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Home › Articles › Personal and Couple Time › Coping with Preconception Worries

Coping with Preconception Worries

Strategies for Coping Until You Test

By Kelly Burgess

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  • If there are mind/body workshops in your area, try one. If not, become familiar with Dr. Alice Domar's mind/body philosophies and techniques for use during your entire cycle. These are explained in Dr. Domar's book Conquering Infertility: Dr. Alice Domar's Mind/Body Guide to Enhancing Fertility and Coping with Infertility (Penguin, reprint ed., 2004).
  • Try guided meditations specific to fertility and conception, such as Jennifer Bloome's CD series Imagery and Meditations for support of a Healthy Cycle (audio CD).
  • Positive thinking is almost a fad philosophy right now with the juggernaut of The Secret, and Leonard does warn against absolute, blind optimism simply because any disappointments may be magnified. However, positive imagery in general may give you a feeling of control that can help you through that difficult two weeks.

Creating a Plan
One of the biggest issues women obsess over during the two-week wait is when to take a home pregnancy test. Dr. George D. Kofinas, the founder and medical director of the Fertility Institute and chief of the section of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at the New York Methodist Hospital, says they give their patients a time when they can start testing, and he recommends against testing any earlier.

"If you test earlier, it's possible to have a false positive," he says. "It takes two weeks to get the hCG [used in some fertility treatments] out of the system. If you test too early, you always have the risk of measuring the pregnancy hormone. The only exception is frozen embryo transfer, but even then there are pitfalls because some patients do not become positive early enough. A few days later they may be positive. For that reason, again, stick with the two weeks in order to avoid those false results."


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