'You just need to relax....'

Anyone who is TTC has probably heard some variation of the advice on relaxing. 'Your too stressed to get pregnant', 'You just need to relax and it will all happen', 'I know women who got pregnant as soon as they decided to do IVF/adopt etc etc etc'.

Actually, I think stress has little, if any, impact on trying to conceive.

Here's what Ellen Lavin, author of 'The essential over 35 pregnancy guide' says on the subject: Unless your level of tension is so high that you are no longer menstruating and ovulating normally, stress is not the obstacle it's made out to be when it comes to conceiving. Women get pregnant during terrible stressful times (during war and as a result of rape, for instance). No emotional state of being of pyschological mindset will make you more or less likely to get pregnant.

And this from my Sydney IVF handbook: IVF treatment can be stressful and intrusive. There are various reasons for this....Luckily, stress itself does not jeapardise the chance of IVF working.

There's some evidence that stress might interfere with ovulation (eg. delay it) but for some women, they are ovulating and this isn't the reason for their infertility.

My opinion is that infertility is a biological problem, which is sometimes impossible to uncover, and nothing to do with your mental state. So the well-meaning advice to 'relax' is not only pretty much impossible to follow for someone who has been unsuccessfully TTC for a while, but also probably completely irrelevant.

That said, anything that makes you feel happy and relaxed is definitely a good thing in general. For me, its the occassional massage or a walk along the ocean. Today I went for a walk in the sun along the coast and I feel much better for it - less worried, less obsessed and just happier.