Unsure Whether to Continue IVF?
Navigating an Impossible Decision

By Saff Mitten

For some of us, there comes a point in our infertility and IVF journey when we start questioning whether we should keep going. We may find ourselves wondering when, or how, we will know if it is time to stop.

Nobody begins IVF expecting it not to work for them. You may go into it hopeful, nervous and anxious, but also feeling somewhat positive. After months or years of trying without success, starting fertility treatment can feel like moving forward at last.

But it is almost impossible to prepare for what IVF will actually be like, how it will affect you or how long you may find yourself stuck in it.

IVF can be emotionally and psychologically brutal. There is the anticipation before each stage, the relentless waiting and the lack of control over the outcome. Unexpected results, unsuccessful cycles and pregnancy loss can repeatedly change what happens next, often before you have had time to process what has already happened.

And you have to do all of this while keeping the rest of your life going. You may still be working, supporting other people and trying to appear functional when internally you feel as though your whole life is hanging on the outcome of your IVF.

It is a lot. Over time, it can wear down even the most resilient person.

When the question of stopping first appears

At some stage, you may start to begin asking yourself questions such as:

Is this ever going to work?

How much of my life am I prepared to give up?

How many years can I continue living in this state of limbo?

How much more can I take emotionally?

Simply having these thoughts can be frightening. You may worry that questioning whether to continue means you are already giving up, or that you no longer want to be a mother enough. You might try to push the thoughts away because stopping feels too painful to contemplate.

But wondering whether you can continue is not the same as deciding to stop. It may simply mean that you are exhausted and beginning to recognise how much IVF is costing you.

The grief associated with stopping IVF can also begin before you have made any decision. Allowing yourself to consider that fertility treatment might be coming to an end can bring you closer to the future you have spent years trying to prevent. Even thinking about stopping may feel as though you are beginning to let go of your hoped-for baby.

This can make it difficult to consider the question properly. Pushing it away may allow you to hold on to hope for longer, but it can also prevent you from thinking honestly about what you need.

Stopping IVF can mean different things

Stopping IVF does not necessarily mean making a final decision about motherhood.

For some women, it may mean taking a break from fertility treatment before deciding what comes next. For others, it may mean ending IVF but considering a different route to parenthood. And for some, ending fertility treatment may mean beginning to face the possibility that they will not become a mother.

These are different decisions, although they can become painfully intertwined.

You may not yet know what stopping IVF would mean for you. You might know only that continuing in the same way no longer feels manageable. You do not have to decide the whole of your future at once in order to take your exhaustion seriously.

Taking a break may not feel simple either. Age, finances, medical advice or your individual circumstances may make time feel limited. What is described as a pause can still carry enormous emotional weight if you fear it will affect your chances or that you will not be able to make yourself return to IVF.

Why is it so difficult to know when to stop IVF?

We often imagine that if the time comes to stop, something will make the decision obvious. Perhaps a doctor will tell us there is no realistic chance of success. Perhaps we will feel completely certain that we cannot go through another cycle.

Sometimes that happens. But often the reality is far less definite.

Even after repeated unsuccessful cycles, nobody may be able to tell you whether IVF will work if you try again. Medical information and success rates can help you understand your position, but they cannot tell you how much more IVF you should endure or what is right for your life.

Part of you may feel unable to continue, while another part is still wondering whether the next attempt could be the one that works.

The point at which you thought you would stop may keep shifting

Before starting IVF, you may have had firm ideas about what you would and would not do. You might have decided how many cycles you would try, how much money you would spend or which forms of fertility treatment you would consider.

But decisions made before IVF can feel very different once you are living through it.

A limit that once seemed clear may become much harder to hold when reaching it means walking away without the baby you had hoped for. You may tell yourself that you will try once more or wait for one more result. The point at which you thought you would stop moves further away.

This does not mean that you are indecisive. It reflects what is at stake. Another cycle may feel like another chance at the future you have been fighting for.

It can also become increasingly difficult to stop because of everything you have already invested. You may have given IVF years of your life, spent a considerable amount of money and endured procedures, losses and disappointments that have taken a significant emotional toll. Ending IVF without a baby can make all of that feel as though it was for nothing.

Continuing may also have become tied to how you see yourself. Perhaps you are someone who perseveres, finds solutions and does not give up when something matters. You may have approached IVF as you have approached other difficult things: by researching, planning and trying harder.

But IVF does not respond to effort in the way that many other areas of life do. You can do everything asked of you and still not get the outcome you have worked for. Recognising that you may have reached your limit can therefore challenge both your hope of becoming a mother and your identity as a capable and resilient person.

Caught between the pain of continuing and the pain of stopping

By the time you begin questioning whether to continue, neither option may feel bearable.

