Infertility Grief: Understanding the Stages and Coping With Loss

By: Wendy Wisner

Infertility grief is the emotional response to the loss, uncertainty, and unmet expectations that can come with difficulty conceiving. 

It can affect both individuals and couples, often bringing feelings of sadness, anger, anxiety, isolation, and strain on relationships. Recognizing these feelings, setting boundaries, seeking support, and talking with a therapist may help you to cope with your infertility grief.

What is infertility grief?

What is infertility grief, exactly? Infertility grief refers to the grief people often feel when they are experiencing infertility. Infertility is defined as the inability to get pregnant after 12 months of trying to conceive. About one in eight couples experience infertility, and it affects about 186 million people around the world.

Grief is a common reaction to not being able to conceive a child. The American Psychiatric Association describes the psychological impacts of infertility as a “profound loss and significant life crisis.” People experiencing infertility loss are grieving a life that they may have imagined for themselves for many years. Many people describe it as painful as grieving the physical loss of someone they loved.

Many people living with infertility grief find it painful to be around other couples with children, or around children in general. Infertility grief can be physical as well as emotional. It’s common to experience insomnia, trouble concentrating, and changes in sexual desire and satisfaction.

Most of us think of infertility grief as something impacting women primarily. But male infertility grief is real, too. Additionally, you can experience grief when you’ve been unable to conceive after having one or more successful pregnancies. This is called secondary infertility grief.

Why infertility grief can feel invisible

Infertility grief is often unacknowledged, making people experiencing it feel invisible and unsupported. Not only that, but there’s a stigma attached to not being able to conceive, and many people feel shame around that, so they don’t discuss it openly.

Women, in particular, may feel stigmatized if they aren’t able to conceive a child, because they may see themselves as not meeting societal expectations about becoming a mother. Women may feel like society, their cultures, or their families view them as failures when they face infertility.

Even healthcare providers don’t always acknowledge the mental health impacts of infertility, often not screening their infertility patients for mental health issues like depression, anxiety, or Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

If you are experiencing trauma, support is available. Please see our Get Help Now page for more resources.

Infertility and disenfranchised grief

Infertility and disenfranchised grief often go hand in hand. Disfranchised grief is when a significant loss is not recognized by others or by society as a whole.

For example, when someone dies, we have societal rituals that acknowledge what mourners are going through, such as funerals, wakes, or memorial services. There are also customs surrounding welcoming babies into the world, or caring for someone who is ill or dealing with a serious health condition.

No such rituals exist when it comes to infertility. This can make the feelings of grief and loss all the more intense, because mixed in with the loss is the feeling of not mattering.

The stages of grief in infertility

Many people wonder what the stages of grief in infertility look like. Some people describe infertility grief as something that comes in cycles, as you try each month to get pregnant, or go through fertility treatments.

You may experience waves of hope, uncertainty, and loss each cycle as you wait to find out if you’ve conceived. These highs and lows can be intense, like a rollercoaster of emotions. The distress of cycling through these emotions is often part of what drives infertility grief.

It can also be helpful to consider the well-known five stages of grief, as described by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler Ross. Her theory was that most people experiencing grief go through five stages, which include denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

In infertility grief, this may look like:

• Denial that there is a problem with conceiving, and not wanting to believe a medical diagnosis of infertility from a healthcare provider.
• Anger at yourself, your partner, the medical system, or your body for not working the way you want it to.
• Bargaining, or trying to do whatever you can think of, to make conception work, including trying different diets and treatments and relying on hope, prayer, and magical thinking.
• Depression once it settles in that you’re experiencing infertility, which may include deep sadness, hopelessness, social withdrawal, and trouble eating/sleeping.
• Acceptance of the situation and making peace with the fact that you are experiencing infertility.

It’s important to keep in mind that these stages of grief aren’t linear. Many people will go through the stages out of order, may linger in one stage for a long time, or may skip one of the stages altogether.

Common emotional experiences

Infertility grief isn’t just centered around feelings of sadness and grief. It includes many different emotional experiences. Some of the emotions that you may have may include:

• Stress
• Anxiety
• Symptoms of depression
• Decreased self-esteem
• Loneliness
• Irritability
• Anger
• Emotional numbness
• Confusion about your identity
• Changes in eating and sleeping habits

While grief is a natural human response to the loss that comes with infertility, some people may experience symptoms of depression and anxiety that become so intense that it can affect their daily functioning. 

Suicidal thoughts or thoughts of self-harm are signs of significant emotional distress and should be taken seriously. If you are experiencing symptoms of anxiety, depression, or thoughts of suicide, please reach out to a healthcare professional immediately.

If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Text or call 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. Support is available 24/7.

If you’re experiencing serious symptoms or depression or thoughts of suicide, please reach out to a healthcare professional immediately. 

How infertility grief can affect relationships

Infertility doesn’t just affect people on an individual basis. If you are going through infertility with a significant other, it can have profound impacts on your relationship.

Infertility grief affects relationships in different ways and varies based on your relationship dynamics and how each person in the relationship is reacting to the experience of infertility. For example, you may experience:

• Emotional distance, as you each get drawn deeper into your own feelings of grief.
• Anger, resentment, and blame about how your significant other is reacting (or underreacting).
• Changes in sexual desire and stress around sex.
• Disagreements about how to handle different aspects of infertility, including financial and medical decisions.

How to support your partner

When it comes to managing infertility grief as a couple, you can start by giving grace to yourself and your partner. Infertility is hard, and it’s natural that big feelings are going to come up. It can be upsetting to see your partner experience these feelings. If your partner is processing the experience differently from you, you may feel confused and angry.

Here are some tips for managing this difficult time together:

• Give your partner the time and space to grieve in their own way.
• Remind yourself that grief can look differently for different people, and that we each move through the stages of grief in our own ways,
• Share with your partner what type of support you need (they don’t always know) and ask what type of support they need.

How to cope with infertility grief

Coping with infertility grief involves making conscious choices for how to view your feelings, simple self-care steps, and tapping into helpful resources.

Here are some tips for how to deal with infertility grief:

• Give yourself permission to “feel the feels,” whether that’s sadness, anger, anxiety, irritability, or whatever comes up for you.
• Share your feelings with your significant other, as well as trusted family and friends.
• Tell your friends and family what type of support you think will be helpful, and what type of support won’t work for you.
• Set boundaries around triggering situations, such as baby showers or spending time with pregnant people/new babies. You are allowed to say no as you move through your grief.
• Consider different self-care strategies, including journaling, gentle movement (walking, yoga), or meditation.
• Connect with other people who are living with infertility. You can check RESOLVE for an infertility support group near you.

How a therapist may help with infertility grief

Infertility grief is a natural human response to infertility. But that doesn’t mean you won’t need support as you move through it. It can be meaningful and healing to share your journey with a mental health professional who listens without judgement and who understands that your experience is real and valid.

Infertility grief counseling is especially crucial if your experience of infertility grief is impacting your day-to-day life and making it difficult to function. Likewise, grief that doesn’t lessen in intensity over time, or that is extremely intense, may become complicated grief, a chronic grief condition where grief hangs on and prevents you from living a full life.

BetterHelp therapists can support you in your infertility grief journey, whatever it looks like. BetterHelp therapists can help you honor your emotions, validate your experience, and offer ideas for coping that speak to your unique experience of grief. Therapy happens in the comfort of your own home, which can help you feel at ease as you share these difficult feelings with your therapist.