Assisted reproductive treatment takes enormous energy and commitment. For those who are not achieving a pregnancy and birth easily, each round of treatment requires decision making with uncertainty regarding outcomes. Even with the best medical and professional input, those undergoing treatment are confronted with thinking about their future treatment. For some this might be changing treatment regimes, for others considering donor arrangements, and for others it may even be about considering finishing treatment.
Everyone who undergoes treatment commits hope, desire, energy, time, and finances to the process, and the thought of ending treatment may not be anywhere on the radar. For those people, it may be that you want to skip reading this altogether. However, for other people, the notion of ending treatment may have become more present, however uncomfortable, and difficult.
Ending treatment is a place people arrive at after much thoughtfulness, heartache, and deliberation.
There is no easy way to decide when to end treatment or to be sure that this is the right decision. Give yourself time to think about it. There is no rush to make a decision. It is important to take your time and weigh all of the factors involved.
For some people ending treatment will be a move towards not having their own child in their life, for others it is a move towards a different relationship with children, perhaps not having a biological/genetic child but pursuing other ways of being in a relationship with a child or creating a family.
Regardless of how long people have been in treatment or trying to conceive, it takes enormous courage to contemplate or move towards a decision to end treatment without achieving the dream of having a child. At such a significant transition it might be useful to consider extra personal support and consider accessing the counselling team at the clinic for additional support.