Lessons from the IVF Trenches: Surviving, Growing, and Finding Yourself

Let me start by saying: during my darkest years of IVF, I was not doing any of the things I’m recommending here. I was, to be candid, deeply depressed, not in my right mind, and behaving in ways that, when I look back, I can’t believe it was me doing those things.  “Those things” includes but is not limited to, throwing a bottle of soy sauce across my kitchen at my husband’s head (it didn’t hit him, but it did shatter), throwing a full bottle of wine across my empty kitchen (I was never able to remove all the stains on my new countertops), and chopping off my ponytail in the middle of the night during a hormonal meltdown. 

I also tried to do all the right things, which were usually ideas offered by people who took pity on me, people who wanted to help, people with the best intentions.  I meditated with a CD on a decades-old boom box, lent to me by a student’s mother, who had struggled to conceive him 15 years prior.  I did acupuncture and followed her fertility diet: gluten free, dairy free, sugar free, caffeine and alcohol free, no red meat but lots of lamb (a “flesh food”).  I tried a ten-week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction seminar.  I can’t say that any of these things helped in meaningful ways.

At a certain point, I left my job—their idea, not mine—because my treatments had become so all-consuming, I was absent from school too often.  They suggested I take a one-year medical leave, and return to the classroom either once I’d had a child, or once I’d figured out my next steps.   

And that brought me here, to Conceive and to this column—after six egg retrievals, 15 embryo transfers, four miscarriages, and one thousand small procedures in between over the course of a decade—I’m on the other side.  And like so much of the fertility experience, I learned most of the hard lessons and big takeaways retrospectively.

Here’s what I learned:

1.  Remember who you were before: it can be so hard to do the things you love when your life feels so altered.  It’s hard to plan travel, it’s hard to RSVP to weddings, it’s hard to stay sane when you can’t exercise or take a bath or have a glass of wine or have sex—“don’t stress” but also, don’t do anything that relieves stress, either! But what did you used to love, who did you used to be, and how can you channel her now, in the thick of this?  If you’re a reader but the effort of picking up a book is too much right now, try an audiobook.  Try to find ways to connect with your identity, even if they look a little different. What’s something you used to enjoy that you haven’t done in a while?

2. Embrace who you are now: in my own experience, I was fundamentally changed during my IVF years.  That’s ok! To be human is to evolve, and there’s no shame in opening yourself up to a new version of You.  I found myself to be more direct in stating my needs, less afraid to self-advocate, and more willing to please myself rather than please others. The old me would feel badly saying no to a dinner invitation.  The new me wasn’t just turning down baby showers because they were too hard.  I learned to respect my own schedule, my own needs.  What changes have you noticed within yourself, and how can you embrace them?

3. Don’t forget your marriage: if you’re going through IVF with a partner, remember that, once upon a time, you were just two people who fell in love.  This hard moment is just one moment in what is hopefully a long partnership in a long life together.  Make sure to make space for that.  Make time for a date.  Check out a new restaurant or museum or movie together.  Step outside your comfort zone together.  Your marriage is more than your ability to navigate IVF.  What’s something you could do together this weekend that will bring you pleasure?

4. Treat yourself with the same love and grace that you’ll one day share with your child: the logistics of scheduling IVF treatment, balancing it with work, with marriage, with life—it’s all so much.  And at least in my own case, the person I forgot about in all of the chaos was myself.  I’d run ragged between appointments, forgetting to eat a proper meal so I could get home in time to take care of all the things I needed to take care of.  Waking up early for monitoring, either refusing food because of the hormonal bloat or indulging in unhealthy creature comforts—I wasn’t taking proper care of myself.  I credited any successes to the doctors and I blamed myself for every loss.  I didn’t put on my oxygen mask first.  I should have.  Put yours on.  You need to be healthy, nurtured, cared for, and loved. Take a moment right now to remind yourself: “I am doing the best that I can, and I am thankful to myself for getting this far.”

5. Turn down the emotional volume and tune out the noise: it seems that, if you do open up to people, they’ve all got something to say.  Something meant with the best intentions, offered with love and with care, but it can often feel insulting and hard to hear.  Especially if they already have a child.  Take a moment to close your eyes and simply turn down the knob on the emotional volume. You can disengage from the conversation now (“thanks, I’ll give it some thought.  In other news, you know what I’ve been meaning to tell you…?”), and you can take or leave whatever advice is offered after the fact, when you’ve had time to think it through.  What is something someone has said that was hard to hear? Think of it now, and then turn down that volume knob.  Let yourself try to tune it out and let it go.  Turn up the volume on the songs you want to hear.    

6. Find support that’s actually helpful:  I didn’t have a community.  I wish I had.  But I did have two friends who were particularly supportive and helpful.  They listened to me, they didn’t placate me, they didn’t try to offer solutions.  They made space for my experience.  At Conceive, we offer text message based coaching and nursing, along with a vibrant community of members seeking connection, to streamline an experience that I know left me isolated, overwhelmed, and under-supported.  Conceive is a place where your questions are answered (“my clinic is closed and I don’t want to call the emergency line but I’m flipping out because some of the Menopur dripped out of the needle and I’m worried I didn’t get all of the medication”), where your voice is heard (“I’m texting you from a bathroom stall at my friend’s birthday dinner because two people just announced they are pregnant and I don’t even know how I can go back to the table after my own failed cycle in light of this news”), and where you are supported at every step on your individual path.

By: Holly Schechter, Conceive’s Head of Coaching, Curriculum, and Community

Prior to her work with Conceive, Holly spent ten years as an English classroom teacher at Stuyvesant High school, and five years overseeing the Stuyvesant Writing Center.

As coach, community, and curriculum lead at Conceive, Holly works on the program's educational platform, coach training, and curriculum development.

Her writing–primarily on the topic of infertility–can be found in Intima Journal of Narrative Medicine, Pregnantish, and Seventeen.