Fertility Care 🤝 Self Care

Struggling to conceive can have an impact on your mental health and yet it’s often left out of conversations.

If you’re experiencing fertility problems you may find it affects many aspects of your life, making it difficult to escape from. It’s quite common for people to feel shame, guilt or low self-esteem but we shouldn’t have to feel this way. We know this is hard and we don’t want to tell you, “Just relax, it’ll happen once you stop trying.” Instead, here are some things you might want to try.

Practical self-care

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to looking after your mental health. It’s very individual and you may want to explore a few different options to find out what works best for you. If you need a hand getting started, here are some of our favourites:

• Identify things that trigger you and try to avoid them if you can. That could include politely declining invitations to children’s birthday parties and establishing boundaries with that helpful aunt and their unsolicited advice.
• Guided meditations can help focus your attention and breathing, which can help with relieving anxiety.
• Journaling or writing down your thoughts and feelings to better understand them can help lessen their impact on you.
• Acupuncture can be a great stress management tool.
• Yoga can promote the same benefits as meditation, with the added perk of stretching and strengthening your muscles.
• Talking it out can help fight any overwhelm you may be feeling. Whether you confide in a friend or family member, a fertility counsellor or an online support group, sharing the load can be helpful. You can also book a session with our in-house fertility coach.

Unfortunately, none of these are a silver bullet but they can contribute to an improvement in your mental health and overall wellbeing.