If you're in the middle of IVF, or you've been through it, you already know that no one really prepares you for how it feels.

They prepare you for the injections, the scans, the appointments. They give you leaflets about the process and percentages about success rates. But nobody sits you down and tells you about the rest of it. The part that happens on the inside.

I know, because I've been there.

The loneliness nobody talks about

IVF can be one of the loneliest experiences of your life, even when you're surrounded by people who love you. Because unless someone has been through it, they don't really understand.

They can't understand the way hope and despair can exist in the same moment.

The way a single phone call from a clinic can change the entire texture of your day. The way you can feel completely consumed by something you can't talk about at work, at family dinners, at the school gate.

You keep going. Life keeps going. And somehow that makes it lonelier.

The hope and the fear at every stage

IVF isn't one experience. It's a series of them. Each stage brings its own particular mixture of hope and terror.

The stimulation, the egg collection, the fertilisation call, the transfer, the wait. Each one is its own cliff edge. Each one asks you to hope again, even when hoping feels dangerous.

And if you're lucky enough to get embryos, you already know how attached you become. Those cells are not just cells. They are possibility. They are everything.

The shame and the feeling of being broken

Nobody talks enough about the shame. The persistent feeling that your body has failed you. That you are somehow less than. That other people do this naturally, easily, without even trying, and you cannot.

The jealousy of pregnancy announcements. The avoiding of baby showers. The triggers that appear everywhere, adverts, conversations, Instagram, a stranger's pram in a supermarket.

The feeling that you are not a real woman. That you are broken.

You are not broken. But I understand why it feels that way.

If you're carrying grief that doesn't have a name, you might find this helpful.

The impact on everything else

IVF doesn't stay in the clinic. It comes home with you. It sits at the dinner table. It lies awake with you at 3am.

It strains relationships, not because love isn't there, but because this kind of pressure and grief is hard to carry together. Partners experience it differently.

Communication breaks down. You can feel alone even with the person who is going through it alongside you.

And then there are the platitudes. "Just relax." "It'll happen when you stop thinking about it." "Have you tried acupuncture?"

People mean well. But those words can land like a dismissal of everything you're carrying.

When it works and the fear doesn't stop

If it works, you might expect to feel pure joy. And you might. But for many people who have been through loss or repeated failed cycles, a positive test brings a different kind of fear.

The wait for the scan. The inability to believe it's real. The terror of attachment. The grief of previous cycles sitting alongside the hope of this one.

Nobody prepares you for that either.

You don't have to carry this alone.

I work with people navigating fertility struggles and IVF as a counsellor, and as someone who has been through it myself. I understand the complexity of this experience in a way that goes beyond the clinical.

I know what it feels like when the earth collapses beneath you. When you're building a new foundation, brick by broken brick, not knowing if it will hold.

And I know how much it matters to have someone who will stand in the rubble with you, not to fix it or rush you through it, but to sit with the grief, the rage and the depth of it all.

How I can help

If you're finding IVF overwhelming, isolating or affecting your mental health, relationships or sense of self, counselling can help.

You deserve a space where all of this is welcome, the hope, the despair, the shame, the fear, and everything in between.

You are seen. You don't have to walk this alone.

I offer in-person sessions in Worthing and online sessions across the UK. If you'd like to find out more, I'd love to hear from you.