Grieving the timeline you thought you'd have before infertility

If you thought your life would look differently by now since you started along the path of trying to conceive, this episode is for you.

Maybe you thought you’d already be pregnant … you imagined you’d have your baby in your arms… you never suspected things would be this hard.

But instead, here you are …tracking, waiting, hoping, trying… navigating something that feels so uncertain and completely out of your control.

And what doesn’t get spoken about enough… is the grief that comes with that.

Because this isn’t just about getting pregnant. It’s about the heartbreak of realising your life isn’t unfolding in the way you expected.
It’s grieving timelines, milestones, versions of yourself, the comparison to so many of your friends around you. Moments you thought you’d already be living.

And the hardest part? It can feel like a grief you’re not even “allowed” to have… because nothing has technically been lost.

But today, I want to give that feeling a voice.

We’re going to talk about how to process the timeline you thought you’d have… how to hold both grief and hope at the same time… and how to come back into trust, even when things feel impossible.

By the time you finish listening, you'll find out:

• Why it's ok to grieve that your life looks different to what you expected
• How to let go of the timeline of "this has to happen NOW"
• How to find peace in the waiting

EMBRACE THE JOURNEY IS BACK at the end of this month!

This FREE 3-day live training event will show you how to use the practices of Fertility Yoga, Meditation + Breathwork to:

• Support your fertility
• Regulate your menstrual cycle
• Cam your nervous system
• Ease the anxiety of TTC
• And be in the energy of a group of

Thanks for being here on Your Journey to Fertility! When you finish listening, I'd love to hear your biggest takeaway from today’s episode. Take a screenshot of you listening on your device, share it to your Instagram stories and tag me @jen.elementpilatesyoga 

If you're trying to conceive, I have lots of resources to support you:

To grab a copy of my Free Fertility Yoga Guide, click here:

To jump inside the Secret Fertility Shift private podcast series, click here:

To learn more about In Your Element - The Fertility Yoga Experience click here and start using so many of the practices I speak about for yourself.

This program is a guided way to: 

• Sync with your cycle & synchronize your hormones
• Increase success rates through proven, scientific methods
• Regulate your nervous system & make every part of this journey feel easier

