"We decided to try in vitro, because both Peter and I felt we couldn't handle another failure. When I miscarried after that, we had to come to terms with the possibility that this wasn't meant to be"

A candid snapshot of a couple confronting infertility reveals the collision of medical possibility and emotional endurance. Choosing in vitro fertilization is not just a medical step; it is a psychological calculation born from repeated disappointment. The phrase “couldn’t handle another failure” speaks to accumulated grief and the protective reflex to limit exposure to more pain. IVF becomes a way to reclaim control, to marshal all available tools so that hope can feel justified rather than reckless.

Yet the miscarriage that follows shatters the illusion that effort guarantees outcome. The journey pivots from action to reckoning. “Come to terms” signals a grieving process: naming loss, acknowledging limits, and reshaping identity after a dream is threatened. The line “this wasn’t meant to be” is not necessarily fatalism; it can be a coping frame, a way to reduce self-blame in a culture that often treats fertility as a test of will, worth, or timing. Sometimes surrender is not defeat but self-compassion, a rebalancing of body, mind, and relationship after relentless striving.

The “both Peter and I” underscores partnership. Infertility often isolates, but here the burden and the decision are shared. That mutuality matters: it distributes the weight of grief, counters the pernicious idea that one person’s body failed, and affirms that love can persist independent of an outcome. It also honors the grueling logistics and emotions of IVF, hormone cycles, procedures, calendars, reminding us that science can extend possibility but cannot erase uncertainty.

There is a quiet courage in contemplating limits. Accepting the possibility that parenthood may not arrive as imagined does not diminish desire or effort; it expands the definition of resilience. Within that acceptance lies space for new forms of hope, perhaps different paths to family, perhaps a reorientation toward wellbeing. The testimony humanizes miscarriage and infertility, replacing secrecy and shame with honesty and tenderness, and invites a gentler measure of what it means to endure.