Fertility Options Coach

Before you knew the heart ache of infertility, you loved lazy weekend mornings with your partner. You didn’t have to schedule passion–it was part of your relationship. Of course, that was when sex required only a cast of two and a gleam in your eye. Enter fertility doctors, ovulation test kits, temperature charts, blood tests, fertility drugs, and financial considerations. Suddenly that bed is getting pretty crowded!

When infertility threatens to drain all the passion from your relationship, here are some tips for protecting what really matters:

* Remember why you chose your partner. It probably wasn’t for their ability to produce a child. Take the time to relive the great memories together. Look through old pictures, talk about your courtship, gaze into each other’s eyes again.

* Spend time together just enjoying each other. Go out to dinner and really talk about everything except infertility. Take a picnic to a park. Wander a museum hand in hand.

* Plan a romantic interlude at a different time of the month. Take a shower or bath together, enjoy a leisurely weekend breakfast, go away for a weekend or shut yourselves in for the weekend. Take the time to be lovers with no thought to ovulation or timing. Just enjoy connecting emotionally again.

* Be kind to yourself. Infertility can feel like the ultimate betrayal or failure by your body. It can be hard to feel sexy when you are angry at your body. Give your body permission to be imperfect, then focus on what is right and good with your body. Being able to enjoy intimacy with your partner is one of those good things to celebrate.

For more ideas about how to keep your relationship healthy during the stress of infertility, check out these books:

Infertility weighs on your mind and swallows up your life. You wait for your cycle to begin so you can start treatment or get blood tests. You wait to see if you will ovulate this month. You wait for insemination or the perfect day to make a baby. Then you enter the dreaded “two-week-wait.” Once you wait for the pregnancy test results you start waiting to ovulate again. All this waiting can drive you crazy but it can also be the perfect time to finish projects or learn new things that you won’t have time for once the baby finally arrives.

Most people who experience infertility do eventually have a baby and many more adopt so it is a good idea to use this time wisely. In addition to giving you time you won’t have post-baby, using your waiting time wisely can make the infertility waiting much more bearable.

Here are some ideas for ways to use this time:

1. Take a vacation. Not only can a vacation help reduce your stress levels, making pregnancy that much more likely, it can also be a time to reconnect with your spouse. Infertility takes a toll on relationships and some time together can help you remember why you got together in the first place. Even if you are short on funds you can usually find a little money for an inexpensive weekend trip.

2. Keep a journal. Journal writing can reduce stress too and has been shown to improve your health. In addition, keeping a journal of this time can be a wonderful record for your child of how very much you wanted to have them.

3. Learn to knit. Knitting and other repetitive crafts can help to calm your mind and reduce stress. Now is the perfect time to knit that heirloom baby sweater set you always wanted for your child or you can make yourself a sweater or learn to make felted knits for handbags and other great items. Knitting (or crochet) gives you a very small thing to focus on when everything else seems to big. It is also an excellent activity for waiting rooms. Click here to get the popular knitting guide Stitch N Bitch: The Knitting Handbook

4. Scrapbook your past. While it can be difficult to look at your own baby pictures when you are suffering from infertility depression, now is the perfect time to scrapbook your relationship or your teen years. Not only is this a project you’ll never have time for with a little one under foot, it is also a great way to remind yourself of the good things in your life.

5. Speaking of good things, a gratitude journal can help to raise our spirits when infertility gets you down. Start keeping a small bound book with random notes about the things you are grateful for. Writing your blessings can raise your spirits and reading them can help to boost your mood when you can’t muster the energy to write. Try pasting in loving notes from your spouse or cards from friends to help remind you of the wonderful relationships you have.

