The Infertile Couple – 3 Questions
Posted on March 26, 2009
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When my husband and I started down the path of infertility we were on two different planets pursuing two different paths. He wanted to live childfree and although he had mentioned this to me in a round-about-way, I wasn’t listening. I wanted to pursue fertility treatments, something he didn’t want to do, and he wasn’t hearing what I wanted.
At first it didn’t seem like we could or would ever agree on a course of action regarding our fertility. We didn’t take the time to figure out if we were both on the same path to parenthood, obviously we were not. I was doing most of the research on what procedures would be the best fit for our medical conditions and assumed that he would agree. We talked about adoption prior to getting married, but when the reality of that decision was upon us we couldn’t agree that was a good idea for both of us.
We did consider the consequences, somewhat. We didn’t talk about what would happen in the procedures didn’t work. Nor did we talk about the risks involved with a twin pregnancy. We were naive too in that we thought a twin pregnancy would be a good thing – we knew little of the risks involved in a multiple gestation pregnancy.
Finally, there are multiple cost to infertility. The financial cost, the emotional cost, relationship strains, etc. We mainly focused on the financial drain of the fertility treatments because initially this was the first hurdle to overcome. Yet, our biggest battle would be the miscommunication or lack of communication during our journey.
I wish we would have considered these three questions once we found out our diagnosis of infertile:
- What is our course of action to become parents? What procedures will we pursue? How long will we try? How much money will we spend?
- What are the consequences of our actions? What if the procedures don’t work? What if we become pregnant with twins or more? What are the risks to the woman during treatment and/or during pregnancy?
- What are the costs? How much are we willing to risk, not just financially, but also regarding the bond of our marriage? How can we minimize these costs?
Did you create an action plan or consider any of these questions?
» Filed Under Infertility, Marriage, communication
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3 Responses to “The Infertile Couple – 3 Questions”
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Thank you for the questions. My husband and I are facing this decision right now. We are on the same path in regards to wanting children…but, he is less concerned with the “effects” of IVF than I am (I’ve done most of the research). They make it seem so easy with the information they pass out sometimes; even though if you really dig into the materials it is not.
We are in the process of gathering questions to ask the Dr. when we go to my post-op appointment next week.
My fertility doctor’s office provides us with an infertility counselor that we’ve certainly been taking advantage of. Her main goal is to figure out our “new path” in life. She’s been so helpful.
Those are great questions. Good advice. We didn’t ask a lot of pre-questions. We knew that we would be parents. Adoption was always something in the background. I think part of the problem is that when you start IF treatments, you hope that it won’t take that long. We were very naive to the process and had no support so we never would have predicted how things turned out for us. Our decision to stop ART wasn’t awfully hard. But, we had had enough and needed to reclaim our lives.