I’m taking a different tack today and want to write about something that has been causing me dramas recently. Social media. I find it easy to get sucked into this black hole.
For me that social media platform is Facebook. For you, it could well be one of the plethora of other sites and platforms that are available – Insta, Twitter, LinkedIn, you get the picture.
So, what’s the problem? Minute stretch into hours and I’ve done nothing useful at all. I’ve got two little kids who take up a lot of my time (as at writing) so I often only get short little snippets of time throughout a standard day. And it’s so easy to jump onto my preferred platform for a few minutes here and there. Then I’ve lost so much useful time in my day. Sound familiar?
It gets trickier when you need to use said platform to connect with people for business.
So how do you go about unwinding the addiction? *
Work out where you are using the platform. Is it from your phone, computer, laptop, tablet, some other fancy device I don’t know about?
Delete the app from your phone/device that you use it from most often. Yes it’s hard to do and you will miss it. It’s much easier to not open it when it’s not there.
Do not reinstall! Easier said than done, I know! But don’t do it!
Install a feed blocker on your computer or laptop. Which one you choose depends on a number of things. Which platform is it? Which operating system do you use (Apple, Windows)? What browser type do you use (Chrome, Firefox, Safari etc)? For example if you are using Facebook on a Mac laptop or desktop – install a feed blocker. Newsfeed Eradicator (Chrome extension), Feedless (Apple store) are a couple of options available
If you are on a Mac you could install SelfControl and get some data on how much time you are spending on different apps and websites. Look for other options for Windows users.
Search online to find the best feed blocker for your circumstances from the questions above.
Have you been through the emotional toll of IVF? If so you will likely relate to what I’m saying. The emotional toll is where the burden really lies for parents-to-be in the world of infertility and IVF. Although the linked article is a little outdated, I believe research would continue to show the same thing.
“ONE in five couples who give up fertility treatment do so because of the psychological and physical burden of the process, rather than the expense, according to a major study of assisted reproductive technology.” (Source: Sydney Morning Herald)
The Path To Emotional Peace
If you are currently undergoing an IVF cycle, you may not want to hear this. My partner and I decided that to even consider IVF at all we had to be okay with it not working. We had to accept that even if it didn’t work we would still be strong as a couple and continue to love and support each other. No matter the outcome. This is accepting and working through the emotional toll of IVF.
Being 100% okay with whatever happens. If you want a girl and you get a boy or vice versa. Or if you – I sincerely hope not- have a chemical pregnancy or miscarriage. I believe you have to be completely okay with that. What do I mean? Of course you will grieve. Of course you may struggle to get through days after such as experience. I’m not meaning to suggest that you wouldn’t have an intense emotional response. Being completely okay means that you accept the situation and are okay with it. You are not dragged to the depths of despair because you didn’t get a healthy child via your IVF cycle. You went in with eyes wide open and knew that there was a possibility that it wouldn’t work.
In many respects it was a lot more challenging for my partner to accept that having children was not going to be a walk in the park. Long before we considered IVF together, he had to make peace with the awareness that choosing me as a partner meant there was a possibility there would be no children in our lives. And he had to be 100% okay with that. I had known about my fertility challenges for a long time (12 years). I had a lot of time to move towards acceptance.
Working Through Emotions
When you find out that you can’t conceive naturally there are a ton of emotions to deal with. Obviously everyone is different but for me the emotions ranged from denial, anger, disappointment, guilt, shame and resentment. I questioned my worthiness, I questioned why I had survived major brain surgery and if this was the price to pay for my survival. I railed against the people who dropped babies like rain falling from the sky. It felt so damn unfair!
I was told to go and get counselling and that was where I started. Over the decade that followed I began to explore personal development. I wanted to understand why I was here if pro-creation wasn’t the natural order for me. I had to come up with a purpose, when being a mum might not happen for me. It was really tough. Don’t let my glib words fool you into thinking it was easy. There were some really rough days and intense sessions where I had to dig deep within myself. I’m still not completely sure of my purpose!
