The emotional impact of infertility

Captura Ansietat i fertilitat

This year’s World Health Day is dedicated to depression. Anxiety or even some mild symptoms of depression may also be related to infertility.

This year’s World Health Day is dedicated to depression, a disease that, according to the World Health Organization, affects 300 million people worldwide and can be caused by various factors.

Anxiety or even some mild symptoms of depression may also be related to infertility. When a couple receives such a diagnosis, emotional problems may appear that compromise their well-being, their mood and their self-esteem. In some cases it is necessary to ask for psychological help to become aware of the problem and to be able to face positively an assisted reproduction treatment.

As Dr. Marisa López-Teijón explains in her book ¡Quiero quedarme embarazada ya! (“I want to get pregnant now!”), women with fertility problems may feel lonely, sad and disoriented when they receive this diagnosis. That is why it is very important that they choose a reference clinic, with a broad team of experts to advise and accompany them throughout the treatment, both from the medical and emotional point of view.

According to the Director of Institut Marquès ,”it is also important to involve the partner, stay positive, keep busy and remember that 95% of women who undergo fertility treatment get to be mothers.” To overcome the stress caused by infertility and the treatment phase, another advice given by experts is to take care of the couple relationship, sharing the feelings and emotions, both negative and positive, that can arise at any time.

The hardest moments

Once the fertility treatment has started, two of the most stressful moments appear during the fertilisation and evolution of the embryo in the laboratory and also after the transfer, while waiting to know the result of the pregnancy test (The Two Week Wait).

To reduce the anxiety of all patients during both these periods of time, at Institut Marquès we have developed a series of investigations that have resulted in two innovative devices: the Embryomobile and Babypod.

The Embryomobile is an application that enables expectant parents to “come” into the IVF laboratory and watch their embryos live from home or anywhere else, with full transparency and as they do embryologists themselves, from the moment of fertilisation until they are transferred into the mother’s womb five days later

Babypod is a device capable of emitting sound from the mother’s vagina. A clinical study carried out by Institut Marquès showed that, using it during the Two Week Wait, women reduced their anxiety and felt calmer and even more optimistic, because they had “the feeling of doing something useful to contribute to the correct development of their pregnancy”.