Making the most of your fertility treatment journey

Several emotional management techniques are available to you to help you navigate your journey more peacefully:

Taking a fertility food supplement which helps to relax can also be helpful. It can be taken alongside a pregnancy supplement, which helps to replenish essential nutrients to support the body. 

At the heart of a fertility treatment journey, we often tend to forget everything else. All concerns then revolve around this desire for a child.

It is perfectly normal for this desire to be at the centre of your concerns, particularly when your life is structured around medical appointments and treatments.
 

However, remember that before being a woman or a man going through fertility treatment, you are above all a person, a friend, a professional…
 

Your life should not be put on hold, at the risk of making this waiting period even harder to bear.
Reclaim the space for everything you are and everything that brings you joy and wellbeing.
 

Allow yourself to pursue all the projects you have been dreaming of and may have put on hold.
 

This will help you face the different stages of your journey with greater strength.

IVF/ART, along with the fatigue and tension it brings, can sometimes lead to a lack of communication and understanding within your relationship. Yet your partner is your greatest ally through this experience. Make sure to express your feelings and needs to your partner, and to listen to theirs in return. This will help you understand each other better and approach each other's reactions with greater objectivity.

This will allow you to go through IVF/ART hand in hand, because a child, however they are conceived, is above all a shared project that requires a great deal of love.

In the context of assisted reproduction (ART), it is often tempting to keep this journey hidden from those close to you, to protect yourself from their remarks, intrusive questions, or simply because you feel uncomfortable discussing a subject that remains taboo and belongs to the private sphere.

You are obviously the only person who knows what is best for you, but do remember that the support of those close to you can prove to be a great comfort.
 

To nurture healthy and enjoyable family and social relationships, it is also important to communicate with those close to you. Do not hesitate to tell them how you feel, what may hurt you, and what you need from them throughout this journey. That might be simply being present, lending a listening ear, or checking in on you regularly. It is up to you to set your own boundaries and your own rules — your loved ones have almost certainly never been through these experiences themselves, and they simply may not know how to act, and can come across as clumsy. By guiding them, they will know how best to support you.

Assisted reproduction is punctuated by many medicalised steps, such as injections, scans, various medical examinations, egg retrievals, inseminations, embryo transfers…

For some couples, this is straightforward; for others, these are truly challenging steps.
 

Since these steps are unavoidable, the idea is to make them gentler and to navigate them with greater serenity.
 

Sophrology, through breathing techniques, visualisation and relaxation, can help you approach them with more ease.
 

The presence of your partner — and their involvement where possible — can be a source of comfort (for example, your partner could administer your daily injections).
 

Do not hesitate to give yourself a little "reward" after each step you find particularly challenging (a small treat, a pleasant moment together, a self-care session…).

All couples who have been through IVF or assisted reproduction know only too well the fifteen-day wait after insemination or embryo transfer.

This period is particularly difficult to live through emotionally, when you are waiting for a positive pregnancy test.
 

Even if these fifteen days represent only a tiny fraction of the waiting endured so far, they can feel no less endless.
 

The uncertainty about the fate of the transferred embryo or inseminated sperm leaves you oscillating between hope that it has worked and fear of failure.
 

Every symptom then becomes a source of questioning. This is perfectly understandable.
 

However, in order to get through this wait as calmly as possible, try as much as you can to give yourself moments for yourself. There is no better time than now to take care of yourself.
 

Allow yourself to believe it could work: trying to protect yourself from a possible failure will not necessarily make it less painful, but it will prevent you from fully living this moment.
 

Think now about everything you enjoy doing, alone, as a couple, with friends or with family, and plan at least one thing each day during this wait to do yourself some good.
 

This will help you cope better with the wait and take care of yourself.

Conceiving a child through assisted reproduction, fertility treatment is both a mental and physical challenge.

That is why preparing in advance helps to create more favourable conditions.

To help the body respond better to treatments and improve overall wellbeing, it is possible to:

Therefore, to help the body respond better to treatments and improve wellbeing, it is possible to:

Our Ovo+ supplement may also help. It contains active ingredients, supported by scientific studies, to help improve oocyte quality.