The expectations we carry. How your mindset could be affecting your fertility journey.

When we first decided it was time to start our family, I was full of hope and excitement. I was going to have the pregnancy glow and breeze through.

My mum fell pregnant easily with all four of us, and my sister also fell pregnant easily with her two. So naturally, I would too. Right? Why wouldn't I?

Well, it turned out to be a very different story.

I fell pregnant relatively quickly the first time and was ecstatic. My plan was unfolding just as I had imagined it. Then, at eight weeks, I woke up and started my day as usual. I soon developed intense pain that made me lie down to rest. The pain increased quickly, so I booked a doctor's appointment that morning. What unfolded over the next eight hours came completely out of the blue and turned my world upside down.

I wasn't prepared for what happened, or for what came afterwards.

I remember how excited I had been in those early days, believing that falling pregnant was simply something that would happen when the time was right. I also remember what it felt like when that belief slowly started to disappear.

Month after month, the hope became harder to hold onto. The excitement of trying was replaced with waiting, wondering, and questioning.

And that is something I understand very personally.

It's also a big part of why I do the work I do today.

Over the years, I've learnt so much about the connection between our thoughts, emotions, language, energy, and the way we experience our fertility journey. I don't believe mindset is a magic solution, and I would never suggest that a woman can think herself into pregnancy. Fertility is far more complicated than that.

However, I do know energy, and I know that our belief systems and the stories we tell ourselves can affect how we move through the journey. Sometimes those stories need to be looked at.

Long before we start trying for a baby, we have already collected ideas about what we think fertility is going to look like for us.

Some ideas come from our family. Some come from friends. Some come from things we've heard or read. And some come from experiences that happened to someone else and somehow became part of the story we tell ourselves.

For me, it was easy to assume that falling pregnant would be straightforward because it had been straightforward for my mum and sister. I had no reason to think my experience would be any different.

But the opposite can happen too.

Perhaps your mum struggled to conceive. Maybe your sister, cousin, or aunty experienced delays or needed fertility treatment. Perhaps there is a history of PCOS or endometriosis in your family. Maybe you've heard stories about how difficult pregnancy was for the women around you. It's natural to wonder if the same thing will happen to you.

But someone else's story isn't yours.

Family history can be important medically, and it's something you should absolutely discuss with your healthcare team. But there is a difference between knowing your family history and assuming your journey will automatically follow the same path.

Sometimes we don't even realise we've made that assumption.

Then there are the expectations we create ourselves.

At the beginning, you probably hope to fall pregnant naturally, or within a certain timeframe. You take your vitamins, start paying attention to your cycle, and perhaps even have a preference for whether you'd like a boy or a girl. But ultimately, you just want a healthy baby. You're excited and you share your dreams with friends and family.

One of the biggest expectations we can carry is that there is a particular way this journey is supposed to happen.

You might have thought you'd have your first baby by a certain age. Maybe you imagined your children would be a certain number of years apart. Perhaps you pictured yourself pregnant within a few months of starting to try.

Then your journey doesn't follow the plan.

A few months pass. You're doing all the right things, but your period arrives again. You start looking at ovulation more closely. You count the days. You read more. You start trying different things. You become more aware of everyone else's pregnancies.

And slowly, the way you talk to yourself begins to change.

"Why isn't this happening?" 

"What's wrong with me?" 

"Everyone else seems to be able to do this." 

"Maybe it's never going to happen for me." 

"I thought I'd be pregnant by now."

These shifts in our thinking can creep in without us noticing. They build gradually, and the longer the journey goes on, the more pressure we place on ourselves.

The problem isn't that you're having these thoughts. If you've been trying for months or years, it's completely understandable that you'll have moments of frustration, sadness, anger, and fear. You are human, and we live through our emotions.

The important part is noticing when those thoughts become the story you believe about yourself.

Changing the way we talk to ourselves is one of the things I work on in my coaching sessions. We look at the language you're using and the beliefs creating those thoughts, then find alternative ways of thinking that support you more fully on your journey.

It's not about telling yourself to "just think positively" or pretending everything is okay when it isn't. It's about becoming aware of what you're carrying and asking yourself whether those thoughts are helping you, or making an already difficult journey even harder.

I don't believe in forcing affirmations that feel untrue.

If you're devastated after another negative pregnancy test, telling yourself "I am going to be pregnant this month" might not feel empowering at all. It might actually make you feel worse by overloading your nervous system.

Instead, we start with something that feels safe, realistic, and believable.

"Today, I can support myself with good nutrition."

 "I'm allowed to feel disappointed." 

"I don't have to know exactly when this will happen."

"My fertility journey does not define my worth." 

"I can be hopeful and still acknowledge that this is hard."

Sometimes the shift is very small. But every small shift matters.

Mindset work isn't something you complete in one session, and neither is energy healing. There isn't a magic sentence that suddenly makes everything feel better. Healing happens in layers.

That's why I believe we need to start from your baseline.

Where are you right now?

What are you thinking and feeling?

What are you telling yourself?

What expectations are you carrying?

And perhaps most importantly, are those expectations actually yours?

Once we understand that, we can start working with them rather than against them. As you begin to believe your new thoughts and gain confidence, we can build into something stronger, always keeping the goal in sight — being pregnant and carrying a healthy baby to term.

For me, this is what creating a strong fertility foundation is about. It's not about having a perfect mindset or being positive all the time. It's about giving yourself the tools to navigate the difficult days, so that the fertility journey doesn't completely take over who you are.

If you're reading this and thinking "I've done all of this," please know that I'm not saying you've caused your fertility challenges by thinking negatively.

You haven't. You are not broken. You are not failing because you're struggling. And you don't need to become a perfectly positive person before you can fall pregnant.

What you do deserve is support. Support to understand what you're carrying, find ways to manage the emotional weight, change the way you speak to yourself, and reconnect with who you are when fertility has started to feel like the only thing that matters.

I know how easy it is to lose yourself in the waiting. I know what it's like to watch hope shift from something that feels exciting into something that feels almost too painful to hold.

That's one of the reasons I created Fertility Foundations.

I wanted to share the things I wish someone had taught me when I was trying to conceive. Not because I have all the answers or can promise a particular outcome, but because I know how much easier the journey can feel when you have the right tools and someone in your corner who truly understands.

You don't have to carry every expectation, every disappointment, and every fear into the next cycle.

You can start from where you are and take it one step at a time, with support and encouragement from someone who genuinely gets it.