Infertility is a battle ranging different length of time and hurtles for each person. There is no magic pill or procedure. During my battle of Infertility, I battled with depression. You may not notice when your depression starts, ends or if it is constant but it will affect your relationships and daily life. Below I list changes to my lifestyle to help deal with depression, I am not a person who likes to talk about myself and so I found these activities to do helped me through my time with depression. This is not to dismiss professional advice. If you feel you need professional help, please call your doctor, and visit a hospital immediately.
6 things to do to help with Depression
1 Yoga
I know it is a cliché, but yoga is an exercise that helps you focus on your body. The focus can be on strength of your body as well work on self-love. Self-love is a head space where I thought as a person I did not need to work on. As time went on through infertility, I felt this shame and hate towards myself. I became to focus on my body through exercise to build strength and mind focus.
2 Affirmations
This leads me to my second tip. During yoga I started to incorporate meditation and or affirmations and before sleep. Below is some links of what I would listen too for a reference. The physicality of hearing positive affirmations helped the focus, so I did not need to rely only on myself. There are also many guided mediations, I used YouTube and would listen to them usually when I went to bed. This became a part of the nighttime routine.
Meditation
Affirmations
3 Exercise
I put exercise separate from yoga because I feel they are different ways of strengthening the body. Yoga I found was more about body and mind connection where exercise routine was more focused on building my body strength. There were days I would only exercise listen to loud music and sing. Other days I would do yoga and or exercise, then finish with yoga. Exercise is important is any manner from walking to lifting weights, it will help build your body to deal with stress. I come from an athletic background, involved in sports and outdoor activities in my youth. I followed Scott Herman, I enjoyed his workouts as they were short and focus on muscle groups. This was great to fit into my schedule and gave me flexibility to improve areas of my body but also have time to enjoy and outdoor walk or hike.
https://www.youtube.com/user/ScottHermanFitness
4 Hobby
Now with so little time, I struggled with working full time and attending my fertility treatments, exercise and social life. Your hobby is something that you do not need to do every day. It can be something that you make time for when you are burnt out. For example, I like to travel so about once a year I made a plan to take trips and breaks from the fertility treatments. This helped me regain focus on other things in my life that make me happy. Other hobbies that I love to do is painting. I have a degree in art and so this hobby was established before my journey. It was hard to create in my state on mind during the 4 years, but I did do some small projects on the side. I suggest sticking to a hobby that you either already do or that doesn’t require too much research. As making time for your hobby is hard, but you need to learn to make time. I personally have a bad habit of always cleaning my home instead of working on myself. To break the habit, you need to make a schedule that is realistic to what you need to accomplish. Below is a template for a schedule I would try and accomplish through my depression. It outlines simple goals and tasks that are in a flexible schedule. There will be some days where you do not want to do anything. So, I made one day a week with no schedule, then if it did not fall on that particular day I would move the days around to accommodate.
5 Massage
Now I know not everyone may have the budget for a regular massage but this can be something similar to your hobby. It is something you do once or couple times a year. A massage has may benefits to your body besides relaxation. My husband and I also have some massage devices so if this is an investment you are interested below is a link to amazon on the 2 devices we use on a regular.
The back massager is something I really enjoyed it is easy to use and some one else can use it on your back. The price was affordable and it worked out a lot of knots I would have from exercising.
Foot massager was a second massager we have purchased in our home. And if you are a person who is on their feet all day and or have sore feet. Save the money for this massager. It is great with different pressure, heat and time it was so nice on the feet. I use this one about once a week.
6 Acupuncture
There are many benefits to acupuncture, and this was one of the treatments that helped me to become pregnant. I suggest trying acupuncture as it can increase circulation and improve mood as it expels toxics from your body. Even if you are a person who is not crazy of the idea of having a bunch of needles in your body, as I was. First try a consultation and a short acupuncture appointment. This will help you get over any idea of how it will feel.
Below is a link to the acupuncture clinic I attended. I was seen by Christine.
https://www.acupunctureshiatsuclinic.com/
I hope this list will give you insight to help deal with depression. Not everyone is keen on talking like myself. I found having tasks that improved my well being pushed me through my depression. This is not to be taken as professional advice. It is only my personal experience and suggestions. Please seek out professional advise if you feel depression as depression is a serious disorder that should be addressed.
Schedule
Below is an outline of a weekly schedule I would try to keep. Each day would have a goal if I had spare time to work on the theme during the day or addition if there was extra time. As for exercising would usually be an hour and half with stretching. So, I would take some time to watch TV or read a book before my bedtime routine. The main focus for my schedule is not to plan every hour but to have a light outline of a few tasks to complete and a focus goal so on the days I felt my depression heavy I did not need to think of my tasks or goals. They were already outlined and all I had to do was at least half an hour of each.
| Day | Morning/ work | Dinner | Task | Bedtime | Goal |
| Monday | -Wake up 7am -Attend work until 5pm | 6pm | – 7pm Exercise | -Prep for bed brush teeth etc. -Meditate 10pm | -positive energy |
| Tuesday | -Wake up 7am -Attend work until 5pm | 6pm | – 7pm Yoga with Affirmations | -Prep for bed brush teeth etc. -Meditate 10pm | -self love |
| Wednesday | -Wake up 7am -Attend work until 5pm | 6pm | – 7pm Acupuncture -8:30 Exercise | -Prep for bed brush teeth etc. -Meditate 10pm | -Self maintenance, |
| Thursday | -Wake up 7am -Attend work until 5pm | 6pm | – 7pm Yoga with Affirmations | -Prep for bed brush teeth etc. -Meditate 10pm | -self love |
| Friday | -Wake up 7am -Attend work until 5pm | 6pm | – 7pm Exercise | -Prep for bed brush teeth etc. -Meditate 10pm | – research/ work on hobby |
| Saturday | Wake up 9ish | 6pm | -10 am Hike -1pm Hobby (painting) | -Use massage device | |
| Sunday | Wake up whenever! | 6pm | -Hang out with Friends or Hobby – Meal Prep | -Plan a trip |
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