Please don’t suffer alone
Isolated through InfertIlIty struggles? MIranda Ward’s neW MeMoIr shoWs the IMportance of sharIng, says MARTHA ALEXANDER
AFTER her second miscarriage, Miranda Ward found herself online, scrolling networks where other grieving parents meet to share their stories. ‘I read in tears – comforting tears – because all these women had gone through this same thing and had messages of support,’ says the 33-yearold writer. ‘Knowing these people were out there was incredibly important.’
Ward, originally from California but now based in Oxford, wrote a memoir about her experience of existing in a space where she simply didn’t know whether or not she would be a mother. Adrift: Fieldnotes From AlmostMotherhood chronicles the six years in which Ward struggled to conceive, experienced recurrent miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, an operation eration to remove her left fallopian tube and two cycles of IVF.
It starts with the decision she and her now husband took to have a child.
‘I hadn’t really considered that it might be more complicated than just making a decision,’ she says. ‘What happens when your body isn’t cooperating?’
Ward finished writing the first draft the week she went for the embryo transfer for the second IVF VF cycle, which resulted in the he birth of her son, Felix.
‘It was important for me to end the book before I knew if I was to have a baby,’ she says, and that’s understandable given the book focuses on the not knowing: the hinterlands of parenthood. ‘Everyone around you seems to be having babies without any effort. You feel like the only person in the world for whom this is a struggle.’
Ward hopes Adrift will also reach those who don’t have direct experience
Relief: Miranda Ward, who struggled to conceive, found comfort in swimming and shared stories with infertility and baby loss, citing unhelpful comments such as ‘at least you can conceive’ and ‘at least you are young’. ‘The “at least” comments are people trying to find something hopeful, which is natural,’ she says. ‘But it’s unhelpful because it doesn’t cancel out the grief.’ Open communication commun around infertility is where whe the internet can help. A Alice Rose, for example, quit her h job to campaign for infertility in awareness, something some she does largely large via social media: @thisisalicerose @thi includes a campaign ca called ‘Think! What Wh Not To Say!’ Meanwhile, M James Kemsley, Kem a male support consultant con for IVF and baby loss los who has personally experienced ex six failed IVF cycles cy and early miscarriage, works to improve support for men. ‘There are very few platforms for men to open up about fertility,’ says Kemsley. ‘Have you ever heard men discussing their fertility at the bar?’ Ward concludes that swimming and writing about the sense of community at the pool helped with her sense of identity. ‘There’s something lovely about snippets of lives in changing rooms,’ says Ward. ‘They made me feel less isolated.’