Counselling
Needing medical help to conceive can feel like a crisis, often suffered in secrecy. Many usual channels of support may seem unavailable; friends seem to be having babies with sickening ease, parents are aching to become grandparents; the workplace may not be sympathetic to the frequent absences you'll have to engineer; you and your partner may be finding the stress and anxiety interfere with your usual ways of relating to and supporting each other; sex may have become a timed chore. You may both have already gone through tests and investigations that intrude into the most private and intimate areas of your bodies and your lives. You may have spent hours, weeks or years waiting.
Taking a bit of private time and space with a trained counsellor is not about 'not coping'. It's an opportunity to look in the broadest sense at the issues in your lives that have been raised because of the situation you are now facing. You may want to air the anger, grief, desperation, isolation and envy, so these feelings don't get bottled up and then come out in other areas of your life that would not be appropriate or helpful. It's sometimes much easier and feels safer if there is an understanding third party there with you. You might also want to share the excitement, joy and ambivalence, fears and relief of successful treatment.
Counselling is friendly, personal and confidential. It is not being told what to do, feel or think. You are not being judged or assessed. You are taking an active role in a process which so often can leave you feeling frustratingly inactive.
