My Work Conflict Destroyed My Ability To Conceive

​I always knew that I was going to be a mom.
It was a given.

But as I passed the 35 year mark, I started to question whether it could or would happen for me.

My husband and I had been married for several years by then, and had enjoyed our “free time” and were ready to have our first baby.

So we did the natural thing, with regularity.

As time passed, though, we started to wonder what was going on.

Is there something wrong with me?
Is there something wrong with my husband?

On top of that, add in all the loving comments that people made:
“You’re not getting any younger you know.”
“When are you going to have kids?”
“Do you want kids?”

I was torn up inside. Not only was I stressed because of my conflict with my boss, but I was feeling even more stressed because I thought that there was something wrong with me.  

When I finally quit my job in March of 2012, I thought...okay, this is it. We can finally have our baby.

IT DIDN’T HAPPEN.

I had left one stressful situation for another. Add on to that the fact that I was carrying around a shit-ton of anger directed at my former boss.

I finally went to see a naturopathic gynecologist in December of 2012 and he took all sorts of blood, ran all sorts of test, and put me on all kinds of vitamins. He essentially said, “The baby will come when your body is ready.”

What I didn’t realize at that appointment, was that I was already pregnant. We did a happy dance when we found out, only to be further disappointed at my first ultrasound. The baby wasn’t meant to be.

What happened next changed everything.

Just three days after the procedure to remove the "non-viable fetus", I got my ass handed to me by the leader of a group coaching program I had enrolled in.

There I was, standing in front of a hundred or so people, tears streaming down my face, talking about how I had failed as an employee and leader, how I was failing as a wife, and how I couldn’t conceive, so by default had failed as a mother.

Over the course of that program, the leader and the other participants, helped me to face my bullshit stories about my former boss, and helped me to take control of my anger, resentment and negativity.

It was there that I realized I had been as much a cause of my work conflict as my boss, and by not dealing with it when I had the chance, I had allowed that conflict to infiltrate every part of my life, including my ability to conceive.

And, just three weeks after starting to work towards the inner resolution (after all, it was too late to salvage my career), I fell pregnant again, and my beautiful daughter is now 3. (And I have a son too.)

So ask yourself, even if you aren’t ready to take responsibility for your conflict at work, what unseen damage is the constant stress and fight-or-flight-mode doing to your body, and to the rest of your life?

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