Welcome to Her Fertility, the podcast for women navigating infertility who want to feel like themselves again while they do it. I'm your host, Jess Tims, researcher, educator, and somatic practitioner, and I've been exactly where you are. I know what it feels like to be in the waiting, in the not knowing, in the relentless hope and grief of this journey, and I know there is a way to move through it fully alive without losing yourself in the process.
Every week, I bring you honest conversations, real research, and the kind of support your clinic can't prescribe. This is Her Fertility. Come on in.
Welcome back to the Her Fertility Podcast. I am so grateful that you are here, and this Dear Jess question is one that really deeply touches my heart, uh, because I identify with it from my own fertility journey. And I know that there's probably a lot of people listening who immediately understand this question.
And it says, "Dear Jess, why don't I trust my body anymore?" And regardless of how long you've been on your fertility journey, there's likely an element of distrust starting to build because infertility can completely change your relationship with your body. You know, before infertility, maybe you didn't really think much about your body.
Like, your period came, you ovulated, you had sex, you exercised, you ate, you slept, but your body was just, like, your body. And then you started to try to get pregnant, and suddenly you're analyzing everything. You're watching everything. You're tracking your cervical mucus, your temperatures. You're peeing on ovulation strips.
You're analyzing your symptoms. You're watching for implantation signs. You're waiting for your period. And eventually, especially if pregnancy isn't happening or if you've experienced pregnancy loss or a failed treatment or maybe you have another fertility diagnosis, your body can start feeling less like a place that is safe and more like the thing that's the source of the problem And it becomes this internal battle with yourself in a very physical way.
So when we talk about, like, hard things, a lot of times it's, like, an internal battle of the mind. But with infertility, we're talking about an internal battle of both the body and the mind. And at some point you might realize, "I don't trust my body anymore." And so in this episode, I wanna talk about why that happens, and more importantly, about rebuilding that trust and what that actually looks like when you're navigating infertility, because you can't just simply deny that that's happening.
So first, I don't want you to think that your body suddenly became untrustworthy. And I think that this distinction matters because infertility can make it really feel like your body has betrayed you. And maybe you've thought, like, "Why can't my body do this? Why does everyone else's body seem to know what to do?
Why can't I trust mine to get pregnant?" And especially if you've experienced pregnancy loss, that feeling can become even more complicated, because you've experienced pregnancy and getting pregnant, and maybe you started to believe that you were going to have a baby, and then something happened that you never wanted or expected.
And so that can really change the way that you experience your body, and that experience happened in your body. And regardless of where you are in your fertility journey, I don't want you to compare you to anybody else. So I'm gonna speak across experiences because there are lots of different experiences listening to this episode, and I'm not sure whoever asked this, like, I don't know much about your journey.
Um, but what tends to happen is when we hear like, "Oh, well, somebody else had a miscarriage, so I really shouldn't feel that bad 'cause I haven't had one." No. Your experience is yours, and I want you to just ... If I'm saying something that isn't your experience, just, like, ignore that part and focus on you.
Don't compare yourself to anybody. Okay? 'Cause I can hear somebody out there starting to do that. There's no point in doing that. It just takes you down. So the goal isn't for me to convince you that your body has been trustworthy all along. Uh, that feels very incongruent with the experience that you've had, and that's just not gonna get you anywhere.
Instead, I'm gonna ask you this question Because getting hyper-specific is going to help you start to see this for what it really is. So what happened that taught you not to trust it? Because distrust usually has a story, and so infertility likely has taught you to monitor your body. So think about what we ask women to do when they're trying to conceive.
We are for the first time asking you to pay attention to your cycle, to find your fertile window, to track your ovulation, to notice your symptoms. And then if you enter fertility treatment, that monitoring gets even more intense. So you're doing, you know, blood work, and ultrasounds, and follicle measurements, and hormone levels, and lining thickness, and egg count, and embryo grades, and blood tests, and pregnancy tests.
