Public discussion of fertility is long overdue

SIR – I am writing in relation to recent articles on the subject of infertility.

In 1989, two years after getting married, I was very unsympathetically diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), a then little understood infertility condition. After getting these results, I had to return to school to teach 36 young children. A colleague found me in tears.

Doctors’ solutions included drugs to force my body to super-ovulate to produce multiple eggs for conception in a Petri dish. Treatment was via the maternity waiting room, where I had to sit, my fertility in doubt, next to heavily pregnant women.

It was a rough, often brutal, experience for both my husband and myself. The article by Jessica Hepburn (November 10), who was inspired to write about her own fertility issues after Jennifer Aniston spoke out on her years of struggling to conceive (“I was going through IVF and drinking Chinese teas”, report, November 10), gave some long-awaited comfort. The elephant in the room is finally and very publicly being discussed.

It has been hard to accept the loss of children and grandchildren. But harder still has been voicing just how that loss can cause decay and misery inside when it goes unacknowledged.

None of us has a right to children: it simply may not happen. But neither does that make women, couples or men without children lesser people. Heather Erridge

Bleadon, Somerset