My story is slightly different in that I do have one child conceived naturally but after a fairly long period of trying and we then were unable to conceive again due to secondary infertility. So although I can’t give you the exact coming to terms with childlessness perspective I can give you a perspective on giving up trying none the less...
In our case, my ex was told that while he wasn’t infertile he had limited fertility due to an extremely low sperm count with low motility etc and so conceiving another child would be difficult at best.
at that stage we both really wanted another,and we looked into the possibilities of having IVF to achieve that. But before we actually got to the point of going through the treatment I brought up the thought of how far you go until you decide to stop if your cycles aren’t successful. If we e.g. managed to get ten embrio’s and froze eight and had two put back, would we actively be able to agree that this was a one shot deal and allow the remaining embrio’s to be destroyed? Or would we potentially freeze them and want to try again? And again, until money and hope had run out?
Just that thought process made me think that actually I couldn’t bring myself to go through the IVF process because actively stopping at that point was a tunnel I wasn’t sure where the end was, iyswim.
So we abandoned the idea of IVF altogether and a couple of years on I decided that I didn’t want the age gap which would have arisen if I’d conceived by then so we stopped trying altogether.
And while I do have one child so my situation is slightly different, I can say with absolute certainty that I am completely comfortable with where I’m at, and actually, I think that had I not ever conceived my ds either the questions would still have arisen and I would still have reached the same conclusions. Iyswim.
Ultimately life has no guarantees, and if this position now is leaving you in a state of depression to the point you are suicidal there is every chance that having a baby won’t instantly cure that, in fact there is a link between IVF and pnd already, and in your particular circumstances this could be higher. But that aside, people can,and do come through this and move forward with their lives. Giving up isn’t a negative,it’s a place of acceptance,and the reality is that if your next cycles don’t work you will reach a point where fate makes that decision for you rather than you making it for yourself.
At least by giving up you are putting yourself in control.
But I am fairly pragmatic and I am very much a believer in things happen for a reason sometimes. We don’t always see what it is and it’s not always defined, but sometimes I think that it can be. In my case it turns out I have a genetic condition which I might have already passed to my ds but which I wouldn’t want to risk passing to more children. My eXH has a genetic condition which wasn’t passed to our ds, but as things happen he did have a child with his now partner and that child has the genetic condition. And I now have a life limiting illness which means two children would have been harder than one especially as a single parent. And while I know that I can thing these things in retrospect and that if I’d had children things would have worked out as they’re meant to anyway, I can now look back on my decision to stop trying as a positive thing which could have had different implications had I continued. And fwiw I was comfortable with my decision before all this came about but still...
Good luck with your decision x