Infertility Myth: If you just relax, you will get pregnant

    In honor of National Infertility Week, I am joining up with RESOLVE and other infertility bloggers to help bust infertility myths.  Hopefully I will be able to get a couple up this week but between work and fertility drugs, I will be lucky if I can write by Thursday.  
    The one thing that drives me the craziest is the phrase in my title.    I cannot tell you how many times I was told to "relax" or to "be patient".    Sorry we could be as relaxed as possible, but it doesn't raise the 2% chance that we will get pregnant without intervention.   While this may be good advice during the first weeks or so of trying to conceive, after a few months it becomes irrating.  
     How would you feel if you desperately wanted a new job and people continually told you to relax?  Instead of sending out all those resumes and spending hours online looking for new postings (I know how this is done for I have seen it done very often from this very laptop), you can just sit and relax and someone is going to knock on your door with a great job.  RIGHT, like that is going happen.    You have to be actively searching for a job in order to find one.   Yes, there was that one time when your friend's cousin's brother's wife wasn't even looking for a job and walked into a company and was hired on the spot, but who is really luck enough for that to happen?   If someone continually told you to relax, I am sure you would be ready to shove your perfectly printed resume down someone's throat.
       Why is it then okay to torture infertile women with this statement?  If I didn't take the nightly fertility shots (not too bad actually), go in for blood work and ultrasounds every other morning, or go through egg retrival and transfer, I may never have the opportunity to have my own biological child.  Yes there are some things I could relax about, such as dinner (Sean would be happy eating  frozen pizza every night) or MCAS scheduling (yes, I did make a spreadsheet of all the possible days that I could miss and how they would affect MCAS), but none of these things will help me to become pregnant without medical intervention.
        Next time you talk to someone who is trying to have a child, don't tell them to relax.  This isn't helpful.   Instead try to see if there is anything they need from you, such as your support.  Even a simple "I can't imagine how difficult this is" can mean the world to the recipient.
       Visit Resolve's site  and read their Infertility 101 to learn a little more about infertility.   Visit National Infertility Awareness Week to learn about the background of NIAW.