Fertility Treatment: Is the Bargain Worth It?

09.01.2010

To add to the long list of issues I already have, I now tack on one more: fertility treatments. And I’m deeply divided. I’ve always held my nose up at this but I’m aware how asinine that is especially because I can’t support my snobiness with anything other than a shrug and loud “harrumph.”

I still don’t really know where I stand, but catching about 10 minutes of that TLC show, Quintuplets By Surprise, I began to listen to my range of emotions. When it comes to finances, I have no sympathy for this family. They lost $90,000 worth of income last year and added $60,000 of expenses by having five babies. And these expenses are just for the basics, not counting the extra medical attention two of them need.

The reason they even got these five babies is because they wanted their daughter, also conceived through fertility treatments, to have a sibling. This is often the case. Parents go in wanting one more child and get double, triple or more what they bargained for. Why? If conceiving the first child was so difficult, why chance getting twins, triplets, etc knowing that the cost, energy, and sanity will cost that same amount? And the “you don’t have kids so you don’t understand” won’t garner any sympathy from me either. You already have a kid, right? Is it like everything else in our society: one is not enough?

But let's flip it, who am I to say that a couple who can conceive naturally can have more than one kid while others can’t? That’s not fair. I acknowledge that.

And what about those women who are like me and wait to have a kid when they are older and conceiving may become more difficult? Choosing to wait for financial reasons, for emotional reasons and for maturity reasons becomes a punishment later in life when the chances of conceiving drop over 30%. Should there not be fertility treatments to help older women have a baby? Part of me says that if it’s meant to happen naturally then it will and let nature take her course. It seems like one unnecessarily complicates his/her life by going in with the intentions of conceiving one kid and coming out with five.

I don’t know what I would do and I can only hope that I don’t have to face that decision should we decide to start trying and things don’t happen. Being my age, childless and confused with time pressing only forward is difficult… Incredibly difficult and quite often very lonesome because we only hear from women who seem to never doubt the fact that all they ever wanted was to have a kid and wasted no time getting to that stage of their life. Would I trade my 20s and 30s for a kid? No. Is this fair? No. Will I be OK if we want kids and can't have them? I don't know.