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you thought your life would look different by now since you started along the path of trying to conceive, then this episode is for you. Maybe you thought you'd already be pregnant. You imagined you would have your baby in your arms, but you never suspected that things would be this hard. But instead, here you are, tracking, waiting, hoping, trying, navigating something that feels so uncertain and completely out of your control. And what doesn't get spoken about enough is the grief that comes along with all of this. Because this isn't just about getting pregnant. It is about the heartbreak of realizing that your life isn't unfolding in the way that you expected. It is grieving timelines, milestones, versions of yourself, the comparison to so many of your friends around you, all of these moments that you thought you would already be living. And the hardest part is that it can feel like a grief that you are not even allowed to have because nothing has technically been lost. But today I want to give that feeling a voice. We're going to talk about how to process the timeline that you thought you would have and how to hold both grief and hope at the same time. How to come back into trust even when things feel impossible. Welcome to your journey to fertility. This is the podcast that blends science with spirit to give you all the tools you need as you navigate your fertility journey. I'm your host, Jennifer Edmonds, and for the last 15 years I've been helping women on their journeys to motherhood and beyond. I believe that combining the latest scientific research along with the best energetic and mindset practices will help you to avoid putting your life on hold and bring you closer to your baby. Each week you'll learn ways to support your fertility and trust your body so that you can stop stressing that you'll never have your baby and finally walk your path to motherhood. This is the Your Journey to Fertility Podcast. Hello and welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for pressing play and joining me on this episode today. Now I'm I'm sorry about my voice. It seems to be okay if I stick to the like lower notes. As soon as I go up high, it seems to get lost. I had a bit of a throat infection last week and I am recording this the day before. It is meant to go live. So I have just made it. I woke up this morning. I'm like, finally, we are back into recording mode today. So thank you for bearing with me. And I it feels like ages since we have had a proper podcast episode together because last week was the launch of my private secret podcast series called The Secret Fertility Shift. If you haven't already, I would absolutely recommend downloading that and listening to it when you have time. It's an eight-part mini-series of eight little episodes that you can listen to just back to back. You can binge them within a day, but they are just a wonderful reset for anyone who feels really stuck on this journey, needs a reminder that you are on the right path. So I'll pop the link for that down in the show notes. If you have any feedback, I would love to hear from you. Please let me know what you have thought and how it has affected your mindset. But today I want to talk about the grief that comes with the timeline that trying to conceive takes from you and how to reconcile that and how to stop it from constantly running in the background. Because I think that the timing of this journey is something that trips us all up. It is something I hear about from my students all the time. And I relate to this so, so much. As you may already know, if you have followed my journey for a while, I started trying to conceive when I was 33, zero idea that anything would be difficult. And before I knew it, friends who had started trying after me were getting pregnant, and then others started having second babies or were completing their families before I'd even had my first. And I was angry at everyone. I was angry at myself. I was angry at my body for not doing the one thing it seemed like so many people could do without even trying. I was angry at the doctors who couldn't give me answers. I was angry at everyone else around me who got pregnant so easily. And I'm sure I was even angry at my poor husband at some point. He copped a whole bunch of the anger, as I'm so sure so many of our partners do. And if any of this resonates, I just want you to know that nothing about how you are feeling is dramatic or wrong. There is so much to be grieving. The ease that you expected this to happen, the timeline and the plans that you had for your future, the version of pregnancy that felt joyful and easy, and that you wanted to experience pregnancy at the same time as your friends. Especially when you may have been pregnant at the same time as a friend and potentially lost that baby. And that is such a difficult thing to come back from. I think our timelines trip us up so much because you thought you would be announcing pregnancies by now, or second pregnancies, or third. You thought this year would look different. You thought your body would just do this because we are led to believe that that is how things worked. You are grieving something invisible, but that doesn't make it any less real. I did an episode with the wonderful Sally Douglas a few months ago, who's a grief expert, and she spoke about this idea of living with the grief that we can't see, this intangible grief and how people really struggle around us. You know, when you can't see something like, oh, I've lost a grandparent or I've lost a pet. People really struggle to understand that. And so much of what we go through gets held and stuck within our bodies. We need to find ways to help us process it and live through it. I want to start by asking why do we get so stuck on these timelines? Now remember, what our nervous systems love more than anything is predictability. We were told from a young age that getting pregnant would be so easy, right? The biggest problem we'd have is well, you have to be so careful to not get pregnant. This is the biggest worry that you that you have. So when we are told this growing up for so many years, and we see people around us getting pregnant so easily, we assume it'll be that way for us. And without even realizing it, we create this timeline in our head. We create this timeline to feel safe, to feel in control, and to feel certain about the future. And as always with our nervous systems, it always comes back to safety. Your nervous system loves things to be predictable, consistent, and for the majority of your life, you get this. We create this, even from little routines to jobs to what you have for breakfast in the morning. We create this quite easily. And as I said, society reinforces it. We go to school, we get the job, we find the partner, we get married, we have the baby, we buy the house or whatever. But infertility disrupts that linear path. So it's not just the disappointment, it is the loss of perceived control over the whole of your life and the future that you imagined. And that is a very big thing. And as I said, the problem is this intangible, ambiguous grief that we are not taught how to deal with and that those around you do not understand. When there is no clear loss, when no one acknowledges it, and there are no rituals or obvious support circles around us, we get into this place of blame and we get stuck in this idea of, well, I just need to stay positive, but I feel devastated. Other people have it worse. So why do I feel like this? And none of these things are helpful. So please know you do not have to minimize your pain to be grateful for what you already have in your life. And you don't need to constantly feel grateful for what you do have instead of grieving what you don't. So, how can you let go of this timeline? This is where I think we need to start doing a little bit more of the inner work. And, you know, as I talk about so much, manifesting what we want in our lives. It would be so easy if it was just about the vision boards and doing the affirmations and repeating a few things to ourselves in the morning. But it is the deeper work when we start to unpack and unravel what we're going through and some of our deepest fears that really expands your life and opens up to so much possibility. So before we get into that, I want to clarify that letting go of the timeline that you had in your head does not mean giving up on your baby or the future or the life that you dream of. Letting go is releasing these rigid expectations. The timeline will give you a sense of control, but it also creates pressure and a lot of suffering. I hated so much that I put timelines on myself and I did it without even realizing when I was trying to conceive. I would say things