‘Never say never.’
‘It will happen.’
‘My friends were infertile, but as soon as they went to have IVF, she fell pregnant naturally.’
On top of the growing fear that my partner and I may never become parents, we were often greeted with these sorts of dismissive and degrading comments from family members, friends and colleagues who didn’t recognise our challenge at all.
These comments made us feel misunderstood and ostracised, forced into an unreasonable space of societal expectation.
After more than six years of trying, we finally found success in IVF and welcomed our beautiful daughter into the world. And yet, the stigma, judgement, and scrutiny we experienced when we were struggling to conceive hasn’t gone away.
If anything, I feel more infertile than ever before.
In February 2013, when I reconnected through Facebook with a long-lost friend from college, it was clear I had almost missed my soul mate.
We started writing to each other, meeting for our first date at an Italian restaurant in Port Solent. It was a favourite of hers since she’d lived in Italy for a couple of years – I found it endearing that she could translate what the waiters were actually saying about us and other diners.
It was an immediate and powerful connection, leading to swift vulnerability in our conversational topics.
I told her about my tour of Afghanistan, and she opened up about being diagnosed with cancer. Soon, we realised that our broken pieces were healed by the other’s love.
We discussed children early on in our relationship as my partner felt it necessary to make clear that they couldn’t be an option for us – her extensive chemotherapy had led to fertility issues.
This did not matter to me – we both agreed that if we had each other, our lives were very much complete.
But the following year, my partner suffered a surprise ectopic pregnancy, when a fertilised egg implants in the fallopian tube, which then ruptures. The pregnancy couldn’t be saved, and she had to undergo emergency surgery.
Going through an ectopic pregnancy confirmed our belief that life is just a series of wars delivered in different packaging, but it also proved that having children might be a possibility for us after all. It filled us with a hope we had long since let go of.
Following our wedding in July 2015, we decided it was time to start trying for a baby – but despite all our best efforts, no baby arrived for us.
We tried for almost eight years, but we were met with silence in response to our pleas to the universe for a child.
As if struggling to conceive wasn’t bad enough, there was the social pressure, too. We were the couple who would get asked by loved ones and even strangers, ‘When are you guys going to start popping them out?’
At first, we would downplay our challenges and simply say, ‘Maybe one day.’ But this felt false – it closed off how we really felt about the matter, as though we were wrong to feel anything other than hopeful.
After a while, we decided it was time to just start detailing the ins and outs of our fertility challenges.
We’d say, ‘It’s not so simple for us,’ and explain in detail our barriers, using it as an offensive conversational measure to make people feel as awkward as possible to stop them being so presumptive that anyone can and will have children.
But instead of hearing us, people would still react with platitudes like, ‘Don’t be so negative, it will happen,’ while looking at us as if we were broken. It always came across as a dismissive tickboxing exercise – a nicety that wasn’t as nice as they believed it to be.
People just had no idea how to navigate this discussion confidently and compassionately, and we felt at blame for making things ‘awkward’. We felt like social pariahs for years.
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While tests after the ectopic pregnancy confirmed heightened fertility challenges for my wife, we also found out I had a significantly low sperm count.
Though getting these confirmations felt like salt in a wound of our now-dashed hope, in a way, I was (and am) happy to be part of the challenge. I could not stand the idea of my wife in some way punishing herself for our quandary.
In January 2024, we were referred to a fertility clinic to begin IVF procedures. Covid restrictions meant we’d started two years later than planned, the wait for which felt never-ending.
Finally, we found out we were pregnant in July 2024, and welcomed our daughter into the world nine months later.
All our challenges so far now pale in significance due to the blessing that’s been bestowed upon us. Every bit of suffering on the road to this point has all but been forgotten, or at least forgiven.
Foolishly, though, I had this idea that once we had our daughter, our infertility would obscure itself into irrelevance. But that has not been the case.
Now, we’re asked new questions. People want to know whether our daughter’s our first, or question why we’re 35 with a newborn, as if we should’ve started earlier.
We tend to brush this off with what we call ‘dismissive positives’. We’ll say: ‘She’s our one and only; the light of our lives,’ or, ‘We’d rather be experienced, mature parents than young and struggling ones.’
Even medical professionals continue to ask us about contraception and future planning, despite knowing that having children via natural conception is a scientific impossibility for us.
This is an odd position to be in – you feel you have to become the doctor and educate the pros, before having to acknowledge the truths about our biology we’d wish to forget.
It all just makes us feel like we’re alone in having these biological struggles – struggles we’d never choose to experience – and it makes us feel more infertile than ever.
I love being a father. It is a gift I know many in our situation may not ever be blessed to experience, with the current infertility rate in the UK standing at 1 in 7 couples.
But despite this knowledge, and despite the fact that we have a daughter, my wife and I are still made to feel infertile by almost everyone we encounter – it never gets less painful.
Long walks in the woodland behind our house help me get more perspective and reframe my thinking – it’s like a shield to protect me from the times I’ll be asked about my ‘next child’.
I’ve realised I can’t concern myself with the opinions or ignorance of others. Our situation has been chosen for us; and that the only decision we have left to make is how we respond.
For now, my wife and I are choosing silent stoicism, and refuse to justify our situation by simply changing the subject.
We think carefully about how much of our truth we divulge and to whom, choosing privacy over gossip.
Yes, I’m a father; and I’m infertile. And that’s okay.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.
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