Infertility Resolution

The media portrays infertility resolution as a successful pregnancy and healthy baby, but that is not always the reality. Live birth rates for even the most high-tech fertility treatments are less than 50 percent per attempt.

What Is Resolution?

Resolution is actually determining what your place will be in the world following infertility diagnosis and having peace with that choice. It’s the plan you devise to “solve” the life crisis of infertility. Some people need to exhaust all fertility treatment options before they are ready to look at other family building options. Others find that advanced fertility treatments are not for them, and move on to find resolution sooner.

Stopping fertility treatment does not necessarily mean that you have resolved your infertility and that you know what you will do next. What it does mean is that you feel like you no longer want to pursue fertility tests and treatments, and you want to stop living the life of an infertility patient. Deciding that “enough is enough” usually takes time.

How Do You Get to Resolution?

Finding resolution might mean accepting a reality that you did not expect, such as not giving birth to a genetic child. You must grieve your losses — the pregnancy, birth and baby that were never created. Keep in mind that it is difficult to mourn something you never had, and sometimes professional help is needed to help you work through that process.

Moving on from fertility treatment and considering other family building options such as adoption, donor egg, donor sperm or childfree living is one of the hardest decisions you will have to make. If you have a partner, you are not making this decision in a vacuum; his or her voice is just as important.

Part of reaching resolution is asking yourself what is most important to you — being a parent or being pregnant? The answer to that question may determine what other family building options you will consider in the future. Donor egg or donor sperm may result in pregnancy, but if being a parent is the most important thing to you, perhaps looking into adoption is the next step.

Infertility May Never Be Behind You

Don’t be fooled into thinking that when you resolve your infertility, infertility will be behind you. Experiencing infertility changes you — it makes you stronger, and it gives you tools for managing other times when your life feels out of control.

Infertility also takes away your innocence. You begin to realize you can’t count on everything in life to work out.

The pain of infertility will pass, but you will not forget the experience or the toll it took on you.