Infertility and Pregnancy Loss are Stressful - Here are 5 Tips to Help
May is Mental Health Awareness Month and as a result, I have been thinking a lot about the immense impact that infertility and pregnancy loss have on mental health. Studies show that navigating fertility can be as emotionally taxing as severe medical conditions like heart disease or cancer. Therefore, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, hopeless or stressed on your journey, you are not alone and you are having a normal response to this very stressful process.
If you’re like I was on my pregnancy loss journey, then even though you know the process is overwhelming (because you’re living it), you may not feel like your feelings are justified or validated and as a result, you may skip out on taking the necessary steps to protect your health.
This Mental Health Awareness Month, I want you to know that your feelings are valid. In this post, I share 5 effective coping strategies to help you manage the stress and emotional impact of your fertility and/or pregnancy loss journey.
Prioritize Self-Care
The first step is to take tangible actions to prioritize your health. We very often think of massages and spa days when we think of self-care. Although these are important, I want to focus on other less discussed forms of self-care that not only help manage stress, but may also improve your fertility outcomes.
Sleep:
Make sleep and rest a non-negotiable priority to support both physical and emotional health. Several studies show that 7-8 hours of sleep helps relieve stress and improve symptoms or anxiety and depression. Adequate sleep has also been linked to improved fertility treatment outcomes, improved heart health and life-expectancy.
Nutrition:
Nourish your body with a balanced, nutrient-rich diet to support overall health and manage stress-related symptoms. It goes without saying that being intentional about what we put into our bodies goes a long way when it comes to our health. Eating a plant-based, low glycemic index diet that is low in processed foods and high in whole foods (as is seen in the mediterranean diet), has been associated with decreased inflammation and improved fertility outcomes.
Exercise:
Incorporate regular exercise, such as yoga or walking in nature. Similar to eating well, regular exercise has been shown time and time again to relieve stress. As a bonus, regular physical activity is a way to kill two birds with one stone, because it is also associated with improved fertility. Patients often ask me what specific exercise to engage in, my response is always, whatever exercise you enjoy and you’re most likely to be consistent with. At the end of the day, consistency is more important than the type of exercise.
2. Cultivate Mindfulness and Relaxation
Mindfulness and relaxation are important ways to reduce stress. However, if you’re like me, hearing that you need to incorporate mindfulness and relaxation can be so vague that trying to figure it out in itself becomes stress inducing.
What works for me when it comes to mindfulness is either guided meditation with apps such as Headspace or Calm (not an ad) or yoga videos on YouTube. Here is a link to the first yoga video I did on my healing journey after my unplanned cesarean hysterectomy. These practices of yoga, meditation and mindfulness, help to reduce stress and improve emotional regulation. Yoga has the added benefit of being weight bearing exercise as well.
3. Build and Lean Into Your Support Network
We’re not meant to do life alone and this is also true of the fertility journey. While not everyone’s path will be the same, connecting with fertility support groups can provide some much needed solidarity, validation, and practical advice from others who have walked a similar path.
Additionally, identifying people in your life who can share your journey with and who can be a strength of love, strength and support is essential to navigating the process.
I am also a big advocate for professional counseling or therapy to gain personalized coping strategies and tools to work through complex emotions in a safe space from a empathic provider with expertise in reproductive mental health.
If you’re navigating fertility or pregnancy loss with a partner, working together to create a space for honest, vulnerable conversations about your individual and shared experiences, fears, and hopes can deeply enrich your experience. Furthermore, engaging in bonding activities that provide stress relief and also help you reconnect amidst the challenges of fertility treatments.
The fertility journey is especially trying for couples and so I cannot overstate the significant role that couples' counseling can play in helping you navigate communication difficulties and strengthen your relationship.
4. Navigate Fertility Treatment with Intention
As we have already established, this journey can be very overwhelming. There is an immense amount of information to navigate. Educating yourself about your treatment options by speaking with your providers of visiting trusted sources such as resolve.org or asrm.org. It is important when speaking with your care team and providers that you understand what tests are being done and the meaning of the test results. It is just as important to understand your next steps, the treatment options available to you and the expected outcomes from each treatment option.
5. Be Kind to Yourself
Finally as you navigate your fertility journey, it is so important to celebrate incremental progress along the way, set realistic goals and most importantly, show yourself kindness and compassion. Part of showing yourself compassion may be honoring your emotional limits by taking breaks from treatment when needed, setting boundaries with friends or family and making your emotional well-being a top priority.
Pursuing hobbies and activities that provide a sense of fulfillment and help you find moments of calm amidst the chaos can also make the journey more manageable by reminding you of the fact that you are more than your fertility journey and that you have other things in life that you enjoy.
Finding the strategies that work best for you may take time, and not all bullet points work for everyone. Most importantly, please know you are not alone in this experience and I am always rooting for you and sending you love.