Skip to main content

Posts

Being Kind to Yourself and Building Resilience During Coronavirus and Beyond

Being Kind to Yourself and Building Resilience During Coronavirus and Beyond. The past three months have been very difficult for all of us. The Coronavirus pandemic combined with enforced lockdown has meant we’ve found ourselves in situations we’ve never faced before.  Personally, I have found it very challenging balancing my time between my work as a counsellor and also caring for my 6-year-old daughter. My emotions have varied and have ranged from feelings of despondency, anger and feeling overwhelmed by the need to keep my head above water. In such unprecedented times, individuals and families have faced different challenges some of them include: -        Balancing work and family -        Financial strain -        Isolation from friends/family/support network -        Missing out on holidays/trips/events/birthdays -        Home schooling -        Bereavements (not being able to attend funerals of friends and loved ones) -        Big life events like having a
Recent posts

My Pregnancy Losses

Recently it was Bereaved Mother’s Day. It was also the 8 th anniversary of my first miscarriage.  Part of my counselling specialism is pregnancy/baby loss however this is the first time that I have written about my own losses, and it occurred to me that maybe I don’t talk about them enough. I was 39, I just had a 4 th round of IVF. I’d recently submitted my pregnancy test and the clinic called to say that the result was positive.  I could not believe it! All these years of trying, the countless disappointments, invasive tests and painful injections, to finally hear the words I had been longing for. It did not occur to me that anything could go wrong. I had experienced a miscarriage when I was 18, so I thought it couldn’t possibly happen to me again. Surely life wouldn’t be that cruel. I went for my first scan at the clinic, which is normal when the baby is around 6 weeks (some people may call it an embryo but to me it was my baby). There was a concern that it had not grown t

Infertility and IVF During Lockdown – 25/04/20

Infertility and IVF During Lockdown – 25/04/20 Due to social distancing measures, infection control and staff being allocated elsewhere all IVF clinics in the UK have been forced to close indefinitely, with no clear idea of when they might reopen. The effect on their patients has been immense, for some people treatment was halted before it really started and for others they have had to pause during treatment usually after egg collection and their embryos frozen for transfer at a later date. Devastatingly, others might have had a failed cycle and have no way of discussing the outcome or next steps. Everyone is stuck in some sort of limbo and this can make people feel a mixture of emotions such as anger, resentment, sadness, frustration and a continuing feeling of unfairness. Let’s face it, having to have treatment in the first place is unfair.  Of course, some people might feel relief.  Relief that they don’t have to go into a hospital at this time, or if they were to be succes

Is now a good time to be trying again after loss?

Should I try and conceive during this time if I have previously experiences a loss? For a lot of people trying to conceive is a wait and see scenario but for others it’s a decision not taken lightly, especially if you are trying again after loss.  For many being able to try for another baby as soon as possible after a loss is really important.  The desire to have a baby that you can bring home is often incredibly strong and something that many people who have not been through it don’t understand. Trying again after loss is always fraught with anxiety, worried if we are doing the right thing or are we putting our unborn baby at risk from not eating the right foods, not exercising enough or too much etc.  Then the real worry that it might happen again, and although statistically its unlikely, no one can tell us for definite that it won’t, well, that’s because it might and it does.  Our mind set has completely changed, this is a new normal, we are changed because of it and it