Before you Start your IVF
How to Prepare Yourself Emotionally for IVF
By Gordon Mullins | Fertility Acupuncturist & Meditation Teacher
Reading time: 8 minutes
The Preparation Your Doctor Won’t Give You
I’ve sat with thousands of women as they prepare for IVF. The protocol conversation is always the same: medications, timing, appointments, what to avoid. But there’s never a conversation about the thing that actually matters—how you’re going to get through this.
After 23 years of clinical practice, I can tell you this with absolute certainty: the women who navigate IVF with their sanity intact aren’t the ones who follow the perfect protocol. They’re the ones who’ve done the inner work first.
IVF demands everything from you—your time, your body, your hope, and most crucially, your presence. Before the needles start, before the appointments consume your calendar, you need to prepare the part of you that’s going to witness all of this without disappearing. Your Mind, Your Body. This is the part that takes the hit..
What I’ve Learned From Being In The Room
In Chinese medicine, we have a principle: the Kidneys are the foundation of all life force.
This matters for IVF. Your kidneys are your deepest reserves—your constitutional energy, your ability to hold presence through uncertainty, your capacity to hope. Before you start IVF, your kidneys need to be strong. Not through supplements alone, but through presence. Through stillness. Through the nervous system settling, or the Nervous System in overdrive.
I can feel it the moment a client walks into my clinic. The ones whose kidneys are depleted—they’re already exhausted before treatment even begins. Their nervous systems are like they are on steroids. They’re running on fumes. Its important to remember, an exhausted tired fatigued body, is an exhausted tired fatigued reproductive system.
The emotional preparation isn’t optional. It’s foundational.
In 23 years, I’ve seen this pattern: women who arrive at IVF already burned out, already anxious, already trying to plan everything, I’m sorry to say this, they struggle more. Not because of lack of effort, but because they’re already depleted. There is zero to work with. Its the Type A personality dilemma…
Those who do the inner work first, who learn to sit in stillness for a few minutes a day, who practice presence, who release the fantasy of these being a plan, they move through IVF a little differently. Not without difficulty, but with more grace. Just a little more at peace with the process of IVF.
What Actually Happens (Not What They Tell You)
Yes, your body will change. There can be bloating. Moods may shift. Sleep sometimes gets disrupted. The hormones are real. And yes you are human not a robot so all this is very normal.
But the thing nobody warns you about: your nervous system goes into overdrive.
This is something I see in every woman, regardless of how emotionally prepared she is. The moment you start stimulation, your whole being: physical, emotional, mental is activated. Your parasympathetic nervous system (the Zen part) goes quiet. Your sympathetic nervous system (Chaos in motion) wakes up.
This is biological. It’s not weakness. It’s your body recognizing that something significant is happening, and it’s preparing to protect you.
The problem: we don’t tell our patients this is normal. So when anxiety shows up, when they can’t sleep, when their mind loops obsessively, they think something is wrong with them. They think they’re failing at IVF before it even starts.
Here’s the truth: You’re not failing. Your nervous system is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do. The question is: can you learn to work with it instead of against it?
The Five Things I Tell My Patients Before They Start
1. Release the belief that you can control the outcome
In 23 years, I’ve watched women do everything right—perfect diet, perfect sleep, perfect attitude with devastating outcomes. I’ve watched women who didn’t follow any protocol and get pregnant immediately. Yes this seems unfair, and yes it is, however fertility is not about a linear approach, there is so much more to it. Sometimes the more we do, the further away it takes us.
This is biology. Your body has its own intelligence that exists independent of your effort and this isnt something medicine can understand, currently.
The sooner we come to acceptance not intellectually, but in our heart the sooner we can focus on what we actually can control: being in our presence, our breath, how we show up each day, even when it is so hard.
I don’t teach my patients to surrender to the outcome and give up. I teach them to surrender to the process and stay engaged. There’s a massive difference.
2. Your grief is real
My patients tell me they feel grief before anything has even happened. Before retrieval. Before transfer. Sometimes even before starting stimulation.
They feel bad about this grief. Like they’re jinxing it. Like they should be positive.
That grief you may be feeling? That’s real and valid. You’re grieving the loss of the easy path. The path where you get pregnant without medical intervention. The path where you don’t have to hold this level of hope and fear at the same time, it is possible to hold two very different emotions about the same thing at the same time, the sadness of the easier path for so many others, the hope for the potential to creating a new life.
Grieve it. Let it move through you. Don’t try to fix it or think positive about it. Just let it be in this moment.
This is what I learned from my meditation practice: the feelings that we resist persist. The feelings we welcome move through us and transform.
3. Build your meditation practice now, not later
This is non negotiable in my practice. Every client I work with, I ask them: when was the last time you sat in stillness for 30 minutes? Theres a big pause, ok 10 minutes, another pause, 1 minute?
If the answer is “I can’t, I’m too busy” or “I can’t meditate,” we start there. Before the protocol. Before anything else.
