The Grief And Stress Of IVF Loss Is Crushing by Amanda Shapiro

The Grief And Stress Of IVF Loss Is Crushing

by Amanda Shapiro

After eight months of IVF treatments/four cycles of IVF, I was finally pregnant. Two lines — the first joy my husband and I had had during the past eight months of bleak, grueling treatments. We did a little dance while singing about having a baby. This was not our first rodeo. Our daughter was born via IVF. While it was difficult to go through with her, we had no idea how lucky we were to conceive her within only two cycles of IVF. Even then, after our first failed cycle, I had felt as if my world were crumbling around me. A grief that went largely unacknowledged, just as the stressful, taxing process of undergoing IVF had also gone unacknowledged.

In recent years, the grief associated with miscarriage has been begun to be brought from the shadows into the light of public discourse and mommy blog articles. However, little attention has been given to the loss experienced with failed cycles of IVF. To fully understand this loss, you have to first understand that to undergo IVF at all is full of losses. For us, there were huge financial losses and associated stresses that come from gambling your savings on a baby you may or may not conceive. I personally experienced the loss of bodily autonomy as I went in for near-daily blood draws and transvaginal ultrasounds, put many hormones and other medications into my body, was put under anesthesia for each egg retrieval surgery, and had my ovaries swell from the sizes of walnuts to the sizes of oranges. We lost time at work — for my salaried husband, it was a diminishing of his vacation hours, and for me in my role as a contractor, it was a loss of wages at time that was already financially straining under the enormous costs of IVF. Continue reading