Mother’s Day Survival Handbook – 5 Tips for Facing the Day When You’re Trying to Conceive

Depending on where you are in your infertility diagnosis or fertility treatment plan, Mother’s Day can be a slightly painful reminder that chokes you up a few times or it can be a devastating event that sends you back under the covers.

Survival Tips For Mother’s Day

If you are having hard time facing up to Mother’s Day this year, we have a few ideas that will help you survive it with your heart and mind intact (mostly, anyway!).

1. Send your friends an Infertility Etiquette Guide. We’ve written in the past about all the annoying things people feel compelled to share with you when they know you’re trying to have a baby. Resolve, one of the leading resources and supports for those facing infertility, has the perfect solution for you: The Infertility Etiquette Guide. Send a link to family and friends, and have them send it to their family and friends, to help eliminate these well-intentioned but completely unnecessary quips once and for all.
2. Host the big event. Some of us need to escape from the world to deal with things, others need to be busy-busy-busy. If you fall into the latter category, consider hosting the brunch, lunch, tea or dinner for your family and/or friends. Maybe being the “hostess with the mostest” will keep you a part of things without having to be the center of any unwanted, sympathetic attention.
3. Do something FUN. Yeah, yeah – mothers are awesome and all that, but they don’t necessarily need to have a big, mushy event in their honor every year. In fact, depending on the mother, you may not be the only one who dreads obligatory Mother’s Day events. Get the women in your family on board to do something totally un-mushy and fun, whether it be ditching the men and heading out for manis and pedis or a day at the spa, riding roller-coasters or embarking on a “girl’s only” bungee jumping adventure. The world is your oyster and odds are it will be everyone’s favorite Mother’s Day yet.
4. Finally make an effort to schedule that fertility counseling appointment. Women and couples diagnosed with infertility can have an uphill journey ahead. Sometimes that journey is only few months long, sometimes the journey takes years before you finally come to some kind of solution or resolution. Either way, it’s easy to keep things contained within yourself and/or for you and your partner to hole-up as an impenetrable unit. This can result in a breakdown of communication, strained relationships with others, a loss of intimacy with your partner – or the inability to handle annual holidays and events that will happen year after year, whether you like them or not. Fertility counseling is a wonderful tool for learning about yourself and to heal and grow as you move forward on your journey.
5. Give yourself an hour or so to be inspired. There are so many roads to becoming a mother – and, as you’re learning – some are much curvier and rockier than others. However, there is ALWAYS hope and you are definitely not alone.

How do you cope with holidays like Mother’s Day in the wake of your fertility diagnosis? Please share your thoughts and suggestions with all of us at RRC.