The words rang in my ear: “Your best course of action is IVF.”
Sorry, what? Hold on. I am only 32. I thought IVF was for women in their 40s, not for me. How wrong I was. And how wrong was the stereotype I had fabricated in my head.
My instant feeling was shock - this couldn’t be happening to me. Then slowly it turned to embarrassment, shame and then grief. I cried so much. I was confused, and so was my husband, and we both felt hopeless.
This was over three years ago now. Fast forward to the present day, and I can happily say I have my two-year-old miracle boy through the science of IVF, and I tell anyone and everyone how we became a family.
That said, it has taken time for me to get to this place of openness and awareness, and I think as a society we’re still not quite there yet.
Not something people wanted to talk about
The one thing I couldn’t get my head around when we first found ourselves on the road of infertility - being the open and honest person that I am (sometimes too open) - is that I didn’t know anyone else who had been through this. But surely I wasn’t the only person out of all my friends and family who had in some way been affected by infertility?
I scrolled through my social media for hours, looking for clues that someone I followed or was friends with was going through something like this, or had experienced it. But I found nothing.
That was my first reality check - this was not something people wanted to share or talk about. But why?
Despite the embarrassment and sadness, and the initial feelings of blame towards myself, I knew from the beginning that my infertility was a biological issue, and was out of my control. So I tried to stay productive, positive and open from the start, talking about every step of our journey with everyone.
‘A drastic measure’
We told our friends and family so that we had their support. But we were also educating them along the way. So many of our friends asked, “How could this be?” and “Surely IVF is a drastic measure?” There was even: “What is IVF, and how does it work?”
We all know that in previous generations women were generally having children younger, and that we are leaving it later and later to start our families. The NHS website states that one in seven couples will have difficulty conceiving.
If this is the case, then why aren’t we talking about it more? And why aren’t we learning about our fertility health, and all the avenues you can go down to make a family, before it is too late?
Normalising issues around fertility
I think we need to use the classroom to normalise issues around fertility. Children should be learning not only where babies come from - and how to prevent them from coming - but also about our fertility and health, for men and women.
They need to understand that every human body has a different makeup and that some have parts that work, and some don’t. It shouldn’t be any different from teaching children about differences in disabilities or gender, race or sexual orientation.
Procedures like IVF, surrogacy and donor conception are not only scientific, but could be discussed in many subjects at school, covering all aspects of the biology, the complex feelings of parents wanting a baby, and society’s views of these processes.
Developing empathy and understanding are relevant life skills not only for discussing fertility, but for dealing with many issues in life.
When I was a child, I loved a good happy-ever-after book or film. I was a dreamer, a hopeless romantic (I still am) and a bit of a perfectionist, so being told that the chances of becoming a mum and having a family would rely heavily on a procedure I knew next to nothing about was hard for me to believe. I wish I’d had a bit more awareness of what it would all entail.
Shame, guilt, confusion and sadness
This is why my children’s book Robo-Babies is so important to me. It’s a story of various robot families, who come together in different ways, and who experience a range of emotions around meeting their babies. It’s a very gentle introduction to the subject, and ultimately celebrates love as the centre of any family.
I wanted to create something that helped to start the conversation early, that illustrated some of the emotions around infertility and also that would provide future generations with further understanding and resilience. Their happy-ever-after may take a less straightforward path than they’d expected, but it can hopefully still be achieved.
Being a teacher myself, I feel more than ever that children just want security. But I also know that children need to be challenged to learn and grow. They need diverse books so that they can relate to stories and see themselves represented in them. But they also need to see diversity in stories and characters in order to understand the many differences around them and the challenges that life may present to them.
No one deserves or needs to feel the shame, guilt, confusion or sadness that I felt that day we were delivered our fate. So why not prepare and arm our children with the right tools to get through these tough chapters?
We all want our happy-ever-after, but sometimes it doesn’t happen the way we think it will or should. The only thing that can prepare us is knowledge, resilience and, ultimately, being kind to ourselves.
Laura Gallagher is a singing and performing arts teacher at a primary school in Essex. Her book, Robo-Babies, illustrated by Nicci Martin, is published by Owlet Press, £7.99 paperback. www.owletpress.com
