Infertility in the times of Covid -19 (7 tips to get you through)
/Depending where you live, currently a lot of us are experiencing some kind of mandatory ‘lockdown’. You would be forgiven for not loving your current situation, it’s not a natural state of being and the longer it goes on the more we may want to rebel against the loss of freedom and lack of control over our lives. Loss of control is hard at the best of times, yet when you are trying to overcome infertility, then life gets really hard. Like pushing a bike up a very steep mountain in the wrong gear, hard.
Back before the times of Covid-19, I had my own private lockdown. I look at it as a trial run for this almost global lockdown. I was sick with Adrenal Fatigue and a prisoner to my own body. To recover I went on a strict diet, no alcohol, no sugar, no fun stuff. This meant I couldn’t go out to eat, dance, drink and I had no energy to do anything anyway.
When we first received the news that our country was going into ‘Stage 3’ lockdown, I felt a familiar feeling rise up, my own lockdown still fresh in my memory. I had an idea of what to expect, I was already resourced with skills and experience to help make this monumental period bearable, I knew that I can stay focused despite all this outside noise and panic. Over the last decade I have developed resilience, through sheer perseverance and continuity, I survived.
I know these times are not easy on anyone right now – no matter which angle you come from. Whether you’ve lost your job (this is my current situation), a loved one, you’ve been sick, your pay has been cut, your freedom lost, your wings clipped – there are few winners right now.
And the way people react, really shows you what they are made of and how they cope with the many curveballs life may throw them.
I realise a lot of countries have halted or limited their IVF programs in reaction to the Covid – 19 situation and this has left people reeling, all their hopes and dreams that were placed on their next round, have been dashed. It’s causing grief, heartache and raising a lot of ‘why me?’ questions.
I totally get it. Covid-19 is throwing most of us a challenge right now, it has a hell of a recourse and we can choose to either swim with it or against it.
No matter what your belief is regarding Covid-19 or how your government is handling the scenario – these elements are mostly out of our hands…what matters now is what you do with your hands! Remember the song by Jewell before she married her cowboy? ‘My hands are small, I know, but they're not yours they are my own’. A great song from 1995, but my point is – if you can’t control what goes around you, you can still control yourself, your hands and what you do with them. In times of adversity (Covid – 19 or Infertility) we can remain consistent and actually come out the other side better for it.
A lot of this uncomfortableness we are currently feeling comes from not having any certainty on how long this will go for, how long will we feel like a small version of ourselves, how long will this outside force rule us and force us into a state of flux?
As hard as it sounds, the idea is to become comfortable with this icky feeling of the ‘unknown’, just as you learn to do when facing infertility.
The definition of infertility changes slightly depending where you read it, in a nutshell it means: the failure to achieve a clinical pregnancy after 12 months or more of regular unprotected sexual intercourse.”… .Infertility is the inability of a sexually active, non-contracepting couple to achieve pregnancy in one year.
To me, the word ‘infertility’ sounds like it’s an ‘infinite’ problem, almost like a doomsday prophecy. But despite the negativity of the name – it is not always the final outcome. To be infertile is to coin a phrase for a certain period of time in your life but it is a course that can change at any time…. you can work towards being fertile ‘enough’ to have a child, I am proof of this. For a long time my outcome was bleak, chances low, against the odds and there was no certainties for me – none at all.
With Covid -19 and infertility – both scenarios are painful, uncomfortable, set big boundaries and make us feel small. But if there is one thing I have learnt when in a period of ‘infertility’ is resilience. To move to another song from the 90’s – this time from 1997 – my gift to you is a line from the classic Chumbawamba ‘I get knocked down, but I get up again, you are never gonna keep me down’ yes a bit of Tubthumping is what you need in your life in these moments. Below I will give you my list of how I kept ‘getting back up again’ in those darkest moments. And it’s not drinking a Whiskey drink or a Larger drink – that’s for sure!
The idea is to become comfortable with being uncomfortable. To be a true survivor and learn resilience, you need to be able to push ahead despite the constant walls pushing against you saying otherwise.
Resilience is something you build up over time. You aren’t born with it and it’s not something you can learn from a friend. You do this completely on your own…your own hands – no matter what sized hands you have!
So how do you build resilience?
Firstly I would lose the tag #infertitle - don’t give yourself a title you don’t want, don’t put yourself in that negative corner. I am sure you don’t want people to refer to you as ‘the infertile person’, so why give yourself a label you don’t want? Especially when you are doing all you can to be a mum.
Turn your language around to match your goal (ie mother to be, mum in waiting) whatever you want to call it. That way you are always heading towards a positive direction, moving to motherhood, not towards infertility, as that’s not how you want to be defined.