Soul Searching
I spent a lot of time soul searching and defining what a life of purpose would look like, even if I didn’t find the man of my dreams (that’s another blog post!) or create the family that I desired. Especially as so much of what I believed success in our modern world was defined by. I saw a nuclear family as the definition of success and happiness. It might not be what other people define as successful, but it’s been my biggest dream to be a mum (and have a life partner to share that journey with).
Over the course of many years I did make peace with these negative emotions. It doesn’t need to take as long as I took. However, I am not one to take the easy route. Perhaps that’s because I make life hard for myself. But as you will see below I wasn’t interested in choosing a partner that was just alright. And I wasn’t willing to go it alone – as you can tell from this blog post here.
Give Yourself Space
The point of this post is to suggest that you give yourself time. Even if your biological clock is ticking, I believe uncovering and healing any repressed emotions is crucial. Ideally before you begin a cycle. I believe doing this work is essential to being the best parent that you can be. Otherwise if you are holding onto a huge amount of repressed emotions you are going to pass them onto your children. Children are sieves and pick up everything, consciously or not from you. Although we can never completely heal everything in our past, we can surely be the best possible versions of ourselves. That, to me, means whittling away the strong negative reactions we have to past events in our lives. These reactions often shape our behaviour in the present, often without us even knowing it.
Additionally, there are so many emotions wrapped around what is considered our birth right. To pro-create, to have babies, to pass on our genes. Shouldn’t that be the easiest thing in the world? And it doesn’t help when well-meaning family and friends ask “when will we hear the pitter patter of little feet?”. Like, c’mon, do you think we haven’t considered this, or perhaps we just don’t want children. If you really DO want children it is insensitive and adds to the pressure that you feel.
There is so much hope tied up in fertility treatment. So much that you have zero control over. I had a failed cycle where everything was seemingly perfect -embryo, my lining, my oestrogen levels. It should have all worked perfectly. And it didn’t. For whatever reason the timing wasn’t right for baby. It’s really not my choice, it’s up to the child coming through to select its perfect time.
The Child Chooses
I believe that your child chooses the time to come through. We might think that we have complete control but really, life is the miracle so many religions say it is. Even the best IVF clinic can only set the scene to a certain extent. It’s still up to that little embryo to implant and grow, grow, grow. And so for me, I made peace with that little embryo deciding that the time wasn’t right. Perhaps this little one wants a different birthday to the one that we had chosen. Accepting and surrendering is how I find peace.
Being An IVF Couple
There is a HUGE toll for any person or couple undergoing IVF that other people don’t really understand. If they haven’t experienced it, there can be little empathy and often zero understanding of the pain and heartache involved. For women that have gotten pregnant at the drop of a hat, maybe they can’t understand what all the drama is about.
The drama is that you can’t have this thing that so many other people seem to take for granted. You grow up taking it for granted: I can be a mother/father. You spend teenage years avoiding it like the plague. And then years wondering what your life would have been like if you had gotten pregnant as a teenager. That may sound glib and perhaps it is.. but when you are in agony because the child/ren that you desperately want do not easily appear you are willing to dream up any alternative reality.
And those internal dramas are multiple within the relationship. Suddenly it’s the two of you questioning if you are right for each other if kids don’t appear with ease. Or if in our case, my partner had to work out if I was right for him when kids might not factor in. Could he be happy with me if kids were not possible?
Fortunately for me, he was keen to commit and here we are. Now a family after a successful first IVF round. Note that was with a donor egg. Which I am aware is very different from a non donor egg IVF cycle.
What Peace Looks Like
I want to explain a little about what peace looks like. If you are undergoing IVF and don’t feel a sense of peace, I want to suggest that you might need to explore the strong emotions that you have.
Peace to me looks like: feeling happy when I see a newborn or young infant with it’s mother and/or father; smiling with genuine pleasure when I see a pregnant woman as I know I will have that swell of new life within me one day soon; feeling okay and frequently great when I meet up with friends who have a young family when I desire the same.
