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Somewhere around October, that little voice can start getting louder.
Could we still fit IVF in before Christmas?
Maybe you’ve had that date in your head for months. Maybe you’ve been quietly hoping that by Christmas things will finally feel different. Or maybe you’re just desperate not to sit around the family table for another year and have to answer questions about whether there’s any news.
And if Christmas has started to feel like a bit of a deadline, you’re not being unreasonable. I think it’s completely understandable.
Because for many people going through fertility treatment, it’s not really about Christmas itself. It’s about the thought of carrying the waiting into another year.
Another year of appointments. Another year of trying. Another year of watching friends and family move on while you feel like your life is stuck on pause.
Christmas can make all of that feel even more obvious.
Christmas can start to feel like a finish line, even though you never actually chose it as one.
But treatment doesn’t always happen according to the timeline we desperately want it to.
Sometimes your body needs more time. Sometimes there are appointments, test results or treatment plans that mean things can’t happen as quickly as you’d hoped. Sometimes the clinic simply doesn’t have the availability you were hoping for.
And if that means treatment isn’t going to happen before Christmas, it doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong.
It doesn’t mean you’ve missed your chance.
It just means that your treatment timeline and the Christmas calendar aren’t quite lining up.
I know that’s much easier to say than it is to actually feel, though.
Especially when everywhere you look people are talking about Christmas. What are you doing? Where are you going? Who are you spending it with?
And perhaps you’re thinking,“I honestly don’t know. I just want to get through it.”
That’s OK too.
You don’t have to have a plan. You don’t have to feel excited about Christmas. And you don’t have to pretend that you’re fine with waiting if you’re really struggling with it.
If the waiting feels particularly hard at this time of year, try to give yourself somewhere to put all those thoughts and feelings rather than keeping them swirling around in your head.
That’s one of the reasons I created the IVF Positivity Planner. It gives you a private space to write things down, work through some of the more difficult thoughts and feelings and focus on what youcan control, using guided journalling and CBT-based activities.
Because sometimes you don’t need another person telling you to“just stay positive.”
You just need somewhere safe to say,“This is really hard today.”
If you're needing that, you're also welcome to join us over in my online support group TTC Support UK over on Facebook xx
The reality is that, sadly, more IVF cycles end without a pregnancy than result in one. That doesn't make receiving a negative result any easier, particularly when you've spent weeks or months building up to that moment and allowing yourself to imagine what life might look like if it worked.
When you first start IVF, you imagine it’ll be full of hope and a team of people helping you move closer to your dream of having a baby. And while that’s true, what most people don’t talk about is how IVF can slowly chip away at your sense of dignity.
In this latest conversation in my ‘Taking Control’ series, I’m joined by the lovely Julianne Boutaleb, Perinatal Psychologist, to talk about the emotional impact of infertility and the things we can do to protect our mental wellbeing along the way.