How do you wait during fertility treatment and pregnancy?

When you are in the midst (and often the chaos) of fertility treatment, waiting often seems impossible. You wait for the testing to begin, then you wait for the treatments to start. But you are likely too anxious to wait. You want things to speed up and happen quickly – you want a wrinkle in time because days can seem like months and months can feel like years.

Then, once you are pregnant, first trimester proceeds at a turtle’s pace, but second and third trimester fly by. That longed for day, the day your child is born, comes at you with surprise. It seems as though you have waited for that day forever.

Waiting permeates all fertility work and imbues all of pregnancy. In both IVF and IUI treatment, you wait for a period to begin so you can start the hormones that will both time and enhance your ovulation. After an IVF retrieval, you wait for your eggs to fertilize and to be genetically tested. Then you spend days waiting for the lab to call you with the all-important number of healthy, viable day 5 or 6 blastocysts you have. After a transfer, you wait for the Holy Grail of IVF treatment, the bhcg results. Depending on this result, you determine that your fertility treatment was either a success or a failure.

Once you have a positive bhcg and are pregnant, the waiting begins again. You wait for the second bhcg and then the first ultrasound. You might wait to tell your friends and family about your pregnancy until twelve weeks when the risk of miscarriage is small. Then you wait for the anatomy scan at 20 weeks to determine the healthy development of major organs such as brain and heart, liver and kidneys. Then you wait for the baby to continue to grow to term. And you wait for labor and delivery.

Both fertility treatment and pregnancy are waiting games. But how do you wait? How should you wait? What does waiting feel like? Does waiting feel different when you are trying to get pregnant than when you are pregnant? Does waiting feel different in first trimester than in third?

These are some of the thoughts that you will be curious about together. I will guide you to the understanding that how you wait is important, not only for your own growth as a person, but also for your family building. I want you to be deliberate and intentional about how you wait, as you embark on the waiting game of family building.