How to Manage Emotions When Going Through IVF?
While most women can handle the medical bits and bobs of an IVF treatment cycle quite easily, managing their emotions, especially anxiety, through an IVF cycle can be very challenging. Anxiety is a feeling of fear, worry, or nervousness. In short, it makes one uneasy about people or situations that they are uncertain about. Given that IVF can often be unpredictable and nerve-wracking, anxiety and stress are common emotions that women often experience when undergoing the procedure.
How Can Stress Impact Your Fertility Treatment?
Having infertility is no doubt, stressful. Choosing to progress with fertility treatments like IVF is also equally stressful. Frequently, patients about to opt for IVF wonder – Does psychological stress reduce the chance of IVF success? Does stress reduction improve the odds of IVF success?
Measuring psychological stress is tricky. In general, there are two methods. The first method is easy. Ask a person if they feel stressed or not. This is known as ‘Perceived Stress.’ You can get a little more complicated by having them complete more extensive questionnaires or surveys that calculate stress scores. The second method involves the measurement of hormones or other markers in the blood.
Many studies have shown that couples with infertility exhibit high levels of stress. Studies of women undergoing IVF treatment have shown that stress increases as the treatment progresses. Stress levels peak right before the egg retrieval but then decrease between the retrieval and transfer.
IVF is stressful; no big shock there. But does the stress encountered during IVF make it less likely for women to become pregnant? A few small studies performed in the 1990s and early 2000s gave mixed results. There was a recent case where a 38-year-old-woman had a low AMH level. She had been advised IVF and wanted a second opinion to ensure that IVF was a good option. Given her advanced age and her low AMH level, fertility experts recommended that she opt for the IVF treatment because time was at a premium for her.
When she heard the news, she became very agitated. The fertility experts did their best to calm her down, which only led to her getting more anxious. When asked what she was worried about – pain, side effects, the expense – she revealed that her actual cause for concern was her age. She believed that her age, along with the AMH level, meant that her eggs were of poor quality, and there was a high chance that the IVF cycle may fail, leading to her never getting pregnant.
What Are the Common Emotions that Women Encounter When Going Through IVF?
The fear of failure is the biggest concern for most women considering doing IVF. However, many manage this anxiety very poorly. For one, they do not articulate it, leading it to become general free-flowing anxiety that starts disrupting their life.
Some prefer remaining in a state of denial because they just cannot build up the courage to face up to the ugly truth that not all IVF cycles result in a baby.
Others prefer keeping a positive attitude because they naively believe that if they are optimistic, all will be well. They think that unnecessarily stressing about the outcome can reduce their chances of success.
Fertility experts believe that patients and their doctors should acknowledge that IVF can be very emotionally stressful. All patients going through IVF are likely to be anxious. It is easy to relive some of the anxiety, for example, worry about hormonal side effects and the fear of pain with information therapy. However, many of these concerns cannot be swept under the rug. It is far better to allow the patient to vent and express her fears to be appropriately managed. Unexpressed anxieties are likely to fester and cause emotional scarring later on.
How to Manage Emotions During Your Fertility Treatment?
Perhaps the most commonly asked question in this regard is if there is any quick fix? Unfortunately, no. Most women are intelligent enough to know that it is not sensible to worry about something you cannot control. But while the mind understands this, it is hard to get the heart to agree.
day or plan some date nights with your partner. It is essential to prepare yourself emotionally, but it is also important to relax in order to carry forward with your treatment.
Primary Amenorrhea
Primary Amenorrhea is classified in women who lack a menstrual period by the age of sixteen. It is usually a result of a genetic or anatomic condition in young women who never have menstrual periods and are not pregnant. Some of the female reproductive organs either fail to form fetal development or never attain full function in puberty.
Problems with the hypothalamus and pituitary gland could also cause primary amenorrhea as they are key for regulating ovarian hormones. Gonadal dysgenesis (premature ovaries leading to depleted follicles & eggs) is another most common cause of primary amenorrhea.
Are You Still Worried?
This is where fertility experts come in. Instead of worrying about yourself, let the experts worry for you. Their worries are about medical concerns, which are likely to lead to constructive solutions. For example, fertility experts will be more concerned with tweaking the superovulation to maximize the chances of success. This will allow you to focus on growing lots of healthy eggs.
At the end of the day, your IVF journey will always be a bundle of emotions and therefore, you need to be associated with the right fertility partner to help you through this stage of life. Feel free to talk to fertility experts who will be able to help to arrive at an informed decision.
Need a Recommendation to Find your Perfect Fertility Doctor?
If you are looking for an IVF clinic in Hyderabad, be sure to take a look at MotherToBe, a well-known fertility centre that is headed by Lead Clinician Dr Vyjayanthi. As Director of the clinic and an experienced fertility specialist, she is one of the very few in India to have earned a sub-specialty accreditation in Reproductive Medicine & Surgery from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, UK.
With a long and positive reputation in this field, Dr Vyjayanthi and MotherToBe ensure that the experience of your IVF treatment is as worry-free as possible. Seek the counsel of Dr Vyjayanthi’s expert team for a personalised approach to your fertility condition.