Babies are on hold. Teaching is brutal the first year, and I have been stressed to the max for multiple reasons. Mostly school, but baby-making is not just hard work, but also super stressful. And you know the "common sense" that stressing out makes it harder to get pregnant, so by stressing out, your problems having babies are YOUR OWN FAULT? It's this horrible cycle of women casting blame at each other, of doctors and husbands (not mine, just in general) and partners (and don't forget strangers on the internet!) taking this already stressful situation and making it so much worse by stripping out every ounce of empathy and smugly insisting that if you just weren't so stressed out, you wouldn't be making yourself infertile.
Turns out that's NOT TRUE (sources in the next post). Can some stressors disrupt ovulation? They sure can! A specific event and a BIG, acute stress can certainly have an affect. Having the flu can do it. Chronic major stressors like hunger or illness or living in a war zone can also be causes. But the much more common "My first three levels of Maslow's Hierarchy are full to bursting, but trying to have a baby and having a job and navigating life in my safe, secure little bubble is HARD, so I'm stressed out" (which is perfectly valid. I fall into this category, myself) level of stress is not going to affect your fertility.
You will hear over and over that it does. Do a google search for "infertility and stress", and everything comes up with the "common" knowledge of how stress obviously keeps you from babies, because you are bad at being a woman, who should be serine and calm at all times. It may not be couched in those terms exactly, but that's the general feeling. I know I don't count as infertile, because we've only been trying for a few months, and I am not trying to bear that cross. However, knowing what I have gone through the last three months, I can only imagine what it is like for women who truly are battling infertility and need to hear this. Hell, I've even gotten the same treatment, that I'm so stressed out about it that I just need to go do some yoga or something, because sheesh! when I was just trying to explain what and how I was feeling.
Invalidating a woman's feelings as, "You're too stressed! Just stop it!" is harmful on many levels. I'd almost go with every level. Here are five specific things
1. It creates a feedback loop of stress.
2. It blames the victim.
3. It only values women based on their ability to have babies, and if you can't, you aren't a good woman.
4. It invalidates the emotions that women are feeling around miscarriages (It still stings when I think too hard about people telling me I didn't have a miscarriage, that I'm over-reacting, that it was all in my head).
5. It perpetuates a myth and leads to our current state of it being so commonly cited on the internet with ZERO sources (much less reliable sources) where everyone just accepts it as true.
Over the next few posts, I will explain each one a little more thoroughly and include the sources and evidence behind my claims in post #1. I will come back and add links as the posts are published.
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