like, well, if I'm not pregnant by this date, we'll have to go back to doing IBF again. Well, if I'm not pregnant by the end of the year, then I'm going to have to overhaul my whole treatment plan and find a new doctor. And I've talked about this a few times on the podcast in the past, but when I was trying to conceive uh both of both of my children, but the second journey that was the more difficult and the longer the journey that I had, I had this idea in my mind that I had to be pregnant before we moved back to Australia. I was like, I cannot go back to Sydney and be surrounded by all of my friends from high school who already have their families, and I am still struggling. But why? Why did I, why did I have this timeline in my head? Who put that pressure on me? And the only answer is that I did. There was no one around me telling me, Jenny, you have to do this or your life is going to be ruined. No, it's just that we put so much pressure on ourselves. And I know it is so hard not to listen to everyone around you telling you that, you know, as soon as you turn 35, you're getting old, and every single fertility doctor keeps mentioning that age is the biggest indicator of success. And I feel like they just can't help themselves, can they? It's like, we get it, we know. But timelines are not everything. And we know that people can be more fertile in their late 30s, in their 40s, than they were earlier on in their lives. I am now turn I'm turning 44 uh next week, and my cycle is more regular and consistent now than it ever was when I was in my 20s. But age is not everything, so I want you to just take that off your worry list, even just while you are listening to this episode. And instead, I want to offer you a softer perspective. What if this isn't going wrong? It is just about things going differently. Trusting, not blindly, but with compassion, that things are working out differently. This is not any indicator that you are not meant to be a parent or that what you want in this life isn't meant for you. But what we need to do is find safety in the present moment first and then start to reframe it. You're not releasing the desire of what you want, you're just releasing the when. You can tell the universe what you want and then trust that the how and the when is not up to you. Your journey doesn't have to look like anyone else's to be valid or to be wonderful. So, how do we let go of this timeline that we don't get to have? And I spoke about this so much in the secret podcast series that I released last week. This idea of knowing that the struggle could give you more than you anticipated. Now, I am not saying that you have to be excited about waiting and everything that you have to do in the meantime to bring your baby home, but I have said this before and I will say it again because it is something we need to be reminded of. The hardest things that you go through in your life are your biggest opportunities for growth. And no, you don't have to be grateful for the fact that you need fertility treatments to get pregnant or that it's been such a difficult journey. But we absolutely can reframe them. We can learn from them, and we can start to look at our lives totally differently. It would be best if you could journal out on a few of these. So I'm gonna give you a few statements to think about. And if this is something you're listening to while you're driving or out on a walk, save it and come back to it later. Write these statements and questions down and journal out what comes up for you because chances are you haven't even really stopped to acknowledge exactly what is going on in the background here. First of all, I want you to ask yourself, what did you believe your journey would look like? Before you even met your partner or before you started trying to conceive? Did you assume it would just be so easy and you would have this blissful, wonderful pregnancy and birth, and you would just build your family? If you are grieving the timeline that you didn't get to have, I want you to be clear on what that timeline was so that we can start to unpack it. And the next question is now that you are on a different timeline and things aren't going the way that you wanted, what meaning are you attaching to the fact that it isn't going as planned? What is this saying about you? Is this saying that you're not good enough? That you're not worthy, that you're not ready? What comes up for you when you reframe it in that way? And next, I want you to give voice to the emotions that come up when you realize that things aren't going the way you planned. As we know, without acknowledging emotions that are there, when we push them down, when we shove them back, we ask them to go away, they just keep coming back stronger. So ask yourself what emotions are present for me? When I look at my journey and I realize things aren't working out, is it frustration? Is it anger? Is it jealousy? Allow all of that to be there as well. Just name it. And then lastly, I want you to get really, really petty. It's one of those things where as soon as you get it out of your head and onto a page, it loses its power and control over you. So ask yourself now, what feels unfair about this whole journey? I don't want you just to get really super petty. No one needs to read this. It is just for you. It's so unfair that this person gets to have this and they go out drinking every weekend and I do everything right, and it's so unfair that so and so didn't have to spend thousands of dollars, and now I'm remortgaging my house and get it all out. All of the stuff that is frustrating you, making you angry, making you wish that this wasn't your life. Get all of that out and onto the page. And I want you to think about what happened in the past that didn't go your way, that actually became one of your greatest blessings. I think one of the easiest ways to probably think about that is to bring back to mind ex-boyfriends. Oh my god, imagine if I had, you know, the person I was desperately in love with when I was 18, if I had married him, good grief. Like my life would be a disaster. And just being able to reframe some of the things that in the past you desperately wanted that didn't go your way, but they actually turned out for the better. You might want to write a few of those down. And then how does that make you feel? And you don't even think about those things now. You realize that your life took you on this winding, crazy, wild path for a reason. And I look back now and I think my fertility journey gave me so much that I wouldn't take back. It made me more connected to my body, it made me more self-aware, it made me more compassionate, more connected to my husband, it gave me a a new career path. I want you to always remind yourself in the moments that you feel triggered or overwhelmed, you can say just quietly to yourself, even in uncertainty, I am safe in my body, I trust in my own journey. And if you have a few moments before you go to sleep tonight, I want you to picture the version of you. Fast forward into the future, the version of you that's already holding her baby. And ask how does she feel? And what does she want you to know right now? And settle into her energy as much and as often as you can. Because that is how we quantum leap into what we want. So I hope that this episode has been validating for you. It's such a difficult thing, knowing that this isn't working out the way that we had planned when so much of our life feels in control, and this just doesn't. And maybe this wasn't the timeline that you would have chosen, but again, it doesn't mean that it isn't unfolding in a way that is shaping you, preparing you, and leading you exactly where you are meant to go. So thank you so much for being here and listening to this episode today. If you found it helpful, reach out to me, let me know what you think. I always appreciate your feedback. Share it with someone because you never know who else might be struggling. And if you have 30 seconds today, it would absolutely mean the world to me if you could leave a quick written review or a comment wherever you are listening to this, because that is the best way to get this out to as many people as possible. Oh now, next week on the podcast, we have a big topic. I posted a video on my socials about this a couple of months ago, about secondary infertility, and it just exploded. Like the comments and the the things that people reached out to me to say, and I realized it was something that we haven't spoken about for a very long time. So on the podcast next week, I want to go through the heartache and the unexpected difficulties of secondary infertility. So I hope to see you back next week for that episode. But until then, I am sending you all of my wishes as you continue your own journey to fertility.