Continuing can mean exposing yourself to more uncertainty, waiting and possible loss. It may mean putting your body through more IVF, spending more money and allowing it to take up more of your life. You may feel that you are losing yourself within the process or no longer have enough time between cycles to recover.

But stopping carries its own pain. It may bring fears that you will regret the decision, that you have not tried hard enough or that you are walking away just before IVF might have worked. If stopping IVF would also mean ending your pursuit of motherhood, you may be facing the loss of the entire future you had imagined.

You are not choosing between a painful option and an easy one. You are trying to understand which kind of pain you are able and willing to live with.

The financial cost of another cycle may be relatively clear. The emotional cost is much harder to calculate. How do you measure what another unsuccessful cycle might do to you? How do you compare that with the possibility of regretting that you stopped?

When you and your partner are in different places

If you are going through IVF with a partner, you may not reach your limits at the same time.

One of you may feel unable to continue while the other still wants to try. Your partner may be ready to stop before you are, or you may feel that you are continuing partly because they are not ready to let go.

Neither person has to be wrong for there to be a painful difference between what each of you needs. But it can be difficult to think clearly when you are managing your partner’s hopes and fears alongside your own.

Wanting to be a mother does not mean you must continue indefinitely

The language surrounding IVF often celebrates perseverance. People are encouraged to remain hopeful, keep fighting and never give up on their dream.

That language can make stopping feel like a personal failure. You may fear it would mean that you did not want motherhood enough, were not strong enough to continue or gave up too soon.

But your desire to be a mother and your ability to continue IVF are not the same thing.

You can still desperately want to be a mother and reach a point where you cannot keep putting yourself through fertility treatment. You can wish the outcome were different and recognise what continuing is doing to your mental health, relationship, finances, body or ability to participate in the rest of your life.

Questioning whether to continue does not diminish how much you want to be a mother or erase everything you have already endured in trying to make that happen.

There are limits to what any person can withstand. Recognising yours is not evidence that you have failed.

You may not reach the decision with complete certainty

Many of us want to feel certain before making a life-changing decision. We want to know that we have chosen correctly and will not look back with regret.

But there may be no choice that feels completely right when neither option is the one you wanted.

You may continue IVF while feeling frightened about what another cycle could do to you. You may stop while part of you still longs to try again. Relief, grief and doubt can coexist. Feeling conflicted does not necessarily mean you have made the wrong decision. It may reflect the enormity of what you are being asked to decide.

The aim may not be to eliminate every doubt. It may be to understand yourself well enough to recognise what you need, what you can tolerate and which choice feels most possible to live with.

You do not have to arrive at the final answer immediately. Sometimes the first step is simply allowing yourself to acknowledge that the question is there.

How therapy can help you decide whether to continue IVF

When you are deep in an IVF journey, it may not be easy to understand or recognise your own thoughts clearly.

Your decisions may be influenced by medical advice, success rates, finances, your partner’s wishes, your age and the opinions of people around you. Fear can also become a powerful driver: fear of stopping too soon, fear of future regret and fear of discovering that life without children is something you may have to face.

This is where speaking to a therapist who has lived through infertility and IVF themselves can be particularly beneficial. I can understand from personal experience why the decision is so complex, why the point at which you thought you would stop may keep moving and why neither continuing nor stopping feels straightforward.

Having lived through it does not, however, mean assuming that your experience is the same as mine or that you should make the same decision. Every woman has her own limits, circumstances, values and choices. What feels possible for one person may feel unbearable for another.

Therapy cannot produce a definitive answer or tell you whether you should continue IVF. That decision belongs to you. But therapy is not only about having someone listen. A therapist can ask questions that help you explore your thoughts and feelings around different parts of this enormous dilemma, including aspects you may not yet have considered.

Together, we can begin to unpick what is making the decision so difficult. We can explore what continuing and stopping both mean to you, what you fear you might lose through either choice, where the pressure to keep going may be coming from and how much of the decision is being driven by your own wishes rather than fear, guilt or other people’s expectations.

A therapist like myself can also help you notice thoughts and feelings that appear to conflict. You might desperately want to be a mother while feeling that you cannot withstand more fertility treatment. You might feel relief at the thought of stopping and then guilty for experiencing that relief. These contradictions are not evidence that you are confused or incapable of deciding. They are part of the complexity of what you are facing.

Therapy may not give you an easy or certain answer. But it can help you move beyond repeatedly circling the same fears and begin uncovering your own internal answers: what you need, what your limits are and which choice feels most possible for you to live with.

You may not be able to make this decision without grief, doubt or fear. But you deserve the space and support to consider what continuing is costing you, what stopping would mean to you and where your own limit lies, without either choice being treated as a failure.