Infertility Is Hard Enough: Now COVID-19 Has Stalled an Already Difficult Process
In our online therapy sessions at Tribeca Maternity, we talk to patients about how infertility isn’t a mental illness, but it can make you feel that way. The situation is crazed: daily doctor’s appointments, figuring out when your body is ovulating, blood work, and rounds of treatment. This can go on for months or years. It can feel completely uncertain and out of your control, and it can also bring up past or current traumatic experiences.
Now, this already excruciating process has likely been put on pause due to COVID-19, further taking away any sense of control. When you don’t have control, being mad is a reasonable response. In phone and video therapy sessions, we help patients work through the anger, sadness, grief, and disappointment this disruption has caused, and help you come up with a plan moving forward.
We Will Keep You Sane Through an Insane Process That May Have to Be Put on Hold
While you’re going through this process or waiting for it to continue, in remote therapy, we don’t want you to avoid your emotion, feel like there’s something wrong with you, or think you can’t “handle” it. It’s okay to wail, to pound your fist, to express every last worry. We don’t want you to perform as the “good” IVF/IUI patient. We will be with you through the loss, the anger, and feeling out of control. And if you are continuing treatments during COVID-19, we understand that the added difficulties of the current situation can put even more pressure on women. Together we’ll talk through this difficult and emotionally complex process. And yes, you can call us at 6:30am screaming and crying to let us know what you’re going through.
You Don’t Need A Cheerleader: You Need to Have Power In Your Decisions
In phone and video therapy sessions, we will help create a plan related to your needs rather than the needs of the clinic. You get to choose to keep going or take breaks, not your doctor. We also recognize that the power to choose what’s next may have been taken away from you during COVID-19. We’ll help you regain that control over your decisions where you can, and help you process those you can’t control.
We can also talk about if and when you want to stop getting fertility treatments, and how the realities of the global pandemic may (or may not) play a role in that choice. In remote therapy, we make space for both individuals and couples to have that messy conversation about what it means to be childless or have fewer children. It may not be your choice to not have a(nother) baby. But you can make the choice to end treatments with intention and power, while we pay attention to your grief and the care you need.
Infertility Can Take Over Your Relationship: Couples Need to Talk About It
Infertility can take over your relationship, creating emotional, financial, and sexual roadblocks. So what can couples do? Talk about it. A couple cannot operate as a self-driving car. You get mad together. You grieve together. You’re in it together. And if you’re not, that’s where we come in. In online couples therapy at Tribeca Maternity, we help you get connected through this uncertain process during this uncertain time.