I went through horror of IVF like Jennifer Aniston and grieved for child I never got to hold
WHO hates a secret? I know I do.
I’m that woman who talks frankly and openly.
How you feel about my revelations is on you — not me.
Which is why I poured myself a large glass of fizz on Wednesday evening when I read that Jennifer Aniston had dropped this year’s truth bomb.
She unexpectedly opened up about the years (and years) she spent undergoing IVF.
The interview was all over my social media feeds and shared with me via lots (and lots) of well-meaning girlfriends.
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But most of them do not know what a horror show fertility treatment is — especially when it doesn’t work.
So thank you Jen, for doing the inter-view alongside a smokin’ hot photoshoot in Chanel’s iconic barely-there bikini.
She looked sensational and “all woman”.
And I for one understood perfectly well the juxtaposition here.
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When you can’t have kids you feel “less than”, as a woman.
Jen redefines the phrase “total goddess” in those images.
That’s why I totally get that this felt the right time for her to decide to put to bed the decades of speculation over why she never had a baby.
We’ve all read the diatribe and the bilge.
Did she put her career first? Was she far too preoccupied with her figure?
Did she covet an Oscar over a baby?
The words written about Jen — and her womb — have been monumentally crass, intrusive and down-right outrageous.
I wonder how all of those bitchy-witchy critics feel now?
The thousands and thou-sands of smugly worded columns and oh-so-helpful advice they brewed up to speculate over why-oh-why Jen isn’t a mum.
The sheer (wo)man hours they dispensed picking her fertility apart was always a sight to behold among the sisterhood.
Are they ashamed? I hope so.
Confession, I’m not a Friends fan so I never understood the adulation for Jen’s hair, Jen’s love life and the Camp Jen v Camp Angelina chicanery.
But what I couldn’t stand was the endless speculation about whether Jen’s womb was going to carry a baby.
Let me say this loud and clear — it was never anyone’s bloody business.
Every woman who is “childless not by choice” knows the emotional agony behind Jen’s words when she said: “I would say my late thirties, forties, I’d gone through IVF, drinking Chinese tea, you name it, throwing everything at it.”
I could feel and resonate with the heartache in Jen’s words.
“I was trying to get pregnant. It was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road.”
The emotional earthquake caused ripples around the globe as one of the world’s most famous women came clean about why she never become a mum.
Now let’s be clear, she did not need to do this. Why on earth should she?
ENDLESS SPECULATION
A woman is at her most vulnerable when she can’t do the one thing (we’re endlessly told) we’re supposed to be able to do and that’s conceive, carry and give birth.
But I understand perfectly well why Jen felt — if not now, then when?
Because when you hit your sixth decade and the menopause — Jen is 53 and I’m 51 — you give zero you-know-whats about what anyone else thinks.
I too first started trying in my late 30s.
After a year with not so much as a positive on a pregnancy stick, my husband Pascal, who is a decade older than me, and I were referred for fertility treatment.
During that time I fell down the fertility rabbit hole.
I ordered fertility vitamins, bought dozens of books, listened to womb-enhancing meditation CDs and saw pricey fertility coaches.
I spent thousands in the desperate hope it would work.
Is it any wonder the fertility industry in the UK is this year estimated to be worth £596million.
More unbelievable then, that the process is a slow one.
It involved me having all manner of examinations before we were declared “unknown infertility”.
By the time we got accepted for our first round of IVF I had celebrated my 40th birthday.
Yet just like the estimated 50,000 British women who also undergo IVF treatment, I put up and shut up with the process because I wanted a baby.
The red tape is endless: There are the fertility talks you attend upfront.
The hours spent going back and forth to the clinic, full of hope on the way there, usually in tears on the way home.
Blood tests, gynaecological exams, time spent on the phone “call waiting” to organise appointments — the process takes over your life.
I wanted to sob when my best friend told me that she was seven weeks pregnant with her second child while I was still trying to have my first.
You stress out seeing friends and family falling pregnant when you can’t.
Truthfully, it’s a miserable time.
Because going through fertility treatment is seen as a private thing — but why should it be?
And those who are privileged to know what you’re going through can be outrageously nosey, demanding updates about every stage.
TRUTH SETS US FREE
We should feel we can share as much or as little as we want to without any stress or shame involved.
Jen says: “I would’ve given anything if someone had said to me, ‘Freeze your eggs. Do yourself a favour’.”
But egg-freezing gives no guarantee of a baby. In the UK the success rate is just 18 per cent.
I did think about freezing my eggs when I was 30 and paid privately for a consultation with a gynaecologist.
When she announced I would have no problem conceiving I believed her.
And let’s not even dwell on that bitterest of pills to swallow, when our exes have moved on and become parents.
I stopped fertility treatment in 2014. I’d undergone a round in 2012 and tried again in 2013.
We were about to have another go — third time lucky! — but I cancelled the appointment when my eldest stepson died of skin cancer at 27.
The process of supporting my husband and two other stepchildren, then 29 and 17, through the grieving process made me recognise I needed to focus on appreciating what I did have in life.
Yes, I grieved for the child I never got to hold but, like Jen, I’m now happy that “ship has sailed” because at some point, for your own sanity, you have to let go.
And yes, our 50s are a brilliant decade for this. We’re menopausal but we’re kinder, wiser human beings.
Like Jen, I know that in telling everyone what I have been through means that the truth sets us free.
I promise there is no greater feeling than owning your own story.
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And Jen doing so will give other women the courage to do the same.
We might not have got that happy ending that Jen’s Hollywood community loves but that means we get to create our own happily ever after — and what could be more empowering or life-affirming than that?
UPHILL BATTLE TO CONCEIVE
By Katy Docherty
A FRIEND’S mother once told me that when you give birth, you hang your dignity at the door and pick it up on the way out.
The same can be said for IVF – and if you can’t laugh about it, you’ll go crazy.
As you are prodded, poked and jabbed, any shame around flashing your bits goes entirely out the window.
I’ve whipped my pants off so many times for doctors now that I once started undressing before realising they hadn’t asked me.
But at the same time you feel wildly self-conscious.
The IVF meds make you bloat, making you look pregnant even though you are most definitely not.
This was driven home by one nosey neighbour who leaned over my garden wall to ask when I was due.
There have been genuinely dark times.
One fertility doctor told me I’d have to get approved by social services to have children because of a chronic illness I have.
Thankfully he was wrong and I found a new clinic which is utterly brilliant.
You need a good support system around you.
But I’ve fought with well-meaning friends who patronisingly ask if I’m having sex during my fertile window.
Well, duh! Or my sister who lived to regret asking if I’d tried fertility crystals.
What’s helped is the realisation that I’m not doing anything wrong. Some people conceive, some don’t, and that doesn’t make you a failure