Please talk me out of IVF!!

[wonderingthis]

Trying to conceive DC2 since years, it's not working, husband got extremely bad sperm and my cycle is fairly unpredictable.

Having first DC was already a challenge but happened naturally after 2 years, we were immensely lucky and our child is our world.
It's not happening a second time now and we were told only chance is ICSI. There are many reasons not to do IVF:

1. I have a prolactinoma (a benign brain tumour) that can react to IVF hormones and grow, and worst case, bleed into the brain (first pregnancy was closely monitored- natural conception is still risky but nowhere near as risky when doing IVF with the shots etc.)
2. We would spend literally all of our savings doing IVF
3. If I did do IVF abroad, I would have to leave my DC in the care of others for a while which I don't want to do
4. DH is totally content with one child.

I am unable to put it out of my mind and think about it constantly. I am 37 and time is running out, and I keep thinking maybe it will only need one go and then I will be happy forever? My whole life will be "fuller" with two kids? I also think I might worry less about my existing DC if there was another one?

Or is that thinking not quite correct, for those of you who have several children?

Please, please give my head a wobble and tell me your thoughts!
AIBU- don't do it
YANBU- risk it all and do IVF

IVF/ICSI is really, really tough even on a healthy body and is a long process. It is full of emotion - partly because of the experience and the pressure, and partly because you are full of drugs. Yes, it is amazing and it worked for me, but in your situation I would cherish your existing child and not put your health at risk. You are very precious to them.

You are allowed to be sad for what might have been, but being an only child can be fantastic - I'm one and so is my daughter!

I feel for you OP - I can’t imagine being in your position. You cannot help how you feel, so don’t feel guilty about wanting a second child despite all the things you’ve said.

I think if it were me I’d consider my options in this order:

1. Try naturally knowing it’s unlikely but not completely impossible given you have conceived once naturally. If it happens, great - if it doesn’t maybe get therapy to help you with your feelings around this.

2. Look into fostering and/or adoption - it sounds like you have a lot of love to give, and I think people who foster or adopt are hero’s (obviously not the ones only doing it for money or for access to children to hurt them)

3. Talk through the risks of IVF with a qualified person and if the risks were low enough, I’d consider one round of it. But with an existing child to consider, I’d want the risk of death from the tumor bleeding into my brain to be on a similar level to the standard risk of death in childbirth. Many people gave multiple children despite knowing there’s a risk of death just from giving birth - we don’t advise people to stop at 1 because of that! So if they said there’s a 1% chance of the bleed happening, and if it doesn’t there’s a 1% chance of death as a result, I’d roll the dice so to speak and go for it. If they said there’s a 90% chance of it bleeding but only a 1% chance of death, I think I’d still be happy with those odds. But if the chance of death if it did bleed was over say 30% I’d likely decide it wasn’t worth the risk. I don’t know the odds of death in childbirth so I’ve picked done random numbers to try to illustrate what I mean. Obviously you’d choose your own max risks!

4. Actively choosing to stick with one child and getting therapy to help me with that.

Good luck, sadly there is no easy answer for anyone to give you.

Have you been told you can’t have embryo transfer without the hormone therapy?

I had my first via ivf. No issues. Second time it worked too, but pregnancy ended up extremely high risk and with implications for my health going forward. I love my second child obviously but if I could go back I think I would’ve just stopped at 1 and not had to go through what I did and the impact me being ill had on my first child too and now whether I will live as long for my children given my now health issues - this gives me huge anxiety and thinking what have I done why didn’t I just enjoy what I had with 1!

Another friend had one via ivf, went for second and ended up with a severely disabled child who will never know them or live independently. Their lives are now medical appointments and fighting for care and respite and the impact on eldest is obviously huge too - always being second to the other siblings huge needs.

sometimes we should be content with that we have. The grass isn’t always greener!

I’m not sure about point 3. Yes, not dying is the priority, but presumably OP doesn’t want to risk a stroke, brain damage, the need to have a high risk operation while pregnant or any other complication that may flow from a bleed on the brain.

Yeah exactly, that's it, not not just dying it's also the other implications, loss of vision, being hospitalised etc.

Sending you lots of love, that sounds incredibly tough.

You are absolutely right- the grass isnt' always greener at all! And so tragic about your friends child- this is it, if anything was to go remotely awry it would all be on me and not being content.

You are so right, I just need to sit my feelings out!

My sister had a prolactinoma which was treated successfully with tablets. She’s since had 3 children with no problems at all. These are one of the more treatable adenomas either with medication or surgery. Is none of these an option although if you are under NHS care maybe they’re not? My sister is in Ireland. She was diagnosed at 23 and had her first child at 25. Do you know that untreated prolactinomas can press on the optic nerve? Is yours being monitored even?

