Career coaching during fertility treatment: how Louise found her ambition again

Career coaching during fertility treatment is rarely about lacking direction. More often, as Louise found, the clarity is already there and what is missing is permission to act on it. In her own words, the coaching "helped me realise that I was very clear about what I wanted at work, I just needed a push in the right direction and to understand I could make the change."

Treading water: where Louise started

When she first got in touch, fertility treatment had taken up most of a year, and a good deal of her energy with it. "I felt like infertility had consumed the past year of my life and I was just treading water," she says. Her role no longer challenged her, and it sat in an area she had no real wish to build a future in. She describes that period as "very stagnant." The treatment had been hard, and it had left her, in her words, "disengaged and beaten down by a difficult year with fertility treatment." Underneath all of that, though, was something she held onto: she was "determined to make some positive changes and progress in other areas."

The hesitation: is fertility coaching worth the cost?

The cost gave her pause, and she was honest about that. Coaching is a significant investment, and signing up during a stretch when so much else felt uncertain was not a small decision. It is a question worth saying out loud, because most people weighing this support are asking it too.

Finding focus during fertility treatment

What our work together did was bring her own thinking back into focus. Louise arrived with her thoughts scattered. "My thoughts were all over the place and I had a list of 101 things to make it better," she says. The coaching helped her narrow that down to goals that were achievable but still had real weight behind them. And it surfaced something she had lost sight of. She realised, as she puts it, that she "didn't owe my manager or employer for supporting me through treatment," and that she "still deserved the chance to progress."

Asking for what she deserved at work

So she asked. She put herself forward for a secondment in the team she actually wanted to work in. It was turned down at first. Then a formal role in that same team was advertised soon afterwards, she applied, and she secured it.

Seeing herself clearly

One of the things she valued most was being challenged, and being able to watch the recording of our session back afterwards. Seeing herself from the outside changed something:

"It made me realise I'm stronger than I give myself credit for. The person talking back at me didn't come across as defeated as I felt."

She is honest that the process was emotional. "It's emotional, I cried a lot," she says. "But I clearly needed it, I felt a weight had been lifted afterwards."

Where Louise is now

Where she had started out disengaged and beaten down, she finished, in her own three words, "confident, strong and empowered." Asked who she would recommend this work to, her answer was "anyone who feels lost, worn down or stuck due to infertility." As she puts it, the coaching "helped me gain some control back over my life and remind myself of who I am outside of fertility challenges."

The takeaway

Fertility treatment can take up so much room that your career, your ambition and your sense of yourself start to feel like things you will get back to later. Louise's story is a reminder that you do not have to wait. The clarity is usually already there. Sometimes you simply need someone to challenge you to act on it.

Names and identifying details are shared with consent. Louise's first-name testimonial is used here with her permission.