24/11/2025
We don’t talk about this part of fertility treatment enough.
The quiet, heavy moment that comes after you’ve completed your family… or decided your journey is over.
When you’re suddenly faced with a question you never imagined at the start:
What do we do with our remaining embryos?
Tiny maybes.
Little sparks of hope we poured our hearts, our bodies, our time, our money, our everything into creating.
And now we have to choose.
We’ve been sitting with this decision for months — paperwork unopened, phone calls avoided, both of us circling around the conversation because it felt too big, too emotional, too final.
But this week, I finally picked up the phone and made the request.
And even though it only took a few minutes… it absolutely winded me.
No one warns you about this grief.
The guilt.
The relief.
The endless what ifs that sit quietly in your chest.
Ending storage isn’t just ticking a box.
It’s closing a chapter that changed us forever.
There are options:
• Donate to another family – a beautiful path, a bit like adoption. (Not an option for us, unfortunately)
• Donate to research – choosing to help future families in ways we may never see.
• Or discard – a decision that can feel impossibly heavy, yet still valid, still yours.
We chose to donate to research.
And even though it was the right choice for us, it still carried a weight I wasn’t prepared for.
We should talk about this more.
The emotional labour.
The invisible heartbreak.
The right to choose what feels right for your family, even when none of the options feel easy.
If you’re here too — thinking, delaying, grieving — I see you.
You’re not alone.
And your feelings, every tangled one of them, are allowed.
