just "relax"

People have no idea how insensitive it is.

It implies that you're doing something wrong that's stopping you from conceiving which couldn't be further from the truth.

I hope you manage to find some joy and happiness in other areas of your life during this tough time. Wishing you all the best xxx

I relate to this so much ❤️

There's someone on mumsnet who keeps posting "just relax" on the TTC threads whilst smugly announcing she had no real issues TTC. Gives me the rage every time, like why the fuck are you on the TTC board if it doesn't apply to you or you have no actual advice to give??

I'm never not thinking about it on some level.

It's one of the most insensitive things someone can say to someone with infertility and/or anxiety as it implies that it's our own fault that we can't get pregnant. 'Oh, if you could only just relax then it would happen.'

But... no. I have PCOS and my husband has sperm motility issues. If we didn't temp and track ovulation and use a fertility cup thing then a pregnancy would never happen.

Son took 15 months to conceive (one day shy of starting IVF) and this pregnancy took 22 months (plus three miscarriages and one IVF round).

Urgh yes, I felt like backhanding anyone who said this to me into space.

On a different note but similar topic, after harassing me for a few months about grandchildren I finally let my mum know that we'd been TTC for 3 years. She then asked (in front of my dad!) if we were "doing it correctly". When I retorted "well it's going into the right hole!" my dad promptly decided the discussion should move on to another topic 😂

I paid £200 recently for a medical director to tell me I needed a long holiday 🙄

Omg yes! The ones I hear saying relax and it will happen are the ones who conceived within about 3 months!!
Most people are relaxed when it's the first few months trying. My friend recently got pregnant and said she was just "going with the flow" and boom she was pregnant. It's not because she relaxed, it's because she got lucky or she's quite fertile. I guarantee she wouldn't be going with the flow so much if she'd been trying 1 year plus.
After experiencing infertility first time round and now again ttc baby 2 I find the comments to relax extremely annoying and insensitive.
Ivf worked first round for me and I will tell you I was highly stressed and not well at all, I certainly wasn't relaxed and I have my beautiful son from that round.

@hopingforapeainapod yes!!! This resonates so so much. I get exactly the same feeling. I'm also a bit sick of people saying "it will happen when it's meant to" when there isn't a guarantee it will happen full stop! It is so dismissive of my feelings.

Agree with everything on this thread 100%!

To add, in my experience I swear this is so much worse when you have 'unexplained' infertility. Like if you have a diagnosis like endometriosis or low sperm count or whatever then people are less likely to tell you to 'relax' because you can't 'relax' your way out of a medical condition. But when you're 'unexplained' and everything looks normal (as is the case unfortunately / fortunately for me) then it seems to be fair game for people to tell you to just relax / go on holiday / not think about it (impossible!) which imo also implies that you are implicitly at fault somehow - that if you were just less stressed, it would have happened already - which is just a horrible thing to make someone think or feel!

God yes I agree with this!

@TeenLifeMum some of this is also because it just happens as it's been x number of months and it just so happens the right sperm met the right egg at the right time - correlation is not causation. Scientifically it takes a whole heap of cortisol (the stress hormone) to have any impact on reproduction, like a crazy amount. For the vast majority of women, the stress levels don't prevent pregnancy from happening.

I totally get this and I definitely wasn’t relaxed trying for dd1. Anecdotally, people do seem to fall pregnant when there’s less pressure. My db and sil tried for 3 years and ended up with a referral for ivf but fell pregnant just before the appointment. There’s quite a few similar stories.

but it’s like telling someone who’s angry to calm down - really unhelpful.

@Ella31 💐 no words can make that ok.

You're not alone, it's the worst. I think it's just simply a sensitive topic and no matter what people say, it's gonna be shit and make you feel like shit.

My experience of this is that it comes from people who have healthy living children. I'm 12 weeks since losing my twin sons at 29 weeks and before that, I had two miscarriages. People think it's actually acceptable to tell me at least you can get pregnant. They didn't have to turn off life support though and watch their 4 day old baby pass away in their arms while their husband held his stillborn twin beside him.

Thanks for this thread op. Sorry it's happening to other people, but it's just so insensitive out there.

Agree OP - and always said by people who have children; usually conceived without undue difficulty

I'm really sorry people are being so insensitive towards you, OP.

The amount of people who told me their sister / friend/ cat had "just relaxed" and then it happened to her, I could have cried. Good for her, she's obviously relaxed her way out of infertility. It just made me feel even more shit, because not only could I not manage to get pregnant, I couldn't even manage to "relax".

@Optimistic66 this is the one! I always answer back with how? How do you suggest I just stop thinking about/worrying about it?
Because that’s just physically impossible- even when I try to pretend I’m not worrying about it to myself, I’m still thinking about it because I’m pretending not to worry…
only on month 7 but already heard a wealth of these and feel like I’m going to go mad if someone says anything beginning with just…

@Rosesanddaisies1 sadly when you've been trying for 7+ years and had multiple losses, it's usually other people who bring it up with me and then go on to offer unsolicited advice like "just relax" 🤷

Kindly, you don’t have to discuss your fertility with anyone unless you want to. I only ever discussed with one friend.

@Optimistic66 oh I hear you!! I snap back at people now, I used to not say anything but I've had enough and I'm standing up for myself now! Scientifically as well there's nothing that backs up "relaxing" as some magic cure for infertility so I sometimes say that back as well, or ask "oh can you show me the scientific journal that shows that works?" 🤣