Welcome to IVF This, episode 185- IVF and Graduating

Hello, hello, hello my beautiful friends, and welcome back to IVF This. Today we’re going to talk about something that doesn’t really get the airtime it deserves — what it feels like to “graduate” in IVF.

And no, I don’t mean walking across a stage in a cap and gown, though wouldn’t that be a fun visual? I mean the moment your fertility clinic tells you: “Congratulations, you’re pregnant. We’re releasing you to your OB.”

On paper, that sounds amazing, right? It’s usually delivered with balloons or hugs and a big “hooray!” moment. But here’s the thing — for many people, “graduating” comes with some very complicated feelings. Joy, relief, fear, grief, even confusion. And that’s what we’re going to dig into today.

What Graduating Really Means

When your clinic says you’ve graduated, it’s not just about moving from your fertility team to your OB. It’s a whole bundle of transitions happening at once.

On the surface, it looks like a celebration. Sometimes clinics will even give you balloons or a little graduation certificate, and it’s meant to mark the closing of one chapter. But underneath, there are so many layers.

For one, you’re often asked to stop the medications that helped get you here in the first place. If you’ve been taking progesterone, estrogen, or a combination of both, your body and your heart may have gotten very used to the routine — those injections or pills or patches become a lifeline. They feel like your safety net. And now, someone is saying: “Okay, you don’t need those anymore. You can stop.” And that can feel terrifying. Because those meds weren’t just hormones; they were symbols of security.

Then there’s the relational side of it. By this point, you’ve likely spent months, maybe even years, in and out of the clinic. Multiple appointments each week. Blood draws, ultrasounds, phone calls with your nurse. They’ve seen you at your most hopeful and your most devastated. They know your partner’s work schedule because they’ve helped coordinate around it. They know your history in such an intimate way. In many ways, your clinic staff become a kind of extended family.

And now, you’re saying goodbye. Not just to the physical clinic, but to those people who have walked alongside you in every version of this journey. That can bring up its own grief. Because as excited as you may be to move forward, you’re also losing the closeness of that oversight, the comfort of being surrounded by people who get it.

And here’s the piece I really want to normalize for you — that grief and fear you may feel in this transition is not a sign that something is wrong with you. It doesn’t mean you’re ungrateful, or that you’re not “happy enough” about graduating. It’s actually incredibly common. In fact, most people never even realize that’s what’s happening — that what they’re feeling is grief. A grief of losing the safety net, of stepping away from the people who have carried you through some of the hardest moments of your life.

So if you’ve felt that ache, or that fear of letting go, please hear me when I say: you are not alone in it. This is a very human reaction to a really big shift.

The Excitement and the Fear

I’ll share a quick story. One of my clients told me, “I thought I’d be over the moon the day I graduated. Instead, I sobbed in the car because I realized… what if something goes wrong now? Who’s going to catch it?”

And that really sums it up — graduating is a milestone, but it’s not the finish line.

What can be particularly tricky is trying to explain that to people who haven’t gone through IVF. You might tell someone close to you, “I graduated from my clinic today!” And because of their innocence — or really, just lack of familiarity — they may assume, “Oh, wonderful! So in seven or eight months, there’ll be a baby!”

But here’s the thing: in IVF, graduating isn’t the same as “guaranteed baby.” It’s just the next step. Typically, graduation happens somewhere between eight to ten weeks of pregnancy. Which means, from the outside, people might hear that and think you’re practically at the finish line. But from the inside, you know it’s just another marker on a very long road.

And in that gap — between your last fertility appointment and your first OB appointment — there’s usually this period where you don’t have anyone checking your labs, you don’t have weekly ultrasounds, you don’t have that constant reassurance. And what most people do in that space is… a lot of symptom spotting. Paying close attention to every cramp, every wave of nausea, every breast tenderness. Not because you’re obsessive, but because it’s your brain’s way of trying to self-soothe. It’s a very normal, very human attempt to reassure yourself: “Okay, things are still on track.”

So when other people get excited for you — throwing confetti, talking about baby names, assuming you’re in the clear — there can be this strange tension. Because you might not feel safe to celebrate yet. And that’s okay. It doesn’t make you negative or ungrateful. It just means your nervous system is catching up with your reality.

And on the flip side — it’s also okay if you do want to celebrate. If you want to throw yourself a little graduation party, take yourself out for a nice dinner, or mark the milestone in some meaningful way — go off! Do it. There is no wrong way to acknowledge this transition.

But the through-line is this: there’s often a misalignment between how you thought you’d feel and how you actually feel. You imagine you’ll be bursting with relief and joy, and instead you might find yourself feeling cautious, overwhelmed, or just… weird. And that can be jarring.

And that’s really the truth of graduating in IVF — it’s almost never just one feeling. It’s usually a mixed bag of excitement, fear, trepidation, gratitude, grief, hope — all at the same time. And that doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It means you’re human.

The Arrival Fallacy

Now, let’s talk about something that I think is at the very heart of this whole “graduating” conversation — the arrival fallacy.

