Trying to conceive and the weight you carry: you are not too sensitive

"Just relax, then it will happen."

Hardly any sentence comes up as often during this time. It is almost always well meant, from people who want to help and do not know how. And it does more damage than almost any other piece of advice.

Why that sentence achieves the opposite

It turns the responsibility around. Something that is happening to you becomes something you are doing wrong. And it builds a loop with no way out: you are tense, so you are supposed to relax, so you put yourself under pressure to be relaxed, so you are tense.

Yet tension around an unfulfilled wish for a child is not a character flaw. It is a normal reaction to a situation that genuinely is hard to carry. You are not too sensitive. The thing itself is heavy.

Where the weight actually sits

From the outside you see very little of it. On the inside it has very concrete places.

In the calendar. Appointments that cannot be moved, because the body sets the rhythm. Holidays, weddings, work trips, everything gets arranged around cycle days.

In the bank account. Treatments, journeys, co-payments. Many couples quietly add up what one attempt costs and never say it out loud, because even the adding up feels wrong.

At work. Early appointments you invent excuses for. A conversation with your manager you would rather not have. The feeling of constantly hiding something.

In your own body. It turns from a home into a measuring device. Every twinge gets interpreted, every week gets graded.

A weight you are not allowed to talk about does not get smaller. It only becomes invisible.

What actually helps

Name the weight instead of explaining it away. "I am struggling with this" is a complete sentence. It needs no justification and no comparison with people who have it worse.

Give the worry a fixed time. One evening a week where everything gets discussed: numbers, appointments, next steps. For the rest of the week the subject is allowed to stay outside. That sounds like a trick. It is one. It works anyway.

Decide in advance who gets to know what. You owe nobody a progress report. It helps to have one sentence ready in your pocket: "We will tell you when there is something to tell."

Take your body back. Any movement that has nothing to do with fertility. Swimming, dancing, walking in the dark. Not to improve anything, but to experience your body as a place again rather than a project.

When it takes more than a good conversation

There is a point where companionship is not enough. If you barely sleep for weeks, if nothing gives you joy that used to, if you withdraw further and further, or if you have thoughts that frighten you, then it belongs in professional hands: a psychotherapist or a counselling service.

That is not failure. It is the same common sense that takes you to hospital with a broken arm.

What I do during this time

I treat nothing, and I promise nothing. What I offer is a place where you do not have to be the strong one. Where the ugly sentences may be said too: that you are envious. Angry. Tired. That sometimes you want to stop, and feel ashamed of that.

Those sentences lose weight once they have been said out loud.

What this time feels like when it stretches over years, I have described in a separate post.

---

If you notice that you no longer want to carry this alone: a conversation costs nothing, and you do not have to know in advance what you want to say.