Why IVF Feels Like Trauma and the Path to Reclaiming Your Body, Safety, and Fertility Success
Ever walked out of a fertility appointment feeling like you left a piece of yourself behind? Not just the blood draw or the scan, but your actual sense of safety, dignity, or presence? You’re not crazy. You’re not broken. You’re experiencing something most fertility clinics don’t warn you about: IVF trauma.
IVF isn’t just “another medical procedure.” It can hit your body and nervous system the way physical trauma does. And the kicker? Even if your conscious brain was on board, your body may have been bracing the whole time.
Let’s talk about what really happens underneath the surface of fertility treatments—and how to reclaim yourself in the process.
IVF Trauma Isn’t All in Your Head
You probably heard the pep talks: just follow the protocol, trust the science, stay positive. Meanwhile, your body’s screaming “nope.”
The truth is, the nervous system doesn’t care about consent forms or success rates. It cares about one thing: did I feel safe? If the answer was no—or even maybe—your body likely stored those experiences like emotional VHS tapes on repeat.
Internal exams. Anesthetized retrievals. The sterile rooms filled with strangers. All “normal” on paper, but often deeply disorienting in the body.
“Each step of IVF was something my conscious mind agreed to, but my body braced against it. And the body doesn’t forget what it wasn’t given space to process.”
The Freeze You Didn’t See Coming
On the outside, you were probably the model patient: calm, compliant, grateful for every update. Inside? Your nervous system was holding its breath in functional freeze.
This is the quiet trauma of fertility burnout—where you push through round after round, telling yourself it’s fine, while your fascia, womb, and nervous system keep score in tightness and disconnect. It’s why years later, you might still feel unsettled, exhausted, or “off,” even if you got the baby.
Presence Is Your Protection
Here’s the radical reframe: healing IVF trauma isn’t about rejecting treatment. It’s about refusing to abandon yourself inside of it.
When you bring your body with you—through breathwork, meditation, nervous system regulation, even simple pauses to check in—you stop dragging her behind you like dead weight. You create emotional safety in real time.
And the difference is night and day. One retrieval while fully unconscious left me with trauma my body still remembers. Another retrieval, where I was awake, grounded, and present—even when things went medically sideways—didn’t leave residue.
You’re Not Broken, You’re Disconnected
If you still feel the weight of past IVF or fertility treatments, hear this: you are not dysfunctional. You are intelligent. Your body has simply been waiting for you to listen.
“You are not crazy for still feeling things in your body from years ago. That’s intelligence, not dysfunction.”
You get to slow down. You get to grieve. You get to rebuild trust with your body, round by round, or long after you’ve stopped treatments. And that choice—bringing your body with you—can shift everything.
Final Takeaway
IVF trauma is real, but it doesn’t have to be the end of your story. Your nervous system isn’t your enemy. It’s your compass, reminding you that fertility isn’t just physical—it’s deeply emotional, somatic, and sacred.
You don’t need to outsource your power to science alone. You get to reclaim presence, sovereignty, and connection in your journey. Because when you bring your body with you, everything changes.
🎧 Ready to dive deeper? Listen to the full episode here and start reconnecting with the part of you that was never broken.
Let's Do This Together 💚
Monica
Listen up, lovelies: Everything I share about health, diet, or fertility magic is my opinion. Yep, it’s all based on years of trial and error, study, reading, listening, and side-eyeing the nonsense out there. What worked for me might be a jackpot for you—or it might be a total flop. Bodies are weird like that. 🤷♀️
Let’s get one thing straight: I’m not a doctor, nutritionist, dietitian, or any other kind of licensed health wizard. If you need medical advice, run—don’t walk—to an actual qualified professional. Don’t come back here saying Monique told you to eat kale for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, okay?
As for the products I mention, they’re either what I used during my own infertility rollercoaster or what I wish I’d known about back then. No guarantees, no promises, and absolutely no refunds on your hope budget if it doesn’t work out.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, proceed with curiosity and, above all, discernment. You’ve got this. 💪✨
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Full Transcript:
00:00
Hello beautiful and welcome to the Finding Fertility podcast.
00:10
I'm Monica, your mentor in uncovering the hidden layers of your fertility journey. Together, we'll discover the right path for you within the six essential steps to creating the family of your dreams. We'll ditch the overwhelm, tune into your intuition, and build a vibrant foundation for your fertility. Whether it's through gut health, subconscious healing, or energetic alignment, you can unlock your body's natural power to get and stay pregnant.
00:37
Your fertility journey is all about radical responsibility and deeply believing that your body is on your side. It's time to stay consistent, embrace trust, surrender, and create the transformation you deserve. Fighting fertility does not diagnose, prescribe, or treat any fertility issues. What we do is empower you to take control of your health by uncovering the root causes holding you back. Let's do this together.
