We now have so much information about infertility, from what healthy sperm looks like to understanding how to begin to identify problems like PCOS. The internet makes this information readily accessible. On the other hand, it is difficult to find information about the emotional journey of infertility. I am not talking about stress and infertility and the ongoing fears many patients have about feeling too stressed to conceive. That is an issue that has been addressed widely, and sadly, too many people continue to blame themselves for their infertility. That is a subject for another day.

Today I will provide a couple of examples of how the stress of family-building efforts can be more insidious than you may have imagined. Everyone knows that going through infertility is stressful but perhaps we don’t consider that it may be so stressful that it can lead you to make unhelpful decisions.

Let’s start with egg freezing, a fertility treatment that is growing in popularity. I have consulted with hundreds of egg-freezing patients and published research in this area. One of the problems I have discovered is that when people undergo egg........

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