Fertility Counseling in Chicago

What is Fertility Counseling?

Fertility counseling is psychotherapy that supports you emotionally, psychologically, and relationally, at any point on your fertility journey. We provide fertility counseling to individuals and also to couples.

Fertility counseling can focus more specifically on:

• Emotional Support: Addressing feelings of sadness, frustration, guilt, anger, anxiety, or grief related to infertility or pregnancy loss.

• Relationship Strain: Helping couples manage the stress that fertility issues can place on relationships, including communication challenges or differing coping styles.

• Decision-Making: Assisting clients in making difficult decisions about fertility treatments, adoption, surrogacy, or choosing to remain child-free.

• Coping with Medical Interventions: Preparing for the emotional toll of fertility treatments, which can be physically and mentally demanding.

• Self-Esteem and Identity: Addressing issues related to self-worth, identity, and societal or family pressures around having children.

When we work with couples on their fertility journey, we primarily utilize Imago Relationship Therapy, which provides the foundation for couples to talk with each other safely about how they are feeling.

Benefits of Fertility Counseling

Engaging in fertility counseling as an individual or as a couple can have a lot of benefits for your fertility journey. Some that come to mind are below:

• Coping with Grief and Loss: Fertility challenges can lead to feelings of grief and loss, especially after failed treatments or pregnancy loss. Fertility therapy provides a safe space to process these emotions.

• Managing Anxiety and Depression: Fertility struggles can trigger or exacerbate mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, or mood swings. We can help you in develop strategies to manage these emotions.

• Strengthening Relationships: Fertility issues can strain relationships, leading to tension or emotional distance between partners. Fertility counseling encourages open communication, helping couples better understand each other’s needs, fears, and hopes.

• Managing Conflict: It can also help couples resolve conflicts that arise due to differing opinions or feelings about treatment options or other family-building decisions.

• Guidance in Treatment Choices: Fertility counseling helps individuals and couples evaluate their treatment options—such as IVF, IUI, egg/sperm donation, or adoption—with more clarity, ensuring they make informed decisions in line with their values.

• Exploring Alternative Paths: Fertility counseling can help clients explore alternative paths to parenthood or even the decision to live child-free, based on their personal values and emotional well-being.

• Managing Treatment Stress: Fertility treatments are often lengthy, invasive, and uncertain. Therapy helps individuals manage the emotional ups and downs of the process, including coping with the waiting and uncertainty that comes with each step.

• Building Resilience: It helps clients build resilience and healthy coping mechanisms to deal with ongoing disappointment or the long, uncertain path to parenthood.

• Enhancing Self-Esteem: Fertility struggles can sometimes affect one's sense of identity, particularly around traditional ideas of parenthood. Counseling can help individuals reconnect with their self-worth and move beyond feelings of inadequacy or shame.

• Empowerment: Through emotional support and self-exploration, clients often feel more empowered and in control of their choices, even in the face of unpredictable outcomes.

• Navigating Ethical Concerns: Fertility treatments often raise complex ethical, moral, or spiritual questions. A fertility counselor can help individuals and couples navigate these issues in a way that aligns with their values.

• Third-Party Reproduction: Fertility counseling can also guide those considering options like surrogacy or egg/sperm donation, helping them process their feelings about these paths and prepare for the psychological aspects of involving a third party.

• Support During Pregnancy: Counseling is also beneficial during a pregnancy achieved through fertility treatments, as it can bring its own set of emotional challenges, including fear of miscarriage or anxiety about the baby’s health. We also specialize in perinatal/postpartum therapy, as well as parenting counseling, so we can help you as your journey progresses.

• Mental Health Preparation for Parenthood: Fertility counseling helps individuals and couples become more emotionally prepared for the realities of parenthood, especially after a long or difficult fertility journey.