Resilience isn’t about avoiding setbacks, it’s about being able to push through despite them. It is about every time you get knocked down, you brush your knees, wipe the sweat off your forehead and move forward once again. It doesn’t mean you can’t grieve, be sad or have bad days. This is all part of the course of moving ahead. You need to get real with yourself and your feelings. Checking to see how you feel, looking at the feelings you currently have and then either accepting and moving on or assessing and working on that blocked emotion before you move forward again. Pushing ahead before you are emotionally or physically ready won’t get you the end result any quicker or possibly at all!
So you can see that your mindset plays a very big part in this whole ‘trying to conceive’ game. It’s a game of Patience and keeping your focus in check when the shit is hitting the fan, I have compiled a list of some of the things I did to keep my mind in check when I was in my own private lockdown;
1) The Mind Game:
This whole Covid -19 thing and (this infertility thing) is a mind game. It’s about not losing your end goal amongst the chaos, potential fears and losses. It’s about being a phoenix rising above the ashes. And how do you obtain this?
The answer: Meditation. Sorry to give you such a boring and obvious answer but it really is the truth. You need coping mechanisms for your mind, you’re in a state of flux and mediation is THE way to deal with stress, grief, loss, anger, disappointments, and change.
I did soooo much work to get my body, health and positive outlook on point and it all helped but it was meditation that really did it for me. Meditation was literally the Vegan cream to my gluten free cake!
I practice Vedic Meditation but I didn’t just start meditating one day and ‘find my tribe’. It took years of knowing I needed ‘something’ in my life. At first I dabbled in various courses and You Tube videos…..it was a great starting point for me. If you are hesitant or new to meditation it’s a great place to begin. This one is from a friend of mine:
It took time to find the kind of meditation that worked for me. (see My Meditation story here)
Meditation is increasingly becoming more mainstream, there’s Podcasts, apps such as Calm or Headspace, You Tube guided meditations such as the popular Dr Wayne Dyer, mediative music, Yin Yoga and self-help books that can help open up the world of meditation to you. If you haven’t found your own meditation tribe as yet, there’s so many options for you to dabble and explore and find what works for you. Take your time finding what works for you.
2) Daily Affirmations:
Ok so if Meditation is too much right now, daily affirmations may be your launchpad to a positive mindset. Daily affirmations are simple, positive statements declaring specific goal/s in their completed states. ... that you repeat to yourself often.
This is the bit where you have permission to talk to yourself, ideally out loud. The hardest part in the world of infertility, is to not beat yourself up about all the IVF cycles that didn’t work, seeing other people fall pregnant quicker than you, the late periods that could have been a pregnancy, miscarriages and navigating a complicated health system, to find a solution to your fertility issues. It’s easy to start blaming your body for what didn’t happen, for letting the team down.
Frequent daily affirmations can turn your mental body bashing to healing and forgiveness.
One of my favourite affirmations is: ‘a thought is a thought and a thought can be changed’ which often snapped me out of my overindulgent thinking that took me into deep rabbit holes, that I couldn’t find my way back out of again. Affirmations were my circuit breakers.
You can find affirmation examples online, You Tube, Pinterest, Instagram and my favourite – the late Louise Hay - she was the master of affirmations and you can buy her cards (either via the Louise Hay app or you can buy physical cards) through her website. https://www.louisehay.com/
Start your morning with carefully selected affirmations, set intentions and new thinking, write them up and stick them around the house (after all this is where we are spending so much time right now). You will be surprised at how many times a day you are not thinking positively and the affirmations will jerk your thoughts back on direction.
3) Mindful distractions:
It’s so cringey for me to suggest you ‘find a hobby, I mean if you had a passion for something you would know by now…right? If you have one – great! Especially essential during isolation. However rather than a hobby, I am thinking more of a ‘time waster’ with the sole purpose that it takes up a lot of your thinking space, so there isn’t as much room for all the nasty thoughts that can overtake you when feeling low. Something almost mediative. I did a LOT of colouring pictures back in my own private lockout years ago.
A friend of mine has a great website you can download colouring and puzzles: www.bellemitchell.com.au
It doesn’t have to be colouring in (although it is cheap and easy) creating photo albums, baking naked treats for your neighbours, cards or puzzles ….ideally something offline. The idea is it is something you can pick up at any point and that it is an activity that can last beyond Covid – 19, whenever you have down time and need a focus away from being overwhelmed or lost and keeps you off social media.
4) Music:
It’s the answer to everything! Really! There’s numerous ways you can use music to push you through. During isolation I’ve been forcing myself to listen to different music genres beyond my usual choice…it breaks me from one dimensional being and shifts my thinking. I started with classical music the other morning and it was such a calm, peaceful morning and really changed my outlook on the whole day.
