The Link Between Stress and Inability to Conceive

If you’re having a hard time getting pregnant, you may hear this statement being repeated to you: “Stop stressing about it!”. Although this can feel insulting, there’s a kernel of truth to it, for stress CAN interfere with conception.

Stress does what?

Stress can affect the functioning of the hypothalamus — the gland in the brain that regulates your appetite and emotions, as well as the hormones that tell your ovaries to release eggs. If you’re stressed out, you may ovulate later in your cycle or not at all. Worse off is, if you’re only having sex around day 14, thinking that you’re about to ovulate, you may miss your opportunity to conceive.

Sudden vs Constant

It’s important to differentiate between constant and sudden stress. If your stress level is high but fairly consistent, your body will likely acclimate to it and you’ll probably still ovulate each cycle. It’s sudden stress — such as an accident or a death in the family — that can throw your cycle off and interfere with ovulation.

Of course, this varies from woman to woman. Some women find that even a trip out of town can delay ovulation. Others have found that a severely traumatic incident didn’t impact their cycle at all.

Stress = Change

It’s also important to remember that stress isn’t only a reaction to something negative. Positive stress can also affect your cycle, causing you to ovulate later or not at all. Brides often report strange cycles because they’re happily stressed about their weddings.

Rethink your attitude

Thinking “everybody else gets pregnant so easily” only causes distress. Instead, try to counter any negativity with positive coping statements:

“If getting pregnant was so easy, there wouldn’t be fertility clinics.” Recognize pessimistic thinking and practice forming a response that is more realistic.

When anxiety gets the better of you

For some couples, the stress of actually undergoing infertility treatments can be so great it can stop even the most successful procedures from working.

Dorothy Greenfeld, MSW, director of behavioral services at the Yale Fertility Center of Yale University once stated, “The whole process of undergoing fertility treatment is pretty nerve racking, partly because it’s a series of hurdles that must be jumped at each step of the way. It’s a period of time that in and of itself is very stressful.”

So, if one already has problems with stress, the treatments themselves can definitely turn the tension level up a notch or two.

Bodily clues

If you’re trying to get pregnant and you’re under stress, your cervical fluid may give you a warning that something’s amiss. Rather than noticing increasing cervical fluid wetness as you approach ovulation, you might find patches of wetness interspersed with dry days. It’s as if your body is trying to ovulate, but the stress continues to delay it.

However, while stress may impact when you ovulate, there is still a chance of pregnancy, as long as you know how to identify when ovulation is about to occur by charting your cervical fluid.

You’ll be able to confirm when you have indeed ovulated by tracking your basal body temperature. You should see a sustained rise about a day after ovulation, lasting about 12 to 16 days.

The delayed ovulation simply lengthens your entire cycle. It doesn’t shorten the luteal phase — typically lasting 12 to 16 days after ovulation to the start of your next menstrual period. This is important because a short luteal phase has been linked to early miscarriage.

Stress and Male Infertility

According to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, in around 40% of infertile couples, the male partner is the sole cause or contributing cause of infertility.

As bad as it sounds, the question to ask here is what is the cause for this?

Past research has associated stress in men with a number of health problems, including heart disease, asthma, obesity and depression. One study even suggests that stress can reduce sperm and semen quality, which could have implications for male fertility.

In a more liberal and non-medical sense, stress, such as work stress in a high-pressured job, commitments and worries can also cause a man’s energy level to dip, making him less likely to have the libido or urge to jump into bed with you to make a baby. A fertility expert, in any case, should be able to help you come to the right conclusion on why a man can’t get his partner pregnant after several attempts.

Life stress ‘led to lower semen quality’

Studies have found that men who experienced two or more stressful life events in the past year had a lower percentage of sperm motility and a lower percentage of sperm of normal morphology, compared with men who did not experience any stressful life events