F O R   P A T I E N T S – stress & infertility
Stress and Infertility 

Introduction The Progression of Emotional Toll Research of Infertility and Stress Breaking the Cycle of Stress Relaxation Methods

The Progression of Emotional Toll
Blenner (1990) describes the predictable progression of infertility's emotional toll. There are eight stages as summarized below. The spiral depicted on the left illustrates the downward drift of emotional health and escalating despair.

1. Dawning of awareness: Couples plan the best time of the year to have a baby; realize it seems to be taking longer than expected, still identify with fertile population.
2. Facing a new reality: Diagnosis stimulates couples to face reality of infertility. Blaming, guilt arise. Selective perception of success rates and discounting of side effects and risks. Begin to isolate themselves.
3. Treatment: Hopeful, excited, high energy.
4. Intensifying treatment: Infertility major focus of life, financial and time sacrifices intensify. Anger or depression occurs. Increasing isolation, avoids activities with children. Loss of control.
5. Spiraling Down: Tearful, overwhelmed, enraged by the injustice of infertility
6. Letting Go: Usually husbands "shut down" first, then wives. Resume social life but activities without children (backpacking). Strong desire to regain control of life, quitting is gradually OK.
7. Quitting and moving out: Initial feelings of relief, followed by grief. Initiation of adoption for some.
8. Shifting focus: For childless couples, peaceful resignation. For adoptive parents, focus on the child. Reengagement with fertile worked.

In addition to the stresses of the medical regimens, overwhelming feelings of loss of control and increasing isolation as described by Blenner, there are psychosocial pressures on couples to reproduce. Erickson's "stages of development" theory describes the tasks of human development from infancy's need to establish trust, through the adolescence's search for identity to middle adulthood which includes the task of generativity. Generativity is the task of guiding and helping children. It is the next stage of a human's development, (according to Erickson), but infertility blocks the accomplishment of this task. The couple can't understand why this stage is thwarted when all of life's other developmental tasks occurred without conscious thought.

Compounding the couple's despair, is the societal stigma that accompanies infertility. The couple may feel "defective" and the inability to fulfill the role of parenthood may be regarded as a personal failure. And while the couple grapples with these unpleasant feelings the woman's biological clock continues to tick adding time pressure to their list of stressors.

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