6. Start your novel. You have always wanted to write a book. Now is the time to get that project under way. While you may initially have trouble focusing, once you put your mind into the project it can be a wonderful way to focus your energies while you wait to take tests. You can even take a laptop, PDA, or notepad to the doctor’s office to work while you wait. Setting reachable goals such as “5 pages per day” or “3 chapters by the end of the two-week-wait” can help to make the project workable. Click here to get the book You Can Write A Novel

7. Learn a sport such as golf or tennis. If the physical activity is ok with your doctor, finding a physical outlet for your stress can make the waiting easier. In addition, sunlight can help to boost your mood.

8. Take a class. Sign up for a community education class or a local art class. Learn to paint, cook Chinese food, garden or make soap. Learning a new skill can be fun, will help you meet new people, and it will give you something else to think about.

9. Study your religion or deepen your spirituality. Now is a time when you need all the faith you can muster. Studying the scriptures, attending mass, or joining a study group can help you to connect to others and reconnect with your faith. Often those who are experiencing infertility withdraw from religious activities because of the feeling that God must be punishing them. Not only is this untrue, it can separate you from your greatest source of strength at just the wrong time.

10. Go out with friends. Again, this is something you won’t have as much time for after your successful infertility treatments. More importantly, women experiencing infertility tend to isolate themselves. It can be difficult being around friends who have babies, but isolation can only deepen your depression and increase your stress level.

11. Start working on your “Life Merit Badges.” There are many things a woman pought to try or learn in her lifetime. Author Lauren Catuzzi Grandcolis offers a practical guide for grown up girls who want to learn new things. This book will have you trying things you never dreamed you’d learn. When your baby finally comes, you’ll have a host of new stories to tell them about their adventure seeking mama. Click here to learn more about You Can Do It: The Merit Badge Handbook for Grown-Up Girls.

I’ve known I had PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome) most of my adult life. So, when we had trouble getting pregnant the second time around, I assumed the problem was just PCOS. However, I decided to get some tests from my doctor and my husband volunteered to be tested as well. It is always a good idea to rule out male infertility, even if there is a known fertility problem with the female partner. We were shocked to learn that along with a lot of other couples with infertility – he and I both have problems that make getting pregnant more difficult.

First, we learned that my estrogen levels were really, really low. My doctor wants to wait and see what happens, but my initial research was turning up only a handful of potential reasons for low estrogen. Since I am not anorexic or a heavy-training athlete, I was not thrilled to see the other two potential reasons – early menopause or premature ovarian failure. It is too early to say if those issues are headed my way, since my FSH (follicle stimulating hormone) levels are fine. But, it is still a worrisome symptom and on top of the PCOS, not my favorite test result!

Then we got the sperm analysis test results back – and I was floored again. While the numbers were great overall (26 million, well above the expected 20 million) and the motility was great (60 percent, compared with an average of 40 percent), the morphology was not.

Morphology refers to the physical formation of sperm. In order to be effective, they need to be properly put together with a shapely head and just one, well-formed tail. If the head is too flat or oddly shaped, it can’t penetrate an egg. If the tail is doubled, twisted, broken or otherwise poorly shaped, the sperm can’t manuever well or swim well.

The University lab is fairly tough in grading, according to my doctor, but they assigned a score of only 11 percent properly formed – when they were looking for a more “normal” 30 percent. This was not good news. While you only need technically one sperm to do the job, it takes a lot of them to ensure the chance that one sperm will be able to finish the job.

So, what changes when both partners are infertile? Other than the obvious, that it is going to be harder for us to get pregnant than we thought, several other things have changed as well.

My husband is starting to understand what I have gone through all these years. Since he has two children (one from a previous marriage), he never had reason to believe that he might have any infertility issues. Now, he is starting to understand a bit of the grief and fear that accompanied me the many years I was trying to have my first baby.

It has also changed the way I am reacting to my own infertility. I feel less able to react to the monthly rollercoaster. I don’t want to be too upset when I fail to ovulate – since I am worried he will blame himself if we don’t have another baby.

We’ll work all of this out – we’ll find a way to have that second baby if there is a way. We’ll work through the emotional side of things. But this is different than it was when it was all just “me.”