Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Trying to relax when TTC is shit advice

114 replies

postingfortraffichere · 12/09/2021 22:26

I hear so many people say this. 'Just relax' it happened for us as soon as we started to 'relax'.

Now I understand the sentiment behind it but I really don't know how people think I can just 'forget' that it's the tww and forget to remember ovulation and keep alcohol intake low etc.

It's just annoying advice.

Did anyone not 'relax' and still manage to conceive? Because I find 'forgetting about it' impossible.

OP posts:
TheWayTheLightFalls · 13/09/2021 08:45

I think there's a difference between a couple who've been "trying" for two minutes before the woman (usually) whips out ovulation charts, thermometers, put the bloke on a green juice regime etc etc, and those who aren't pregnant after a year or more of regular sex. The trouble is we often don't know which is which in casual conversation, so best not to wade in to other people's love lives.

user1471462428 · 13/09/2021 09:16

@Avenueofcherryblossom I used to point that out to the people telling me to relax… I eventually got pregnant after surgical intervention but I heard all kinds of bullshit before including from a GP that infertility is a mental health issue. I got unbelievably dismissed and lost a lot of confidence in health professionals as a result.

Frazzled2207 · 13/09/2021 09:20

It is totally useless. However. anecdotally for me it worked.
Dc1 took 2 years to conceive, lots and lots of stress and various further investigations etc

When it came to dc2 we stopped using contraception but weren’t actively “trying” at all-
assumed it wouldn’t happen for years. Two weeks later….

Mumoblue · 13/09/2021 09:20

A woman at work told me “Oh it’ll happen just when you stop trying!” - I wanted to snap at her “Do you know how babies are made?? How would it happen if I stopped trying?!”

It took me 3 years and 2 early losses to get my son and if it’s taught me anything it’s taught me to be QUIETLY supportive of anyone trying, and to not make assumptions.

InTheNightWeWillWish · 13/09/2021 09:24

The idea that tracking ovulation and your cycles introduces stress is true for some women. For some women, they feel they need the control. My periods were regular until we decided to TTC, then they decided to just do whatever they wanted. Not tracking in that situation was more stressful than not knowing when to expect my period and doing (negative) pregnancy test after pregnancy test. I was able to spot that temping wasn’t for me and wasn’t helping me and I stopped that after two months. However, using OPKs from month 2 helped me feel as in control of the situation as I could.

I did actually get pregnant on the month I stopped using OPKs but it wasn’t because I was relaxed. I had no idea when my period was due and even though I’d been paying attention to my body during ovulation for months, I didn’t see the usual signs of ovulation that month. I was stressed because I thought I hadn’t ovulated at all, had no idea when my period would decide to show up. As a result, I was a raging bitch for the whole month because I was so angry my body had just decided to go off the rails for no apparent reason when we wanted to TTC. Maybe you should just try being a complete bitch and telling everyone to fuck off for a month? Wink None of the advice worked for us the month I got pregnant - we had very little sex (roughly every 5-7 days), we had also both introduced alcohol back into our diets after doing dry January. Fingers crossed you get a BFP soon.

brokenbiscuitsx · 13/09/2021 09:26

I agree OP it’s shot advice. As well as making it sound easy, like something that just happens as soon as you ‘relax’ it also has a sense of blame. You’re not relaxing it’s your fault!

It’s up there with a comment I received from someone who was all about manifesting their future (you can manifest anything into your life apparently!) apparently I couldn’t be manifesting this enough 🤬

FrangipanFlower · 13/09/2021 10:04

Oh I’ve forgotten what my SIL said to me - she’d done some course in hypnotherapy and was touting one of her ‘services’ as helping women with fertility issues. Apparently I wasn’t getting pregnant because I didn’t want a baby yet deep down.

CounsellorTroi · 13/09/2021 10:34

Yes it is infuriating advice. For the first year I was ttc I didn’t worry about it. I knew it could take a while and was sure it would happen eventually. Except it didn’t. We went on loads of nice holidays too.

YouMeandtheSpew · 13/09/2021 10:38

It’s such a cliche - up there on the bingo card of ‘shit things to say to a person who’s struggling to conceive’, along with ‘you can always just adopt!’ (Because adoption just involves going to the baby shop and picking one you like).

LincolnshireLassInLondon · 13/09/2021 10:46

I hear you, OP! It is infuriating advice and it's never said to the man, which makes it yet more infuriating.

