Guest Post by Alison Reede

Struggling to conceive and have a baby can literally consume you and your life beyond recognition. It can bring you to places both mentally and physically that you thought you would never be. It can require you to make big decisions with big implications, and to top it all off it can unearth a huge range of emotions for you to deal with too.

Having to use assisted reproduction to get pregnant and have a family can be life shattering and research has shown that the impact of infertility is as big as the impact of dealing with potentially terminal illnesses. This news is usually shocking to digest at first but on reflection you can see why – the ability to reproduce is something that is taken as given, it is innate within all beings so when the ability to reproduce naturally is taken away, it can be devastating.

Life Coaching is a powerful process that can help you deal with this adversity and build your resilience. The beauty of life coaching is that it is all about you and your agenda. It can help you contemplate and navigate the unchartered waters of fertility challenges in a supportive empathetic environment where you can speak openly and explore your thoughts and feelings in depth. It increases your self-awareness and brings back that ‘sense of you’ that is so often lost when trying to get pregnant so you can move forward with confidence and clarity.

A key part of the coaching process is also looking at how your fertility problems are negatively impacting you and how you are living your life and then working to manage and improve that impact. Coaching will ultimately increase your positive emotions and improve your physical & mental wellbeing which is critical to improving your health and specifically your reproductive health. Interestingly enough our stress and fertility / reproductive hormones are controlled out of the same gland at the base of our brain so mind and body need to be in sync and to support chances of getting pregnant and sustaining that pregnancy through to birth. Coaching very much sits beside and enhances other clinical and medical interventions.

Decision making is major challenging aspect of fertility problems that so many people struggle with, and this is understandable considering the range and complexity of these decisions. Decisions about doing IVF or not, using donor eggs or donor sperm, when to stop, financial decisions, decisions that impact your body and health to mention but a few. Coaching can help you establish a framework for decision making to make it easier.

I always tell my clients at the outset that life coaching requires some motivation and momentum and is action orientated so commitment to the process is important. It will challenge and provoke you (a little more!) but if it can improve the quality of your life and even improve your chances of getting pregnant and give you skills to deal with any other adversity that may arise in your life I think it is worth the investment.

Alison Reede is a Qualified Life Coach who lives in Dublin, Ireland. Alison’s personal journey with infertility inspired her to focus her coaching practice on Fertility Coaching as the impact of fertility related problems is often underestimated and under supported. Alison is also an approved Fertile Body Method Practitioner which is a mind/body holistic approach to fertility problems. Combining these two approaches Alison’s mission is to improve the quality of life whilst increasing fertile potential for her clients when suffering with fertility related problems. www.alisonreedecoaching.com