MIVF Prepare for IVF
How to Prepare Yourself Emotionally Before Starting IVF
Before the injections. Before the scans. Before the waiting. Prepare the part of you that IVF asks the most from: you.
By Gordon Mullins | Fertility Acupuncturist, Meditation Teacher & Founder of Mindful IVF
Reading time: 8 minutes
The IVF Preparation Nobody Really Talks About
Before starting IVF, you’ll probably receive a lot of information.
Medication schedules. Injection instructions. Appointment dates. Blood tests. Scans. What to take. What to avoid.
Your clinic will prepare your body for IVF.
But who’s preparing you for IVF?
After 23 years of working exclusively in fertility and IVF, I’ve sat with thousands of women before, during and after treatment.
And one thing has become very clear to me:
IVF isn’t only something that happens to your body.
It happens to your mind too.
The anticipation. The waiting. The Googling. The hope. The fear. The constant questions.
How many follicles?
How many eggs?
Will they fertilise?
Will we get embryos?
Will the transfer work?
Am I pregnant?
You can go from feeling incredibly hopeful to terrified in the space of five minutes.
That’s why I believe emotional preparation deserves a place alongside your medical preparation.
It’s also one of the reasons I created Mindful IVF.
I wanted women to have something they could reach for throughout IVF not generic meditation, but short, calming practices created specifically around the moments of an IVF cycle.
Because sometimes you don’t need another piece of information.
You need somewhere to put down the weight of IVF for five minutes.
What 23 Years Around IVF Has Taught Me
I’ve spent more than two decades working with women and couples going through fertility treatment.
And there’s something I wish every woman knew before beginning IVF:
You don’t have to wait until you’re overwhelmed to start looking after your emotional wellbeing.
In fact, before treatment begins may be one of the best times to start.
IVF can bring uncertainty into almost every part of your day.
You may find yourself thinking about treatment while you’re working.
Checking dates while you’re eating dinner.
Thinking about follicles when you’re trying to sleep.
Replaying conversations with your clinic.
Searching online for reassurance.
Wondering whether every sensation in your body means something.
This doesn’t mean you’re doing IVF badly.
It means you’re human.
But you can give yourself tools that help you come back to the present moment when your mind starts racing ahead.
Meditation is one of those tools.
Not because meditation can guarantee an IVF outcome.
It can’t.
Meditation isn’t about making IVF work.
It’s about helping you move through IVF.
That’s an important distinction.
What Actually Happens Emotionally During IVF
Yes, your body may change during treatment.
You may experience bloating. Your mood may shift. Sleep can sometimes become disrupted. You may feel more tired or emotionally sensitive.
But one of the biggest challenges can be what’s happening inside your head.
IVF gives your mind an enormous amount to think about.
And unfortunately, much of it involves things you cannot control.
That’s where anxiety can creep in.
You start asking:
What if there aren’t enough eggs?
What if the embryos don’t develop?
What if this doesn’t work?
And suddenly you’re trying to solve tomorrow at 2:17am.
If you’ve done that, you’re certainly not alone.
Your mind is trying to protect you by searching for certainty.
The problem is that IVF doesn’t offer much certainty.
So rather than trying to eliminate every anxious thought, we can learn something different:
How to notice the thought without following it all the way down the rabbit hole.
That is one of the skills meditation can help you practise.
And it’s exactly why the Mindful IVF meditations are organised around the different stages of treatment.
When your IVF experience changes, the emotional support you need can change too.
Five Things I Want You to Know Before Starting IVF
1. You Cannot Control Everything
This may be one of the hardest lessons in IVF.
You can take your medication at exactly the right time.
Eat well.
Exercise appropriately.
Attend every appointment.
Meditate.
Sleep.
Avoid alcohol.
Take your supplements.
Do everything you possibly can.
And still not control the outcome.
That can feel deeply unfair.
Because when something matters this much, our natural instinct is to do more.
We search for the perfect diet.
