Instagram’s IVF warriors
When Grazia’s Emily Phillips began her fertility journey, she discovered an online community of women through the tough times. Here, she finally meets those who bolstered her in her darkest hours, without even knowing it
What do you do when all of your friends can get pregnant but you can’t? Who do you turn to? This was the situation I found myself in over the last six months in the run-up to IVF. Because, after two-anda-half years of trying and failing, I felt like I was the last woman standing.
Yes, you have your partner, but when you’re both feeling a sense of shame and sadness, leaning on each other just cranks up the pressure. Family and friends are there, but often find it hard to know what to say. I felt I was becoming a burden in my failure. So, to channel my emotions, I wrote a book, processing the years of dismay into a comedy called TRYING. It was cathartic, but a solitary pursuit. So I hit up message boards, searching for women like me but, as every PMS ache was spun into (false) early pregnancy symptoms, they became a hotbed of medical neuroses.
Then one day, a recommendation popped up in my Instagram feed: follow @Ivfbabble. I looked at their burgeoning feed – a couple of friends, Sara and Tracey, who struggled with fertility and eventually both had IVF twins. They’d newly set up a resource for people like me, even launching a pin to raise awareness for those feeling alone in the process. It was in the shape of two pineapples – the jokey symbol for fertility since eating it apparently makes an embryo ‘take’ in your womb. Then there was Emma Cannon (@emmalcannon), a holistic therapist whose account and book,
Fertile, would guide me through some of the self-care pitfalls of weathering the injections and potential failure.
But it was when I fell down a rabbit hole of hashtags such as #infertilitysucks that I realised Instagram, instead of being the glossy shop window of perfection I’d assumed, was being used by women as a raw outpouring of their fertility journeys. Women like CNN anchor Hannah Vaughan Jones (@hvaughanjones), who was documenting every step of her seventh round of IVF. That resulted in her first pregnancy and then, sadly, just a couple of weeks before we met, a miscarriage. And Amber Woodward, posting as @thepreggerskitchen, who embarked on treatment the very same week as I did and documented it with deadpan wit – and is now bravely telling the world that she’s 10 ½ weeks pregnant.
These women didn’t realise what an impact they were having on my life. When I was feeling hormonal and low, they were there with me. If I didn’t know the answer to a question, they’d post something informative to explain away the doubts. They were holding my hand through the bruising injections, the woozy anaesthetic of egg collection day, the angst-ridden wait of embryo development and the delay of having to have a frozen round because I was suffering ovarian hyperstimulation, without ever having even met me. I was no longer a burden to friends.
This week, my book makes its entrance into the world. It will hopefully remind people experiencing this that they are very much not alone. And as I prepared for the second half of my suspended treatment, I met my IVF warriors to say thank you.
Meeting them all felt oddly natural considering I’d had little contact, bar a couple of messages before the day. I ran into Sara on the train, after I noticed her pineapple pin – that sense of recognition she always wanted when her own IVF failed. As we wandered to the studio, it was as if I’d bumped into an old friend. Tracey joined us and her story and rambunctious twins made me feel hopeful for the future. I was so pleased to finally speak to Amber, as I felt bad for lurking on her hilarious Instagram account while she knew nothing about me. I soon realised we had more in common than just our IVF dates – she too could see the funny side of going through this testing time and I felt buoyed by her success. When I sat down with Hannah, I was blown away by her poise but also her softness. I expected a steely news anchor, instead, I saw a wonderfully caring woman who continues to battle and I look forward to sharing the onward journey with her. I’m booked in to see Emma for acupuncture, and was absorbed by her energy.
Having those faces together in one room, people who I’d witnessed in some of their most vulnerable moments, was so powerful. I know I’ll have good friends from here on, who understand what I’m going through. I hope they’ll all be at my book launch, too. ‘ TRYING’ by Emily Phillips is out 25 Jan (£14.99, Hodder & Stoughton). See our review, page 92. Follow her @emilylphillips