Addicted to I.V.F., or Addicted to Hope? "You know, some people here get addicted to I.V.F.," a friend of a friend said when I mentioned to her that I was going to be doing fertility treatments in Israel, after my attempts in America. "Because it's free, they keep going and going, destroying their marriages and their bodies," she said, looking me up and down. Unlimited treatments just came to an end with a new law in Israel limiting I.V.F. to eight cycles, or three if you're over 42. I didn't know how to answer this veritable stranger - a woman who had already had her kids at the "right" time, getting married in her 20s, finishing by her 30s, leaving her the 40s to complain about moody teenagers, midlife crises and a passionless marriage. "I think everyone should do what they feel is right for them," I said. That's the unfairness of I.V.F. - everyone gets to critique your choices, standing as judge, jury and hangman: Why did you wait so long? Do you really want to have a child anyway? Should you really be spending so much money? Is it healthy for you to do this to your body? Isn't it time you move on already? I've heard from women all over the world who have had a baby after a number of treatments - eight, 10, even in Israel women doing 15 or more cycles. Who is to say what the right number of treatments is? The reproductive endocrinologist Dr. Geoffrey Sher, a prolific blogger who answers questions online about I.V.F., said that it was "rarely advisable to undergo more than three I.V.F. attempts using the same approach each time." Three is the number Solomon and I have agreed upon. His caveat is when a reason for repeated I.V.F. failure is uncovered, a new treatment should be done - as he did successfully with one Australian woman who had undergone 22 rounds (!) of I.V.F. But, he writes, "The time to stop trying is when there is no remediable explanation for repeated failure to achieve a viable pregnancy." So many women are disconsolate over I.V.F. failure, as Ali Margo put it so poignantly last week on Elle magazine's website, writing how $47,000 could not help her have a child: When we ran out of money, we borrowed more. I felt like an addict, doubling down on a bet when I knew the odds were against us. So when the first round went bad, we did a second round just to be sure. Ms. Margo had her 20 embryos genetically tested (the same preimplantation genetic screening procedure Solomon and I will do). But they were all nonviable. She is more than disappointed. She angry at the industry: "At what point, I wondered, are doctors simply exploiting our deepest, primal longings? Is that what medicine should be? Some in the field have taken exception to this sentiment. As the I.V.F. patient coordinator Lisa Rosenthal writes in "I.V.F. Cost - Lies About Infertility Treatment?," while she is glad there is a conversation about the patients who leave without a baby, it's not news - nor should it be to the patient. What I feel like pushing back about is this: When we are told about treatment, we hear numbers. Percentages. We are told that there is a 20%, 30%, 40%, 50% or any other number percent chance that we could achieve a successful pregnancy. That leaves us to understand that directly opposite are the chances of not becoming pregnant. A 70% chance, 60% chance, 50% chance, all the way down to a 20% chance of not becoming pregnant, if you are lucky. Maybe some of us do focus on the likelihood of success rather than that half-empty glass, reminiscent of that famous Jim Carrey line in the movie "Dumb and Dumber," when his love interest says he's got a "one in a million shot" of dating her, and he replies, "So, you're telling me there's a chance!" Someone in those percentages is going to have a baby. I hope it will be me. And yet, I feel for people like Ms. Margo because I am angry too: at myself, for not being able to get my act together sooner; and at my first gynecologist, who didn't send me to a specialist during my second pregnancy, despite the fact I'd just miscarried and would again then, no thanks to her. I feel betrayed by my body, which is not doing the one thing it was created to do (and might not have even done it a decade ago). And then I'm rankled by the conversations: the holistic crowd, which acts so sure that changes in diet and lifestyle will produce a baby that it often maligns I.V.F.; the women who already had their children, who not so subtly suggest that I should give up on I.V.F. before I become "addicted." I'm troubled by the way women in general replace rooting for each other with judgment and competition, as if parenting - and the quest to parent - were a blood sport. One group I cannot muster anger toward is my fertility doctors. Every specialist I've met with has been realistic about my chances, and yet, hopeful. Are they "selling hope," as Ms. Margo asks? Certainly, the Israeli doctors I met with aren't, as their salary is set and they don't make money off state-sponsored health care. My American ones didn't seem to be about the money either. Dr. C. had been amazingly kind, pained by each I.V.F. disappointment as deeply as we have been. And with reproductive endocrinology still in such early stages, with so little known about so many treatments in every field of medicine, what choice do doctors have but to offer hope? It's up to us to take the hope, the caution, the percentages, the success stories and the failures - our own failed cycles - and make the best decision, one that works for our own life. Amy Klein's Fertility Diary is the first in a series of weekly diaries documenting the ever-changing experience of having and raising children. Her tenure, and her weekly essays, will end in February (although she will continue to update Motherlode on her progress).