When Hope Hurts: Living with Chronic Illness While Trying to Conceive
By Dr. Solimar Santiago-Warner, LCSW, PMH-C, Birth Trauma, Infertility & Reproductive Loss Therapist in NY & CT
Trying to conceive is often imagined as a season of hopeful anticipation—but for those living with a chronic illness, this journey can feel like a constant negotiation between longing and limitation. If you are navigating this intersection, I want you to know: you're not alone, and you're not doing it wrong. This experience is layered, complex, and worthy of validation.
This blog explores what it means to live with a chronic condition while trying to conceive (TTC), through a psychosocial, trauma-informed, and intersectional lens—and offers some grounding ways to cope.
The Invisible Weight of Dual Realities
Living with a chronic illness while TTC means you are managing two profound identities at once: someone committed to their health and healing, and someone actively trying to create new life. These dual roles can feel contradictory, especially when:
You’re taking medications that affect fertility or have to pause treatment.
Medical appointments blur between managing your condition and fertility planning.
Your body, already weary from chronic symptoms, now feels like a battleground for timing, ovulation, and injections.
You're grieving the dream of an “easy” path to parenthood that others seem to access effortlessly.
This is not just physically demanding—it’s emotionally exhausting.
Intersectionality Matters: Why This Isn't Just About Biology
From a psychosocial perspective, the impact of chronic illness and infertility is never just about the body. These experiences are shaped by:
Systemic ableism: Health systems often invalidate or deprioritize people with chronic illnesses who want to conceive. You might be told to “wait” or made to feel irresponsible for desiring parenthood.
Gendered expectations: Birthing people are socialized to “sacrifice everything” for a pregnancy. But what if you already sacrifice daily just to function?
Cultural and racial disparities: BIPOC individuals often face medical gaslighting, delayed diagnoses, and under-treatment—making fertility even more fraught.
Financial trauma: Chronic illness and fertility treatment can both be financially draining, leading to a compounded sense of scarcity and powerlessness.
When we acknowledge these layers, we move beyond blaming the body—and begin validating the full human experience.
Trauma-Informed Truths for This Journey
A trauma-informed lens invites us to recognize how chronic illness and TTC can retrigger past traumas, including:
Medical trauma from past surgeries or misdiagnoses
Loss of bodily autonomy or trust in medical providers
Previous pregnancy loss, reproductive violence, or systemic neglect
Feeling out of control—again
You may find yourself in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn modes during medical visits, intimacy, or even ovulation tracking. These are nervous system responses, not failures. Healing means noticing these patterns with compassion, not shame.
Ways to Cope (That Don’t Involve Toxic Positivity)
Here are a few trauma-sensitive ways to navigate this path with gentleness and integrity:
Honor Dual Realities
You can want a baby and still be tired. You can grieve the body you have and hold hope for the future. Let yourself live in the “both/and.”
Advocate for Integrated Care
Ask for coordination between your reproductive specialist and chronic illness providers. You deserve a team that sees your whole body and story.
Create a Boundaried Medical Folder
Reduce emotional labor by creating a document with your history, medications, and questions. Bring it to appointments to reduce the need to retell painful experiences.
Use Somatic Tools
Try nervous system regulation tools like:
5-4-3-2-1 grounding
Diaphragmatic breathing
Somatic journaling (“What is my body asking for today?”)
Lean on Community That “Gets It”
Join TTC or chronic illness support spaces (online or in-person) where others speak your language—grief, grit, and guarded hope.
Decolonize the Fertility Timeline
There is no “right” time or way to build a family. Whether you are cycling, resting, freezing eggs, or pausing—you are still on your path.
In Closing
Trying to conceive while managing a chronic illness can feel like living in a paradox: hopeful and heartbreaking, sacred and exhausting. You may feel invisible in fertility spaces and in chronic illness communities. But your experience is real. And your desire for parenthood, despite everything, is a radical act of love.
Be tender with yourself. You’re already doing so much.
Need support on this path?
At Solmaterna, we specialize in supporting individuals navigating the intersection of chronic illness, infertility, and reproductive trauma. Whether you're living with an autoimmune condition, recovering from medical trauma, or quietly grieving a long fertility journey—your experience deserves to be seen, validated, and gently held.
Our trauma-informed, culturally responsive therapy offers a safe space to process grief, manage anxiety, and reconnect with your body—without shame or pressure.
We offer virtual therapy in New York and Connecticut, with a deep focus on:
Infertility counseling
Therapy for chronic illness and TTC
Reproductive trauma and medical PTSD support
Perinatal mental health care
Holistic and somatic approaches to fertility grief
You don’t have to navigate this journey alone.
Learn more or book a free consultation: solimartherapy@gmail.com
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