Work situations can be difficult too, particularly for those who have to deal with pregnant women, babies or young children on a daily basis. Women who grow up with a strong maternal instinct may veer towards careers that involve spending time with children, and when you find you can't have your own, your job can become much harder. It's not just working with children that can be difficult. Watching work colleagues get pregnant, go off on maternity leave and then come back again while you are still trying to conceive can be incredibly depressing. It is perfectly normal to feel jealous of other women's pregnancies, but dealing with these negative feelings is not easy.
 |
| Infertility And Depression |
'Every day I go to work in fear of an announcement about someone being pregnant. I really don't know how I am going to cope with it. I struggle seeing people in the street who are pregnant, I have to not even look at them. I feel like it's turning me into a really horrible person.' Lisa, 32
Feelings of shame and failure
Women who can't get pregnant often start to believe it is somehow their fault. Even though you know you haven't done anything to cause the problem, there may be a sense of shame, and a feeling that you have failed because you can't do something that comes so naturally to others. You may feel your status as a woman is undermined by your inability to conceive when friends and colleagues are getting pregnant and giving birth. These feelings are often accompanied by a sense of guilt for not being able to provide the child we know our partner and family are longing for.
'I felt I was so different to everyone else because all my work colleagues were going off and having babies and I couldn't do that. I felt I was such a failure, and I felt I wasn't a proper woman because I couldn't do what everyone else takes for granted. When I was in that depression I couldn't see anything other than failure, that we'd failed everything and let everyone down.' Mary, 38
Depression
It is clear that infertility is a major cause of emotional upset, and the vast majority of couples going through fertility treatment suffer some degree of depression and isolation. There may be a general sense of bleakness and gloom, which seems to pervade everything, and women often find that they feel sad and tearful. It can be hard to talk about the pain you are feeling, as other people simply don't understand unless they have some personal experience of what you are going through.
Some women feel their infertility makes them into a less likeable person. You may feel your entire personality is changing, and that you have become jealous, angry and brimming with negative emotions. Treatment may make you feel low, and you may lose your sense of fun and enjoyment of other areas of your life. It is easy to forget the positive things in your life, as not being able to get pregnant starts to dominate everything.
'When I wasn't getting pregnant, I used to wake up and the first few seconds you think, "Oh, it's a sunny day," and then all of a sudden the reality would hit you, "hang on, I am still going through infertility." It was desperately painful and really depressing when everyone around you was pregnant and having babies.' Claire, 44
Coping with other people
Our friends, family and colleagues may not know how to deal with our situation, and despite their best intentions, can often end up saying the wrong thing. They may just be trying to be helpful, or to cheer us up, but we have to recognize that infertility does make us very sensitive, and questions that might seem perfectly innocent to anyone else can be really upsetting. Other people are not always going to understand, however hard they try, and they may find it hard to appreciate quite how devastating infertility can be. To find out more, you can check out Infertility And Depression.
