It’s an unfair question to ask when you’re on the other side and on to parenthood. Our children are the joys of our lives, the breath of fresh air that we breathe in each morning. We would do anything for our children, and we can’t imagine our lives without them.

Ask someone who does not reach parenthood through their IF journey. Take someone who goes through years of treatment, multiple IVFs, miscarriage after miscarriage, has an adoption fall through, and finally decides that it’s time to stop. Ask that person whether it was all worth it only to end up choosing to be child-free (either by independent choice, or to have it hoisted upon them for financial or medical reasons). Most of the women who I know that have *chosen* to take themselves off the island and continue their journey forward without children universally say, “yes, it was worth it.” Worth it to know that they had tried everything. Worth it to get to a point where they knew they were making the best choice for themselves to move on. Worth it because they finally had some control over something, but they never would have known that had they not had their journey.

IF has changed me in tangible ways – some good, some bad, frankly. I wouldn’t give up my infertility experience, though – I’ve met too many strong women (including you) who have helped carry me through the heartache, created too many friendships as a result of our mutual struggle, become more appreciative of the joys in my life. I understand myself better. I appreciate things differently.

But I still think it’s horrific to force a woman to say “it’s all worth it” just because she did get to the other side. To me, the journey and the result are almost two separate entities. The journey sucks. The life on the other side, whether parenthood or child free, is priceless.

But there are people have children only to discover that it is not for them and they plan to never have another one. So, who knows? When the road is so hard, I guess it is reasonable, or at least there is the time, to ask the question.

I don’t think you necessarily can judge the cost before you live it. Just as I could imagine living in Africa before I went, it was very different than actually living there. Being a parent is, in many ways, very much like I imagined it; but in other ways not at all.

If I had know what we would go through to have a child before we ever started TTC (dead baby, multiple failed IVF cycles, donor eggs after MFI) AND been able to turn off that innate desire to have children; I think I would have decided to skip it.

But when we start, we don’t know how bad it could get. Each step along the way, there would be a discussion of “It is worth it?” and we would, “Yes, we can do one more IVF.” or “We can do DE”, but we never had to say yes to the whole miserable 6 years.

Now I love our little girl and am happy to be where we are now and every day I am thankful for the things I get to experience, but I can’t say for sure that it was worth it. If I could have given myself the knowledge I have now 8 years ago, I might have been able to be happy with just the two of us. Of course that is impossible and back then I couldn’t imagine happiness / fulfillment without a child.

I wrote a post called “What if” on this very topic a few days ago and also asked “was it worth it”? My motto now is KEEP GOING.

Now that it is decided, I feel like maybe I didn’t want it enough, and that’s why it hasn’t worked. After all, if I wanted it enough, would I do everything possible to become a mother??? This has definitely helped me reconcile that, yes I desperately want to be a mother, but it’s not worth it emotionally, mentally, fiscally, etc.

Great post!

It’s strange. It’s not so much a life with a child that I am desperate for, it’s more that I had never expected to have a life without one. It’s almost as if I want to fix the wrong.

Your post has definitely made me think!

Personally- yes. To get my daughter every single moment was worth it. I would have used a wish for sure. But, in retrospect- I am not sure that I would have wished to ~not~ go through IF. It changed me, and my husband, and shaped who we now are & how we look at being parents. I think it has created a mindset that helps us through the bad bits (because there certainly are the bad bits) and makes us more patient & understanding. In my disbelief that we actually ~get~ to be parents & really truly have this amazing person as our daughter, I realize just how lucky we got & that is worth going through what we did as well.

Like you though- I seem to have decided already that I would not use a second wish to build my family. I experienced a pregnancy- I have my angel safe & healthy. If another comes to us somehow I will be happy, but I doubt that, for us, treatments are in our future again.
My second wish would be used to cure my sisters chronic disease so that she could then experience the chance to be a mom too. (Or that she is able to be a mom through any way other than pregnancy- there’s a lot of roadblocks for her)
I would also always like to have my third wish hanging out & would probably shoot down a lot as non-wish-worthy