Top tips for surviving infertility treatment, day nine: take the long view

Many times, it seems that the pace of infertility treatment can be excruciatingly slow.  First, you have to wait  to get a period, then have tests done and then wait for results.  Even after treatment occurs, you often must wait nine or more days to find out if it worked, and even if it did, you must wait again to see if your hormone levels are rising properly, etc., etc.  The waiting is so terribly difficult, especially because by this stage of the game, you are already probably "behind" on your life plan of when you would start your family.

Thus, it makes sense that people generally are in a big rush when it comes to infertility treatment.  Being stuck in the process, not knowing how it is all going to turn out is very painful, so naturally we want to get through it as quickly as possible.  However, sometimes it is necessary or prudent to wait--either until medically the situation is optimal, or until we can get an appointment with the doctor we think might be most helpful.   Setbacks and delays are common.  I remember one RE telling me during my treatment, "In the scheme of your life, it won't matter if you get pregnant now or a few months from now."  I thought he was crazy (and I ended up getting pregnant five YEARS later) but now with the benefit of hindsight I see that what he said was true.

It's true that infertility treatment is painful and anxiety provoking. But it's also true that we have limited resources to devote to it and a limited biological window of opportunity to exploit--so sometimes it pays to take a couple of extra months to get everything lined up just right, to give ourselves the best chance we can have at treatment success.

If you find yourself rushing around, it might be wise to ask yourself if there is anything else you might be missing.  And if your doctor or nurse is telling you to wait or slow down, chances are they have a pretty good reason.

In the end, it all comes down to taking the long view. You need to do everything you can do to the best of your ability to prevent having regrets later on down the line, when you can't do anything to change the situation.  Try to think of how you might view your current decisions in ten or twenty years, and make sure they won't be likely to cause you future pain.

Thanks for reading, and I'll be back tomorrow with a final tip in this series.  Have a great day!