Emotions of Infertility and Pregnancy Loss
Our guest was Martha Diamond, a psychologist that specializes in infertility and loss, a survivor of infertility herself, and co-author of Unsung Lullabies: Understanding and Coping with Infertility.
Hit the Highlights
- Infertility affects so many layers of your life including your relationship with your spouse, friends, and extended family.
- Everyone has a story of how their life will turn out, including a reproductive story. What happens when that story goes awry?
- How to cope when surrounded by pregnant woman and new parents when you’re struggling trying to conceive.
- Prepare in advance how to handle baby showers, the holidays, and family gatherings?
- Deciding whether to go or skip the event.
- How to be self protective without cutting everything and everyone out of your life.
- Suggestions on what to say when people are fishing around trying to find why you don’t have kids.
- The stages of grief and how they apply to infertility.
- Why do some marriages get stronger when faced with infertility and others fall apart?
- Why “unexplained infertility” is so hard to deal with?
- Does the diagnosis of the cause of infertility affect how people are able to cope?
- How do the financial worries over fertility treatment affect spouses differently?
- How to handle pregnancy loss in a society that doesn’t recognize this loss?
- How to create a way to honor prenatal loss.
- How do you know when to try again after a miscarriage?
- How to find a therapist that specializes in infertility and pregnancy loss?