My husband and I have been trying to have a baby for over two and a half years and, being in my late thirties, these futile attempts have been consumed with pressure as you become deafeningly aware of the incessant ticking of your biological clock. Friends tell you that you aren’t old and they knew someone who had a baby in their early forties and they didn’t have any trouble. To doctors and consultants, you are old, well your reproductive organs are, and when you think of your womb, despite the positive visualisations you have read about, you find it impossible to visualise a warm, fertile place and instead it is empty, like the empty circle on the Clearblue ovulation tests. The anxiety, pessimism and grief is consuming and sometimes feels like too much for one person to carry. With Coronavirus and the lockdown, these feelings have been exacerbated because everything has stopped. Fertility tests have stopped, appointments have stopped and, especially painful for me, IVF has stopped. I feel selfish for complaining about it especially as, every day, the death count continues to rise but for me, and I imagine many of you, I am experiencing grief and loss, loss for what might have been and grief for the baby who I am still waiting to meet.
Since lockdown began, I have been trying to untangle this complex knot of emotions and be kind to myself. As a teacher and leader, you’re often kind to others, staff, students and you neglect yourself. You’re busy and stressed and sometimes it’s easy to sit on the couch rather than go to the gym or have that extra cup of coffee because you slept terribly the night before and you have a meeting until 7pm. I must admit that I sometimes blame myself for my ‘unexplained infertility’ – I work too hard is that why I can’t get pregnant? However, with lockdown, I have experienced spare time (albeit indoors) and that has provided me with thinking time and time to make changes to my life so I build a healthier mindset. I already feel like I’m in limbo so I need to take control so my emotions and hormones don’t have control of me. These are the three main ways I am taking care of myself. I hope they work for you too.
1. Take control of your thoughts
Over the past two years, I have read a lot of books about fertility and visited a lot of sites and my head is bursting with fertility information, fertility myths and opinions. I just can’t seem to stop thinking about fertility. One of the first things I did when lockdown began was set myself limits because information feeds my worry and worry is eating away at me. With more time, I needed to take control of what I do think about and focus on. I have hidden my fertility books and I will only read the IVF sections when the process finally begins. I won’t read fertility websites or engage in forums before bed because I find I then can’t sleep because my mind is filled with worry rather than feeling soothed. I have filtered through what I read and watch so I don’t read books or watch films/TV programmes about babies. Despite these changes, I found I was still thinking about fertility and this was just as draining so what else could I change?
In The Science of Learning, 77 Studies That Every Teacher Needs to Know (Busch and Watson, 2019), they include a study on thought suppression. They mention ‘The Rebound Effect’ and describe it as being when you try not to think about something but you are actually more likely to think about that thing. Consequently, I found that even though I was avoiding fertility websites and trying not to think about fertility, I was completely preoccupied with it. This, obviously, wasn’t the result I was hoping for. According to the findings from this study from Trinity University and the University of Texas, you need to think with a focus and focus instead on what you want to achieve, rather than what you want to avoid. Now, rather than saying to myself, “I’m not going to go on this fertility forum”, I say, “I’m going to read/clean/draw/knit/do some gardening.” My alternatives are always based on a task and doing something active e.g. not watching TV or doing something where I have easy access to my phone. This helps because I help myself to suppress a thought and I often find, by the time I have finished, I have forgotten exactly what it was I was about to Google about fertility this time. This will also help when I return to school so rather than thinking about work, I can suppress those thoughts and feelings of guilt by focusing on other things I want to achieve. Set limits and then set alternative actions and then you don’t feel like you’re adding to a list of ‘dos and don’ts’. In the world of fertility, there’s enough of those already.
