Fertility Road Issue 03

FEATURE | it’s my life
WORDS | KELLY ROSE BRADFORD
IT’S MY
LIFE
Why the most intimate and private of life
experiences can often result in being the most
public, and with traumatic consequences...
For some couples, it can barely seem like the ink is
dry on the wedding certificate, or the emulsion is
put on the walls of their first home, before people
start asking those questions:
“When are we going to hear the patter of tiny feet?”
“Ooh, you’ll be making a baby announcement soon, no doubt!”
And, for those who already have a baby, the constant ‘so
when are you going to try for number two’ comments.
A woman’s fertility and baby-making prowess is, it seems,
of great interest – and not only to family and friends, but
complete strangers too.
“I was sitting in the doctors’ surgery, ironically waiting to
have a chat about the fact I hadn’t fallen pregnant after six
months of trying,” says Katie, 34, “and there was a screaming
baby wriggling and arching its back in a pushchair opposite
me. An old lady who lives in my road who happened to be
sitting next to me nudged me in the ribs and said ‘You’ve got
the right idea, not having babies! Bet you’re glad, aren’t you?’
“I found myself welling up – obviously she wasn’t to know
why I was there, but it made me so angry that people just
say what they like to women about pregnancy and children
– you’d never say to someone, ‘Oh I bet you’re glad you
haven’t got cancer’ or something. It’s just so rude.”
“It’s insensitive and intrusive,” says Michelle, 30. “I’d only
been with my partner for 18 months when people started
quizzing us about starting a family – I thought it was really
overstepping the mark – not only given that the relationship
was fairly new, but also because I’ve got PCOS (Polycystic
Ovary Syndrome) and didn’t even know if I could conceive. I
hate the fact that women’s fertility seems to be public property.”
Mum of one Laura, now 40, agrees. Having eventually
gained a son after years of trying, she found people’s constant
questions about ‘number two’ hard to take:
“It took five years to have our son, Jacob. In that time I had
load of tests, but they never found anything actually wrong. It
just wasn’t happening. And then, after Jacob was born, number
two didn’t happen either. We tried for a couple of years, but
didn’t really put our hearts into it as it had just been too draining
going through years of negative tests before having Jacob.”
This did not stop friends and family’s incessant questioning
though, something that Laura and her husband Nick found
very difficult to cope with.
18 fertility road | november - december