Or you could plug the words ’30 day music (or song) challenge’ into Pinterest and you will find a way to spice up your music appreciation. https://www.pinterest.com.au/search/pins/?rs=ac&len=2&q=30%20day%20music%20challenge&eq=30%20day%20music&etslf=16684&term_meta[]=30%7Cautocomplete%7C0&term_meta[]=day%7Cautocomplete%7C0&term_meta[]=music%7Cautocomplete%7C0&term_meta[]=challenge%7Cautocomplete%7C0
If you usually listen to Pop, try another category such as dance or jazz for a week and see what happens. Maybe you decide at the end that you only like Pop but maybe you widened your music appreciation taste and as a result, broadened your tastes and you may just start to see or feel things differently once you have broadened your mindset.
5) Movement:
Depending where in the world you live right now may determine how much access you have to the outside world. If you’re not allowed outside, I am so sorry!
Getting back to nature is so important in these isolated moments. Allowing your feet to touch the ground – the grass or sand or to feel a part of nature in your hand is an important part of healing.
It is not nice to have these cages around us, for our mental and physical health we need to move in some way. Even if it is simply listening to a song each morning and dancing, releasing some endorphins. I’ll be honest, I am not much of a yoga person but it’s a great way to move in a confined space, afterwards light a candle and make a herbal tea. It’s all about taking a moment, being gentle and aware of where you are right now, accept where you are but know that this could change at any time.
For more on the health benefits of nature read up and see for yourself. Here’s a an article from Time that sums it up well: https://time.com/4405827/the-healing-power-of-nature/
6) Fertility Diet:
Stick to your fertility diet as much as possible. Maybe the foods you usually choose are not available but you need to be trying your best with the things you can control, so that you continue to strive to be fertile fit for your goal to become a mum.
Adopt the mindset that you are consistent despite any restrictions right now, you will overcome these obstacles as you do every other limitation that life throws you. Eat your way to health, if you are not on a fertility diet, now is a good time to find out what a ‘fertility diet’ is and why it is so important to women trying to conceive. Giving up alcohol and sugar and all your favourite comfort foods is hard, but not as hard as the concept of never having children. Now is the time to research and discover what it means to feed your body the vitamins and nourishment it needs for optimum fertility.
My fertility diet consists of gluten free, sugar free, dairy free, alcohol free, preservative free foods and additives. Staying on this diet doesn’t change when things get hard. This is because I know that staying consistent is the key during the tough times.
If you want to know more about fertility diets and increasing your overall fertility, my naturopath has written a great book called ‘Fertility Breakthrough overcoming infertility and recurrent miscarriage when other treatments have failed by Gabriela Rosa.’ you can find the book here. Use this downtime to be informed
7) Journal:
This was my personal way of coping with grief and loss when I felt I couldn’t or didn’t want to talk to people. Writing is my creative outlet. For you it may be drawing or cooking or patchworking. Whatever you’re creative outlet is a good start but there is something extra therapeutic about writing, when you start the page you may think you know what you are going to say but then all this other stuff pours out and boom – you may have unsurfaced thoughts and anxieties or concerns you didn’t even know you were holding. The beauty is once written you can throw it away, burn or hide it afterwards, you don’t need to look back on it ever again (unless you want to see how far you have come over time). It really is a safe space to rant, yell, grieve and cry and no one ever needs to know or judge you. Buy a cheap exercise book or a nice journal and simply start writing and see what it is you want to say.
Struggling to conceive is hard. It’s a frustrating and lonely situation that I wouldn’t want anyone to go through, however here we are and this is what we are dealing with. So let’s learn to deal with it the best way we can. Let’s build resilient selves that can overcome our current obstacles, be as mentally fit and fertile as we can be, so we feel confident to go through the next round, the next cycle or treatment with positivity that we’ve done enough.
Being resilient means that things like Covid -19 are detours not roadblocks. We are a special club and we know that we just need to keep ourselves on track and accept there will be speedbumps that slow us down but it’s not about the pace in which we get ‘there’ but the hope that we will get there, as long as we stay true to our overall goals, be gentle with ourselves and constantly move forward. If we do de-rail, it’s ok as we are constantly building our resilience for the next roadblock. We know there will be many more of these days in our lives but they will not beat us, we can control our inner selves from the outside chaos.
It’s all a mind game that we can constantly tweak. We will get there in the end!
After my own private lockdown I did get better over time, it took over two years of hard work, perseverance and consistency before I finally fell pregnant with my son who is now three. I still look at him every day and wonder how he got here? For so long it did not seem possible, the hill too steep, but he is sitting next to me as I write this, dreams do come true!
My love and thoughts are with you at this time xx
PS Please note that I am not a medical professional and these thoughts are my own, based on my own experiences and should not be taken as medical advice.
