Infertility and mental health: why belonging matters

This week is Mental Health Awareness Week, and the theme this year is ‘belonging matters’. This feels particularly relevant for our fertility community.

Infertility sometimes feel like the club you never wanted to belong to. And one of the challenges about being a part of this community is how, even though there are many other people going through very similar experiences at the same time, it can still feel isolating.

We know that the experience of infertility has a social impact on people’s lives. Whether it’s masking challenging emotions from people in our world or feeling disconnected from peers who are moving forward with their lives and parenting plans, infertility occurs within the context of our social lives and social connections.

The World Health Organisation estimates that around one in six people worldwide experiences infertility during their lives. That's not a small number! And yet, when you're in the middle of a fertility pathway, it’s not uncommon to feel as if everyone else is moving forward while you're standing still, holding hope and navigating the unknown.

As human beings, we are hard-wired for connection. Our relationships play an important role in our mental and physical health. Research consistently shows that having meaningful social connection is associated with better wellbeing and health outcomes generally.

The thing about social connection, however, is that it’s about quality over quantity. Not simply a head count of those people in your world, but finding those relationships where we can feel understood, supported, valued and able to be our true selves, even through adversity.

The question is, how can we be our true selves with the people around us when going through such a personal journey? A journey that started as private and intimate and now sharing with others would require letting more people into our story, our challenges, our insecurities, the hardships and the vulnerabilities.

Fertility journeys are incredibly personal. They often represent long held beliefs and expectations. They are fuelled with meaning, intense emotion and deep, deep hopes for your future. You might not want to talk about the finer details with absolutely every person in your world, and that’s okay. You might find that you struggle to find language that accurately tells that story of the path you are travelling, and that’s understandable; you might be unsure who feels safe to hold this intimate story with as much care and respect as you need, and this is only natural.

Belonging isn't necessarily about having an army of people around you. Sometimes it's about having a key relationship where you feel safe to be yourself. It's about having people who make space for what you're going through, people who can listen without trying to fix, and people with whom you don't have to explain every update and all the finer details along the way.

For some people, that connection might come in the form of a partner who walks this pathway alongside you, equally it may also be that close friend or a whānau member who feels trusted with this precious information. Sometimes it's someone who has been through infertility themselves and knows what it means to be sitting with uncertainty. For some it's a peer support group or an online community. And sometimes, it's simply finding that one person who makes you think, “oh, you get it”.

The reality is that you are far from alone, even if you haven’t met these people yet… there is a community who know what it is like to sit in a waiting room, count days, hope for a different result, navigate appointments and treatment, or wonder what might happen next. These are the people who understand the strange mix of hope and uncertainty, excitement and disappointment, fear and anticipation that can come with trying to build a family.