ABAYOMI AJAYI FROM PUNCH
If you are challenged by infertility, it can have far-reaching effects on your relationship with family and friends, and even create financial difficulty, and negatively affect your sexual relationship.
Most couples achieve conception within the first six months of trying and overall, 80 to 90 per cent of couples will conceive after a year. If you are struggling to conceive and give birth to a baby, the journey to conception can feel like an eternity.
Normally, to conceive, your ovulation and the fertilisation process need to work just right. It should be clear to you that the best time to try to conceive is several days before your ovulation up till one day after you have ovulated, which usually occurs at the middle of your cycle.
If you are challenged by infertility, it can have far-reaching effects on your relationship with family and friends, and even create financial difficulty, and negatively affect your sexual relationship.
Infertility can cause stress, and stress can cause infertility. If you are infertile, you would be having the same anxiety and depression levels as women with cancer, heart disease and HIV. The fact is that infertility is a disease, so if you are infertile you should not blame yourself or be blamed for your condition.
While it’s unlikely that stress alone can cause infertility, stress can interfere with your ability to get pregnant. If you have a history of depression, you are twice as likely to experience infertility. Anxiety also can prolong the time needed to conceive.
Trying to conceive on its own can eventually be a stressful time for you and the stress is most likely to come from the failure to become pregnant after several months. Although it’s perfectly normal for it to take time to get pregnant, as months pass without seeing that positive line on the pregnancy test, couples can start to feel the pressure of trying to conceive.
Then there’s the stress that you may feel from having frequent and timed intercourse while trying for a baby. You may link the stress of trying to conceive to infertility, but it could just be as simple as not knowing when to have sex, which is why taking an ovulation test may help.
Ovulation tests can help you accurately calculate when you’re going to ovulate. This makes it easier to plan when to have sex so you can conceive. Focusing on timed intercourse can be more stressful, but having this information helps you to feel more in control and able to be pro-active about trying to conceive.
Chronic or extreme stress can cause havoc to your body; it may affect your health, and impact on your fertility and chances of getting pregnant. It’s important to take care of yourself and reduce your stress levels if you can, but stress shouldn’t directly affect your ability to get pregnant; it’s the indirect effects like decreased libido and anovulation which may have an impact.
Stress decreases pregnancy rate but with some knowledge and the right awareness, you can deal with the stress of infertility.
It begins with education. You need to educate yourself about the normal responses to infertility. Talk to other people going through infertility. Understand your medical condition and ask about treatment options.
