Support
Where to get real support
If something is urgent, right now
- Call 999For anything severe or frightening: heavy bleeding, severe or sudden abdominal pain, difficulty breathing, collapse, or if you or someone else is at immediate risk of harm.
- Call NHS 111Free, 24 hours, for anything urgent that isn’t an emergency, or when you can’t reach your clinic. Also available at 111.nhs.uk.
- Call your clinic’s emergency lineMost clinics give patients in active treatment a number to ring out of hours. Find it now and put it in your phone, before you need it.
- Samaritans, 116 123Free, any time of day or night, from any phone. You do not have to be in crisis to ring them, and you do not have to know what to say.
Signs worth ringing about without waiting: severe tummy pain or rapid swelling after egg collection, being unable to keep fluids down, breathlessness, passing much less urine than usual, heavy bleeding, one-sided pain or shoulder-tip pain in early pregnancy, a high temperature. Being over-cautious is the correct instinct here.
Your GP
Your GP handles referrals, NHS funding questions, sick notes, and your own physical and mental health through all of this. They can also refer you for talking therapies. If you’re struggling and don’t know where to start, start here.
Your clinic's counselling team
Every licensed UK clinic must offer you counselling, and it is often included in what you have already paid. The counsellors know fertility treatment inside out, which saves an enormous amount of explaining. It is available to both partners, together or separately, and asking for it is completely routine.
British Infertility Counselling Association
BICA maintains a directory of counsellors who specialise in fertility, including independent ones if you would rather not use the clinic’s own team, or if your clinic’s waiting list is long. Search for “BICA find a counsellor”.
Fertility Network UK and peer communities
Fertility Network UK is the main national patient charity, with a support line and local groups. There are also many forums and social media communities. Some are a lifeline at 2am when nobody else is awake.
Honestly, though: quality varies enormously. Peer spaces carry a lot of anecdote, unverified claims about protocols and supplements, and some genuinely distressing content. Treat anything medical you read there as a question for your clinic, never as an instruction, and give yourself permission to close the tab.
A note on the emotional side
Fertility treatment asks you to be hopeful and realistic at the same time, repeatedly, for months, while being injected with hormones and spending a lot of money. It would be odd if that didn’t affect you.
Both of you are in this, and you will often be at different points on the same day. That is normal and it is not a sign the relationship is failing. Counselling for couples is available and is not a last resort.
If you are having thoughts of harming yourself, please tell someone today — your GP, NHS 111, or the Samaritans on 116 123. If you are in immediate danger, call 999.
The section for supporting partners covers the specific, rarely discussed version of this that partners tend to carry.