Thank you so much for your refreshing perspective- to be honest I grew up almost like an only (one much older sister), I was extremely happy and loved my parent's company and never even questioned our set up until I started TTC myself!

Personally if I had one child I wouldn’t go into debt to fund IVF or risk my heath due to a high risk pregnancy.

For background I had my only child via ICSI at 37. At that stage in our lives we were financially comfortable and had been trying for 3 years. Our case was idiopathic (all tests were normal) so I just skipped the IUI route and went straight for IVF. Pregnant from my 1st cycle (lucky me). Normal pregnancy but post labor I had placenta accreta and post-partum pre-eclampsia. Obgyn said I had a 50% chance of getting each condition again with another pregnancy. TBH if I had a normal delivery I would possibly have tried again (we had plenty of savings and 1 embryo left) but too me it wasn’t worth it and the three of us are such a close, little family. It wasn’t worth risking for me.

Hiya, yes so my prolactinoma has been successfully treated with medication prior to my first pregnancy. I have regular scans and blood tests and it has since shrunk a bit, however it is still present. The problem is two-fold in that way that my husband's sperm is very poor and my cycle has always been erratic (I have had every test under the sun and nothing crystal clear has ever come back). The treatment for my prolactinoma and the endocrinologist were all under NHS and were fantastic.

A natural pregnancy is much less of an issue than an IVF one because of the amount of hormones that you have to take, it's them that can make the prolactinoma unstable

I think you know that you can't do it but looking for validation in that decision being made for you.

I don't have a medical condition like yours. However I have had surgery that means I now can't conceive children naturally so would need IVF. This happened after the second child. I absolutely know that I am done I do not need or want another child. However that biological clock and innate breeding desire side pops up every now and then even still.

Have your periods returned?

They have.

Is more treatment for the adenoma possible?

Death was the main risk people were talking about so I focused on that. But you’re absolutely right - ALL the risks need weighing up. It might be it’s a less than 1% risk if any of those things, they just have to tell you that it is a risk! So I’d want full facts and percentages, what the risks are and what the outcobes of the risks might be to try weigh up my choices. A pack of paracetamol lists a huge amount of possible side effects, yet most of us take them as we deem the risk either low enough to not worry about, or the side effect to be an acceptable thing to put up with. So we are already used to weighing up risks around medical conditions etc which is why I wouldn’t immediately rule out IVF just based on the initial perceived risk if that makes sense, as the risk might actually be minuscule!

Thank you all so much. To those ones who said that I would worry about a second child as much, I think my (probably skewered) thinking is that if you have more than one, if something was to happen to one of them, there would still be one for which you have to keep going and which will fill your life with meaning, does that make sense?

To those mentioning adoption, a friend of mine has adopted siblings so i have a bit of insight. I applaud everyone who does it but it is a huge gamble and there almost always is an enormous amount of trauma involved, you need lots of resilience to deal with this and I personally don't think I could deal with this, especially when you have a child at home already

That sounds wonderful, congratulations on your family! That's it- we are such a close and harmonious family and I think I just cannot risk that!

I'm not sure I would take the risk personally, as you need to think of your existing child and their quality of life if things went wrong. Having said that, I did take the risk of doing a frozen embryo cycle after having had a premature baby due to pre-eclampsia - but I did get medical advice and the odds I was given of having severe pre-eclampsia and another premature baby were low enough for me to take the risk. (Plus I felt morally obliged to give my frozen embryos a chance.)

One suggested thing to consider: you say that the IVF hormone injections are a major risk factor for your condition. Have you looked into natural IVF, which does not use additional hormones?

if that was to happen, I would never be able to forgive myself for not just being content.

To be brutal - and I’m really sorry to say this - you’d probably be dead and leave your child motherless. Really, please don’t do it. I was told another pregnancy would be tantamount to suicide. I listened.

I think your logic is skewed there. Would you not risking all those things by attempting IVF? The trauma of your child losing a mother or suffering a life-altering stroke?

IVF would be a huge gamble too.

OP have you had therapy? I had infertility issues and found it invaluable to talk it through with someone objective. I was also fixated on that idea of what if something happened to my son and would I feel better if I had another etc. Ultimately my fertility treatment didn't work out and I decided to stop but it is a decision you have to come to in your own time. One thing I found helpful at times was to agree to leave it for a period, say 6 months, and the. Consider it again to try and stop that constant loop of thoughts... might be worth a go. Also 5 or ) months later it has all sunk in and I would say I'm 99% content with our one!

Thank you for your post. The problem even with natural IVF is that we cannot really afford it....well we can, we have the savings, but we would end up broke if we had to do like 3 rounds, which is probably what is required.