Well we are pregnant but my levels are really low and so they are assuming that I'm having another miscarriage. I will have to go back in on Friday for one more blood draw to see if I'm down to zero. Now what....what do we do? Another IVF....why not just drain all of our accounts for nothing. I just don't understand why this has to be our life. Why when two people love each other so much would God do this to us. I'm not very good with words so someone has passed this on to me to help others know what we are going through.


Stage one is called denial and isolation
The couple first denies the fact that they are infertile. It is difficult for them to face because they see friends their own age having babies. Many infertile couples may say they are opposed to having families in order to deal with their own infertility publicly. Many others avoid going to the home of friends who have children. The infertile couples tend to isolate themselves from people with children.


Stage two is called anger
During this stage the couple is angry at each other, angry at themselves as individuals, angry at doctors for being too clinical and for giving them a "one foot in the door" attitude and treatment. Couples often describe treatments for infertility as cold and unfeeling on the part of the clinicians involved and their approach and interaction with the couple.

Furthermore, the couple often becomes angry even at God because everyone else they know says they would make good parents and they wonder why God does not agree.

Most couples seem to resent the societal conditioning to "be cool," to "maintain" and to "stay in charge" of their feeling about infertility. This further antagonizes infertile couples as they perceive society as being insensitive to them.

In addition, the couple may be angry because society does not recognize infertility as a life crisis. If the couple suffered from alcoholism or drug addiction, the crisis could be faced as a crisis and resolved in a socially acceptable manner. However, there is no avenue provided by our society for a couple to mourn openly about infertility.

Stage three is depression
This is perhaps the most difficult stage for the infertile couple and is primarily a product of guilt. The individuals feel guilty about past transgressions in their life such as love affairs, poor church attendance and other real or imagined situations. This causes them to feel as though being made infertile is punishing them.

They are depressed about the fact that their friends who are having children by birth do not have to prove their parental fitness to anyone, but the infertile couple finds that everyone to whom they turn for children is questioning them. Mothers giving birth to children biologically are experiencing first heartbeats and first baby movements, while adoption applicants experience the accumulation of bank statements, triplicate copies of their financial records, location of their marriage certificates and so on.

The infertile couple may find themselves very depressed about the loss of their "dream child." Yet society does not recognize this type of loss. It just doesn’t seem real enough too fertile couples. In fact the couple may have spent the past several years in discussion in which they speculate about the characteristics of their dream child whom they always believed they could conceive biologically in the marriage. This dream is very difficult to let go of and requires a great deal of work before infertility can be restored. One of the more important aspects of resolving infertility is, once faced, for the couple to let the pregnancy dream die and let the dream child die as well, similar to the manner of grieving over death as described in the book Death and Dying by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross.

Many times the couples are anxious to talk to someone about the problem but become very upset because of the lack of understanding at every turn, including professional counselors according to the panel members.