I am now going to be really annoying myself and give unsolicited (but hopefully helpful) advice... check out BFN podcast on Spotify. They have lots of funny things to say about "just relax" and "you can always adopt" advice and also some genuinely useful stuff about looking after yourself whilst TTC.

Good luck!

BabyLeaf · 13/09/2021 10:46

Of course it's shit advice. There is some evidence that stress can reduce fertility, but it's not like you can turn stress off. Wanting a baby and the process of trying for one, waiting to see if it'll happen, dealing with the uncertainty, months passing by without a positive test, possibly dealing with losses, IS inherently stressful, and being told to relax about it is about as helpful as telling someone who's upset to 'calm down'.

People conceive through rape, during wars, during natural disasters, while being held captive.

The most annoying is the anecdotes about someone's friend who was incredibly stressed about TTC, somehow stopped stressing about it, and then magically fell pregnant. Pure confirmation bias.

I don't mind it SO much if someone is giving actual practical advice, for example an alternative mindset to consider, but the whole 'try to relax' thing is insulting.

Here's a personal anecdote: I was incredibly unrelaxed about TTC, I was really concerned about having only one tube and stage IV endometriosis. From the get go I had zero chill about getting pregnant, used OPKs from day one, had scheduled sex around ovulation, took prenatals, used a tracking app. And got pregnant immediately. I was the opposite of relaxed, I wanted a baby yesterday and was desperately worried in case it wouldn't happen for me. None of what was going on in my mind mattered, conceiving is most of the time absolute pure luck, you can get the sperm to where the egg is at the right time (which isn't doable for everyone) but the rest is up to chance. People who like to talk about how relaxing and a positive mindset helps tend to believe that they can somehow will themselves into a pregnancy and have more control over it than they actually do. It's comforting. More comforting than recognising that it's pot luck whether you end up with a baby or your friend doesn't.

Jeds55 · 13/09/2021 10:48

Totally agree with all, such pointless and infuriating 'advice'. If it's got to the stage that you're discussing ttc with friend/doctor/consultant you're obviously further along in the process than you thought you'd be and already quite unrelaxed about it.
Total bollocks, we've been on a long ttc journey. Now pregnant with second and also had the 'you should be grateful with dd' and 'relax' after 4 mc when stressed in early pregnancy. People talk shite.

CounsellorTroi · 13/09/2021 10:51

I always think we wouldn’t need the pill if stress could really stop you getting pregnant!

randomsabreuse · 13/09/2021 10:52

Relax is the wrong word but there's an element of of trying to control things you can control and not trying to control things you can't.

You can control your diet, sleep, alcohol consumption but trying to control your partner is a recipe for stress! Likewise work/life will happen - DH broke his arm right after we started TTC and I was initially so cross we'd have to delay until he was healed (would not admit this in real life) and had to make myself move on from being angry with the situation to something more constructive and be less of selfish person about it!

ChameleonKola · 13/09/2021 10:53

@gogohm

There's two angles from this - from a medical perspective you need to approach your gp after the appropriate amount of time (typically 6months or a year depending on your age) and go through the tests they suggest etc but from a lay perspective hearing people planning to do temperature charts, ovulation monitoring etc before they even start to ttc would prompt me to say just relax and enjoy having lots of sex!
I think there's a misconception though that every couple can or wants to 'enjoy having lots of sex'. People's sex drives are variables. Many, many happy longterm couples have sex infrequently and would struggle to fall pregnant if they just went along with their usual sex frequency, and wouldn't enjoy feeling forced to have sex every couple of days to TTC. Forced sex because you want to get pregnant is rarely enjoyable for anyone.

Plus once you have it in your mind that you're trying, sex becomes something different for most people. It's no longer purely for enjoyment, it becomes very difficult not to have it at the forefront of your mind as a woman, you know after all whether your period has arrived or not, where you are in your cycle.

Not to mention the fact that many people experience pain with sex and so having lots of sex is the opposite of enjoyable or relaxing.

I'm all for people going into TTC with a game plan and deciding to try and target ovulation if they can, that's what we did. I was ready for a baby. I wanted to make sure that if I didn't get pregnant in a given month it was because it wasn't happening for us, not because we'd missed our chance by not having sex at the right time. It was the right approach for us and I was a lot more relaxed knowing that I was having sex at the right time and the rest was down to luck.

