Once someone is diagnosed with infertility it is completely common and understandable to experience physical, mental, and emotional stress. There are many ways to deal with this and a large community of infertility support groups. To handle it all it is important to be informed and also to stay in touch with and take care of your emotional needs.

Communicating with your loved ones

In communicating with the people you love it is important to be specific, as it may be hard for them to understand exactly how you are feeling. This can be frustrating for you. Be specific when describing your feelings. It is often very helpful to provide reading material for your loved ones about infertility to help them understand.

Infertility Support Groups

Sometimes it can feel like your friends, family, and even counselors can't truly understand, no matter how supportive they are. For this reason, many people look to support groups for help. A support group is defined by Merriam Webster Dictionary as "a group of people with common experiences and concerns who provide emotional and moral support for one another." Support groups offer good resources, hope, personal connections, understanding, and friendship. Though many support groups can be found online, it may be most helpful to find a support group through someone who knows you and/or your area. Good resources can be: (1) your healthcare practitioner, who is familiar with your area and your specific case, (2) your local hospital or health care facility, especially one that is geared specifically to your gender and (3) a national infertility organization like Resolve. If you are uncomfortable and want to remain anonymous in your first support group, experience you may try an online group or forum. You can search online using the words "infertility" + "forum" and browse the results to find something that fits your needs, or use Resolve.org's forums. But the most common, and seemingly most cathartic way of support, is in person.

IVF Stories

Another way of coping is hearing other people's stories, especially stories from people who went through with the same treatment options that you might be considering. These can be found through support groups, by searching online, or going through a national fertility organization.Fertilitystories.com and fertilitycommunity.com are two great online resources.

Fertility Massage

Fertility massage is designed to increase blood flow to the uterus and ovaries, strengthen the immune system, stimulate hormones, and, most importantly, relieve stress. It's unknown if massage really enhances the chances of fertility, but without a doubt it is a great way to cut tension which can improve life in all sorts of ways. It can especially help deal with the stress of infertility. There are even instructional DVDs available in order to treat yourself with self massage.

There are a lot of ways to cope with the stress of infertility and the options can be tailored to your specific needs and comfort levels. You are, most definitely, not alone.