Many infertile couples start playing the woulda, coulda, shoulda game when they find they can’t have a baby in their bedroom. They start regretting the fact that they didn’t get married earlier ; or that they didn’t start trying to have a baby when they were younger; or that they terminated a pregnancy when they had got pregnant inadvertently many years ago.
They believe that this is why they are having difficulty getting pregnant now – that either they messed up their body , or that God is punishing them for terminating the pregnancy , and they had rejected his gift.
None of this brooding and blaming is helpful , because there’s no point in living in the past – you can’t change it ! It’s much more useful and productive if you start thinking about what you can do in the present to improve your future – after all, your future will become your past as well !
Please learn to be kind to yourself , and stop beating up a decision you made earlier. You made the best decision at that point in your life , based on the information you had at that point. None of us makes decisions to harm ourselves , and none of us has a crystal ball either , to predict what the consequences of any decision are going to be.
When you are confronted with options, you have to make a choice, no matter how hard this is , because not making a choice is often the worst choice !
I also remind couples to think about counterfactuals. For example, I just met a 38-year old doctor who was having a hard time having a baby. I advised her to do IVF because of her advanced age, and she was beating up on herself. I had been so ambitious in pursuing my academic career , that I postponed having a baby , and I bitterly regret that decision now.
I told her that supposed she had decided to prioritise building a family at that time, today she might very well have become a full-time mom with 3 babies, but she would most probably have resented her kids and regretted her decision to not pursue her professional career in order to become a homemaker. She would have compared her life with those of her successful colleagues, and kicked herself for throwing away her education !
There are never any easy answers, and all of live and learn . Yes, it’s important to learn from our mistakes , but please remember that God is not unkind , and doesn’t want to punish us ! We need to be kind to ourselves , so that we learn the right lessons rather than become bitter about what we did in the past. It’s important that you take the path of least regret , and this is why it’s sometimes so helpful to find a counselor ( who could be a coach , family member, spiritual guide, friend or mentor ) who will give you advice . She will not tell you what to do , but help you find the answers within yourself . A good coach acts like a sounding board, who provides non-directive counseling .
She can be invaluable , and will allow you to explore all your options at that particular point , so that even when you look back at the decision , you will have peace of mind that it was a well thought-out decision , irrespective of the outcome . Really, all we can control in life is the process – not the outcome. I tell patients that writing things down will help to clarify your thinking, so that you know that you have weighed all the known pros and cons and then made a well-informed decision , Even if you do end up regretting that decision 5 years down the road , you can always go back to that journal and remind yourself why that decision was the right decision at that point in your life.
Yes , it’s a good idea to have a plan B and create a safety net but this is not always possible – you can’t always have your cake and eat it too ! We are all humans , and we will mess up and make mistakes , but there’s no point in making the mistake even worse by beating up on yourself for making it. And a helpful way to approach this in a detached fashion so that your emotions don’t hijack you is to step outside your own skin metaphorically, and pretend that instead of advising yourself you’re advising a close friend ! This will often help you find the right path for yourself , so please do try it out.
And just because you made a mistake in the past is no reason to compound it ! You can use this experience to make better decision now, so that you don’t have regrets 2 years later on that you didn’t try all the medical options available to you !
Please get your doubts resolved free using our chatbot which is powered by AI based on Dr Malpani’s 40 years of clinical expertise and experience at https://www.drmalpani.com/chat-w-chatbot/index.html. This will ensure you’re on the right path and potentially save significant costs in the long run.