Fertility Counselling
Individual and couples fertility counselling helps women and their partners explore and express the roller-coaster of intense mental and emotional experiences that come with building a family. We provide a safe and empathic environment in which you can learn to trust your body, develop healthy coping strategies to manage stress and uncertainty, and reclaim hope to optimize your fertility.
You dream of building a family.
You feel so drained and defeated; you try to stay positive, yet you are cautious about being too hopeful. It feels like nobody can fully understand your experience. Trying to conceive is no longer a private, romantic experience between you and your partner. You feel unable to cope with normal but powerful emotions like anger, sadness, fear, jealousy and depression. You feel lost and heartbroken.
Fertility struggles can be stressful, stealing your joy and peace.
It is not just about not having a baby in your arms, or about miscarriages and grieving the loss of your hopes and dreams. It is also the anxiety and stress of dealing with medical complications arising from failed fertility treatment and pregnancy losses. It is also the endless and exhausting medical procedures at the fertility clinics and the struggle of navigating different treatment options such as IVF, IUI, donor egg, etc. It is also anger and jealousy towards people around you who seem to have babies so effortlessly. Your mind is so consumed by the desire to have a baby that you can hardly think about anything else.
Secondary infertility is just as difficult and painful.
If you already have one or more children and are experiencing difficulty in having another successful pregnancy, the situation is just as difficult and painful. Unhelpful things said by others may make you feel guilty for wanting another child so badly. Additionally, it is very hard for women and their partners to take time to care for themselves and grieve their losses when they have one or more children to look after.
Miscarriages are devastating.
Miscarriages, terminations, stillbirths and the loss of an infant are experiences that go beyond devastation. No words can possibly describe the pain and heartache. You don’t have to go through this alone and in silence. We are here to provide a safe and empathic environment in which you can process feelings of sadness, anger, fear and resentment, grieve your loss, develop healthy coping strategies, and make sense of your fertility experience.
How can counselling support your fertility journey?
We offer both individual and couples fertility counselling and therapy in a safe, sensitive and empathic environment to help women and their partners explore and express the roller-coaster of intense mental and emotional experiences that come with building a family. Some couples experience significant grief as they let go of the hope of having biological children. We have experienced fertility struggles first hand, and we are here to listen and journey with you. You are not alone. Fertility counselling will help you to:
identify emotional blocks and fear-based fight-or-flight stress responses
let go of negative thoughts and unhelpful core beliefs about yourself
learn effective stress reduction and self-care strategies such as mindfulness, breathing, meditation and visualization
trust your body and reconnect with yourself to discover your inner strength and resilience
explore the impact of fertility struggles on your relationship and intimacy
manage uncertainty and triggers in your interpersonal relationships and in the world
feel grounded and reclaim hope and peace in your present moment
Individual fertility counselling
When struggling to conceive and undergoing fertility treatments, each cycle becomes a roller-coaster of intense emotions - from hope and excitement to anxiety in the two-week wait, to feeling disappointed and disillusioned. Many women experience anger and self-blame about what they have done or imagined they may have done. Many women have told us that they feel they are being punished for choices they made in the past. Perhaps you feel like a failure and have lost your joy and peace.
Our approach to fertility counselling is holistic and integrates a mind-body framework that may include mindfulness, visualization, yoga and more. Individual fertility counselling can help you identify and process mental and emotional blocks such as previous miscarriages, infant loss, unwanted pregnancy, abortions, sexual abuse and trauma, unresolved family-of-origin issues, body image issues, or beliefs about your ability to be a good parent. Fertility counselling helps you express your feelings and feel more grounded and confident about yourself to optimize your fertility.
Couples therapy
Couples usually decide to have a family together when they feel most in love and are at the peak of their relationship. Both partners can feel closer and more connected when trying to conceive. Fertility treatment, however, can be very stressful and mentally, emotionally and financially demanding. It can create tensions and misunderstandings, leaving both partners feeling defeated and disconnected. Trying to conceive can also impact sex and intimacy as it takes away the romance of lovemaking, which instead becomes heavily timed, monitored and medicalized. You may also disagree on what type of fertility treatment or assisted reproductive technologies to try, putting further strain on the relationship.
Fertility struggles impact your relationship with your partner.
Men and women experience fertility difficulties in different ways and also have different ways of expressing their emotions and concerns. Often, women may experience resentment towards their partners, feeling that they are the ones doing all the work - going through invasive fertility testing, attending multiple medical appointments, trying to cope with the mood fluctuations caused by hormonal therapy, or researching various fertility treatment options in order to have a successful pregnancy. Men may feel guilty and helpless and worry that the joy and connection in the relationship are gone. Couples therapy can help you both to process the stress and pressure that the fertility journey puts on your relationship, helping you communicate and reconnect with each other. We use Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, which is an evidence-based approach to help couples identify their negative interactional patterns and reconnect emotionally.
