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If you are trying to become pregnant, each menstrual cycle, every month, brings with it a lot of emotions.  

• Stage 1 - In the initial few days of the cycle, you are excited as you are looking forward to ovulation & are planning your strategies to time the intercourse with your partner.  

• Stage 2 - After ovulation when your fertile window is closed, you are in the waiting mode. First, you feel relieved that you have put in the effort & then you start waiting to know whether it has worked or not. Your anxiety keeps increasing as days pass & you move closer to the end of your monthly menstrual cycle. Will I be pregnant this month or not? This question keeps hounding you.

• Stage 3 - At the end of the menstrual cycle, you may skip your period & get to know that you are pregnant. You are happy. But for those women who skip their period not because they have conceived, but due to some health issue, it's not a happy situation to be in. OR for those who were anxiously waiting to conceive in this cycle, but now they get their period. Another month has gone, another cycle to work on & wait. When this happens again & again & again, it leads to a lot of frustration, disappointment & helplessness. You feel stuck, what am I doing wrong? You wonder will this ever work for you, will you ever become a mom? These thoughts are very self-limiting in nature & work against the fertile mindset that we need to create for seeding a new life. 

So how does one get out of this emotional roller coaster? And why is it important to get out of this roller coaster? Let's examine this with the help of an example. 

There are 2 ladies - Ms Smarty & Ms Maddy. They are given a boulder, a large rock, to roll uphill a mountain & if they succeed they get a financial reward that both of them are in dire need of. So, on get-set-go, both start pushing the boulder uphill, initially with a lot of enthusiasm. As time passes, they start getting tired. The boulder is huge, they can’t look past it & they want to know how far off they are from the hilltop, their destination.

Ms Maddy is anxious. She decides to stop & steps aside from the boulder to take a peek at the hilltop. In the process, she loses control of the boulder & it starts rolling downhill. She runs after it but is unable to stop it because it's huge, no one can stop it. She ends up being back at the starting line & has to start all over again. She feels disappointed, frustrated, helpless.

In the meanwhile, let's look at what Ms Smarty is up to. She also decides to stop because she also wants to know how far off she is from the finishing line. But she doesn’t let go of the boulder. She steps aside very carefully without losing hold of the boulder, looks at the hilltop & gets back into her position of strongly holding the boulder. She stays there to take some rest and catches her breath. The boulder doesn’t fall down, it stays firmly where it was. After a while, Ms Smarty starts rolling it uphill again. She’s still feeling enthusiastic because she knows she has covered enough distance & has taken rest too.  

As time passes by Ms Maddy doesn’t learn from her mistakes. She keeps going back to the starting line with her boulder and obviously feels increasingly disappointed helpless, frustrated each time. She’s now praying for a miracle to help her win!

On the other hand, Ms Smarty continues to follow the same strategy. She halts every now & then, takes rest, takes a cautious peek at the destination & continues moving forward. Beyond a point, she is very sure she’s about to reach the hilltop. So she doesn’t even need to take a peek anymore. She just knows she will reach. Her entire experience is one that demonstrates calm, confidence, fruitful effort & she enjoys the race.

Who would you like to be in your fertility journey - Ms Smarty or Ms Maddy? If your answer is Ms Smarty, let's see how you can enjoy your fertility journey & get rid of the emotional rollercoaster. How you can take charge of your emotions in a constructive manner & create fertile thoughts only- no fear, no anxiety or any negative emotion. Here are 3 things you have to do - 

1. Be well informed about your reproductive health status & keep taking the right steps consistently to meet your fertility goals

Let's assume your menstrual cycle is out of whack due to PCOS or other hormonal imbalance. You first need to fix that by embracing the fertility square. Once you do that, the anxiety of conceiving / not conceiving goes out of the window because planning a baby is step 2, you know you have to fix your health first.  

In the other scenario, where menstruation is not an issue - don’t feel disappointed when you get a period at the end of a cycle where you were trying to conceive. Menstruating is one good sign that shows your reproductive system is working fine. You got your period, but also look at the other signs - 

• Are you getting premenstrual syndrome? - bloating/heaviness in the lower pelvic area, irritability, sore breasts? Different women get different premenstrual symptoms.

• Are your periods painful & scanty or heavy & clotty? 

If your answer to any of these is yes, you still need to work on your reproductive health. Don’t let go of the fertility square, keep finding the missing links & keep working on them. 

If you are in sync with your reproductive health status, you will not have any unreasonable expectations about conceiving. And when you keep making consistent efforts to improve your health, you will experience changes in your body & that will make you feel confident, it will automatically remove negative emotions

2. Express gratitude to your body

There is so much work that goes on in our body. How about taking a moment to acknowledge it, appreciate it? Don’t you think it will motivate your body to do more for you?

For eg - The next time you get your period when you were hoping not to get it, I want you to shift your awareness from feeling disappointed about not getting pregnant to feeling happy that your body is working well. So, next time you get your period, close your eyes, join your hands, express gratitude to your body by saying this small prayer - 

Dear body, I am so grateful to you for giving me the last monthly cycle & the next one & more in future. It gives us an opportunity to seed a new life. I have full faith in you. When you decide we are ready to conceive, we will conceive.  I promise I’ll continue to nourish you well with the right food, air & thoughts. 

This is the gratitude prayer, keep it handy. You can express gratitude to your reproductive system every day. You can express gratitude to any part of your menstrual cycle. For eg - You could express gratitude for ovulation. Write your own gratitude prayer.

3. Establish gold, silver & bronze goals

Sometimes you may feel stuck in your fertility journey. You may feel that no matter what you do, things are not moving. You may feel demotivated to take any health actions from the fertility square. Well, it's absolutely normal to feel this way & it's fine to let go of it sometimes. However, even in these circumstances, I want you to continue pursuing your bronze goals.

What are bronze goals? These are your health goals/actions which are very easy for you to do. For eg - some people find it very easy to be just on fruits till noon. They can always follow this goal, even when they are not in the best of spirits. For you, the bronze goal could be going for a walk regularly or doing meditation regularly. Find your bronze goals & stick to them always. 

The benefit will be that with time when you come out of this ‘feeling low, feeling stuck’ zone, you will come out stronger. You will not feel "oh my god I haven’t been doing anything". You will know the bronze base was always there, so you don’t have to start from scratch again. You have to keep adding on the silver goals & then the gold ones, which you think are the most difficult for you to do. 

Summary
To summarise- you need to get out of the emotional roller coaster & there are 3 ways to do it -  

1. Be well informed about your reproductive health status & keep taking the right steps consistently to meet your fertility goals

2. Express gratitude to your body

3. Establish gold, silver & bronze goals. Stick to the bronze health goals under all circumstances. Keep adding in silver & gold goals.

As you stabilize your emotions, you create a more fertile mindset & physical body as well. Please practice this & I’m sure this will help you in conception.

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(About Anchal Kapur - Anchal struggled with infertility in 2014, she was under heavy medication for hormonal imbalance & was en route to IVF.  But adopting a Natural Lifestyle helped her attain motherhood naturally. She is a Lifestyle Medicine Coach from Hippocrates Health Institute, US & a Nature Cure health coach from the International Institute of Mahayoga & Natural Hygiene, US. She has conceived an e-learning program ‘Boost Fertility Naturally’ where she educates women on diet & lifestyle to improve their reproductive health. YOU CAN JOIN ‘BOOST FERTILITY NATURALLY’ HERE).

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