Shirley Nicholson Counseling
Life Coach, Psychotherapist (retired)
Hendersonville, NC 28792
828-242-7806

• I’ve always wanted to be a Mom. If I can’t have children, I cannot imagine a happy future.
• Since we’ve been trying to have a baby, no one seems to understand the depth of our despair. Why is this happening to us?
• Each month is a cycle of anticipation and despair.
• What if I never get pregnant? I feel completely out of control.
• Being told I am infertile is like being told your body has failed its very reason for existence.
• My self-worth is shaken. I feel like a failure as a woman and this feeling of failure is affecting every area of my life.
• My husband wants us to “move on”, perhaps to adopt. But, I don’t feel ready to give up. What do I do if one of us is ready to stop and one isn’t?

If you and your partner are having difficulty getting pregnant, you may be experiencing increasing stress and anxiety from medical procedures; deep waves of overwhelming emotions; feeling out of balance; intense feelings of loneliness and isolation; a sense of emptiness, futility and despair; difficulty being around pregnant women and babies; resentment towards women with babies; tension and conflict in marital relationship.

All of the above increases levels of stress in the body. In October, 2001, a study of the effects of stress on conception was published. Doctors at the Univ. of California, San Diego, examined the success rates of a group of women undergoing gamete intrafallopian transfer (GIFT) or in vitro fertilization (IVF). The study concluded that women with the highest rated life stress levels were 93% less likely to become pregnant and achieve a live birth than women who scored lower on the stress scale.

I can’t know the pain you may be experiencing in your quest for conception. Perhaps you, like me, have experienced the disappointment, the frustration, the hope and the hopelessness of each pregnancy test. Perhaps you, like me, have felt the heartbreak of conceiving and losing a child.

I don’t know why we must go through such struggles to bring our children into the world. I am committed to helping women and their partners deal with the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual symptoms of stress, depression and insomnia associated with fertility challenges. Getting professional help if the emotional challenges become too much for you and your partner can have a positive effect on coping with whatever you are faced with on your journey to parenthood.