One of the “soft” causes of infertility is stress. Relaxed and happy couples make love more effectively and more frequently, both of which increase the chances of conception.
It’s not a blanket cure, but for some couples it can be the difference. Obviously there are many other causes of infertility, but stress can be one of them.
Likewise, just because a couple can’t conceive doesn’t mean they are not happy and/or relaxed.
Any medic will tell you that it’s a good first port-of-call for couples struggling to conceive.
While that may be true, most couples who have been trying for a significant amount of time will be stressed by the very process of having to have sex at certain times of the month. It ceases to be a pleasure after about a year of this, if not sooner.
Being told that relaxing will help will have the opposite effect upon the poor couple, and will just make them more stressed. Ergo, that advice really doesn’t help anyone - the too stressed for sex or those with physical issues!
Unless you are the medic and have been asked for advice by the couple AND have some specific information about their TTC history and physical issues that makes it 100% clear that relaxation is the only problem they are having, YOU should not say this to a childless couple.
And if they keep talking about it, and talking about it, and giving you further details?
I mean, I didn’t mind, he’s my friend, but I felt distinctly unsure of what to say, and I ended up telling him that - you have my sympathies and I care for you but I don’t know what to say. I can’t make it better, but I’m here for you.
That’s kinda the point… working to a schedule is stressful and tiring, and takes a lot of the fun out of it.
So chucking away the timetable now and again, and having sex as lovers rather than baby-makers, can often provide exactly the level of relaxation needed.
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach, and motility / morphology problems won’t be solved by a massage and mood music.
But to dismiss stress entirely as a cause of infertility is to ignore medical opinion, and is worth a try in some cases.
But I think that the point is that you aren’t the person that should be giving that advice.
And I have to say, in answer to your point above, that most people who have been trying for some length of time find it impossible not to know when the best time of the month to have sex is, making worry free lovemaking nigh on impossible.
Are you their medic? No? Then, to be blunt, shut up 'cause it’s NOYB. Someone seeing a doctor for infertility probably already has an idea of whether their issues might be stress-related or not, and if you (I mean a general you) insist on implying that it’s their fault for not relaxing, you’ve just added to their stress. Such a person is the kind of asshole the OP is talking about.
And as well, I’ve never tried to conceive, but I’m aware that the surest way to set me up for failure at some task is to tell me “Relax. It’s easy! Anybody can do it. The only way to screw up is to get worried about it.” Works every time.
In other words, it may well be good advice, but it’s not good advice for some schmoe off the street (or on a message board) to give. Which is the point of this thread.
One friend asked me once how we were going with our infertility issues and I went through some of the stuff that was happening with us and how miserable, discouraged and fed-up we were. She then started talking about her plan to fall pregnant on x date with her next child so it would be born in time for yadda yadda because “I fall pregnant so easily, if I just think about it it happens!”. Not something I needed to hear just then.
Same girl told me about using my (then) husband and I as an example of why you should have children young (like she did) or you may wait too long and wind up infertile (like us). I was speechless. Our fertility issues were not age related - my ex’s issues were caused by a birth defect - and though we were the grand old age of 30 at the time she told the story, we were 26 when we started trying… just 12 months older than she was when her first child was born. I also hated the implication that somehow we’d brought infertility on ourselves by our selfish, reckless insistance on waiting until we felt ready to have children.
Another woman on a parenting message board had a drama queen moment because her baby wouldn’t show the goods on the ultrasound. She was all hysterical about how she couldn’t feel as close to this baby as her first one because she didn’t know its gender and she had to wait four or five days to have another one done. I was sitting there reading it thinking bitterly about the fact that I’d been waiting four years to fall pregnant, and was facing paying lots of money, taking unpleasant medications and undergoing medical procedures in order to not even be present for my child’s conception, while here was this person throwing a hissy fit over a less-than-a-week long delay in finding out the gender of the second baby she’d conceived in less time than I’d been trying.
Lots of people gave me the “Suchandsuch is bigger than you and she had a baby” speech. I was thought to have PCOS and the doc suggested if I lose a bit of weight, it might help. I couldn’t get it through to my mother (among others) that my doc wasn’t saying I was too fat to have a baby, he was saying my PCOS symptoms might be eased if I lost a little weight. So I got to listen to stories about every single fat woman anyone had ever known who’d had a baby even though they may or may not have had PCOS and so their situations were in no way relevant to mine.
It’s lousy “advice”. It’s not even advice. It’s about as useful as suggesting they try sexual intercourse - they already know that. No one needs to be told to relax while they are trying to conceive, and the few who maybe could benefit from relaxing are not going to do it just because you tell them they should. In fact, after a while the chorus of “Just relax and it will happen” begins to sound like “It’s your fault you can’t conceive because you’re obsessing about it. Your infertility is all in your head.” Need I point out that feeling like everyone is judging you and telling you that you’re making yourself infertile because you’re too eager to have a baby is not a helpful way to make them feel relaxed?
Relaxation won’t cure a low sperm count or polycystic ovary syndrome or endometriosis or any of the myriad other real medical issues that many infertile couples face. Stop telling infertile couples “just relax and it will happen” because they don’t need to hear it.
Not to mention, even if you are their medic, you should phrase it some other way. Only a (I think smallish- ) percentage of infertile couples who have reached the point of going to a doctor for it, will get pregnant that way. Saying that “Some couples find that stress can be a factor, so try your best to relax while we run these tests over the next few months,” would be far better than giving false assurances.
If they’ve brought it up of course it’s my business!
The OP makes no mention of the context in which the advice is offered… I’d never say it as unsolicited advice, but if we’re chatting about it of course I’ll mention it as a possiblility. My wife is a medical student, my brother and his wife are both hospital doctors, so our friends can often be happy sharing more personal stuff that we’d never broach without invitation.