The opposite of peace feels like any of these strong emotions when you see or experience a pregnant woman/ newborn/ child/ren/ family. Anger, resentment, sadness, guilt, shame, feeling unjust or that it’s unfair. Denial is a tricky because you might find that you feel fine, and underneath there’s a pinch of pain that you don’t yet have that baby in your arms (or belly).
Are You Struggling?
(Source: pixabay)
So if you are struggling to get pregnant, I’m going to be blunt here. How does this picture of a pregnant woman make you feel? Are you completely okay with it? And with the below gorgeous pic of a newborn?
Before I did a lot of my internal work, I felt a lot of stress and discomfort seeing someone with a family. Be that an old school friend or current friends. It seemed as though everyone but me had no issues finding a soulmate and building a family. It was the easiest thing in the world. Although it wasn’t an easy path, I didn’t want to just settle with any guy. I wanted the man that would make my heart sing and who would adore me. Also, I wasn’t willing to go it alone. So quite a few things had to come into play for this picture to unfold for me.
Prior to doing any internal work, looking at these photos was painful for me. Today, they make me excited for my potential future.
(Source: pixabay)
So if you’re not okay with looking at photos of pregnant women or newborns, then I would suggest that you probably have some soul searching to do. Dive deep into yourself and find out what is blocking you emotionally. I discovered that I have to be okay with IVF not working because there is a chance that it just might not.
You are probably wondering what has worthiness got to do with fertility? For me, it has everything to do with it. Have you been working on improving yourself? I have and I discovered that some issues keep coming up time and again.
Issues Repeating Themselves
I know for me, the issue that came up over and over again was about worthiness. Somewhere along the path of my life (it usually happens during childhood) I made a(n unconscious) decision that I was not worthy. For those that have never dealt with the challenge of worthiness, you are possibly thinking, are you crazy? However, these types of unconsciousbeliefs occur at critical moments in our development. For example when you are 4 years old and a new sibling appears to take over your role as the ‘youngest child’. Somehow through this experience I took on a belief that I wasn’t worthy. Not worthy of love, not worthy of the things I desire, not worthy of many things. One pivotal moment that you then find yourself adding layer upon layer of unhelpful, negative beliefs to your psyche.
Negative Beliefs and My Fertility
I had a belief, a negative one, that I wasn’t worthy and it had a lot of legs, and arms, and tentacles all over the place. When I first began my internal exploration as to why my life wasn’t where I wanted it to be, worthiness was the first thing to pop up. And of course, it was my fertility, or lack thereof, that was driving me to understand myself and improve my health. I desperately wanted to resolve my fertility and questioned my worthiness because my ovaries had gone into shutdown. Sometimes when people work on getting healthy, they forget how important their internal health and mental state is. So through this process of disentangling my beliefs I came to understand that for me, worthiness was, and is, a key driver in the way that I view the world and live my life.
Moving Towards Owning My Worthiness
So while I am now almost 32 weeks pregnant and in the happiest relationship of my life, I know that it is possible that worthiness may continue to crop up as an issue for me. I say ‘moving towards’ owning my worthiness because it’s a work in progress. I may never, ever, be fertile in the way that some women seem to get pregnant through touching a man. However, when it comes down to it, having a child and being a mother is really what I want out of my fertility. I can live with having sleeping ovaries. I can live with having to take medication for as long as necessary. What I could not live without was having a child in my life.
Finding the Support You Need
So if you are going through something similar, maybe PCOS, or endo, or something else not being ‘quite right’ with your reproductive systems, I want you to know that you are not alone. That there is support out there for you. See a therapist, see a counsellor, heck contact me and I’ll happily support you! The sooner you identify your key issue, the sooner you can begin processing the emotions that are keeping you spinning in circles. From my experience, doing so will allow you to move beyond the tears and frustration and everything else in between. Whether you are trying naturally, using IVF or even deciding that adoption or fostering is for you. There are choices and the biggest one to start with is looking out for your emotional well-being.
