When in-person fertility treatments were suspended at the height of the COVID-19 lockdown, hopeful parents-to-be were forced to wait even longer for another chance to get pregnant.
Many IVF patients lost hope.
"With IVF, there's a lot of hormones that are being pumped into the women's bodies and injections that you have to do routinely and timed things and medications that you have to take. And it can be really invasive to the body."
Our ABC15 Health Insider, Dr. Emily Bashah tells our Kaley O'Kelley, instead of waiting and losing the chance to have children, a rising number of men and women are finding ways to preserve their fertility.
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"Women can choose to freeze their follicles, and that can extend the life, the lifespan that they choose, and when it may be more convenient for them to have IVF, or in-vitro fertilization. Males can also choose to freeze their sperm and they can be tested to find the healthiest ones."
From same-sex couples to those waiting to have children later in life, Dr. Bashah says parenting trends are changing.
"Now we're seeing trends of single moms by choice. I love it, where children are being raised not alone in isolation, but with their chosen family, if their parents are still living or their friends who are their family."
To cope with this, the licensed clinical psychologist stresses the importance of self-acceptance and love.
"Having that flexibility and having these really difficult conversations, that means revealing your insecurities, revealing feelings of inadequacy, what your grief and loss might be surrounding, and especially when it comes to infertility... sometimes that is the case."
The mission of ABC15's Health Insider series is to dive deeper into the things impacting your health and the health of those around you. We're going in-depth with expert advice from people who know it, see it every day in their work and study it. Have a story idea? Contact the team at HealthInsider@abc15.com.