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For those of you whose pregnancy continues to elude: you may find some insight in this article.
This is a transcript of a consultation with Dr Scott Martin and his client regarding some common difficulties women suffer while waiting to fall pregnant. This transcript is provided with the permission of the client for publication. The clients questions and answers are presented in italics.
Last couple of weeks has been so hard. This is so stupid. Everyone around me is pregnant, and its like “what the frig?”
So let me ask:
Would you prefer to be surrounded by people who are pregnant or people who aren’t getting pregnant?
Would you prefer to know that everyone around you was having difficulties or that everyone was fine?
(Everyone was fine)
That’s right, because, you’re more likely to end up like the people you’re around.
What emotion would you associate with what you’re talking about? Everyone getting pregnant and you’re not?
(angry but sad)
Jealousy?
(Hmmmm)
One of the main reasons for that is the hopes, dreams and desires associated with having a baby. It’s not the actual pregnancy that’s the issue; it’s all the hopes and dreams tied up with having that child.
When you see someone else being pregnant its like “they have my dream, why don’t I have it”
And until you get pregnant you can upset yourself over it, but the fact is you will get pregnant, you will have our baby, its just a matter of time, don’t make your life a misery while you’re going through it.
Now I also appreciate that’s a lot easier said than done.
Helping yourself mentally is a really important part of fertility.
I see many women obsessing over it, life becomes difficult for them, for their partner, the relationship comes under strain and its all because you focus your desire, focus all of your tenacity into falling pregnant, believing that the more you focus on it the more likely its going to happen.
What also happens is, the more you focus on it, the more obsessive you become about it and for some reason continues to elude you, slipping out of your grasp.
I believe this is a really big issue. I see this regularly
This is one of the most common reactions that women have when they can’t have a baby. “Everyone else has their dream, but I don’t”
Realistically you think you’re hating on the rest of the world but really you’re just hating on yourself, which makes it even harder for you, because you’re already struggling emotionally and you’re externalizing your frustration on other people but really it is disappointment with yourself. That’s the real issue.
Really, can your fertility problems be solved over night?
(No)
Will it take time?
(Yes)
Are you doing something about it?
(Yes)
If you’ve got problems and challenges in your life and its causing issues for you, and you are doing nothing about it, this is when you start going crazy.
But when you’ve got these same problems and taking steps to rectify them, you’re on the path to getting sorted. Give yourself a break
Don’t beat yourself up about it
It’s a process.
This is your current challenge.
‘When you have a child, a whole new lot of challenges pop up, which can be a lot more challenging than getting pregnant in the first place!
A lot of people see challenges or things going wrong as something bad.
I don’t see it like that, mistakes aren’t bad, mistakes aren’t wrong, things not going your way isn’t necessarily a problem, what it is, is an opportunity to learn and do better next time
You’re going through a whole learning process right now
I’ve always wondered, what is the ultimate purpose of suffering?
There is so much suffering going on in the world.
People suffering all the time. They’re suffering in the heads in their lives in their lives.
They suffer over all sorts of things.
And, I’ve always had a wish, when I was younger, that I’ve always wanted to take the thing that was blocking a person’s life, take this key, its like a big Jenga set, and you just take out the right one by reaching in and you make it go away and their life goes on without the hindrance.
I had this wish even before I had any inkling that I was going to get into medicine that was something I really wanted to be able to do.
Now I’m older I realise; it is this suffering, these problems that actually create us that makes us grow, that can, and is supposed to, turn us into better people.
Your problems are designed to help you evolve emotionally and intellectually.
So why you’re going through all this, you’re learning a heap and it may ultimately make your more empathetic more compassionate.
I know at the moment you’re hating on any and every pregnant women, but now you realize you’re just upset because you haven’t had that yet. It’s got nothing to do with them at all.
In fact you’re probably quite happy for them, underneath.
Its your own hurdle to jump.
So psychologically, this is your challenge.
So don’t think of it as a bad thing.
How you react to it, is either positive or negative.
I’d suggest you’re doing a whole lot of stuff to help yourself; you’re looking after yourself.
If there are areas of your life, where you think “maybe I could improve this, maybe I could do this better, do this a bit differently”, do it.
Because it will build you up. It’s going to bolster your confidence.
Yes I can achieve, yes I can do these things. If you tweak these other areas of your life, ta da, the magic happens.
Let me tell you a story, about one of my clients
They had had one child, and wanted another
They had been trying for 5 years, they had spent $120000 on IVF and other fertility methods. They had done a massive TCM program in Gold Coast in Australia, they had done a naturopathy course too. In fact they knew more about the different aspects of fertility than I did at the time, because they had just lived it.