01:04
Happy Friday, y'all. Welcome back to another episode of Finding Fertility. I'm your host, Monica Cox, and I am so completely honored you are here with me, becoming the conscious mama you were born to be. Today we have something that maybe I've touched on a little bit throughout the podcast, but I've never dedicated an episode to it. To be honest, I haven't because...
01:31
Not a lot of people are talking about it. I have zero scientific evidence and that's just gonna have to be okay. This episode is going to speak to people who maybe feel the exact same way and don't have words or don't have anywhere to express potentially, what they are feeling or what...
01:59
they know they're feeling something but they don't quite understand it. And the best way I'm gonna do this so I don't ramble on is read what I wrote about my personal experience and my thoughts about the use of IVF and it having a emotional impact on the body very similar to
02:29
physical trauma that many women have experienced. So I'm just going to read the article and if this lands for you, this lands for you, I probably should put a trigger warning. I don't really feel like I go super in depth to anything, but if you have known traumas and you're still dealing with that,
02:54
and you feel like you might be triggered, this might not be the episode to listen to right now. You can bookmark it and come back.
03:02
Knowing your body carries when it's been through too much and never had the space to say so It didn't hit me all at once. It came after two breath of fire sessions Just a few weeks apart the first time I brushed it off just a bit of discomfort But the second time I couldn't ignore it my hips wouldn't soften wouldn't flow Instead, they slammed against the floor, rigid and tense
03:30
Like something inside of me was begging to be let out. Not with words, not even with pain, but with that dark, unspeakable knowing your body carries when it's been through too much and never had the space to say. Luckily, I was in my room by myself, so I didn't feel the need to silence myself yet again. And in the quiet stillness after the session, when my body was tired but my mind was clear,
03:59
and willing to listen, it surfaced. What was I really doing when I was using IVF? It wasn't just about infertility. It was about everything my body had endured in the name of fixing something that wasn't even broken in the first place. About the silent agreement I made with the system that said, if you just follow the steps, I'll be okay. About the way I handed over my body and my hope, believing that science would save me.
04:27
But my body wasn't asking to be fixed. She was asking to be heard, to be honored, to be brought with me, not dragged behind. And I didn't know how to do that yet. So I kept going. One protocol after another. One scan, one blood draw, one early morning appointment after another. Always hoping the next result would finally give me peace.
04:56
But peace never came from numbers or outcome. And now I really felt it, how much I had overridden her. A flood of moments I had long buried under the label of necessary. The internal exams, the quiet ultrasounds, the egg retrievals under anesthetics, the body of strangers in rooms I was never fully present in. All technically consented to, but never truly honored.
05:26
Each step of IVF was something my conscious mind agreed to, but my body braced against it. And the body doesn't forget what it wasn't given space to process. I used to tell myself it was all fine, just part of the journey. But now I see it for what it was. Tiny breaches I thought didn't matter, but accumulated over time. For the first three years of my journey, wasn't present.
05:55
I was just moving from pillar to post, scan to blood draw, procedure to procedure, clinging to each next step like it was the one that would finally deliver the dream. But underneath it all, I was a scared little girl, placing all of her hopes on something she couldn't control. I wasn't empowered, I wasn't healthy, and I wasn't connected to my body at all. Add the pressure of age, a diagnosis, the whisper that time is running out.
06:26
stacked on top of heavy medical protocols, intense hormone surges, and repeated procedures. It's no wonder I ended up completely disconnected from my own experience. But year four was different. I changed. I was a different woman during my second ache retrieval. With hindsight, it showed me that when you're consciously present and taking care of your body, you can get through hard things without storing
06:55
The residue. They kept me awake. It was a beautiful, sacred experience. My husband was even in the room watching each egg being collected like a little Easter egg hunt, but it went medically sideways. They nicked something and I started to hemorrhage. Nurses and doctors jumped in, applying pressure in every direction to stop the bleeding. But I was there. I had my meditation in my ear.
07:22
I went into a sacred place and somehow, even in the chaos, my body was okay with it because I was present. But my first egg retrieval, the one where I was completely unconscious, I don't remember a thing and yet my body does. That's the one that left the mark because I had abandoned myself in the name of doing everything right. And this is why we can't keep pretending these treatments are no big deal.
07:50
like they're just another dental checkup. They're not. They're intimate, invasive, and often deeply disorientating. They carry implications far beyond what we're told in the consulting room. Not just physically, not just hormonally, not just financially, but emotionally, energetically, somatically. Because the nervous system doesn't speak in logic. It speaks in sensation.
