Infertility is an insidious enemy that you fight with everything you have until you gain success or acceptance. Infertility often attacks with no warning and leaves its victims perplexed, angry, and sad. So how do you fight an enemy that can rob you of your self-esteem, along with thwarting your biological urge to reproduce?
The simple answer is, you throw everything you can at it. Most people do win the fight against infertility in the end, although it can be a long, hard fight. Also, always keep in mind that infertility or its symptoms don’t define you.
Reproductive Sciences Medical Center & Fertility Clinic – San Diego, California, brings you insight into the journey you will experience throughout infertility and the treatment process.
First: Define the Infertility Problem
As with any battle, the infertility battle has many stages to it. This isn’t a one-shot battle. There are many hurdles to overcome on your way to victory. The first step in the battle of infertility and its symptoms is to define the problem so you can start looking at fertility solutions. Most people start to worry about whether they can conceive without assistance after they’ve been trying to conceive naturally for about a year. It is possibly less if they are over the age of 35.
First stop for women is the OB/GYN, who will take a history, possibly run some tests, and suggest some procedures that don’t require a lot of testing or high-tech help. These can be like Clomid® (an ovulation-stimulating drug) followed by an Intrauterine Insemination (IUI). IUI is a fertility treatment solution that involves placing sperm inside a woman’s uterus to facilitate fertilization. This can be done in an OB/GYN’s office and is minimally invasive. It is done with the processed sperm of the partner. It makes sure that there are more strong sperms swimming toward the fallopian tubes.
Time to Up Your Game with Infertility Treatment
If the minimally invasive procedures don’t work, it’s time to move up to the big guns. Now you should consider solutions with the Fertility Center (such as RSMC – San Diego) and IVF. Before investing a lot of time and money in fertility solution services from a clinic, make sure to check out their success record. Also, check the feedback from current and past patients.
Infertility is a very emotionally charged subject. The hormones women take when undergoing IVF can cause more emotional mood swings. With this in mind, you should be looking for a fertility center where the staff seems like the people you want to spend time with. Remember that you will be seeing them a lot more in the coming time. These are going to be the soldiers in the trenches with you, so you need to trust them.
Four Stages of Grief for Dealing with Infertility
You can go through the fight against infertility and choose IVF, and possibly escalate to using donor eggs and/or a surrogate mother. But keep in mind that there are four stages of grief for dealing with infertility. Even if the infertility treatment works early in your treatment cycle, you may still experience these stages. So you need to remember to experience them, absorb the lesson, then move on. The stages are:
Stage 1: Denial and Isolation
Most people, when confronted by infertility and its symptoms, don’t believe it at first. They believe it just takes a little more work on their part, or a medical procedure, and everything will be normal. During this time, people tend to isolate themselves from people they know with young children. It seems like a reminder of what they can’t do.
Stage 2: Anger
During stage 2, people going through infertility treatment are angry at the situation as well as themselves and the people around them. You’re angry at your body, your partner, God, the doctor, the symptoms, the infertility treatment that didn’t work, adoption agency rules and policies, people who have babies easily, and the list goes on.
You can feel as if your body is failing you. It can arise especially if the problem is some sort of “unexplained infertility”. It’s easy to be angry, but hard to know exactly where to place the anger. Thus, your anger tends to spread itself around.
Stage 3: Depression
A feeling of guilt over things you did in the past can cause depression. Things like abortion or using birth control for a long period of time can make infertility feel like a punishment. This is an easy assumption to make when depression has already set in.
Stage 4: Acceptance
This is where the person accepts the infertility and can talk about it and process it, especially with their partner.
Infertility Doesn’t Define You
Once you’ve reached the acceptance stage, you have won the battle. Now, you are accepting things as they are, whether it’s the outcome you had hoped for or not. This is the time in the battle that you assess your situation and decide what’s next. If you haven’t tried every option the fertility center has to offer, do you want to try everything? What is enough? If you have tried it all, what’s next?
There’s always a next; infertility doesn’t define you and shouldn’t consume your life indefinitely. The fight against infertility is over when you can make peace with the outcome and with yourself. You’ve gone through an intense battle, both physical and mental, and have come out stronger and at peace.
If you have any questions regarding Infertility treatment solutions, you can always visit Reproductive Sciences Medical Center & fertility clinic – San Diego, California at www.fertile.com. You can call us at 858-436-7186 to schedule a consultation.
