Clomid for Christmas

How to Survive Fertility Treatments During the Holidays

By Teri Brown

This feeling of disloyalty adds to an already painful situation. Couples often feel caught between their need to take care of themselves (by not being around all the children and talk of the children) and the feeling of wanting to please and be a part of their family's holiday traditions and festivities.

Elizabeth Edwardsen of South Portland, Maine, found the holidays very depressing, mostly because of the logistics of trying to do fertility treatments during an extremely busy time of year. "It was very inconvenient because I had to drive to Boston to have follicle-monitoring ultrasounds and blood work done on Christmas because the local facility was closed for the holiday," she says.

Edwardsen, now the mother of a 7-year-old girl, believes that you should do whatever you need to protect yourself during this very emotional and stressful time of life. "If you need to skip someone's holiday party or even your big family gathering because you know half of the guests will be pregnant or carrying babies, skip it," she says. "If you've got gifts to buy, shop online or through catalogs if the holiday cheer at the mall is going to depress you."

Want to see more?

• All I Want for Christmas: Coping with Infertility During the Holidays
• Dollars and Sense: Affording Infertility Treatment
• The Infertility Marketplace: How Success Rates Are Advertised
• Check out our Article Library.
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