The perfect supplement.
The perfect protocol.
The perfect mindset.
But IVF isn’t an exam where doing everything perfectly guarantees the result you want.
There are things you can influence and things you simply cannot control.
Learning the difference can remove an enormous burden.
I don’t teach people to give up control and stop caring.
I encourage something much simpler:
Stay engaged with the process without believing you have to control the outcome.
Today, take today’s medication.
Today, attend today’s appointment.
Today, take today’s walk.
Today, breathe.
Tomorrow can wait until tomorrow.
Try this in Mindful IVF:
Choose one of the short calming meditations before bed tonight. Don’t try to solve IVF. Give yourself five minutes where nothing needs to be solved.
2. You Are Allowed to Have Mixed Feelings
You might be excited about starting IVF.
And frightened.
Grateful that treatment exists.
And angry that you need it.
Hopeful.
And exhausted.
You might even feel grief before treatment has begun.
None of those feelings cancel out the others.
Sometimes there is grief for the easier journey you imagined you’d have.
The spontaneous pregnancy.
The surprise positive test.
The pregnancy announcement that didn’t involve injections, clinics, scans and waiting rooms.
You don’t have to replace those feelings with positivity.
You can simply acknowledge them.
Meditation isn’t about sitting there telling yourself:
“Everything is going to be fine.”
Sometimes you don’t know if everything is going to be fine.
Meditation can instead help you say:
“This is how I feel right now. And for this moment, I can be with it.”
That’s a very different kind of strength.
3. Don’t Wait Until IVF Gets Hard to Learn How to Meditate
This is probably the most practical advice I can give you.
Start now.
Not when you’re lying awake the night before egg collection.
Not when you’re waiting for the fertilisation call.
Not during the two-week wait when you’ve Googled “implantation symptoms” for the seventeenth time.
Start before IVF.
And please don’t begin with thirty minutes.
Start with three.
Seriously.
Three minutes.
One of the biggest misconceptions about meditation is that you need to stop thinking.
You don’t.
Your mind will wander.
You’ll think about dinner.
Your clinic.
Work.
Your follicles.
Whether you’ve done the meditation correctly.
That’s meditation.
Notice you’ve wandered.
Come back to your breath.
Wander again.
Come back again.
You’re practising the ability to return.
That’s the skill you may need during IVF.
Mindful IVF was created to make this easier. Instead of opening a general meditation app and wondering what to choose, you can select meditations created specifically for the stage of IVF you’re actually experiencing.
Your IVF cycle changes. Your meditation can change with it.
4. Find Someone Who Can Hold This With You
You shouldn’t have to carry IVF entirely by yourself.
That person might be your partner.
A friend.
A therapist.
A fertility professional.
Or someone else who understands what you’re going through.
But here’s something important:
You don’t necessarily need someone to fix it.
Sometimes you need someone who can simply listen.
You can even tell them what you need:
“I don’t need you to make this better. I just need you to be here with me.”
Those can be powerful words during fertility treatment.
And there will also be moments when nobody is available.
The middle of the night.
Before an appointment.
Sitting in the clinic waiting room.
After an injection.
Waiting for the phone to ring.
Those small moments are another reason I created Mindful IVF.
Think of the app as something you can reach for when IVF suddenly feels like too much.
Put your headphones on.
Close your eyes.
Breathe.
And give yourself a few minutes away from trying to figure everything out.
5. The Hardest Part May Be the Waiting
People often worry about the procedures.
Will egg collection hurt?
What will embryo transfer feel like?
But for many people, one of the most emotionally difficult parts of IVF isn’t a procedure.
It’s uncertainty.
Will I respond to stimulation?
How many eggs will they retrieve?
How many will fertilise?
Will we have embryos?
Will we reach transfer?
Will implantation happen?
Am I pregnant?
IVF can feel like moving from one waiting room to another.
You get one answer.
Feel relief for five minutes.
And then discover the next question.
Again and again.