I don't mean to sound insulting but I find the 'relax and enjoy the sex!' advice to be quite patronising and insensitive.

Bells3032 · 13/09/2021 10:56

haha i got this a lot when i told my family i was pregnant. We had done two rounds of egg freezing for IVF (we had never tried to conceive naturally due to DH's past cancer) and were isolating for a third round with a transfer planned. I had never been so stressed in my life the week we conceived. I was prepping for this round which would be my first ever try at getting pregnant (and all that it entailed), i was isolating just as the Covid restrictions were lifting and I was climbing up the walls and I was prepping to go through what was a very stressful 3 weeks for the 3rd time in less than 6 months.

Started the IVF, had a few days of meds and didn't respond. Turned out I was pregnant naturally. It was bonkers. and everyone said to me "oh it was obv because you were more relaxed" and I was like "one never been so stressed and two didn't know me relaxing could increase DH's sperm count".

it's a redic thing to say

Dozer · 13/09/2021 10:56

Infertility bingo. Sad

Unsolicited opinions or ‘advice’ on others’ personal business is rude and annoying in general, but where there are difficult emotions involved it goes well beyond ‘annoying’!

CounsellorTroi · 13/09/2021 10:58

There's two angles from this - from a medical perspective you need to approach your gp after the appropriate amount of time (typically 6months or a year depending on your age) and go through the tests they suggest etc but from a lay perspective hearing people planning to do temperature charts, ovulation monitoring etc before they even start to ttc would prompt me to say just relax and enjoy having lots of sex!

Somebody said to me ”at least you can have lots of fun trying!” The problem with that is that persistent, longer term infertility plays havoc with your libido. It starts to feel li,e a pointless chore. You don’t feel like having sex and you feel guilty that you don’t and that you don’t really deserve a baby.

Moonbabysmum · 13/09/2021 11:01

I guess I'm approaching this from the very fortunate position of someone who has quite a high sex drive and who was lucky enough to get pregnant quite quickly.

If someone had been ttc for a while, or if there is a time limit (say the man is going on a military deployment in 3m), or if age is going to make getting pregnant difficult, i totally understand all the charting, and the ovulation sticks etc.

But for the average couple, who are just starting out, who have regular sex, I do find it a bit odd personally where they jump straight to that reseller then just continuing as usual, but without contraception, and just enjoying an my extra sex.

Each to their own though. If it makes someone feel happier to chart, then go for it.

Moonbabysmum · 13/09/2021 11:03

reseller= i don't even know what autocorrect did there 😂

brokenbiscuitsx · 13/09/2021 11:10

@CounsellorTroi

There's two angles from this - from a medical perspective you need to approach your gp after the appropriate amount of time (typically 6months or a year depending on your age) and go through the tests they suggest etc but from a lay perspective hearing people planning to do temperature charts, ovulation monitoring etc before they even start to ttc would prompt me to say just relax and enjoy having lots of sex!

Somebody said to me ”at least you can have lots of fun trying!” The problem with that is that persistent, longer term infertility plays havoc with your libido. It starts to feel li,e a pointless chore. You don’t feel like having sex and you feel guilty that you don’t and that you don’t really deserve a baby.

This!!! I’m hormonal this morning but reading this has me welling up, it’s so true.
Janey3090 · 13/09/2021 11:21

Totally agree OP. Currently TTC baby #1 and have been doing so for a while. Got a call with the doctors later to investigate my very short luteal phase and reasons behind it.

All friends/family keep saying to me is 'if you relax it will happen, that's what happened with me blah blah'. May sound harsh but I honestly just want to tell them to shut up!

Fupoffyagrasshole · 13/09/2021 11:25

I did find it helped getting rid of the ovulation sticks and removing the app I had on my phone though for a while so I wasn’t obsessing over it though !!

minipie · 13/09/2021 11:29

If I’d “just relaxed” then I never would have found out about my underactive thyroid and either would never have got pregnant, or would have got pregnant but put my baby at significant risk of developmental damage from having an untreated thyroid problem.

It’s such bad advice on so many levels.

readingismycardio · 13/09/2021 17:29

Completely agree! So so so crappy!!! Together with the "when are you gonna have a child?". People are so weird and intrusive.

We are TTC now, I have pcos, and I take duphaston to have regular periods and make sure it's easier to know when I ovulate. No one knows we TTC (except my mother). Easier this way. Hoping this month or next month will be the lucky one... it's draining