The pain of hope during IVF

People often talk about how hard IVF is because of the disappointment they may experience throughout the journey. The lack of fertilisation. The failed cycles. The negative pregnancy tests. The losses.

And of course, those moments are devastating. But one of the hardest parts of IVF is often what comes before all of that. Something which starts out feeling positive, but changes over time – hope.

At the beginning, hope can feel like the thing that carries you through. It gets you through the injections, the appointments, the scans, the waiting. It allows you to believe that maybe all of this might finally lead somewhere.

Without hope, most people feel like they cannot continue with IVF, but when treatment becomes prolonged, hope often starts to change shape. It stops feeling simple. Or positive. Or safe. Instead, it can start to feel frightening and difficult.

The emotional crash that so often follows hope

One of the exhausting realities of IVF is that you are not simply coping with disappointment. You are repeatedly being asked to emotionally invest yourself in uncertainty. To open yourself up again and again.

But that is the process, so you do what needs to be done. You allow yourself to believe maybe this cycle will be different. Maybe this embryo will be the one. Maybe this phone call will finally bring good news.

You picture what life could look like when it all works out. You imagine finally being able to relax again. Until, in an instant, you are back there again. Every cycle carries the weight of the ones before it. The hope that collapsed. The grief that followed. The fear of finding yourself back in that same place again.

Until one day, you may find it is not only the disappointment and loss itself that hurts. It is the process of allowing yourself to hope in the first place. The emotional investment. The vulnerability of believing again. Knowing what it might cost you if things fall apart.

When hope and fear become linked

This is something many might struggle with during IVF. After a while, your nervous system starts remembering the painful emotions that follow hope.

So even positive moments can begin to feel complicated. A good scan. A promising update. A positive test. Instead of relief, you may immediately feel fear. Fear of loss. Fear of things changing. Fear of allowing yourself to feel too happy before it is safe.

For some, hope starts to feel less like comfort and more like exposure. Like opening yourself back up to pain again, and yet part of you still feels you need hope in order to continue. It is a very complicated and difficult place to find yourself.

Coping with the emotional reality of complicated hope

Dealing with this on your own can be hard. And it is likely most people in your support network don't really understand, unless they have been through it too.

This is where therapy can be helpful. Therapy cannot remove the uncertainty of IVF, or the pain and loss, but it can offer somewhere to be honest about how emotionally complicated this experience is for you, and for you to be supported through it.

Somewhere, you do not have to force positivity, minimise how hard this has become or pretend hope still feels uncomplicated. Therapy provides the space to express all of these thoughts and feelings openly, without judgement.

And when a therapist truly understands the reality of IVF and infertility, it can feel very different from having to explain or justify why this experience has affected you so deeply. There can be something incredibly validating about not having to explain the emotional reality of IVF from the beginning. The uncertainty. The repeated disappointment. The way hope and fear can end up existing side by side for months or even years.

Particularly when that understanding comes not only from professional experience of working with IVF and infertility, but from a therapist with lived experience of it too. Because during IVF, feeling understood is not a small thing. It can make the weight of this journey feel far less lonely and a bit easier to get through.