By Dr. Shweta Agarwal, MBBS, DGO Medically reviewed by Dr. Shweta Agarwal, MBBS, DGO Last updated: July 2026
Information on this page is educational and does not replace a medical or mental-health consultation. If you feel you may act on thoughts of harming yourself, call 112 (India's Emergency Response Support System) or go to your nearest hospital emergency department now, and tell someone in the house.
Aansh Hospital & IVF Center is a government-registered Level-2 ART clinic (Reg. No. MH/AC/2024/15441/L2/Chandrapur/132), with our headquarters and in-house embryology lab in Chandrapur, serving families across Vidarbha and northern Telangana under the clinical leadership of Dr. Shweta Agarwal.
Almost every guide to IVF explains the injections, the scans, the retrieval, the transfer. Almost none explains the part patients describe as hardest: what this does to your mind, your marriage, and your ability to sit through a family function.
Our patients kept telling us the same three things. "Doctor, I cry at nothing and I don't recognise myself." "Everyone asks and I don't know what to say." "My husband thinks I'm overreacting."
None of that is a personal failing.
Does IVF make you emotional?
For many people, yes — noticeably so. It is one of the most common things patients report, and it has physical as well as situational reasons behind it.
An IVF cycle asks two hard things of you at once. It uses medicines that alter your hormonal state on purpose, and it holds you in suspense for weeks over the thing you want most. Feeling unsteady in that situation is an ordinary human response.
What patients most often describe:
- Crying suddenly, over something small, then feeling embarrassed about it
- Irritability with the people they love most — often the partner, because he is nearest
- Difficulty concentrating at work
- Waking at 3 a.m. doing arithmetic about dates, money and age
- Feeling fine one hour and hopeless the next
Not everyone experiences this, and the intensity varies widely. But if you recognise yourself in that list, you are far from unusual.
How do IVF hormones make you feel? Emotional side effects of IVF drugs
This is the section to show anyone who has said "it's all in your head."
Not every cycle uses the same medicines — antagonist, agonist, mild-stimulation, natural-cycle and frozen-transfer protocols differ, and yours may not include all of the drugs below. Ask your doctor which of these applies to you.
| Medicine (depending on your protocol) | What it does | Mood-related effects in the product information |
|---|---|---|
| GnRH agonist (e.g. leuprolide-type injection or nasal spray, used for down-regulation in agonist protocols) | Temporarily switches off your own pituitary signalling so the cycle can be controlled | Product labelling for leuprolide recognises emotional lability, depression, headache and hot flushes, related to the temporary low-oestrogen state these drugs create |
| Gonadotropins (FSH/LH stimulation injections) | Grow several follicles at once | Oestradiol rises well above a natural cycle. Bloating, abdominal discomfort and disturbed sleep are common and can affect how you feel day to day |
| Progesterone (pessaries, gel or injection, for luteal support after transfer) | Maintains the uterine lining | Product inserts list possible mood swings, irritability, fatigue and bloating. These overlap with early-pregnancy symptoms, which is part of why the two-week wait is mentally punishing |
Two practical points follow.
Notice when in the cycle you feel worst, and tell us. Direct research linking measured hormone levels to mood scores during IVF is limited and inconsistent, so we cannot promise a specific cause. But a pattern tied to one phase is useful clinical information, and protocols are not fixed — in some situations a different protocol is clinically appropriate.
An emotional side effect is still a side effect. Report it the way you would report a headache. Patients often hide it, fearing we will say they are "not strong enough for IVF." We will not.
What to report to the clinic straight away
- Mood changes severe enough to frighten you or your family
- Sleep loss continuing for more than a few nights
- Breathlessness, chest discomfort, marked palpitations or severe bloating — do not assume this is anxiety. During or after stimulation these can signal OHSS (ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome) or another physical complication and need to be assessed medically first
- Any thought of harming yourself
Call +91 80056 85160. If you feel you might act on thoughts of self-harm, call 112 or go to the nearest emergency department immediately — do not wait for an appointment.
Why does infertility cause depression, and why is it so hard on mental health?
