that matters.

PP, I'm sorry that happened to you! I am also a single mother by choice who used both a sperm donor and a surrogate. I also had terrible eggs, and I was told I would need an egg donor. I wasn't willing to do that-- I needed to have *some* part of the process that felt normal to me, so using my own eggs was my line in the sand (plus, surrogacy is harder legally if the baby isn't genetically related to the intended parent). Luckily, it worked for me with my own eggs on the first try. I'm glad you're okay. I also thought that I couldn't have gone on with life if it didn't work, and I still feel that way.

[Anonymous]

This was a much easier decision for us than I suspect it is for others, but we said if we had to go the IVF route, then we knew we’d move to adoption. We said we’d do 5 rounds of IUI/ICSI, then stop. I was very open to adoption because I’m adopted and never was wed to the absolute desire or need for bio children. We adopted from the same country I was from and it was an easy (as easy as adoption gets) process, only a little longer than a pregnancy.

[Anonymous]

We did an IUI and 8 IVF retrievals and lots of transfers, and are now getting ready for a DE round. Maybe we should have moved to DE sooner but it's so hard to let go of the hope of our OE working. Similarly, it will be really hard to let go of being pregnant at all if this first DE round doesn't work, so we'd probably do another. It's painful to think about the next phase (DE, surrogacy, adoption, no children) when I'm still holding out hope in the current phase, but I know it can be helpful. Sometimes I look back and can't believe this is my life, but then I try to accept it and do the best I can with the cards I've been delt.

[Anonymous]

i have moved the goalposts so many times. I started my journey at 34 with very low AMH (.4) several months after getting married. at that time i made a mental promise that I would be done at 39 no matter what the outcome. We got lucky and DD was born at 37 from a fresh 3 day transfer (my third IVF round). When she was 15 months old the need for sibling overwhelmed me (i was just shy of 39) and we did two rounds of banking and started transferring. Well over a year later and NONE of those embryos took. I was then 40.5.
Ended up doing 2 more abysmal cycles (because of Covid went to local clinics instead of NYC - BIG MISTAKE). didn't even get one egg retrieved both times. Decided one more time but went back to NYC and found a low/mini protocol - currently 6.5 weeks and seeing heartbeat hopefully tomorrow.
If this doesn't work out for any reason we are DONE. DD will be 5 in the fall and I just turned 42. I am exhausted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:i have moved the goalposts so many times. I started my journey at 34 with very low AMH (.4) several months after getting married. at that time i made a mental promise that I would be done at 39 no matter what the outcome. We got lucky and DD was born at 37 from a fresh 3 day transfer (my third IVF round). When she was 15 months old the need for sibling overwhelmed me (i was just shy of 39) and we did two rounds of banking and started transferring. Well over a year later and NONE of those embryos took. I was then 40.5.
Ended up doing 2 more abysmal cycles (because of Covid went to local clinics instead of NYC - BIG MISTAKE). didn't even get one egg retrieved both times. Decided one more time but went back to NYC and found a low/mini protocol - currently 6.5 weeks and seeing heartbeat hopefully tomorrow.
If this doesn't work out for any reason we are DONE. DD will be 5 in the fall and I just turned 42. I am exhausted.

Would you mind sharing where in NYC you did your low/mini protocol?

[Anonymous]

I'm not PP, but I did a low dose protocol at Cornell with Dr. Davis and I really liked him and the clinic, even though it didn't work for me.

[Anonymous]

I did low dose protocols at GW. Not sure what more Cornell would offer, particularly if you’re doing day 3 transfers.

[Anonymous]

I know as someone starting out you look at that woman who is on her 10th retrieval and think I don't want to be her, I would never do that. But I look at her and understand completely.

I was lucky. It only took me $80,000 and 4 IVFs to get my daughter. I was preparing to move to donor eggs if that transfer didn't work - a line that I said early on I wasn't willing to cross.

Perhaps there was a point where I would have stopped, but there is no way I could have known what it was up front.

I think you just have to decide before every IVF round, what you are or are not willing to do if this one fails. "If this one fails, we are / are not willing to do X." That's how you know.