Blog

Creating a Family shares “Learning to Trust Your Body: Pregnancy After Infertility“

Many who have suffered through infertility and recurrent pregnancy losses have a hard time trusting their body to successfully carry this baby to term. Rather than the bliss they expected, their pregnancy is full of:

• Fear on every trip to the bathroom expecting to see blood,
• Over-focus on every pain, and
• Wanting to slap the next person who glibly tells you not to worry.

Our bodies are the lifelines for our babies, but our bodies don’t exactly have a good track record at baby making, so how can we trust them at baby growing.

It’s Normal and That Sucks

I wish it weren’t so, but almost every woman who has experience infertility, and especially those who’ve had multiple miscarriages, feels this fear during their pregnancy to some degree. Many report that they relax somewhat after about 30 weeks when they know that their baby would likely survive a premature birth, but even then many fear if they haven’t felt the baby move in the last hour (or minute).

Let Your Obstetrician Know

You have every reason to be afraid whether your fears are grounded in reality or not. Let your obstetrician know that you will need more handholding because of your history. Ask for more frequent appointments and/or sonograms if that gives you reassurance–and it probably will.

Mind-Body Relaxation

Many women report that yoga or some other type of mind-body relaxation works to calm them during a pregnancy after infertility or miscarriage. The added advantage is you attend a pregnancy yoga class you will be around other pregnant women and will see that they all have some degree of fear, which may help you keep things in perspective.

Fairfax Cryobank partners with Creating a Family, the national adoption & infertility education organization. Their mission is to provide support and unbiased information before, during and after adoption or fertility treatment to help create strong families.