Manage the Impact of Infertility on Your Career With a Coach
Infertility is a silent struggle that many people experience, 1 in 6 couples in the UK in fact. Add that to the number of same sex couples accessing fertility treatment to conceive plus the single hope-to-be-parents. That’s an eyewatering number of people managing fertility with their careers.
Are you one of them? Do you know one of them? Chances are, if you’re lucky enough to not be managing the impact of infertility on your career, you know someone who is. Of course, you might not know it because we don’t talk about these things much. It’s not great watercooler chit chat and people tend to reserve tales of hormone injections, scans, hopes, losses and grief for a tight trusted circle.
What is the impact of infertility on career?
So what’s the big whoop? People struggle with all sorts in secret don’t they. That may well be true but infertility and its impact on work is a much under-discussed topic. Because we don’t talk about infertility in the workplace much (if at all), when it happens there isn’t a trodden path for people to follow. This wouldn’t matter so much were it not for the fact that infertility does impact work, in fact it’s actually very relevant to how people show up in their careers.
There are so many things that can make work difficult and employers address this fact with various inclusion networks and activities. In my HR capacity I’ve seen and organised many a panel event where senior speakers have talked about “how they managed their career as a working mother.” Or “how to juggle career and wellbeing.” I’ve seen inspirational speakers talk about navigating their career as a woman, as a person of colour, as an LGBTQ person.
The beauty of these important inclusion events is that A. they raise awareness and B. they’re laden with helpful tips and pointers for how to do it yourself from someone who’s been through it.
But what about my infertility at work?
But when I experienced a miscarriage and when I had several unsuccessful rounds of fertility treatment that knocked me for six, there was no advice from an inspirational speaker for me to draw upon. There was no panel event entitled “How to Manage the Impact of Infertility on your Career” in the archives. Everything that was happening to me was a first, physically and emotionally. I was so completely unprepared for how it would all impact me at work. When we’re unprepared, we tend to just muddle through. The fact that so many people are muddling through this stuff is wild to me. Managing the impact of infertility on career has got to change.
Infertility and stress at work
If you’re struggling to balance your infertility with work, you might find yourself feeling more than a little bit stressed throughout the process. With no point of reference, it would be easy to wonder whether you should be finding it so hard. Did you know that infertility can cause the same levels of depression and anxiety as cancer and heart disease? Just as with these illnesses, infertility doesn’t clock off whilst you’re at work.
Putting on a brave face at work whilst coping with the emotional upheaval of fertility challenges can be incredibly stressful. You might become very skilled at masking but no matter how well you can conceal your anxiety, it still takes a lot of effort. That effort can be exhausting and its impact cumulative. Meetings that were once a breeze can become completely draining and you might not even be able to pinpoint exactly why.
The thing with stress, is that you only have a limited capacity for it. As great as it would be to be able to take on more and more stress without buckling, it doesn’t work like that. Everyone has their tipping point, that point where resilience meets burnout.
Infertility and grief at work
When I talk about fertility challenges and grief, people’s minds automatically go to miscarriage. That’s not surprising because we associate grief with loss of a life. It’s also not inaccurate because miscarriage can and does cause grief no matter how early on in a pregnancy.
Chemical Pregnancy
A chemical pregnancy is a one that is detected by a pregnancy test but ends in miscarriage at or before 5 weeks. Without the positive test, chemical pregnancies are often mistaken for a period. But if you’ve been longing for a baby and you get that positive test, having a “period” is still a miscarriage. Sometimes people can feel guilty or silly for grieving a chemical pregnancy. But no matter how short that pregnancy was, losing it is still losing the hopes and dreams that established themselves so quickly in your heart.
Unsuccessful Treatment
People undergoing fertility treatment can also experience grief when that treatment is unsuccessful. During IVF, embryos are created. Often only 1 or 2 but even when there are several, every single embryo is precious to the hope-to-be-parent/s.
When treatment is unsuccessful (and more often than not, IVF isn’t successful) there can be a crushing disappointment and also a sense of grief for that precious embryo.
Disenfranchised Grief
A lesser understood grief that people who experience fertility challenges suffer, is a more generalised infertility grief. It is entirely possible to grief for something you’ve longed for but never had. Ploughing so much energy, hope and often vast amounts of money into something that never comes can be beyond exhausting. It’s not unusual to experience symptoms of grief during infertility. Because this kind of loss is not widely understood, it’s known as a type of disenfranchised grief. The fact that people don’t understand it can sometimes make it even harder to manage.
Unlike many other types of grief, fertility related grief is typically not something you share at work. Pregnancy loss and infertility are deeply personal life events that people often chose to keep to themselves. But as we know, masking takes a lot of effort and can prolong the grieving process. That’s not to say you should rush to tell everyone your situation but it can be validating to know that the way you feel is completely normal and that yes, your infertility is impacting your career. You’re not imagining it.
How to Manage the Impact of Infertility on Your Career With a Coach
If you’ve had a Career Coach before, you’ll know how transformational that partnership can be. If you haven’t had a Career Coach, let me explain.
What is a Career Coach?
A great coaching conversation can take many forms. It’s typically with a specialised Career or Leadership Coach who helps you to identify your goals, make plans to achieve them and prepare for any obstacles. Sometimes the work with a coach can be more about getting unstuck than anything else but the premise is generally always some form of “I’m here and I want to be there (or at least somewhere else but I’m not sure where), help me get there.”
The Benefit of Quality Goal Setting
Goals and plans are all well and good when they’re completely authentic. In my HR career I can think of countless times people have joked that they set objectives with their manager that they never look at again until their end of year reviews. Were they authentic objectives? I’d argue no. PDPs (Personal Development Plans) are another tool that are sometimes scoffed at as “box ticking”. Does that mean it’s pointless to set objectives or to have personal development planning conversations? Not at all!
Both of these types of goal setting conversation are hugely valuable tools that (provided there is the right level of preparation and engagement from both Manager and Employee) can set someone up for success.
However, too often one or both of these essential elements are missing;
- Authenticity
- Achievability
Setting Authentic Goals to manage the impact of fertility on career
Career Coaches are a great resource to have in addition to a manager precisely because you can be authentic with them. You don’t need to worry about the implications because they’re totally objective in a way a manager can’t be, they don’t have an agenda and the only skin they have in the game is your success. Whatever that looks like to you.
However, I know from experience that even with a great Career Coach, it can take a fair few sessions before you feel comfortable enough to start talking about how your fertility challenges are impacting your career. Sometimes you never feel comfortable enough because these things are so personal and so emotive.
This is where having a Career Coach with a fertility lens can help. Someone who says up front “you can tell me about how your infertility is impacting your career and I will immediately get it”. There’s a psychological safety that creates that means you can be authentic straight away. You can identify goals that are true to your situation and are achievable in spite of your situation.
Career Plus Fertility 1:1 Coaching Program
I created my Career Plus Fertility 1:1 Coaching Program specifically to help people manage the impact of infertility on their careers. I took all of my own experiences, my certified coaching qualification plus extensive and ongoing research and poured them into a coaching program that reduces the friction between fertility and career.
If you would like to work with me, here’s how you can do just that
- Book a free 45 min discovery call
- Sign up for a 6 or 12 session program
- Start your program with a detailed assessment of your current situation and where Career-Fertility Friction is showing up for you