IVF And Stress: How To Combat It

Stress and anxiety are common emotional issues when you (couples of the opposite sex) are trying to conceive or carrying a conception. You are constantly in a worry mode. Your anxiousness or stress goes up when your effort does not bear fruit. And you visit a fertility or IVF centre in India or your locality to detect and treat the issues you have.

At the fertility centre, a respective doctor suggests fertility treatments like IVF after having interaction with you, conducting physical examinations, and going through the reports of a few recommended tests. The doctor explains everything associated with IVF and its success. Thinking about your IVF treatment success could increase your stress or anxiety levels. Here are some effective steps to company it while having your fertility treatment:

Make a support team

Usually, IVF treatment takes 3-6 months. During treatment, you need to have several appointments with doctors, tests, and medicine purchases. Sometimes you and your partner may feel you are alone in your fertility treatment journey and need some support while staying at hospital or having tests.

This feeling may increase your anxiety and stress level. Here you must ask one of your family members, friends, relatives, or colleagues to be with you if required. You should be careful while asking anyone to support you. It is crucial as some of them ask you questions you are not ready to answer.

Educate yourself

Before moving to have fertility treatments such as IVF, you should know it in depth. At your end or while interacting with a respective doctor, you should ask everything around IVF. Your queries should be on the following points:

  • What IVF is
  • IVF treatment process
  • Why you need it
  • Success ratio of the treatment
  • Associated risks
  • Preparation tips

Identify your triggers/worries

To manage your IVF stress and anxiety, you should start it by identifying your trigger points. As far as possible, you should avoid judging your concerns. Instead, you should listen to your thoughts and point out your worries that could be:

  • Having a child
  • Things related to having a healthy conception
  • Others’ thoughts about you
  • Effects of health issues on fertility

Setup healthy ways to cope

IVF makes you have both physical and emotional tolls. To manage the tools, you need to have a healthy self-care plan. For example, you have some unhealthy coping mechanisms such as a pan of brownies and a glass of wine. You should try to have new healthy mechanisms like meditation, knitting, journaling, and allied hobbies to work on your stress management during the IVF treatment process.

Divert your mind

During the IVF treatment cycle, you have emotional ups and downs. Some of those emotions and associated feelings could be negative for you and leave a bad impact on your treatment success. You need to divert your mind by doing something that makes you happy when you have bad feelings or thoughts in your mind/heart.

Keep communicating with your close one

Usually, both of you will be with each other during your IVF treatment. Sometimes, it is possible that one of you could be alone when one of you has to be at another place for tests, medicine purchases, etc. It can make you feel alone if you have no supportive team. At that time, you can talk to any interesting topics over the phone call to keep you engaged. Further, you can stay in constant touch to ask for help if required.  

Seek an expert’s help

Sometimes it is hard to manage your stress and anxiety at your end during fertility treatments. You may feel that your effort is not enough to deal with your IVF stress. If it occurs, you must look for a counsellor and request him/her to help you cope with what you are going through.

Be positive for most of time

Having fertility treatments, especially IVF, makes you think a lot about what feelings you have. Due to those feelings, you have worries and negative thoughts in your mind. You need to keep your mind free of negative feelings or thoughts. And for this, you need to think positively and see the bright sides of your treatment.

Conclusion

Stress and anxiety are not good for you, even though they are common during fertility treatments. Their higher level can bring bad impacts on your IVF success. So, managing your IVF anxiety and stress is crucial. And following the above-mentioned ways can be beneficial for you.