And your body becomes the source of the data, and the data can absolutely be very useful. But there is this massive emotional consequence to constantly being measured that we largely ignore. And what the experience in the body becomes is, is it working? So, like, is my body working? Is all of this data telling me whether it's working or not?
Because every symptom becomes evidence. Every test becomes like a grade. Every cycle becomes a pass or a fail. And eventually, you stop listening to your body, and you start, like, surveying it And that is a different lived experience than you've ever had in your body before. And so sometimes, I'll say most of the time, your body becomes the easiest place to put the blame because infertility really contains so much uncertainty, and that uncertainty is incredibly uncomfortable.
Human beings do not like change. We don't like things to not go the way that we want them to go. It's just part of the way we're designed. It's way safer to know what's going to happen. It's way safer to have certainty. But infertility is very uncertain, right? Like, I would just say, like, getting pregnant is uncertain.
We don't even have to, like, stretch it just to infertility. Like, that, in general, is uncertain. and a lot of the times with infertility, there is not a clear explanation for why pregnancy isn't happening. And most of the time, you're doing everything your doctor is recommending, and the treatment still doesn't work.
Sometimes an embryo looks beautiful and perfect, and it doesn't implant. Sometimes you get pregnant, and you experience a loss. And so these are all things that medicine can measure, and they're things that we can use science to support. But there are things that nobody can predict with certainty. And when we don't have an explanation, the mind r- still wants one.
We are storytelling creatures, and we really love an ending to a story. We want an explanation. We want to know the why. And so your body becomes that. Your body's right there. Like, it becomes the story, and that story can become, "My body failed me. My body can't do this. Something is wrong with me." But there is a difference between, "Something happened in my body that I don't want," and, "My body betrayed me."
Those might feel identical, especially when you're hurting, but they aren't necessarily the same statement. And trust doesn't have to mean believing that your body will get pregnant And if you don't hear anything else from this episode, I really want you to hear this. Because if you've been trying to rebuild trust with your body, you may think that you're supposed to get to this point where you can, like, confidently say, "I trust my body to get pregnant.
I know my body can do this." And there's a lot of, frankly, like, bullshit affirmations out there that cause more harm than good, that are feeding you these beliefs, these statements, and they're asking you to sacrifice your experience in your body for the sake of believing. Like, "I know my body can do this.
I am fertile," or whatever. But what if you don't know that? Because again, there's so much uncertainty in infertility, and I don't want you forcing yourself into a certainty that you don't actually have. Body trust doesn't have to mean that believing your body will produce the outcome you desperately want.
Maybe body trust starts somewhere much smaller, right? Like breadcrumbs here. Like, we're gonna start smaller. Maybe, and you can write these down because ... Or you, like, come back to the episode later and, like, write them down because they might be a nice place for you to start. So try these on. Maybe your body trust starts with, "I trust myself to notice when I'm tired," or, "I trust myself to eat when I'm hungry.
I trust myself when something feels overwhelming. I trust myself to ask questions when something doesn't make sense. I trust myself to get another medical opinion when I need one. I trust myself to know when I need support. I trust myself to make the next decision with the information I have." That is still trust, and importantly, none of those statements require pregnancy as proof that your body is worthy of being trusted Your body is not a pass or a fail exam And it's not like a fertility project.
I want you to really pay attention to this. When you're experiencing infertility, it becomes very easy to turn your body into, like, an improvement project. I- maybe if I eat better, maybe if I lose weight, maybe if I gain weight, maybe if I exercise differently, if I stop exercising, if I take these supplements, if I eliminate these foods, if I meditate every day, if I regulate my nervous system better.
Like All of that, like, may genuinely support your body. Like, they're not bad things, but it can become this project. And not all of those things might make sense for your individual circumstance. And so there's a difference between caring for your body and then... or constantly trying to correct it. And so ask yourself, which one of those are you doing?
