Christmas and infertility

[Youngatheart00]

I’m mid IVF cycle so there’s a chance this won’t apply this Christmas, but I feel there’s every chance it will.

How do folk cope with christmas? Year after year I’ve found it harder and harder. So much focus on kids, and families. I just feel like an outsider, when I used to love it.

Trying to prepare to enjoy the season come what may but I’m feeling a sense of dread already. Any tips or perspectives?

Do you have someone to talk to who you can be honest with? That you can say everything you’re feeling? I’d say acknowledge how hard it is to be in your position, don’t fight it.

Then find things that do make you happy, or that you have to really concentrate on and maybe take your mind off it for a while?

It’s very hard when people point out that lots of people are really sad and lonely at Christmas, it doesn’t help you to feel any better.

I've never really had any family at Christmas. My parents were abusive and then died before I was a teenager. We never had settled foster homes, so nobody really celebrated with us... it always felt, at best, that we were "looking in" on other people's Christmases.

I've found that it helps to do things for yourself - I like to go to the Christmas Market, for example, so I do that every year without fail. I spent a few years not really engaging with Christmas parties and specials and things, when it hurt... and then some years, I did my own version of Christmas, with the bits I love and none of the rest. And sometimes I've let other people sort-of envelope me into their families; and that's helped, if it's someone I can be honest with about how I feel. That means I can take ten minutes when I need to, and they don't expect me to be in on all the traditions!

I don't know if any of that helps - what happened to me was nothing like infertility, and none of it might feel relevant - but I hope it offers some ideas, at least

Best of luck for your IVF cycle!

Thank you both, and I’m sorry to hear about your childhood @anchor, I feel very lucky to have had a happy upbringing. When I’m staring down the barrel of something very different it seems to make it all the more harder! Would love to give my parents a grandchild, Christmas just seems an anticlimax without children in the family and I’m torn between trying to enjoy it or shutting myself away entirely.

We had a 7 y/o with us earlier this year who we hoped to adopt. For various reasons he is not with us anymore, and I am not relishing Christmas either

Oh @topcat2014 that sounds very hard. Do you have any other children?

I was going through the same as you last year, we tried for 6 years but luckily am pregnant finally. Last year if someone had said I would be pregnant this year I wouldn't have believed them. I say this to give you hope! So I would go along with this is potentially your last Christmas as a couple without children so get out to busy Christmas markets at night time, drink mulled wine and eat all the nice food. Go to the cinema late to watch a Christmas film and for a drink after, midnight mass, Christmas parties and tell yourself that there is a good chance that everything will be different next year. Do lovely adult Christmas things that won't be possible with children. Good luck with everything and I wish you all the best

I say this to give you hope!

Hope is cruel. Hope keeps you stuck in this nightmare.

I’m thinking of just not doing Christmas this year.

I get how you feel OP. Really do!
I used to love Christmas but since I lost my baby last October (TFMR) and all the fertility crap surrounding that, prior and current, I dislike Christmas now. As you say, seems like it’s all very family/children focused. I often feel like an imposter 😅 and I feel strange about receiving gifts as I feel too old, and I should be centring Christmas on who should’ve been my 6 month old son now. Sadly wasn’t meant to be.

I don’t think there’s any right or wrong way to deal with Christmas, and you should only do what you feel like doing/joining in with.
I wish you all the very best with your IVF cycle x

@youngatheart100 as it happens we do, but still horrendous..

Didn’t put my Christmas tree up for 3 years while doing IVF family and friends wanted me to but I didn’t see the point with no children.. this year will make up for it all as my baby is 14 week old so was worth the wait and forgot about the missed Christmas’s now there just a distant memory

GOOD LUCK ALL 🍀

I'll be testing a few days never Christmas. It will be my 4th transfer (cycle 3, embryo 6&7). I'm not looking forward to it either x