If you have a wish for a child and you are not pregnant after the first few months of trying, you don’t worry about it right away, because you have only just started. The longer it takes, however, the more difficult it becomes to stay at ease and confident.
At some point, you do get worried and you decide to see your family doctor.
When, eventually, the examination results have arrived and the doctor tells you that there is no chance of a natural pregnancy, or that the chances are reduced, you probably prefer that this message had passed you by.
The romantic idea of having a baby is disrupted and the sharp mental image of starting a family together becomes blurred. Perhaps you start to wonder, ‘What if it never happens?’
Fortunately, there are many different types of fertility nowadays that can increase the chances of a successful pregnancy. Still, it is not how you expected to become pregnant.
Psychological challenge
There is a lot of progress made in the field of fertility treatments. These days you have different treatment plans like OI, IUI, IVF, ICSI.
Despite all the progress, the highly improved methods are no guarantee that you will actually conceive. The discovery of a fertility problem is a psychological challenge.
In the hospitals and clinics there is not always enough time, or even knowledge to support fertility patients in this challenge.
Thé Guidebook
That’s why I wrote the book ‘A wish Unfulfilled’, guidebook for couples during fertility treatments. For all couples who want to be prepared the best possible way for their fertility treatment, physical as well as emotional.
In the different chapters of this book you find the difficulties that you may encounter during your fertility process. With tips and exercises to deal with them as good as possible.
Experience experts are protagonists of this book. Their openness allows you to read how other couples experience the treatments. In addition, professionals are called upon who specialize in guiding men and women with fertility issues.
The uniqueness of this book is that it comes with a workbook. It correlates with the different stages of your fertility treatment and provides with tools, tips, exercises and assignments to ensure that the treatment process will go as smoothly as possible.
Mental coaching
When people come to me for their first coaching consultation and are under the impression that I have a magic wand that will take away all their anxiety around their fertility treatment, then I say to them: If you are under the impression that consulting me will help you happily breeze through your treatment, you are not at the right address. Going through this treatment will inevitably cause you great anxiety. But I can teach you the right mindset: to accept that it’s exciting but also fraught with anxiety and stress, but, that it is also full of possibilities, that is the best mindset you should hold onto and with which you should enter this treatment program if you want to persevere to the end. It won’t help you to say to yourself all day long: It’s not going to work, it’s going to fail, just to protect yourself from possible disappointment. You also don’t have to be a positive guru, screaming: I know for sure this is going to work. Create and hold onto the mindset: I’m creating more possibilities for success for myself. And that is certainly the truth. You are not fooling yourself in any way.
Do you want more information about my book and my mission, take a look at my coaching website The Life Composer.
Marijke Linssen M.A. is a professional fertility coach, speaker, trainer and author of her coaching book A Wish Unfulfilled. She runs her own practice, specialized in guiding men and women with an unfulfilled wish for children, who have or have not (yet) started IVF, ICSI or IUI treatment.