The arrival fallacy is a cognitive bias — a way our brains are wired to think — and here’s the kicker: every single human has it. Nobody escapes this one.

And here’s the really important qualifier: the arrival fallacy isn’t just about wanting something. It’s about believing that once you achieve it, you’ll finally have lasting happiness. That once you get the thing you want most — whether that’s a baby, a promotion, more money, or getting through a tough season — then you’ll be carefree, protected, and safe from pain.

Our brains overgeneralize so much — because they have to — that we truly come to believe: “Once I have this, I won’t feel that pain anymore.” And you know what? You probably won’t feel that same pain again. You won’t feel the sting of IVF shots and daily monitoring once you’ve graduated. You won’t feel the ache of being overlooked at work once you land the new job. That’s true.

But here’s what our brains leave out: you will still feel other pain. It just takes a different shape. The anxiety of trying to settle into your pregnancy. The stress of navigating a new job. The worries about the next milestone.

And I want to share something really personal here, because I’ve lived this. When we first started trying, we didn’t know we had both male and female factor infertility. Yes, both — because apparently my husband and I are the consummate overachievers. It took us 18 months and two gynecological surgeries before I got pregnant with our oldest. And yes, I was over the moon excited.

I had a tough, but relatively “normal” pregnancy. And then I delivered him… and my whole life flipped over. Not just in the way everyone tells you your life flips upside down with a new baby. For me, I was hit with postpartum anxiety and depression. Now, I’ve always been a little prone to anxiety and depression, so that part didn’t shock me. But what did shock me was how I thought I was supposed to feel. I thought I’d be flooded with love and connection from the very first moment. That’s the story we’re sold, right? The perfectly curated Instagram photos, the women saying they fell in love the second they saw their baby.

That wasn’t my experience. Not even close. And I can remember standing in the shower, sobbing, saying to myself: “This is what you fucking wanted!” Super helpful, right? But that was the arrival fallacy in real time. My experience didn’t match the image I had built up in my mind — the image the world told me I should have — and my mental health suffered deeply for it.

And that’s the danger of the arrival fallacy. Not the milestone itself, but the misalignment between what you expected to feel and what you actually feel. That gap can mess with your head. It can convince you that you’re broken, ungrateful, or doing it wrong.

But here’s the truth: you’re not broken. You didn’t do it wrong. This is just how the arrival fallacy plays out — in IVF, in parenting, in careers, in life.

And just so you can really see how universal this is, I want you to pause and think of a time in your own life. Maybe you got the degree, or you bought the house, or you finally landed the job. Do you remember what you thought you’d feel once you got there? And then… what you actually felt? Was there a gap? A little disappointment? Maybe even confusion about why you weren’t floating on cloud nine? That gap — that’s the arrival fallacy.

So the next time you catch yourself thinking, “Once I get there, then I’ll finally feel safe, calm, or happy” — pause. Take a breath. Remind yourself: it’s not about eliminating pain. It’s about recognizing your resilience, and knowing you can carry both joy and struggle together.

Moving Forward with Awareness

So if graduating is layered, and the arrival fallacy is sneaky, what do we actually do with all of this? How do we move forward when the reality doesn’t always match the picture in our heads?

The first thing is awareness. Just naming what’s happening is huge. If you can notice, “Oh, this fear or disappointment I’m feeling — that might be the arrival fallacy talking,” you’ve already created space between you and the thought.

The second thing is what I call the both/and practice. It’s giving yourself permission to hold two seemingly opposite feelings at once. “I’m grateful I graduated, and I’m terrified.” “I’m thrilled for this next step, and I’m grieving leaving my clinic.” Both can be true. Neither cancels the other out.

The third thing is grounding yourself in the present moment. Our brains love to future-trip — “what if this goes wrong?” “what if I never feel safe?” Instead, ask: What’s true right now? Anchoring in the present helps keep you from spiraling too far into the what-ifs.

The fourth thing is self-compassion. Can you talk to yourself the way you’d talk to a friend in the exact same situation? If your best friend told you she felt scared after graduating, you wouldn’t say, “Well, you should just be grateful.” You’d probably say something like, “Of course you feel scared — this is a huge transition.” Try turning that same kindness toward yourself.

And finally, I want you to remember this: the goal isn’t to avoid pain. Pain will show up again, in different forms, at different times. The real goal is to grow your capacity to carry it. To recognize that you are resilient, that you can feel scared and still keep moving, that you can hold grief and joy at the same time.

So here’s what I want for you instead: don’t focus on chasing pain-free living. That’s not possible. Focus on building your capacity to navigate the inevitable ups and downs. Focus on recognizing your own resilience. Because the real “arrival” isn’t never feeling pain again — it’s knowing you can feel the pain and still move forward.

And that is my wish for each and every one of you. Give yourself the freedom to be a messy human, because you are! Just like me and every person on this planet. So go be messy! Be messy and loving, and scared, and resilient, and all of the things in between.

That is what I have for you this week, my beautiful friends. I’ll talk to you soon.