Not because meditation will change your IVF outcome. (It won’t. That’s not what it’s for.)
But because a regular meditation practice settles your nervous system permission. It teaches your body what presence feels like when there’s no threat. It creates a neurological baseline that you can return to when everything gets overwhelming. Now doesnt that sound amazing….. what would you pay to have just a full day of calm, peace, hope and fun. Just ask yourself, when was the last time you felt one of these four.
In stimulation, when you’re bloated and anxious and your mind is spiraling that’s not the time to learn to meditate. Your nervous system is too activated. You need this foundation in place before treatment starts.
Even 5 minutes a day, starting now, changes everything.
4. Find someone who can hold this with you
Not a cheerleader. Someone who can hold the actual truth of it.
In my practice, this might be their partner. It might be a therapist who understands fertility. It might be a close friend. It might be a community of other women in IVF.
But it can’t be just you, holding this alone. The human nervous system is designed for co-regulation. We settle each other. We regulate each other through presence.
If you go into IVF without this, you will feel isolated in a way that’s hard to describe to anyone who hasn’t been there.
Find your person. Tell them now: “I need you to understand something about what’s about to happen. This is going to be hard for me. And I need you to just be here, not to fix it or make it better, just to witness it with me.”
The right person will always say yes.
5. Know that uncertainty, not the procedures
Patients always ask me: “Will retrieval be painful? Will I be okay during transfer?”
The answer is always: “Yes, you’ll be fine. You’ll be sedated for retrieval. Transfer is quick and simple. Your body is stronger than you know.”
But nobody talks about the waiting. The not knowing.
Will I have a normal response to the medications? Will they retrieve enough eggs? Will fertilization happen? Will the embryos develop normally? Will it implant? Am I pregnant?
Each of these checkpoints is a little death and rebirth. Hope, then uncertainty, then waiting, then answer, then the next hope, the next uncertainty, the next wait.
This cycle of hope, uncertainty, answer repeats itself over and over and over. And this is what causes the chaos.
The human brain is built for predictability. We really hate uncertainty. It activates our threat detection system. When you’re in IVF, you’re living in perpetual uncertainty. Of course your nervous system is activated. Of course anxiety shows up. This. Is all normal.
Understanding this in advance is half the battle. When you know: “This uncertainty I’m feeling is normal, it’s biological, it’s not a sign of weakness or lack of faith” something shifts. You stop fighting the feeling. You just acknowledge it.
“Oh, here’s the uncertainty. Gordon told me about Yes, this is part of IVF. Yes, I can hold this.”
The Clinical Truth
From my acupuncture practice, I work with the concept of Qi (life force energy) and blood circulation. IVF stimulation is intense. It asks your body to produce more follicles than it normally would, in a shorter timeline.
What I see clinically: women need acupuncture support not because it will increase success rates, but because it helps regulate the nervous system and support blood flow during stimulation.
The same applies to meditation. You need it to support your nervous system through the activation of IVF.
When your nervous system is regulated, your body can function more optimally. When it’s deregulated, everything becomes harder, your sleep, your digestion, your emotional resilience, your hope.
This is why I’m so passionate about starting these practices now, before treatment begins. Because the more tools that you have in your toolbox for IVF, the better the outcomes. This is not me just making this up to make you feel better, this is 23 years of knowledge, experience and of course a little bit of guess work.
Before Your First Appointment
Sit somewhere quiet. Close your eyes. Take three deep breaths.
Feel your feet on the ground. Feel your body here, present, alive.
Notice what you’re carrying about this journey: the hope, the fear, the uncertainty, the longing.
Don’t try to change any of it. Just notice.
This is the beginning of preparation. Not doing something to fix yourself. Just bearing witness to what’s true for you right now.
You are about to do something brave. Not because you’ll definitely get the outcome you want—you might not. But because you’re willing to navigate uncertainty with presence.
That takes a particular kind of courage. The kind that comes from grounding, not from willpower.
The kind that comes from knowing you can hold yourself, no matter what happens.
This Week: Your 3-5 Meditation Practice
Start here: 3-5 minutes a day, in the morning or evening, doesn’t matter.
Find a quiet space. Sit. Close your eyes. Follow your breath. When your mind wanders (it will), gently bring it back.
That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
Do this for seven days before you start IVF. Make it familiar. Make it your space to return to.
When everything gets intense—and it will—you’ll have this practice. You’ll know what it feels like to simply be present without doing anything.
That space becomes everything.
What’s True
I’ve been doing this work for 23 years. I’ve sat with thousands of women as they navigate fertility, IVF, disappointment, loss, joy, pregnancy.
The ones who do best aren’t the ones with the best outcomes (though many of them get those too). They’re the ones who show up for themselves first. Who build these practices. Who release the fantasy of control. Who stay present.
You can be one of those women.
It starts now.
Next week: What Nobody Tells You: The Real Emotional Reality of What Happens During Stimulation
Let your doctors care for your embryos. Let me hold the space for you.