Another Father’s Day has come and gone. It’s a bittersweet time at our house. Cancer took my wife’s stepdad in 2007. Complications of liver disease took my dad in 2005.
Equally painful and devastating: Our dream of having kids died in 1998, after more than a year of trying on our own and then six months of intra-uterine insemination (IUI) procedures. In the late 1990s, about 9 percent of U.S. couples were unable to conceive. IUI had a 4 percent success rate, and the cost was about $1,000 per cycle.
We tried IUI five times. By the second try, I was viewing the monthly ritual as a bizarre sci-fi story in which a specimen jar, a test tube and a long, slender nylon tube replaced my reproductive organs.
After our third unsuccessful attempt, my mind began sliding into a dark place. I started to wonder, “How many more times can I take this monthly cycle of failure?”
When the fourth attempt failed, I stopped hoping. My statistics professors would have understood: I knew the probabilities, participated in the experiments, and was left with the unhappy results.
That November, we tried for a fifth time. Twenty-nine days later, my wife returned from Christmas shopping, much earlier than expected. She walked in to the house sobbing, with severe cramps. We held each other for a long time.
We spent the holiday season deciding what to do next, researching and discussing the options: advanced procedures; domestic or international adoption; foster parenting; and, ultimately, life without kids.
If only we had known about RESOLVE, the National Infertility Association. Founded in 1974, it connects people to others who can help, empowers them to find resolution, and ensures equal access to family-building options.
Some of the most valuable content on its website () is in a section called Finding Resolution. It includes an article titled, “How Do You Know When Enough Is Enough?” by Bonnie Cochran, LCSW, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social work from CSU.
Deciding when to say “enough is enough” is a devastating debate between logic and emotion. It happens silently in each partner’s thoughts and, eventually, happens aloud when they muster the courage to talk.
Today’s statistics are marginally better than in the late 1990s. According to the CDC’s August 2013 National Health Statistics Report, about 6 percent of couples are infertile (2006-2010 data). If they pursue IUI, the success rate is still 4 percent but, according to RESOLVE, the average cost is $865 per cycle.
The costs, which speak to the logical side of the brain, are a reality check. Currently, only 15 states require health insurers to cover infertility treatment (Colorado does not).
The dream of being a parent resides on the emotional side. Deciding to let go is the beginning of an odyssey through the grieving process. For us, it took years of trekking, each at our own pace, through denial, bargaining, depression and anger before reaching some level of acceptance.
If you grapple with deep emotions every June when Father’s Day rolls around, please know that you’re not alone. Others have been through the same struggle.
We have friends and former co-workers who chose either adoption or foster parenting, and they needed deep reserves of strength and hope. We decided to live a life without kids, and we also needed strength and hope.
Whichever path you take — driven by choice or fate — may you find the strength, hope and help that you need to keep moving forward.
Ross Van Woert of Loveland is founder and manager of a marketing consulting and communications agency. The longer version of this essay is at .
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