08:17
It doesn't understand this is necessary or I signed a consent form. It only understands, did I feel safe? Was I supported? Was I present? Did I have agency? If the answer is no, or even a hesitation maybe, the body often responds by bracing, shutting down, or freezing. The perfect storm, functional freeze. On the outside, you're calm, cooperative, maybe even grateful. But inside, your body is holding its breath.
08:48
and just trying to make it through. And it's not just your nervous system that responds this way. The body holds memory in places that don't speak in words. The fascia, the connective tissue that wraps around your muscles, organs, and bones, contracts in protection when it senses overwhelm. The womb, sacred, sensitive, and intuitive, often absorbs what you never got to express. Each time you override discomfort, push through pain, or ignore your body's quiet,
09:17
No, these places remember, they don't keep score with thoughts. They keep score with tension, with tightness, with disconnect. And if you've never been taught to listen to those parts of you, you may not even realize how much you've been holding on. And this is the piece so many of us missed. Not because we weren't strong, but because we were never told we could move through IVF differently.
09:44
We were never shown that presence is a form of protection, that you can choose a procedure and still stay connected to your body. That sovereignty isn't just about rejecting treatment, it's about refusing to abandon yourself while you're moving through it. The women I work with now are starting to see this too. And once they name it, once they feel it in their own nervous system, the way their bodies held their breath through every retrieval, every scan, every call from the clinic,
10:14
They stop asking, why am I still so exhausted? Or why does this still feel like it's happening to me? They start realizing the power of doing this journey wake with full emotional and energetic presence, with permission to grieve, to pause, to say no, or to say yes, or to say yes differently. Because when you bring your body with you, everything changes. If this resonates, here's what I want you to know.
10:43
You are not crazy for still feeling things in your body from years ago. That's intelligence, not dysfunction. You can start healing even if your IVF happened a decade ago or last week. You get to slow down. You get to check in. You get to ask, is my body with me in this? You can choose to do your next treatment differently. You can bring emotional safety, somatic presence, and sacred awareness into it. And yes,
11:13
that can change everything. If you've been through treatments or something still feels unsettled in your system, even if you can't name it, I encourage you to start gently rebuilding that relationship with your body. Meditate, dance, breathe, scream, journal, get still, let your body speak. And if you're preparing for another round, don't just prepare the calendar and your supplements stack. Prepare your nervous system, your heart, your inner knowing.
11:42
Because fertility isn't just physical, it's deeply emotional, and your body deserves to be a partner in the process, not a passive participant. When you bring your body with you, everything changes. And make sure you tune in the next two weeks because I have a special guest, Leslie.
12:02
She does have her own fertility journey, but what she's here to really talk about is the difference between your cellular age and the number of candles on your birthday cake. She and other scientists are doing the science and the research about what I keep banging on about, about how your cellular health, your cellular age is way more important than your
12:32
birthday. So I'm really excited for these episodes. So please come back and tune in. Thank you once again for tuning in and becoming the conscious mama you were born to be. Remember, I wasn't some magical unicorn who stumbled into fertility success. I stayed consistent. I put in the work and I made it happen. And guess what? You can too. And I have something for my loyal podcast listeners, but here's the key. This is only for women who are feeling burnt out.
13:01
frustrated and stuck in the cycle of endless research. And you're at a point where you are screaming, I have tried everything. Why isn't this working? This only works for women who are ready to take a radical responsibility for their journey and start listening to their body's innate wisdom. Because deep down, you know, you can heal and achieve your ultimate goal.
13:29
If that's not you yet, that's okay. Not everyone is ready yet to show up with ease, deeply connect to their energy, unlock subconscious patterns, and listen to their body's ability to come into full coherence. But for those who are ready, I'm offering something I only do with my paying clients, and this is a fertility breakthrough session. This is the first thing I do. Even before I start,
13:56
really deeply working with someone in a coaching package. It's a deep dive session where we look at exactly where you are right now, what's keeping you stuck, and the easy shifts that can change everything. But fair warning, these sessions are very limited and go fast. So if you're interested in checking out my superpower for uncovering exactly what's been overlooked, jump into one of these free calls. They're deep.
14:25
they're intuitive and they're game-changing. The only way you can access this is if you actually personally message me. You can do it on your favorite platform, IG, TikTok, or at my personal email, monica at findingfertility.co, not .com because they wanted $3,000 for the M with just one word. And that word is dreams, obviously, D-R-E-A-M-S. uh
14:53
and I'll make sure you get that link right away. Remember, this transformation happens when you stay committed to yourself. Trust your body, follow your intuition, make it possible. The links that you need are down below. And if you are still here and you absolutely love this podcast, please take some time and leave me a review and help other women like you find this podcast to get the support they need. Help a sister out. Leave a review today.