Infertility does not cause depression in everyone. But it is strongly associated with distress, and the reasons are not mysterious.
It is recurring. Most difficulties resolve and then you begin recovering. Infertility rebuilds hope every cycle and then removes it again. Hope is exhausting when it is compulsory.
It is invisible and unspoken. In most of our families this is discussed in whispers or not at all. The couple carries it alone while everyone around them has an opinion.
It attacks identity. Where a woman's worth is still openly linked to motherhood, infertility does not feel like a medical condition. It feels like a verdict. That is why "just relax" lands like an insult.
It is chronic, costly and largely outside your control — the combination known in general medicine to drive distress in any long illness. IVF involves real money, often borrowed. We publish our actual cost ranges and 0% EMI options precisely so this is not another ambush.
A well-known 1993 study by Domar and colleagues found that women attending an infertility clinic reported depression and anxiety scores that were not statistically different from those of women attending clinics for several other serious medical conditions. The comparison groups were small, so it does not prove every person with infertility feels that way — but it was an early signal that this distress deserves to be taken seriously as a clinical matter.
How to deal mentally with infertility
Not platitudes — these are the things patients most often tell us made a difference. None is a treatment, and what helps is individual.
Put a boundary on the searching. Compulsive googling of symptoms and success rates tends to feed anxiety without teaching you anything your own reports don't already say. If you read, read at a fixed time, from clinical sources, and be sceptical of clinic marketing (here is how to read an IVF success rate claim).
Bring the questions to us instead. Much 2 a.m. anxiety is an unanswered question that felt too small to ask in the consulting room. It was not too small. Write questions down during the week and bring the list.
Keep the parts of life that are not about fertility. A job, a course, a business, a friendship, a trip. Suspending your whole life "until the baby comes" tends to make the waiting harder, and it does not improve the odds.
Move your body gently. Walking, gentle yoga, breathing practice. Do it because of how it makes you feel, not because it changes implantation.
Don't let your spouse be your only support. Some people find it helps to have one other person — a sister, a friend — who is allowed to know everything.
Consider a counsellor early, not as a last resort. Psychosocial support and fertility counselling are recognised parts of good ART care internationally, not something reserved for people who are "not coping."
Set decision points while you are calm. Agreeing something like "we will review after this cycle" is easier to live with than deciding in the hours after a negative result. It replaces an infinite corridor with a plan.
How to relax before IVF and keep calm during the cycle
The honest version: you will probably not be calm, and calmness is not a requirement for success. What is realistically achievable:
- Ask for the cycle plan in writing — which day which injection, which day which scan. Uncertainty is the fuel; a printed calendar removes a surprising amount of it.
- Sort the money before you start. Get package inclusions and likely extras up front so costs don't ambush you mid-cycle.
- Practise the injections with the nurse until you feel confident. Fear of the needle is a nightly stressor that teaching often eases.
- Decide your two-week-wait rules on day one — work or not, test at home or not — so you are not renegotiating with yourself daily.
- Slow breathing, with a longer exhale than inhale. Free, portable, and some people find it steadies them in a waiting room.
How to stop being depressed about infertility: when it needs assessment
First, separate two things. Sadness during infertility is normal; it needs support and boundaries, not "stopping." Depression is a different, treatable condition — and it is diagnosed on a pattern of symptoms, their duration and their effect on your functioning, not on any single sign.
The signs below are reasons to seek assessment, not a diagnosis you can make at home. Several of them — fatigue, disturbed sleep, appetite change, poor concentration — can also come from the treatment itself or from another medical condition, which is exactly why a professional should sort it out rather than you.
| Usually the ordinary distress of treatment | Worth getting assessed |
|---|---|
| Bad days and better days | Low mood most of the day, nearly every day, for two weeks or longer |
| Some things still give pleasure | Nothing gives pleasure any more, including things you loved |
| Crying, then recovering | Persistent numbness, or crying you cannot stop |
| Sleep disturbed around scans and results | Sleep badly broken for weeks, or sleeping all day |
| Tired from the cycle | Exhaustion that makes basic tasks feel impossible |
| "This is unfair" | "I am worthless" / "Everyone would be better off without me" |
| Managing work and home, with difficulty | Unable to function at work or at home |
| No thoughts of self-harm | Any thought of harming yourself — urgent, regardless of how long it has lasted |
How common is depression in fertility treatment? Pooled estimates vary widely depending on the population studied and the screening questionnaire used — published meta-analyses have reported figures ranging from roughly one in five to more than half. The honest summary is that it is common enough that we ask about it, and that a single tidy percentage would be misleading.
