What negative impacts an infertile couple has to go through?
Mental disturbances due to infertility often break the bond of marriage
Infertility is when a couple who has had unprotected sex for one year fails to conceive. It is rather a broad term and this would be a no-shocking statement that nowadays the number of infertile cases is on a rise.
Those who conceive but end up having miscarriages and do not make it up to healthy pregnancy and child birth are also included in the infertility criteria. May it be the faulty lifestyle or physiological disturbances or anatomical disorders or even unexplained cause, there are millions of couple in the world struggling to conceive.
Not to go too far, me too! It’s been a vague effort of t-t-c trying to conceive for the last 12 years. After two spontaneous abortions and the D and C (dilatation and Curettage) my uterus has never been able to implant the fertilized ovum. Reason: not known? Countless appointments to OBG and lots of medical treatment in all these years have been only fruitless. Needless to say, I gained nothing other than weight gain and mental stress.
According to PubMed Central, there is a negative impact on the mental health of the couples living with infertility.
Now this is so true. If you think I might be blabbering or just spitting out whatever that comes out of my mouth. Just go check this study report also, which actually says, Infertility can cause mental and physical problems in couple. It is not only the female but the male also, that suffers from the emotional point of view and this makes their life uneasy and difficult to live.
While it is easy for most of the couples to conceive as soon as they get married, infertile couples have a hard time hitting the chord. They feel like neglected, depressed, frustrated and hopeless. For them the act of intercourse remains no longer a joyful experience. Instead, it becomes a mere practice to trying to conceive. To not let the medicines go waste, they try out in vain.
3 Huge Negative Impacts of Infertility On The Couples:
1. Physical disturbances: When you fail your one year trial for conceiving, you need to see your doctor immediately and your doctor initiates your treatment. Treatment for female infertility puts a high burden on the mental and financial aspect. You have to undergo a lot of laboratory investigations in order to rule out any disorder or any fault in your body.
If there is something sorted out, you get the treatment accordingly. You may benefit from either medical or surgical approach of treatment and conceive but in case, just like mine, when the reports are normal, of both, you and your husband, you are put on unimaginable hormone therapy, which you actually don’t need practically. But I still don’t understand why we need to take that?? Well, they are doctors and we just can’t disbelieve them, right?
Keeping up the faith we take medicines and injections only ending up to some of the below physical troubles in our body:
· Weight gain: It is the most common side effect of the infertility treatment
· Bloating and gastric disturbances: Many women complain of having bloated stomachs when they are on infertility medical treatment
· Urinary tract infections: Frequent transvaginal ultrasound during the treatment cycle can pose you at risk of getting urinary tract infections. You may pass urine with difficulty or having burning sensation while you pee.
· Apart from these, there are multiple physical symptoms that can appear as the side effects of the therapy you are put on. You may have clots during your periods, painful periods or headache, acidity and many others depending upon your body’s response to the medicines.
· Your body suffers a lot when you go for a D&C section and then the problems with your veins in the legs come into picture. I did not actually have leg pain before I got my D&C done. I believe the position (lithotomy position) they put us on while doing the procedure pulls up our hamstrings much causing veins in the calf to get dilated and trouble us in the future.
· Sex or intercourse no longer remains a fun factor. This can cause other physical as well as emotional troubles.
2. Psychological or mental disturbances: Now here comes the worst part of being infertile. And I can challenge you nobody is ever gonna talk about this to you because no one in the world can feel the hidden, silent pain that we, the infertile couples, carry deep down our hearts. To the matter of fact, they would feel that we are fit and fine and what can go wrong with our minds??? Really!! I have one cousin of mine who always makes fun of me, when I say I am depressed a lot. She laughs out, I don’t see a damn thing like depression on your face. Now this is the perspective of people surrounding us. Nobody actually is interested to know about how we feel.
Infertility puts up a lot of pressure on your emotional wellbeing. The moment you start taking treatment you are full with hope. But as soon as you get your periods, the meres sight of blood on your panties make you feel miserable, desperate and hopeless like never before. Initialfew years may not seem bothersome but the later years, when your trial period has crossed more than three to five years, you start losing yourself.
A couple experiences a bundle of emotional disturbances and they don’t have any reason to validate them.
· Mood swings: There would be moments of sudden crying, sadness, anger, shouting, depression, fear, etc.
· Anxiety: The female and in some cases the male also gets anxious about the outcome while trying to conceive and this makes them actually feel vulnerable when the treatment yields no reason. (Note: I am specifically talking about- from the female infertility point of view).
· Feeling isolated: Infertility is often seen as a social taboo and people generally feel that “the couples might be lacking something, else how it is possible to not conceive even spending whole night together for years). Believe me, many relatives of mine have hit hard such comments on my face and to tell you the truth, it is bitter to gulp down and digest. Such couple start feeling isolated and start avoiding social gatherings and functions, only to stay away from such negative remarks on their infertility.
· Feeling of guilt: Even when your tests are normal, periods are normal, sex is normal, semen is normal, you start doubting yourself and a feeling of guilt takes over your mind. You start believing something may be lacking in me only. Living in guilt makes it difficult to live your sex life and you ending losing interest in anything.
· Hopelessness: Due to consecutive back-to-back failure of treatment, the couple starts feeling hopeless. This makes them lose hope. There are moments they quit the treatment or showing up to any doctor for one or two year.
· Stress: It affects the daily living and makes the person less active and the person starts losing interest in doing things.
· Mental burden of treatment: The initiation of treatment makes you feel loaded with hope but as the treatment progresses, your mind is constantly conscious about how the things will go on? Will it work out this time? Did I take the medicine properly? Am I eating the right food? What precautions I need to take? Such mental arguments are enough to tire your mind and you feel exhausted. You are desperate to see the results and the constant bragging makes it difficult for you to enjoy the process of journey to parenthood and when the things do not work out, you feel you have lost another battle.
3. Financial impact: The treatment of infertility is mostly hormone-based and it is expensive. Initial tests and laboratory investigations are also too heavily charged. Ongoing appointments and doctor fees, scan fees, all add up to the financial burden to the infertile couple. The medicines need to be continued till you get the desired results. This also adds up to your bill.
When the conventional medical approach seems fruitless, you may be advised to go for assisted reproductive techniques (ART) such as IUI (intrauterine insemination, ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection) and finally the IVF (in-vitro fertilization). The costs go on a rise as we walk step by step for each procedure in case the prior one fails.
The financial burden may create chaos in the life of the infertile couple. It might not be feasible for each and every infertile couple out there to undergo such expensive advanced treatment for conceiving. This again may cause emotional outburst and mental disturbances.
Infertility needs to be discussed. It negative affects the physical, psychological and financial aspect of the life of those who are infertile. It hugely impacts the lives of the couples struggling to conceive. If you can’t support them emotionally, it is better not to say a foul word to them. Simultaneously, the couple need to understand each other and enjoy their lives rather than falling prey to the negative impacts of infertility. Just try for conception, but the condition is “TRY With Positive mind-set.”
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