They came to me, they told me their story.
They’ve got everything wrong with them.
His sperm is terrible, she hasn’t got regular periods, she’s got horrible menstruation and poor egg quality.
They’ve got everything wrong with them.
They looked at me and I thought, “they know more about this than I do!”
I said “I’m not going to tell you anything, because you’ve heard it all before, I’m not going to make you promises. If you want me to do my thing, I will do it for you, but that’s all I am prepared to say”
They said, “fair enough,” they got it.
Anyway they started coming in, and she said, I’ll give it 3 months, and if I’m not pregnant then, I’m going to give up.
She had been hanging on to her pregnancy dream for 5 years.
She had driven herself crazy, her partner crazy and they had spent a fortune on treatment in that time, with no results.
Could you imagine how she felt?
And, she was also habitually constipated.
What I have found is that people who are habitually constipated like to hang on to things, they just can’t let things go. They literally like hanging on to their shit!
So all the emotional baggage just piles up and never gets washed away.
3 months came and went, no surprises, she wasn’t pregnant.
But she came back 2 weeks later. She said, “I’m just going to come fortnightly.”
I said, “Alright, lets talk about this.”
I said, “What is in your baby’s room, the room where your baby’s going to go, what’s in it at the moment?”
“It’s just a whole pile of junk, things we don’t know what to do with, so we just stash it all in the room” she said.
I then asked her “What’s one thing you really like to do?”
She had sadness, and this sadness had crept in to all other aspects of her life. Her life was sad and she wasn’t in a happy place. Mentally she wasn’t happy, emotionally she wasn’t happy and in her life, because of the absence of this pregnancy, her life was sad as well.
Who wants go and hang out with her?
I said “What’s one thing you really like to do, one thing you haven’t done for ages?”
She said “painting.”
This is what I want you to do….
I want you to get everything out of the baby’s room. I want you to set up an easel, some paints. I want you to get a plant in that room, somewhere it can grow happily and healthily.
She did it.
She took my advice.
What happens is, your house is like the inside of your mind.
If your bedroom is an absolute filthy mess, your thoughts also are an absolute filthy mess.
If you don’t ever cook in your kitchen, it has a lot to do with how well you’re able to create things in your life.
If no one ever uses your lounge room, or your lounge room is a mess, that’s the social aspect of your life.
So how things are arranged in your house and what’s actually in there is a direct reflection of what goes on in your head. If you’ve got a whole heap of possessions that you haven’t used in a very long time, and its hanging out in there, that’s almost like emotional baggage.
So, she cleaned out the babies’ room. She put a plant in there. The reason why I suggest a plant, particularly a young plant, is that as it grows and thrives, there is actually life in that room. She actually put life into that room and started doing the thing she really loved; she started painting.
And the next time she came, she seemed like a completely different woman.
All that stress hanging on, that fierce grip to achieving this pregnancy, she just let go of the reins.
It was astounding just looking at her.
She had just let it go. She was painting. She was happy. The room was clean.
And she just felt good about this change in her life.
She had a change in her house, in one of the rooms in her house, and it changed her mindset.
She literally let her shit go.
Oddly enough, she wasn’t constipated any more either.
But this is how close these connections can be….
Six weeks later she was pregnant!
A miracle!
For her, I put down her infertility to the blockages she had in her mind, to the blockages she had in her heart and to the blockages she had in her life.
And the blockage was the desire to get pregnant.
The very thing she wanted was the very thing that was stopping her.
It sounds ridiculous, but life works like that.
When we made that change in her house, it made the change in her mind and it made the change in her life.
What’s in your baby’s room?
You don’t have to put a cot in there, or anything like that, but I want you to start associating that room as a baby’s room. Let’s put a plant in there, a young plant, let’s get some light, put it somewhere it’s going to grow, I want you to nurture it.
What is it you really like doing?
Clay shooting
So you’re someone who likes to pinpoint something and be very, very accurate.
No wonder this is annoying for you.
Your psyche of targeting and achieving is really very well defined, and the fact that you can’t do something that’s seems everyone else can do naturally….
I can understand why you’re peeved
Have a think.
See if there is a way to get into clay shooting.
You get back into that focus. You’re doing something external, outside of yourself, not think about what’s going wrong inside of you.
And you’re taking care of stuff outside you and maybe those changes might change your mindset, and change your unhappy heart and your unhappy mind.
And you will start flowing again.