Welcome to IVF This, episode 25- Minimum Baseline

Hello my friends, I’m so excited to talk with you again! 

I want to share with you something that’s been going on for me personally.

The hubs and I have started the process for our next round of IVF. If you listened to this podcast before then you’ve probably heard me talk about how we had a transfer in September of 2020 that did not result in pregnancy. Now that I was a couple of months before the launch of this podcast so this round will be during it so I will talk a little bit about how I am managing the process, kind of woven throughout the next few episodes. 

By the time this episode comes out I will have started stims unless there is a drastic change in our plans. So I usually have a few episodes in the can so I think this one will drop about 3’ish weeks after I write and record it. 

So, something that I have been experiencing a LOT recently is anxiety and overwhelm. Like a LOT. I’ve previously talked about how I experience anxiety on pretty much a daily basis. Most of the time it’s like this low-level hum of static in the background. Right, like I know it’s there and I just kind of carry it around with me. 

But that’s not what it is right now. It’s kind of ratcheted up to 11 right now.

I have found myself waking up with it during the night, eating more, using SM more, and kind of withdrawing into myself- which is kind of historically my go-to move during times of heightened anxiety or stress. 

The things that I normally do, making a food plan and sticking to it, paper thinking, 30 minutes of exercise, having a daily calendar of activity for my business- whether that’s client calls, writing, 

I want to share this with you for a couple of reasons 1) I want you to know that your coach is TOTALLY human. Like I’m sure some or most of you listening can relate to what I am saying. I think by sharing with you what I am experiencing it might help you to know that no one has it all figured out. We’re all humans, with human brains, and we all have some messy thoughts and feelings sometime and that’s totally normal. 

2) I want to share with you the technique that my coach taught me and that I am going to teach you to help during times where you are struggling.

Maybe you can’t find the want or desire to do things you would normally do

The times when you’re EXTRA hard on yourself about the things you’re doing or not doing. 

It’s called the Minimum Baseline. 

Again, I did not come up with this concept, like most things, I think it’s been recycled a thousand times and everyone puts their own special sauce on it. But I think it’s such an enormously powerful tool to have in your back pocket for the days that you don’t feel like you have anything to give. 

A minimum baseline is basically the least amount of anything that you are willing to do for the day or maybe several days. 

An example of a minimum baseline could be how many days you’re willing to go without taking a shower. Maybe it’s what you’re willing to wear when you leave the house to go someplace public. Maybe leggings are ok but not house shoes (and this is by no means a judgment of either of those things just wanting to illustrate the point). 

WE have minimum baselines for all sorts of things, the amount of food we eat, how long we want to go without seeing family, and on and one. 

Every one of us has minimum baselines built in to our lives we just don’t think about it. 

Maybe someone thinks “It’s been three days since I’ve done some sort of exercise and that’s unacceptable to me” or “Unless there’s an act of God, I will arrive to work no later than this specific time every day” maybe its “It’s been a week since my partner and I had sex and I don’t want to go that long without it” right?

So they show up in all of the areas of our lives.

Now here’s where I think creating a minimum baseline, like intentionally creating it for yourself is super important during infertility, fertility treatments, and beyond.  

The wide breadth of emotions that we experience during this time, not necessarily the high’s but definitely the low’s, is pretty normal and expected during this time. 

We get into trouble when we don’t really expect for them to be there. When they kind of take us by surprise. THEN, more often than not, when we are experiencing a low, we kick the crap out of ourselves for the laundry list of things we have in our heads that we SHOULD be doing.

So, we’re already feeling low, maybe sadness, grief, anger, jealousy, right whatever it is- and then we pile on 100 lbs of shame for not doing things we tell ourselves we “should” be doing which only serves to make us feel worse, and on and on. The cycle just continues. 

Now, I don’t suggest specific minimum baselines to my clients because, well, how the hell am I to know what is their minimum baseline but what I do is talk them through the things that they think should be there. 

So if daily exercise is important to someone, and we’re planning on a down day, we re-visit or deconstruct what that would look like for minimum baseline days. Maybe its 15 minutes of yoga, taking a 30 minute walk, of a 10 minute walk, maybe it’s breath work or something like that. 

I had a client tell me that she ordinarily does a load of laundry per day, in her words “to keep on top of it”, which is totally fine. But for her minimum baseline it looks more like, I’ll make sure that I have clean clothes to wear for work and the rest can wait”

For someone else something might be “going to work and not calling out” or spend 5 minutes journaling or paper thinking. Right, the point isn’t WHAT you are doing. There’s no metric for what is a “good” minimum baseline because the minimum baseline is entirely based on your life, choices and preferences. And it usually includes more than one thing. 

So let me give you an example of what mine has looked like over the past few years. 

So, If I am not feeling well, maybe I’m sick or, more likely having a sad or down day or days- this is my commitment to myself:

Get out of bed 

Take a shower

If I have client calls then I do those, unless I’m sick in a way that would prevent me from doing that (like a fever, or losing my voice or something)

I will spend 10 minutes outside (even if it’s raining or cold or, more likely in TX, unbearably hot)- just taking that moment to connect with nature is important to me. 

I will spend a minimum of 2 minutes paper thinking- because this is such an important part of my own self development, I don’t skip this. It also tends to help me process whatever it is that I am going through so that’s an added bonus. 