Depression responds to treatment — counselling, and where appropriate medication — just as blocked tubes respond to treatment. If you already take an antidepressant, do not start or stop it on your own during fertility treatment: your psychiatrist and your fertility doctor should decide together.
Where to get help in India — free, in your language
Most articles on this subject were written for the US, UK or Australia and refer you to services you cannot use from Chandrapur. Here is what actually exists here.
| Service | Number | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Emergency (immediate risk) | 112 | India's Emergency Response Support System, or go to your nearest hospital emergency department. Use this if you may act on thoughts of self-harm, have a plan, or cannot keep yourself safe. Tell someone in the house and do not stay alone. |
| Tele-MANAS — National Tele Mental Health Programme, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Govt of India | 14416 or 1-800-891-4416 | Free, 24×7. Available in English and 20 regional languages including Marathi, Hindi and Telugu. A trained counsellor answers, and can refer you onward to a mental health professional where needed. |
| Your fertility clinic | +91 80056 85160 | Tell us. We would far rather adjust your support or your protocol than have you carry this quietly. WhatsApp us. |
| A psychiatrist or clinical psychologist | Ask us for a local referral | Counselling and, where appropriate, medication are both legitimate and available in Chandrapur. |
Calling a helpline is not an admission that you have failed. It is the same category of act as calling us about a missed progesterone dose.
The part nobody writes about: "Good news kab de rahe ho?"
Every international article on coping with infertility assumes you can set a boundary and be left alone. That advice was not written for a joint family in Vidarbha.
Here it is not one question from one person. It is your mother-in-law, a neighbour, your maushi, a woman at a wedding you have met twice, an uncle at Diwali — and the question rarely feels neutral. It carries an implication: that you are delaying deliberately, that something is wrong with you, or that a remedy exists which you are too stubborn to try.
Three things worth saying plainly.
The pressure lands on the woman, and that is medically wrong. Infertility can involve the female partner, the male partner, both, or no identifiable cause at all (see unexplained infertility and male infertility). A family that pressures only the daughter-in-law is, quite simply, factually mistaken. Bring them to a consultation and let us say so. We have had that conversation many times, and it changes households.
"Just relax and it will happen" is not advice, and it is not true. Stress is not why the fallopian tubes are blocked or why the sperm count is low. Manage stress because you deserve to feel better, not because relaxing is a treatment.
Nobody is owed a report on your uterus. Politeness does not require disclosure.
Scripts: what to actually say when they ask
Practise one or two out loud with your partner so they come out smoothly instead of as tears. The goal is not to win the conversation — it is to end it without spending your energy. Use whichever language your family actually speaks.
| They say | You say (warm, and closes the topic) |
|---|---|
| "Good news kab de rahe ho?" | "Jab hoga, sabse pehle aapko batayenge." — smile, change the subject. |
| "Ab toh der ho rahi hai" | "Doctor ko dikha rahe hain, aap chinta mat kijiye." / Marathi: "Doctorांना दाखवत आहोत, तुम्ही काळजी करू नका." |
| "Koi problem hai kya?" | "Medical details abhi private rakhna chahte hain." |
| "Meri friend ne yeh dawa li thi, tu bhi le le" | "Doctor ne jo plan diya hai, wahi follow kar rahe hain." |
| "Pooja/upvaas kar lo, ho jayega" | "Bas aapka aashirwad chahiye." (Accept the blessing, decline the instruction.) |
| Someone announces a pregnancy and you feel your face fall | "Bahut khushi hui — main bas do minute bahar hokar aati hoon." |
Two permissions you may not have given yourself:
- You are allowed to not attend. Skipping one baby shower is not a family betrayal. Send a gift, send love, protect yourself.
