I need my body and I don't like my body at the exact same time

Infertility brings up a lot of feelings toward your body.

The Bradley University Body Project does a good job at outlining the research on the topic of infertility and your body. They show that during infertility you may feel the following ways toward your body. 👇

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• Powerless. They feel that they are no longer in control of their bodies, and they feel powerless when it comes to decisions about when they will become parents or when they will be intimate (Dunkel-Schetter & Lobel, 1991).
• Broken or disabled. Some infertile women have reported feeling empty or broken, describing their bodies as “defective machines” (Clarke, Martin-Matthews, & Matthews, 2006). While this perception of the body can be painful enough when first diagnosed, infertility treatments tend to perpetuate and intensify this feeling. Women's bodies are typically the focus of fertility treatments, and many women come to feel a sense of alienation from their own bodies, as the inner workings of what was once her private body are now described in medical terminology and exposed to unfamiliar, invasive procedures.
• “Hollow” or incomplete. 63% of women interviewed in a study by Clarke, Martin-Matthews, and Matthews (2006) expressed the opinion that the ability to bear children is necessary for someone to be a “full-fledged woman,” and those who are infertile feel that it is not only their bodies that are incomplete, but also their sense of self.
• Responsible. Infertile women tend to hold the decision-making authority in regard to treatment, which adds a considerable amount of stress. Women's bodies are usually given more intensive medical treatments, often even when the man is the sole reason for the couple's infertility. Therefore, many couples claim that the decision to either continue or end treatment should be up to the woman, as it is her body that needs to be “fixed” (Clarke, Martin-Matthews, & Matthews, 2006).

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We asked our social media following to describe how infertility makes you feel toward your body. Here is what everyone said. 👇

1. My Body is a Failure: 24.14%
2. My Body is a Disappointment: 18.97%
3. Frustration Toward Body: 17.24%
4. My Body is Broken: 15.52%
5. My Body Betrayed Me: 13.79%
6. Other: 10.34%

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