Are you caring for your body, or are you constantly trying to correct it? Because if every interaction you have with your body is designed to make it more fertile, your relationship with your body becomes conditional. It becomes like, "I'll trust you when you work. I'll appreciate you when you get pregnant.
I'll stop trying to fix you when you finally give me what I want." And that is an exhausting relationship to live inside. And if you're there, there's no shame. I know exactly firsthand what that feels like. But I wanna give you some steps on how to start rebuilding trust, right? Beyond those, like, breadcrumb statements that we, that I already gave you.
I don't want you to stand in front of the mirror and say, like, "I trust my body," especially if you don't. I think that rebuilding trust is through experiences. And so here's something I want you to try. For the next few days, start noticing the places where your body communicates something to you that has, like, absolutely nothing to do with fertility.
So something like, "I'm hungry," or, "I'm full," or, "I'm tired." Maybe your body wants to move. "I feel tense. I feel comfortable here." Maybe your body's telling you like, "I don't wanna have this conversation today," or like, "I need some space," or, "I want connection." Okay? Like, those are all things that your body's gonna communicate to you.
And when you notice one of those signs, see if you can respond to it. Not perfectly, but just respond to what your body is telling you more often. Because every time your body communicates something and you respond with care, you're creating a tiny experience of, "I heard you." And that is very different from like, "Are you working yet?"
Separating your body from the outcome. I also want you to work with this sentence. You- if you like journaling, then this would be a really great place to journal. Starting to get clarity by asking or journaling around, "I don't trust my body because" And don't censor yourself. But maybe you'll gain some clarity by answering that statement.
Like, "I don't trust my body because..." Maybe it's because I had a miscarriage, because I haven't gotten pregnant, because my AMH is low, because my IVF failed, because, you know, my body didn't respond to the medication the way I wanted it to, because I have endometriosis, because I have PMOS. Whatever comes up, write it down, and then ask, " What am I asking my body to guarantee for me?"
Because sometimes when we say, like, "I don't wanna trust my body," what we actually mean is, "I want my body to guarantee that this is gonna work," and your body can't give you that guarantee. Neither can your, you know, your doctor, or neither can I. But you can start to build a relationship with your body that doesn't require certainty about the outcome.
You know, the unfortunate truth about infertility, but really all of life, is that we don't know the outcome. There is a large element of uncertainty. so when you and your body are not on opposing teams, when you're not fighting against it, you're living this experience through it. And maybe rebuilding trust isn't about deciding that, you know, your body has never disappointed you. It maybe has. Maybe instead it's about just ending that constant battle with it.
Maybe for you it's about moving from like, "Why are you doing this to me?" to, "We're gonna get through this." That's a very different relationship. And if like the statement like, "I love my body" feels like miles away for you right now, don't start there. Maybe you start with just neutrality or like curiosity, and then maybe you start really feeding it and listening to it in those really gentle ways that it's communicating with you.
And let the experience of that have nothing to do with conception, which I know is way easier said than done. But try and just hear the body and slowly create experiences for where your body is allowed to be something other than a place where infertility is happening. And so to come back to the question, why don't you trust your body anymore, there's a lot of different reasons why.
Maybe because infertility has given you an experience that really taught you to question it, or maybe it's because you've spent months or years monitoring it. Maybe you don't trust your body anymore because you've been given like numbers or a diagnosis that really change how you see your body. Maybe you don't trust your body because something happened inside your body that really broke your heart.
There doesn't need to be anything that is required for this to make sense. You're allowed to feel that distrust. But you also don't have to wait until you're pregnant to start to rebuild that relationship again. And you don't have to force yourself to believe that your body knows exactly what to do and that you are at battle with your body.
Maybe you can start somewhere much more honest with something like, "I'm learning how to listen to my body without constantly grading it," or, "I'm learning to care for my body without constantly trying to fix it." And then it could become, "My body and I are going through this together." And like, maybe for today that's enough.
