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Helane Rosenberg and Yakov Epstein
Pointer 10: Don't Give Up
Overall statistics suggest that about one out of two infertile couples will eventually produce a baby. But we believe that for some couples whose problems are not too complex or who are willing to go the limit -- using repeated trials with donor eggs, donor sperm, or even both -- the success rate can approach 90 percent. Of course, this 90% figure represents what's medically possible. Tragically, medical possibilities require economic resources. Many of the 90% of people whose infertility problems could be medically remedied may be unable to afford the cost of treatment. It is truly a tragedy that family planning decisions are so strongly affected by finances. Naturally, some infertility treatments are more successful than others. The "cutting-edge" treatments that offer possibilities when nothing else would ever work, get the most publicity. But their odds of success are still limited. Even the top-notch programs have a take-home baby rate of about 50 percent at best with IVF and its related assisted technologies. Simpler procedures, such as artificial insemination, can also offer you reasonable success rates. Even though we encourage you to optimistically try all possible avenues, we also encourage you to be realistic about your odds are of getting pregnant.
To fully appreciate the odds of succeeding with a single therapy, imagine that you are sitting in your doctor's office with nine other women. Each of you has dysfunctional ovaries and is about to start Pergonal therapy. At the end of six attempts, four of you will be pregnant.
No human being could sit in that waiting room and undergo treatment unless she believes she will be one of those four. Doctors encourage that optimism. Yet, they walk a tightrope between encouraging you and tempering that encouragement with a realistic perspective. When a procedure fails, they urge you to try again.
And remember, technology is evolving all the time. Today's insurmountable problem may be fixable next year. For example, since we wrote the first edition of our book, the treatment of male infertility has trasformed. The technique of injecting a single sperm into an egg has allowed men, who would not have been considered for IVF in the early nineties, to father a biological child. Other new and exciting techniques and medications have also improved success for other medical problems.
It is important to continue when many attempts have failed. The important key is to find ways to persevere despite these repeated failures. The temptation to give up increases if you withdraw from daily activities or let the specter of infertility color everything you do. Later in the book, we will introduce motivational (and sometimes even humorous) techniques borrowed from athletes[i], actors[ii], artists[iii] and other successful individuals who manage to keep going in the face of adversity. The skills, modified for use with infertility, focus on helping you help yourself through all the various situations you must confront. You can choose those that work for you or adapt them to fit your circumstance. Armed with these tactics, you will be able to continue infertility treatment as long as it continues to hold out a realistic chance of success.
[i]. Suinn, R. (1983) Imagery and Sports. In Sheikh, A. (ed.) Imagery: Current Theory, Research, and Application. New York: Wiley, p. 507-534.
[ii]. Chekhov, M. (1953) To The Actor. New York: Harper and Row.
[iii].
Rosenberg, Helane S. Visual Artists and Imagery.
Imagination, Cognition, and Personality, 7,(1), 1987-8,
77-93.