2. Manage stress, don’t let it manage you
Busch and Watson also include a study on stress and uncertainty from researchers at University College London. The findings show that uncertainty is a major contributor to feelings of stress. With the uncertainty in all of our lives at the moment, we are all feeling different levels of stress and for those of you who have had IVF or other medical treatments postponed, you will be feeling, like me, very uncertain. We have no ideas about when treatments will start and it’s already been a very long wait. To manage these feelings of stress, I took advice from Mind, the mental health charity. They suggest accepting things that you can’t change. This was initially hard to do with the postponement of IVF but I have accepted it now and I am making some lifestyle changes to not only get me IVF ready but to make me happier and healthier. I am trying to eat more fruit and vegetables and exercise daily and this does make me feel better and stronger. They also suggest using more relaxation techniques; this was always a luxury when at work but I am determined to make them part of my routine so when I return to work, relaxing is a habit that I cannot do without. I find I feel more relaxed when I go for walks in the countryside, when I’m out in the garden, when I read a good novel and when I do exercise (well after it!). Before lockdown, I also started craft courses and found that very relaxing. To ensure I actually do make time to relax, I am organising my time, even during lockdown, so I schedule in relaxation. I know this might seem odd but I need to do this so I relax and I will do the same when I return to work. Only I can control whether I relax or not and I’m hoping this will help with conception but also with living a more joyful life.
3. Let’s talk about it, or not
The week before lockdown, I don’t think I quite grasped that my IVF journey might stop. I remember calling the clinic and being told that, “It’s not going to go ahead and we are going to put you in a holding area.” I was surprised by my reaction afterwards; I was surprisingly calm and it was my husband who was angry, more for me than anything else. I understood; it was for my safety and the baby’s and beds were needed for those who were really ill. I was really quite rational but my dreams told a different story. I haven’t slept well for the past two weeks and, unusually for me, have had tension headaches and then, on Saturday, I hit breaking point. I cried, I cried a lot – the trigger, a Zoom call with other members of a fertility group. Whilst embarrassed and drained for the rest of the day, I need to cry, I needed to grieve and I needed to share the knot of emotions within.
I learnt that you do need to communicate and experience that release but it needs to be when the time is right for you. You don’t need to put pressure on yourself or judge yourself. You also need to think carefully about who you communicate with. Unless friends have had trouble conceiving, they don’t often understand despite their best intentions, and this leaves you feeling upset and even more alone. During lockdown, everyone is more available and that means more able to chat. I have not felt ready to talk to friends about this and am only communicating via WhatsApp. When I do feel ready to talk to friends, I am preparing my responses in case they broach the subject (I’m hoping they won’t). My response at the moment is something along the lines of, “Thanks for asking but is it okay if we don’t talk about it? I’m finding it tough at the moment.” I will talk about it when I’m ready and I can control that not others.
When life returns to normal, I’m also going to consider when I meet up with friends and hopefully meet up with them without children. I met up with a close friend and pushed the pram for her whilst she took a phone call and vividly remember the pang of heartache at the realisation that this might never be me. I have also realised that I can’t invite friends with families to my house. I feel deeply guilty about this and selfish but it’s too hard. According to Mind, these events trigger stress for me at the moment. Rather than endure these social events and feel sad after, I’m going to take control and either say no or define the meet up I want. When we return to work, spare time will be precious and I need to be around people who make me happy rather than sad. I’m also going to talk to my Line Manager so she is aware because I will need support at work during IVF. I will also let her know some of my non-negotiables e.g. don’t ask whether it’s been successful, please don’t tell XXX. I have found that you do need to set these parameters because, if you don't, people tend to think they can ask you about fertility and they don’t understand the waves of emotion that accompany fertility and, sometimes, you just can't find the words.
Admittedly, I have found it easier talking to strangers about my experience. I joined a local fertility group and I have found that this has helped because everyone, though they have different stories, is experiencing the same pain. They have shared tips on how to cope and answered those questions that crop up in moments of fertility uncertainty like, “Can I jog during the two week wait?” “Did it hurt?”, “How did the hormones make you feel?” This has helped. I also visit a specialist fertility acupuncturist and this has really helped and I’m missing it greatly during lockdown. She has been a source of expertise (she had IVF too) and she also made me realise the importance of self-care. She could tell just by looking at my tongue that I was stressed! When work resumes, I am going to prioritise these appointments and make room for them in my diary. As my husband once said, “Work does not own you. You own you.”
During lockdown, these are some of the changes I am making to my life so I take better care of myself now and in the future. As a self-certified control freak, I hate that I don’t have any control over my fertility. By making changes, I feel more in control but, more importantly, these changes will not only support my fertility but help me to feel calm and happy during a worrying and uncertain time for us all.