u/Illustrious_City3971

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to vent about/ask if others struggle with expectations of how you think people will or should act and then spiralling about it?

I struggle when somebody doesn’t react to something the way I do. For example, my wife and I just experienced something that was very devastating and sad related to our IVF family building journey. I was crushed and super outwardly emotional and I KNOW my wife was feeling the same way but she wasn’t as outwardly expressive of her sadness as I was in the moment.

Then I started obsessing over that - how her reaction was different than mine and maybe that means it’s not as important to her or she has some kind of secret ulterior motive or something she’s not saying, etc. Even though I know realistically that people just process and express emotions differently and that none of those things are true, those worries still live in the back of my mind based on her reaction not being the same as mine or the way I expect her to act.

I struggle with this in all sorts of scenarios - if someone says something with a different tone than expected or simply has a different “vibe/energy” about a situation than I do, I start looping through all these negative situations in my mind.

Do others struggle with this? And how do you mediate your expectations of people/confront those reactions? I know it is not realistic to expect that everyone will always act or speak or behave in the way that I for some reason think is the only normal and acceptable way.

Hi all,

My wife (29f) and I (32f) are in the midst of our fertility journey, and were trying for reciprocal IVF. I did an egg retrieval back in March with worse results than we of course hoped for. I ended up with 16 eggs retrieved, 12 mature, 8 fertilized, and 3 blasts. One blast is a 2CC they weren’t able to biopsy for testing (and likely wouldn’t survive thaw), and the other two were sent for testing. We ended up with one that was haploid, and one high quality euploid 5BA.

We’re not happy with how my protocol went - most of my mature follicles were in the 26-32mm range at the time of retrieval which is far past ideal and I believe played a role in affecting the quality. I was on a whack of meds for mild OHSS. But that’s another story.

Anyway, we did our FET of our 5BA to my wife’s uterus on 7/3 (which is also my wife’s birthday) and sadly it did not implant. We are of course devastated as that little 5BA was our beacon of hope for a few months, and that was the only really viable embryo we had.

However, we luckily each have a government funded IVF cycle coming up (we live in Ontario, Canada) in October as the wait list has moved faster than anticipated. We paid for our other cycle out of pocket and with insurance coverage.

At this point, we think we are going to put reciprocal IVF on the back burner and try a full cycle with my wife’s eggs. Her AMH and AFC are higher than mine and we are hopeful for more embryos, and I am nervous to use up the funding when I am not sure how my next ER will go, although I think the primary issue was the protocol itself.

We have always wanted to do rIVF for our first and that has been my dream since before even meeting my wife so it is a bit of an adjustment for me to come to terms with this new plan, but more than anything, we just want to get pregnant and meet our baby. We always planned to use embryos from both of us (same sperm donor) and I sincerely hope we are able to get more embryos from me down the line too.

The time between now and October feels so long but it will be nice to have some time to step out of fertility mode and focus on other parts of life.

Anyway, just a long vent but wondering if anyone else has been in a similar situation or has any advice for a hopefully better next ER?

Hi all,

I am wondering if anyone struggles with feeling like you’re not spending your time correctly so you must be a bad person for not getting things done/enjoying the time enough, etc.?

For example, I am in Canada and it is a holiday long weekend here. I have been in this obsessive loop for two days that I am not spending my holiday weekend correctly and feeling like that makes me a bad person because I don’t know how to enjoy things or be present. I feel like there are so many things on my to do list (errands, gym, answering messages, housework) but then I also feel like maybe I should relax and spend some time on things I enjoy but I know that either way I will feel guilty for either not being productive enough or not enjoying time off work properly (whatever that means).

Worst of all is that I get so stuck in thinking about this that I waste so much time and then I truly haven’t been present at all. Like yesterday morning and this morning, I felt so overwhelmed by this when I woke up that I spent an extra hour laying in bed trying to figure out what to do with the day but nothing feels like the right way to spend time.

I am trying to break that by just getting up and doing SOMETHING to start my day but my head is always spinning about this moral value I place on time and being present and productivity. I would love for once to actually enjoy an extra day off work and not spend the whole day thinking about the right way to enjoy it!