So I had a post-surgery appointment today. The good news is that I’m doing great! Healing quickly, in less pain than ever before in my life. The bad news is that the exhaustion that I thought was my body recovering from surgery is most likely actually from all the post-surgery and pre-IVF hormones and the anti-depressant/anti-anxiety medications that I’m taking. I think that this blog will be most helpful to you, reader, if I keep things real. So, in addition to talking about infertility, I will also be talking about what it’s like to go through infertility (and hopefully pregnancy and beyond) with a pre-existing anxiety disorder and history of depression. As you likely know first-hand if you are also struggling toward parenthood, there are all kinds of scary statistics out there about the level of stress that going through infertility causes. OK, I’m getting off topic. We will geek out about infertility and stress in a later post, complete with scholarly references. For now, let’s just leave it at my anxiety medication and hormones for infertility treatment are not playing nice. I’m exhausted all the time, and I now realize that this state of affairs won’t go away with one more week of rest. I have to find a way to cope and get work done while I’m this exhausted, possibly for months on end. I’m not sure what I’m going to do to cope yet. In the past I’ve broken my work up into small, doable chunks and rewarded myself for completing each chunk. I’ve also used the ideas of self-compassion and self-care. Now that I’m aware of the cause, I’m confident that I will find ways to slog through: one small step at a time.
Resources that I’ve found helpful:
Gamify Your Infertility (because why not):Â SuperBetter
Get support and, if you need it, help from an expert:
Impatiently Infertile 