10 Ways of Coping With Infertility

Struggling with infertility when trying to grow your family can be a long and difficult journey. Many women struggle with infertility. Fortunately, there are other avenues that those facing infertility can pursue to start or grow their families. Whether you choose reproductive technology such as IVF or surrogacy, or you choose another method like adoption, there are several options for those individuals trying to start their family while dealing with infertility. Before you decide which option is right for you, it is important to cope with your infertility. Infertility can affect you both mentally and physically, so it is very important to learn different ways to cope in order to properly prepare yourself for this next stage in your life. This blog will look at different methods that you can use to overcome your infertility and learn to cope with it in a healthy way.

1.Acknowledgment

It is completely understandable to feel sadness, grief, or a sense of loss when you learn about your infertility. That is why one of the first steps to be able to cope with infertility is to acknowledge that you are going through it. This step involves accepting your emotions instead of pushing them away or burying them. Carrying such heavy emotional distress can lead to severe mental and physical side effects. Once you acknowledge how your infertility makes you feel, you will be able to begin processing and determining the best route for you to pursue to move forward in a healthy manner.2

2.Talk with your Partner

Another important step towards coping with infertility is to be open and discuss how you’re feeling with your partner. It is easy to build up resentment and anger when you don’t talk about all of the emotions that you are feeling. It is important to remember that your partner is also experiencing the loss and grief of infertility and they can be a great resource to confide in and rely on during your time of need.

3.Seek Professional Guidance

If you find that you cannot communicate about your infertility with your partner in a productive and positive manner, contacting a trusted therapist or a counselor can really help create an open and positive dialogue. Being able to be open and honest with your partner is an important part of dealing with your infertility and deciding what other options you’d be interested in pursuing to build your family (if any). Don’t know who to contact? There are several professionals who specialize in couples or individuals facing infertility. 

4.Learn About Your Options

The next step in coping with infertility is to learn about the other options that are available to help you grow your family. This next step can really help individuals rid themselves of the feeling of helplessness. Learning about these options and discussing them with your partner and industry specialists can help reignite a positive light on your journey towards starting or growing your family.

5.Join a Support Group

Oftentimes when people are struggling with infertility, their friends and families will try to comfort them. Although the sentiment may be genuine, if the individual does not completely understand what you are going through, then it can often be overwhelming and frustrating. That is why we suggest that couples or individuals join an infertility support group. These groups are not only filled with other people who are at different stages of coping with infertility, but they are led by instructors who know how to help you cope and accept infertility. Becoming a member of this sort of community can really help in the healing and acceptance process.

6.Find Healthy Outlets

Oftentimes people become overwhelmed by having to constantly talk about their feelings and emotions. In these instances, we often suggest that those coping with infertility find a healthy outlet to channel their pain and disappointment into. There are several different outlet options including: journaling, exercising, volunteering, etc. The outlet that you choose completely depends on what feels best for you and your situation. The goal of finding and utilizing an emotional outlet is to add back more positives into your life and remove some of the stress caused by the negatives.

7.Self Care

The final way to cope on our list, and maybe one of the most important, is self-care. When you are facing infertility, it is important to never blame yourself, no matter how easy it may seem. Dwelling on the “what-ifs” can be painful and detrimental to the healing process. Take the time that you need to heal and move forward, no matter what your next steps look like. Whether it is carving out an hour a day for exercise or going for a monthly massage, even the smallest self-care efforts can really transform the way that you are currently feeling.

The Simple Surrogacy Difference

If you are struggling with infertility and choose Surrogacy as your method to start or grow your family, contact us today. Our team of experts will help explain the process to you and ensure that your journey is as easy and simple as possible. We are proud to have a team made almost entirely of female staff who are past Egg Donors or Surrogates themselves. This allows us to give our clients the unique experience of dealing with staff who personally understand the process from start to finish. If you are struggling with infertility issues, contact the team at Simple Surrogacy today! We can help educate you on the different options available to grow your family.