Unbearable: Screw The Infertility Studies, I’m Having My Morning Coffee

Having a child is usually a happy time in a woman’s life. Unfortunately, as we wait longer to have children, infertility and trouble conceiving can become a part of the family making process. Unbearable addresses these difficulties.

The newest information on infertility says that  drinking coffee reduces your chances of a successful round of in vitro fertilization. Like many other things, caffeine is often thought to inhibit fertility. My natural fertility supplement program says that you need to stop the caffeine for maximum effectiveness. It also tells you to cut back on saturated fats and alcohol. Booze, I can give up. Healthy eating, I’m fine with it. Coffee? That’s where I draw the line.

Every time a new study emerges saying that something decreases the chance of having a baby, I immediately adapt my behavior to optimize my chances. No smoking? Well that wasn’t really a problem before. But I would’ve given it up in an instant. No alcohol? Goodbye Bud Light, I’ll see you in a year or two. Eat more of this, take less of that. Do more exercise, don’t exercise too much. Whatever the doctors say will help my chances, I’m all about it.

But I’ve been doing that for two years and it hasn’t changed anything. All of that careful adherence to the fertility plan and it didn’t matter. It didn’t change anything. And I’ve put my foot down with my morning cup of coffee.

I don’t drink coffee all day long. I have one cup in the morning. It’s how I wake up. It’s my time to collect my thoughts and plan out my day. I love my morning cup of coffee.

I have come to the point in my fertility journey where I realize that no single choice I make will really change the outcome. My problems are more than coffee and beer. These little “5% less chance” or “slightly less likely” factors probably don’t keep your uterus out of commission for multiple years. Holding on to those ideas, that just cutting out the caffeine or giving up saturated fats will finally bring me a baby, are false hopes. They make me think that if I can just behave perfectly, I’ll get pregnant. As if there’s something that I did to stop my reproductive system to begin with.

Those suffering with infertility want to feel like there’s something they can do. We want the illusion that if we try just a bit harder, there will be results. It gives us a goal. It gives us this illusion of control. Less coffee, less fats, less booze and you can finally have a baby. I tried that for months and it didn’t work. Those little fixes didn’t really solve the issue.

So I’m back to drinking my morning coffee. I’ve decided that being a happy and positive person every morning might be more helpful to my attempts to get pregnant than cutting out caffeine. I’ve decided that I won’t feel guilty, like I’m betraying my ovaries when I turn on my Keurig in the morning. Plenty of women have gotten pregnant while drinking coffee. I plan to be one of them.

(Photo: Raisa Kanareva/Shutterstock)