Re. relaxation and de-stressing… when we’ve been chatting about babies at work a number of people have said that was the initial advice they received from their GP.
In some cases it ended up in IVF, in other cases it “just happened”, but in many cases it was the first thing they tried.
I should fuck like bunnies with him, or I should tell him to fuck like bunnies? I wouldn’t mind the former, but, um, I’m not bearing any kids for him. Or anybody.
Ouch, SSG Schwartz. People are pure morons sometimes. :smack:
We were never in the “trying and unable” boat but we were married for 10+ years before Dweezil came along (it was by choice) and got a lot of nagging from my mother-in-law. During which time I once - very foolishly - let slip to her that her son wasn’t sure he wanted to have kids. Ever. She took this as a license to nag him. Including one time when I was in the room.
MIL: “So are you still thinking you don’t want kids?”
Me: “Uh, MIL, this is a sensitive subject. Please drop it”.
MIL: “I’m not asking you, I’m asking him.”.
Me: “I said, this is a sensitive subject. Please Drop. It. Now.”.
She didn’t.
About a month later, on the phone with her about something different, she let slip that she was doing the cutesy “so when are they gonna have kids” with friends of hers (who had an adult married child) and the friends crowed “Well, now that you mention it, they’re PREGNANT”. Squeals of glee followed. For some reason, hearing this second hand really snapped something and I ripped my MIL a new one for even asking that of these people (whom I didn’t know). I finally explained that it was directly due to her pushiness on the previous occasion.
Another time (a few years earlier), she phoned me on Mother’s Day and INSISTED on wishing me a happy Mother’s Day. We were not at that point even trying and she insisted on the greeting “because of the potential” even when I insisted that it was very unwelcome.
She never did seem to realize that her pushiness with us was very, VERY out of line. I love, honor and respect MIL, we get along great, but on this specific topic I still (rarely, occasionally) want to bitch-slap her
Don’t assume that we’re talking about a situation where the childless person brought it up. The OP makes no mention of the context in which the advice is offered. Hmm, where have I heard that sentence recently…
Right. But, given the context of the other “advice” mentioned, it’d be a hell of an infertility clinic where the doctor also told him to get a dog, or offered his own kids to cure him of his desire for his own.
There’s plenty of jerks, as demonstrated by other people in this thread, who have no compunctions about offering all kinds of unknowingly hurtful remarks.
Ugh. How about “So when someone going to come along to take that spare bedroom?” I want to respond with “It was supposed to be here by now, but it died last Christmas, and my wife’s body has decided to stop working now. Thanks for asking!”
And who says they’ve brought it up? My parents were hearing “when are you having your firstborn” almost from before the wedding until I was yelling in Dad’s arms! (Mom being knocked out at the time) That’s four years. People were asking “how many kids do you have” directly after introductions (both parental units wore wedding bands) and jumping to either the advice or the berating as soon as they heard “none.”
I was a miracle for six years, given that Mom (as mentioned upthread) was officially sterile and six years is how long Middlebro took to arrive. That’s over three years of trying, followed by three months when they only spent two days together (yeah, Mom is very sure of when was I conceived), followed by ten months of pregnancy (the doctor refused to believe Mom could be pregnant), followed by six years of having sex whenever and wherever because “it’s not like we’ll ever get pregnant again.” If “relaxed sex” equaled babies, Middlebro and me would be Irish twins. Instead, it took nine years to prove that “the best ObGyn in the area” was a bleeding moron who shouldn’t be allowed within ten yards of any woman including his own wife.
I’m not entirely sure why people think it’s necessary to know whether a couple has had kids without waiting for the couple to say so first. For me, it’s as private information as asking someone what their beliefs in a higher power are or what they like to do in bed; it’s just not appropriate to bring it up in polite company, IMO. I get it often enough at work from complete strangers, and right now, I can hide behind the “I need to finish school/I’m not ready yet” guise without having go get into the difficult and pushy questions of “why don’t you guys have one yet?!?!” that people in the “with kids” group often like to push. It’s considered a “neutral” topic by everyone who’s already had kids and hasn’t had problems having them, but it’s sensitive to anyone who’s either not interested in having kids or is trying to have kids and hasn’t been successful yet for one reason or another.
Because I have been on the receiving end of several mind-numbingly dull lectures on particular couples’ attempts to procreate. One particular example involved thousands spent on fertility tests and IVF, when in fact the issue was hubby working away from home 5 days a week, and then being so knackered at the weekends that on the occasions when conditions were right he wasn’t able to fulfil his requirements. Of course, they didn’t want to hear that, and preferred to chuck money at the problem (easier to blame morphology than his stamina).
In this instance, a few months after hubby changed job to one nearer home, got some sleep and some regular bonkage, things started working as they should.
People seem to be sweeping some rather broad brushes in this thread… not all unwillingly-childless couples are silently suffering with motility/morphology issues. Some are quite happy to share it with the world, and seem not to understand the science behind conception. Others have never been taught about optimum cycle times and temperature measurements.
So in those cases I’d be more than happy to give some common-sense advice (ie. if hubby is too knackered to keep it up, then babies may not ensue).
It sounds like some of you are looking for offence when none is intended - if I have a sore shoulder, I don’t mind if someone says “a nice hot bath will sort that out”, even if keyhole surgery is actually what’s required.
And to refer to my initial post, it is flat-out wrong to say that a couple’s mental and physical state vis-a-vis stress has no part to play in conception. It may not be a factor in your particular case, but that doesn’t mean it’s not an issue (or even the main issue) for some couples.