- You are allowed to leave your phone in another room. For many of our patients, family WhatsApp groups during festival season are the single largest source of distress in the month.
If you are searching for words: "ivf quotes in hindi", "infertility quotes", "ivf hope quotes"
A striking number of people going through this search for quotes — in Hindi, in English, for a caption or a status. That is not trivial. It is people looking for language for something they have no permission to say out loud.
If that is you, here is a sentence to keep instead of a quote:
"Yeh ilaaj chal raha hai. Yeh meri galti nahi hai. Aur main akeli nahi hoon." This treatment is ongoing. This is not my fault. And I am not alone.
All three parts are accurate. Say them to yourself on the bad days.
Protecting your marriage through treatment
Couples rarely arrive at the clinic in the same emotional place, and the mismatch becomes a second problem. Often one partner is living it daily — the injections, the scans, the questions — while the other copes by staying practical and saying little. Silence gets read as indifference; distress gets read as a failure to fix things. Both readings are usually wrong, and neither gets said out loud.
Three things couples tell us help:
Contain it in time. Agree an hour in the evening when the topic is discussed, and keep it out of the rest of the day. Not avoidance — containment, so the whole marriage does not become a treatment cycle.
Share the admin, deliberately. Appointments, injection schedule, pharmacy runs, the reports folder, EMI paperwork. Decide together who owns what, so one person is not the patient and the project manager.
Agree in advance what you will tell people. Most family blow-ups happen because one spouse disclosed something the other considered private. Settle the sentence before wedding season starts.
And after a negative result, one of you may want to plan the next cycle within a week while the other needs a month. Both are normal. Say the timeline out loud instead of assuming.
For husbands: a short section, please read it
If your wife sent you this link, she is trying to tell you something she has struggled to say directly.
Some of what she is feeling has a physical component. She may be on medicines whose own product information lists mood effects. That does not excuse anything anyone says or does — but it may explain why she does not feel like herself, and why "control it" is not useful advice.
Do not fix. Sit. The instinct is to solve: another doctor, another city, another diet, "don't think so much." What most women tell us actually helps is "This is really hard, and I'm here." Full stop, no solution attached.
Take your own family's questions. This is the single most valuable thing you can do. When your relatives ask about "good news," answer them yourself, in front of her: "We're handling it, and we'll tell you when there's something to tell." If the questions come from your side, they are yours to stop.
Come to the appointments — not only the ones where a sample is needed. It signals that this is a shared problem.
Your own feelings count too. Men in our clinic carry the financial fear and a heavy silence, and are far less likely to tell anyone. If male factor is part of your diagnosis, it is a finding about cells, not about masculinity — read male fertility myths vs facts. The helplines above are for you as much as for her.
Does stress affect IVF?
This is asked constantly, usually with fear attached — that a woman's own anxiety is sabotaging her cycle.
The reassuring finding: a 2011 meta-analysis published in the BMJ (Boivin and colleagues) found that pre-treatment emotional distress was not associated with pregnancy outcome in women undergoing a single cycle of assisted reproductive technology. In other words, being anxious going into a cycle has not been shown to be what decides the result.
Where distress does matter is different and real: it affects your quality of life, it strains your relationship, and it is one reason couples discontinue treatment. That is reason enough to take it seriously — without adding self-blame to a list you are already carrying.
If this cycle did not work, the clinical review and how the next approach is adjusted are covered in coming to terms after a failed IVF cycle. If you would like a second set of eyes on previous records before deciding anything, our free second opinion exists for that.
Talk to us
If any part of this page described your last few months, tell us — at your next appointment, or before it. We can adjust your support, explain your protocol again, speak to your family with you, or refer you to a counsellor in Chandrapur.
Call or WhatsApp +91 80056 85160 for an appointment, or book a free second opinion if you are carrying reports from a previous cycle. Partners are very welcome in the consulting room.
If you need to speak to someone tonight: Tele-MANAS 14416 — free, 24×7, in your language. If you may act on thoughts of self-harm: 112, or your nearest emergency department, now.