The human mind loves certainty.
IVF gives us very little of it.
So when you find yourself struggling with the waiting, remind yourself:
“I’m not doing this badly. This is a genuinely difficult part of IVF.”
Then bring your attention back to what exists right now.
Your breath.
Your body.
The room you’re sitting in.
This moment.
Not tomorrow’s phone call.
Not next week’s pregnancy test.
Right here.
Why I Created Mindful IVF
Mindful IVF grew directly from my fertility practice.
For years I watched women arrive at appointments carrying enormous amounts of stress, fear and uncertainty.
I would teach breathing.
Meditation.
Grounding.
How to come back into the body.
How to stop living ten steps ahead of where they actually were.
But then they would leave my clinic.
And IVF continued.
At home.
In the car.
In bed.
In the waiting room.
During injections.
Before egg collection.
Before embryo transfer.
During the two week wait.
I realised women needed those tools with them, not just during an appointment.
So I created Mindful IVF.
The idea was simple:
What if you had a meditation companion that understood where you were in your IVF cycle?
Not generic stress meditation.
Not a library containing thousands of meditations you have to search through.
Something specifically created around IVF.
A meditation when you’re preparing.
A meditation during stimulation.
Support before egg collection.
Support around embryo transfer.
Something to reach for during the two-week wait.
Something for sleep.
Something for the moments when your thoughts simply won’t stop.
That’s what Mindful IVF is designed to be.
Your doctors take care of the medicine.
Your embryologists take care of your embryos.
Mindful IVF helps you take care of you.
Before Your First IVF Appointment, Try This
Put your phone down for a moment.
Sit somewhere comfortable.
Close your eyes.
Take a slow breath in.
And breathe out.
Again.
Feel your feet against the floor.
Notice the weight of your body.
Notice what’s here.
Hope?
Fear?
Excitement?
Sadness?
Uncertainty?
You don’t need to change any of it.
Just notice.
Then ask yourself:
“What do I need today?”
Not during the whole IVF cycle.
Not on transfer day.
Not if treatment doesn’t work.
Today.
Maybe you need information.
Maybe you need sleep.
Maybe you need reassurance.
Maybe you need a walk.
Maybe you need to cry.
Maybe you simply need five quiet minutes.
Give yourself permission to take them.
Your 7-Day IVF Preparation Challenge
For the next seven days, try something incredibly simple.
Give yourself 3–5 minutes a day.
That’s it. Choose roughly the same time each day if you can. Morning. After work. Before sleep.
Put your headphones on.
Open Mindful IVF.
Choose a meditation.
And for those few minutes, you have absolutely nothing to accomplish.
You don’t need to become calm.
You don’t need to become positive.
You don’t need to manifest pregnancy.
You don’t need to stop thinking.
Just show up.
Seven days.
Three to five minutes.
Let meditation become familiar before IVF becomes intense.
Then, when you find yourself sitting in a clinic waiting room with your heart racing, or staring at the ceiling at 3am thinking about embryos, you already have somewhere familiar to return to.
Your breath.
Your body.
The present moment.
One Last Thing Before You Start IVF
I’ve spent 23 years working in fertility and IVF.
And if I could sit down with you before your first appointment, I wouldn’t tell you that you need to be more positive.
I wouldn’t tell you to relax.
And I certainly wouldn’t tell you that stress is going to ruin your IVF cycle.
I’d tell you something much simpler:
Look after yourself through this.
IVF can become all-consuming very quickly.
Don’t disappear inside the process.
You’re still here.
Your life is still here.
And however your IVF journey unfolds, you deserve support while you’re going through it.
That’s why Mindful IVF exists.
Starting IVF?
Download Mindful IVF and begin with just one meditation today.
Three minutes is enough.
Let your doctors care for your embryos.
Let Mindful IVF care for you.
Coming Next
What Nobody Tells You About IVF Stimulation: The Emotional Reality of Injections, Scans and Waiting