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If you’ve ever experienced infertility (or even just a few months of trying to get pregnant), I can basically guarantee you’ve heard something along the lines of “Just relax and it’ll happen!” when you express what you’re going through. At some point, you’ll start to feel like if you had a dollar for every time you received that type of comment, you could probably pay for the fertility treatments, no insurance needed.
And guess what? Those fertility treatments will probably be far more effective than “just relaxing”.
When I was trying to conceive, I constantly heard some version of this (or, my favorite: “Go on vacation, it’ll definitely happen then!”). Never mind that I was a journalist with years of experience covering reproductive health at the time. People still felt the need to tell me how to approach my own fertility journey.
Here’s the thing: It’s not just annoying to receive this type of advice. It’s also unproductive (you can’t relax your way out of reproductive health issues, in most cases) and wildly invalidating. Yet it persists: Even though we’ve come so far in our normalization of conversations around fertility issues, even though we’ve shared so much information about the complexities of reproduction, people still tend to boil getting pregnant down to mindset.
The problem with this fertility myth
In leaning into these wellness ideas about relaxing or meditating or embracing mindfulness to get pregnant, we're effectively telling people who are struggling to conceive that it’s their fault. And while that may not be the intention, it is the effect.
That’s why we need to unpack recent comments from an influencer
Lauryn Bosstick answered questions about her pregnancy on a recent Q+A episode of Skinny Confidential Him & Her podcast, and one "controversial" answer is making waves on the internet.
Bosstick shared that she conceived all three of her children on the first try. After acknowledging that a lot of people do have a very different experience, Bosstick shared her own approach: “I seriously meditated and thought about it in a way where I said… this is weird, but like: ‘My womb is healthy. I’m ready to have a baby. I’m open to having a baby’... I got my mindset really, really strong.”
“I don’t think that I would have gotten pregnant on the first try,” she added. “I really don’t. I think that that’s a blockage in your mind and body connection.”
Her comments are rubbing some people the wrong way… and I get it.
Feedback on Bosstick’s comments includes comments like: “So [for] all the years I have been trying to have a baby and thinking about being a mom and buying a new baby outfit every failed cycle and going through IVF all I had to do was ✨decide to have a baby✨🙄” and “I’ll let my fertility specialist know this 😂.”
There’s nothing wrong with sharing your fertility story (even if you did get pregnant immediately three times in a row). There’s nothing wrong with sharing the thing that worked for you. But we need to be careful about the messages we’re spreading, and the ways we are feeding into existing cultural tropes that hurt people navigating fertility issues, especially when we’re putting these messages out to large audiences. And these comments just perpetuate the idea that when it comes to getting pregnant, mindset is the thing that can make all the difference.
When it comes to fertility, mindset isn't everything
But here’s the thing: While there’s data to back up the relationship between stress and fertility challenges, we’ve taken this sort of “mindset-is-everything” line of thinking too far, especially where reproductive health is concerned.
The reality? So much of fertility comes down to dumb luck. And then, of course, there are the very real physical issues that can impede fertility — issues that require proper medical intervention. To lean heavily into this “mind-over-matter” sort of narrative that colors so much of the discourse around getting pregnant feels like a denial of both of these factors.
The fact of the matter is, that some people just get lucky… and some people don’t
This is true of everything in life, and fertility is no exception. Mindset can affect the way you experience fertility issues, and maybe it even has an incremental effect on your odds of actually conceiving. But as someone who has been through fertility challenges personally and who has spent the last ten-plus years covering reproductive health, I can say with certainty: Our cultural ideas about mindset and its role in fertility are being taken way too far.
When it comes to fertility issues, people are already wading through so much. There’s the personal element of the experience, plus the medical maze they must walk through — and on top of all that, there’s the societal stuff (take, for example, the “just relax and it’ll happen” treatment) and the mounds of misinformation and unhelpful advice.
People may mean well, but when people chalk it up to changing your mindset, it can have the opposite effect. It can add even more stress to an already incredibly overwhelming situation. Think about it: when you’re fired up about something and someone tells you to “calm down”... doesn’t that just make you feel worse?
You can't meditate real health issues away
You can’t meditate your way out of a true health issue. You can’t relax your way out of PCOS, endometriosis, diminished ovarian reserve, uterine abnormalities, or unexplained infertility. The line between health and wellness is blurry, but we’ve got to keep calling out this sort of wellness jargon that can hurt people going through real fertility issues more than it helps.
Bosstick probably didn’t mean to ruffle feathers or offend anyone — even though she did have the foresight to label her comments as “controversial”. But the fact of the matter is, comments like this can be a real slap in the face for people who are already feeling broken, or like their bodies are failing them, or like they’re constantly being blamed for something that exists outside their control.
Because at its core, that is what so much of the fertility experience is: uncontrollable. Yet when people spread messages like this, they’re essentially telling people that they just weren’t mentally strong or focused or relaxed or tapped in to steer the ship of their fertility. And don’t we already have enough blame directed towards women for the realities of their bodies?
Zara Hanawalt is a freelance journalist and mom of twins. She's written for outlets like Parents, MarieClaire, Elle, Cosmopolitan, Motherly, and many others. In her (admittedly limited!) free time, she enjoys cooking, reading, trying new restaurants, and traveling with her family.