Stress is a normal response to pressure about difficult and sometimes life threatening situations. Humans are wired to respond to dangerous situations by releasing hormones from the adrenal glands. You know that feeling you get when something scares you and the rush of energy surges through your body so you can jump into action and either take on the threat (fight) or flee from the scene (flight).
Adrenal glands sit on top of the kidneys. Triangular in shape, they are only as big as a walnut yet these little glands pack some serious punch, secreting almost 50 different hormones!
In our modern day society it is highly unusual to be under regular stress from lions or wild animals chasing us. Our bodies, however, are programmed to respond in the same way to any intense or stressful situation. A little bit of stress is fine and increases energy and alertness meaning that we have resources to cope with the situation. Frequently, however, the stresses of modern life can chronically run over long periods of time and the impact it has on your body and your life can be huge.
Impact on your Fertility
Stress and anxiety can have a major impact on your fertility. It’s logical when you think about it. Those hormones that your adrenals are secreting? They can block other key sex hormones. So effectively leaving you not only stressed about your daily life, but struggling with your fertility as well!
It’s logical when you think about it. If you are running away from that wild animal, it’s not helpful to be gestating a baby. That baby, while surely wonderful, is likely to slow you down, not help you get away from a hungry lion. Thus the body is going to aim for your survival first and foremost. Kind of like the airplane oxygen mask instruction airlines give before takeoff.
Ways to come down from stress?
Ideally you want your parasympathetic nervous system to kick in. Why? Because this is responsible for the ‘rest and digest’ functions of your body.
If possible, and I know it might not be, change your work.
When you can’t change your work or job, look at your lifestyle. Look closely and be honest with yourself. Smoking, drinking too much alcohol, doing anything that ‘numbs’ you is unlikely to be really helping. Make some changes and you put your body in a much better position to get well.
Get more sleep! Sleep is a natural healer. If you can get regular hours, you will start to feel better.
Start moving your body! Exercise will improve your sleep and overall you will feel better.
Go outside every day, in nature, if you can.
Get a massage or bodywork.
Have fun! Life is meant to be fun not misery.
Find things to appreciate every single day! They are there, and one day you might not have them, so notice them today.
Because it takes time and persistence to bring your body down from ongoing stress, be patient with yourself. If you have any major physical concerns, be sure to go and see your doctor.
Do you ever feel like a failure? Feel a bit lost or worthless? Then I completely understand where you are coming from and have written this for you.
Feeling like I’m a failure is the area that I’ve been working on recently. It’s seems like a bit of a grim topic to be looking at, really. I’m sure many people go through this at some stage or other. What if you could clear your sense of failure? Surely you’ve heard that it took Edison a large number of attempts before he invented the light bulb? If he had given up, we might still be lighting kerosene lamps at night.
People Fail Before They Succeed
Check out this great post of six entrepreneurs who overcame failure to achieve great success.
So I have been working on releasing the pressure valve within me towards fear of failure. What does that look like (I’m guessing that you are thinking)?
That looks like me taking all my skills, tools and techniques, and checking in with myself. Do I have this belief in me? Why yes, Bianca, you do. So, rather than continue to live with this stressful belief of “it’s not okay to fail” I’m going to clear any stress around it, using the right tool from my toolkit. So today the statement I cleared was “I am 100% okay with failure”. That means that if this blog post is a fail, still I’m okay with that. Even if I fail at something that means a lot to me, like my business, I am completely okay with it. I will pick myself up, dust myself off, and give it another go.
I know this may come across as lots of hot air or letters on a blog post; however, the clearing work really does make a huge difference! I am really okay with failure now. The emotional charge that I felt prior to doing the work has now receded. What is left is the space to make mistakes, take 1,000 attempts if that is what I have to do. And be completely okay with whatever happens. As long as I’m taking action and not stuck doing nothing because I might fail.
