For Those Not Feeling it Tonight: Woman Up

One of the most challenging elements of infertility is the necessity of putting marital intimacy on a schedule. Once doctors start giving you shots and drugs to open up windows of ovulation, ‘not feeling it’ is just ‘not an option.’ Unless you are into wasting even more time and money.  Still, it is important to understand that even if lovemaking is happening on a schedule, it should still be making love, not just making a baby. Remember to express love and appreciation for each other, even if the timing of the requisite intimacy is not optimal, or must be brief.

Everyone has crazy busy lives, but do your best to prioritize intimacy by allowing more than adequate time for sleeping and for intimacy. If the choice comes down to sleep or sex, once your body and your mind get tired enough, sleep will start to win. It feels odd to have to tell people this, but you really do need to be intimate frequently to have a baby. And you need to be aware of when your ovulation window is, especially if you have a spouse who is frequently out of town.  If one or both of you travel a lot for work, you might need to have the financial discussion of whether you want a baby bad enough to fly one of you to the other in order to hit the right time window.

A final word of advice, make it a point to also be intimate when it does not involve baby-making, when you are sure you are NOT ovulating, so both of you can relax and just enjoy the experience once again. So if all you want to do is just cuddle, it’s not a problem. It sends an important message to hubbie that he is more than a sperm donor. The longer you have been experiencing infertility the more this message will make sense to you.

*Remember- this series of entries is about environmental factors for infertility. Your frequency of intimacy may not have anything to do with your infertility, but you will feel happier!