What is fertility treatment like?
A military regime that now feels like it didn't actually happen
(First up, may I please salute all women going through fertility treatment or wanting to go through it or about to go through it or choosing not to go through it.)
2012 and I was in the trenches of fertility treatment whilst holding down a job at a senior level. The clinic I ended up with (after two unsuccessful attempts at a different one) had a punishing regime where you had to arrive every morning at 7am to have your blood tested. This meant getting up at 5am, taking the tube into town, queuing with a bunch of worried, anxious women (most of us so worried that we didn’t really speak to each other) and then heading into work, pretending everything was normal and trying to be a useful professional whilst crying in the toilet at regular intervals. I didn’t want people at work to know I was having treatment. I was worried that they’d ask me about it. I was also worried that it would compromise my position as the women who had babies were generally viewed as below par. (There was a definite sense that once you had a child, unless you were a machine, you weren’t as good at your job as you’d been beforehand.)
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