Is fertility-related stress a good thing?

If you've ever worried about your stress levels when you're going through fertility treatment, you can stop worrying now. A new study has found that women who were most stressed during treatment had a higher pregnancy rate than those who rated themselves lower down the stress scale.

The researchers in the States weren't expecting this outcome when they studied more than 200 women going through treatment as it is generally believed that stress has a negative impact on fertility. They found that women who put themselves high on the stress score appeared to have a 20-30% higher pregnancy rate than those who were less stressed

There is nothing less helpful when you are going through fertility treatment than being told that it won't work if you are stressed - infertility causes a huge amount of stress, and telling women that they are making things worse by feeling stressed ends up being a vicious circle - you feel guilty about being stressed which then makes you more stressed, so you have to feel even more guilty about being more stressed etc. For that reason alone we should welcome this new research.

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