There is no getting away from ethical issues when it comes to Neonatal Intensive Care and reproductive technologies.  I love ethics and the study of ethics, but dealing with it in real life can be painful and heartbreaking.  The New York Times has a great piece about IVF, economics and the  impact of multiple births as it relates to prematurity and admissions to the NICU.

Read the article, and answer these questions for yourself:

1.  Would you do anything to have a biological child?

2.  Would you risk financial ruin to have a biological child?

3.  Would you risk having a premature child with developmental disabilities , if it increased your chances of having a biological child?

4.  Would you go through expensive reproductive technologies with a statistically increased chance of having a premature infant, when doing so would increase the health insurance payments of your co-workers?

These are hard questions to answer.  My husband and I were lucky enough to become pregnant, and deliver healthy babies easily.  I KNOW HOW LUCKY WE ARE.

But because I am a NICU nurse and have seen first hand the devastation that a sick infant can have on a marriage, I asked my husband some difficult questions before we ever thought of having kids.  We discussed what we would do if we could not get pregnant.  For us, we loved our life together, and we would live our life to the fullest without kids. We loved to travel, to meet people, to talk, to eat, to collect (and drink) wine, to go to the theater, to live life.  For us, children did not equate to a complete life .  Before anyone flames me, I am not saying I do not love my kids and that they are not the most important part of my life, because they, and my husband, are the purpose of my life.  I am just saying that my husband and I felt we could live a very happy and fulfilled life, ………without children.

Yes, easy to say these things when I have kids.  But, I stand by them.  Having children was not the epitome of a happy, fulfilled life for me and my husband.

So why is  having children  the epitome of ultimate happiness for others?

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Post edit 10/21/09 12:30pm

*After reading some comments left on this post, I realized (full disclosure) that I came off sounding like an asshole.  Really, I did. For this I apologize.  I edited out  some sarcastic statements on this post where it seemed like I was mocking infertility.  God knows, I was not.  I was trying to convey that the choice, for me, to not have children was OK.  Nothing to feel bad about.  But instead, I came across sounding like an asshole, I admit it! I sounded as if infertility is no big thing. Yes, I am an idiot, (and not a very effective writer either ) I am sure it won’t be the last time I end up eating crow.  Again, this post is in response to the NYT’s article that brought up ethical issues of infertility and the tough questions it raises.  Questions that should be asked, but in a more sensitive way than I presented.

RR