IVF: why another season passing can feel so hard

The end of a season can feel particularly hard when you’re going through IVF. Because it’s not just another season ending. It’s another season when you didn’t get pregnant. Another season when you didn’t have the baby you thought you would have by now.

Maybe you remember this time last year, thinking, surely by next year things will be different. Surely IVF will have worked. Surely I’ll be pregnant or even have a baby.

And now another season has arrived, and you’re still waiting.

What might seem like an ordinary change of season to someone else can bring you face to face with the distance between the life you imagined and the one you’re actually living.

You thought life would look different by now

When you’re living with infertility, you may find time passing carries far more weight than it did before.

You might not consciously set deadlines, but you imagine and hope for things to change by a certain point. Being pregnant by Christmas. Having a baby before your next birthday. Spending next summer on maternity leave.

These thoughts can give you something to look forward to during an uncertain and painful time. When you begin IVF, there may be a particular reason to believe that things could finally change. There is treatment, a plan, and the possibility of the pregnancy you have already waited so long for.

But when those imagined milestones arrive, and you’re still not pregnant, you’re left with more than disappointment about the treatment itself. You’re also facing the loss of what you thought this part of your life would look like.

The summer you imagined being pregnant or even spending time with your baby has become another summer of appointments, waiting, difficult decisions or recovering from loss. And now you may be realising that even if treatment works soon, having a baby has moved into another calendar year.

That can be a painful thing to absorb. The future you want keeps being pushed further away, without any reassurance that you will eventually reach it.

The world moves on while you’re still waiting

In summer, particularly, there are so many reminders that time is moving on. Summer ends. A new school year starts. People return from holidays and get back to their routines.

But when you’re going through IVF, your own life can feel anything but normal. You may feel as though you are in a permanent state of painful limbo.

Other people seem to have something definite to move towards. You may struggle to make plans because you don’t know whether you’ll be in treatment, pregnant, recovering from another disappointment or deciding what to do next.

It isn’t necessarily that nothing else is happening in your life. You might be working, seeing friends and managing responsibilities. From the outside, you may look as though you’re carrying on as usual.

But internally, so much can feel unresolved. The question of whether you will become a mother remains unanswered, and it affects how you imagine almost everything that comes next.

That’s one of the most difficult things about a long IVF journey. Time doesn’t stop while you’re waiting.

It’s not only a season ending, but what it means

Another season ending can also bring the weight of previous years into focus.

You may remember how hopeful you felt at the beginning, how much you have been through since, and how often you have had to find a way to keep going without the outcome you wanted.

There may be grief for failed treatment or pregnancies you have lost. But there can also be grief for the time itself: the years spent waiting, the experiences you imagined having, and how much of your life has become organised around trying to have a baby.

These losses can be difficult to explain because there isn’t always a single event for other people to recognise. Nothing new has necessarily happened. But that may be exactly what hurts. Another season has passed, and the thing you most desperately wanted to change still hasn’t.

How therapy can help

If the end of a season feels particularly painful, you don’t need to dismiss it as you being overly sensitive. Going through IVF can really have an impact.

It may not really be about a season ending. It may be about another season passing, another year rapidly disappearing, and the grief of still not being where you so desperately hoped you would be.

Therapy can offer somewhere to talk honestly about this without having to reassure anyone, find a positive angle or pretend you’re coping better than you are.

A therapist who understands infertility and IVF can help you make sense of why this change of season carries so much emotional weight.

That support cannot remove the uncertainty or give you back the time you have spent waiting. But it can help you feel less alone in what you’re carrying, acknowledge what this experience has cost you, and find ways to care for yourself while so much remains unresolved.