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When diagnosed with infertility, many couples feel helpless and no longer in control of their bodies or their life plan. Infertility can be a major crisis because the important life goal of parenthood is threatened. Most couples are accustomed to planning their lives and experience has shown them that if they work hard at something, they can achieve it. With infertility, this may not be the case!
However, not all stress faced by infertile couples is emotional or psychological - infertility treatment can be physically stressful as well! Blood tests; injections; hysterosalpingograms, inseminations and surgery can be painful, awkward, and embarrassing.
There is considerable financial stress too and this is especially acute for poor patients. Infertility treatment is expensive, and this represents a major hurdle. Many patients drop out of treatment because they cannot afford it, and this can be very hard to come to terms with, especially when they know they could have got pregnant, if only they could have afforded the treatment.
Some of the hormonal medications you may need to take can also cause mood swings and emotional upsets, making it harder for you to cope with the stress.
Don't forget the impact of being stressed on your personal relations. Being stressed out can add to marital distress and disrupt sexual intimacy as well, making a bad situation even worse. It can also alienate you from your friends, cutting off sources of support. Also, if you are always irritable, tense, and angry, it's going to be hard to build a rapport with your doctor or his clinic staff. You may get a reputation as being a " difficult " patient, and this may make it harder for you to get good medical care.
There are certain times which are especially stressful:
Many of these stresses are amplified considerably during IVF treatment. Many couples start IVF focused anxiously on one primary concern: failure of the procedure. To compound this anxiety, couples are aware that they have little control over the final outcome - and this helplessness can make the situation even worse.
The inconvenience of daily injections and blood tests, the perception of low success rates, the wait for results, and financial pressures only add to the travails. Often, IVF is their last hope after many years of trying, and they feel that their entire future rides on the outcome of the cycle.
While it is true that couples cannot control the outcome, they can be helped to control their responses to the various phases of the process and to the overall outcome.
It has been suggested that patients who are better able to cope with stress have higher pregnancy rates, although there have been relatively few studies in this area. Interestingly, we find that patients coming for the second IVF treatment cycle are much more relaxed and in control, so that they are less "stressed out".
Perhaps the best general approach for treating stress can be found in the Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr," God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can change, and the wisdom to know the difference." Remember that no single method is uniformly successful: a combination of approaches is generally most effective. Also, what works for one person does not necessarily work for someone else.
There are a number of very useful books which deal with stress management techniques in great detail. A special bonus is that these tools will help you cope with stress for the rest of your life as well! Some of these tools, which you need to learn how to use, so that you can deal better with the ups and downs of your infertility include: imagery, visualization, hypnosis, auto-suggestion, meditation, positive thinking, progressive muscular relaxation, deep breathing, biofeedback, and massage.
© Dr. Aniruddha Malpani and Dr. Anjali Malpani www.drmalpani.com
Credits: How to Have a Baby: Overcoming Infertility
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