I will review my calendar- if I have an impending deadline for something like within the next 48*, then I will focus on that task and get it done. But I focus on B- work. There’s NO room for perfectionism at the minimum baseline. I think I’m probably going to do a future episode on perfectionism because I have a lot of opinions about that-shocking, I know. But B- work is the idea that I can still get good quality stuff out in a productive way but not sit there an re-do and refine everything to death. Not here for that, really ever, but ESPECAILLY for minimum baseline stuff. 

IF there is an opportunity to rest, then that’s what I do too. Rest can look like a lot of different things, maybe its taking time off social media, taking a nap, going for a hike- rest is for your soul the way sleep is for your body. 

Minimum baseline for me also includes picking my kids up from school- because I am in charge of pickups. 

Feeding them dinner- now that dinner could be a PB&J sandwich with a side of goldfish and that is absolute perfection. 

Ok, so that’s an example of my minimum baseline. 

The reason the minimum baseline is important is because it’s just as easy to not do it as it is to do it because it’s so easy to talk yourself out of it, especially if you’re having a down day. Basically its really easy to tell yourself that “none of this stuff will even matter”, I think I’ve told myself that a million times. 

But with the minimum baseline, all of a sudden, you’re doing this minimum think just for the sake of honoring yourself and your commitments in the world. Just for the sake of doing things that you say you’re going to do but also shifting out of that perfectionistic nature that I think a lot of us have. 

It switches the emphasis of doing everything for other people, because that’s what we’ve been conditioned to do, doing all the things, looking perfectly polished, looking like we have it all together, to doing things that will serve what YOU need most in that moment. 

A lot of us, myself included, we have these really high-productivity times. Maybe it’s like weeks and weeks at a time, maybe you do several day sprints and then on the weekends you need a complete recharge- it’s all completely normal. 

No one is supposed to run 100 miles an hour EVERY SINGLE DAY.

Yet that is the standard bearer for us. From society and then, in turn, our own expectations. 

I can’t tell you how many of my clients tell me, I just want to show up as my best self, do my best everyday, be the best. The best, the best, the best. 

The best isn’t the standard bearer. Exceptional or perfection isn’t sustainable, every day. 

If it was, then THAT would be your baseline. 

Can we normalize the natural ebb and flow of productivity, please? 

Can we normalize that we all have to recharge?

If you’ve been going balls to the wall for 7 days straight, you know what’s not going to recharge you? A bubble bath. Or whatever BS the pseudo self-care messaging is today. 

REAL self-care if self compassion. Is giving yourself grace and understanding that functioning at 100%, 100% of the time, is not realistic. 

And when we can’t because we’re ya know, human. We kick the crap out of ourselves. 

Even thinking about starting an IVF cycle. 

We have all of these plans that we make, trying to be productive, trying to be all the things to all the people and we *might* plan to slow down, say the day of our egg retrieval and then maybe another day after. Except we forget that our bodies have literally been running an INSANE marathon for the last ya know 14 days or however long you stim for and then we throw on the assault of a medical procedure we just expect ourselves to bounce back and when we cant be at peak performance for all or any of that time, we tell ourselves that we’re not doing enough. That we should be doing more. That we’re letting ourselves or other people down. 

There’s like NO room for you to be HUMAN.

Setting a minimum baseline allows for the moments of humanness. 

So I love this example of minimum baseline to help with humanness and those moments when we really do need to slow ourselves down and to offer ourselves the grace and opportunity to not be all things to all people at all times. 

But, you can absolutely apply this concept to ANYTHING. 

If you’re wanting to start a new habit. Set a minimum baseline. 

Maybe you want to start exercising and it’s not really a habit for you then set a minimum baseline of however many minutes a day for however many days a week. I had a client, when I first started coaching that wanted to go to the gym to workout. She wanted to eventually build up to taking some of the classes the gym offered but just the idea of spending an hour+ felt too daunting. So we started with 15 minutes and that INCLUDED the 5 minutes to and from the gym. She literally got dressed, drove 5 minutes to the gym, got on the treadmill and walked for 5 minutes, and after that, she could come home if she chose but that was her minimum baseline- 3x per week. Now, did she typically only walk for 5 minutes? No! She would hit the 5 minutes and then her brain would be over all the drama about “how much time it was going to take” and then she could ease into working out for 30, 45, or even 60. It was just about bypassing the brains built in BS thought errors that our brain throws out whenever we are trying to do something new or uncomfortable. 

Another example could be that you want to prepare more meals at home. 

Maybe your minimum baseline is that you start out with Stouffer’s Lasagna’s (like the frozen meals that you just heat up). I get that nutritionally they’re not the best but doing that can help you get past your mind drama of wanting to go from eating out regularly to I have to have a beautifully and healthfully plated meal 5 days a week- which is where our brains go. 

There are tons of examples of this little brain hack that you can use. 

So, you can set minimum baselines for days that you are just performing basic functions at work or in your home or whatever. The goal for that is to build more humanness into our lives and create more compassion for ourselves. 

AND, you can use this little brain hack when/ if you want to start a new habit or something like that. 

Currently, I am using this hack to train myself to get up a little earlier and earlier in the mornings. I have aspirations to be an early morning exerciser. My goal is to get up at 5am and get in an exercise and shower before the rest of my family gets to it. I’m not pushing too hard on it because I am trying to give myself some space around not feeling that great while on Lupron and then we’re about to go into a stim cycle and such but I think it’s such a great little hack to have in your back pocket to help with rest and new things you want to challenge yourself with. 

OK, my friends. That’s what I have for you today. I hope you have a beautiful day. 

And remember, I adore you and you’ve got this.