Infertility: The Rebrand
Photography by Charlotte Wales
Let's be honest, struggling to conceive doesn't have the best image, IVF is never met with a "cool!" or a "good for you." It's met with pity and tied up with shame. Shame that your body's not working properly, that sperm has three heads and does backstroke or that ovaries have checked out, eggs have gone off, a uterus has retired. I hate the word infertility, infertile. It's too finite. Google defines it as a disability, a disease, with it bearing a stigma in some cultures. I prefer 'still trying to make a baby.’ And I think when you're 'still trying to make a baby' needs a serious rebrand.
It makes me feel old when I think about how long I've worked as a creative in advertising. I've made ads for expensive phones with great cameras, persuaded people to drink booze, and flogged cheap fashion. I've embellished and manipulated. I've told you that you can run faster, to keep your bowels regular and written many a manifesto about the virtues of staying young. I've somehow become sentimental about an organic dog food and helped make some brands I give zero fucks about make a lot of money. But this – the perception towards alternative routes to parenthood. I care a lot about this. To procreate is the most natural thing species do, and if you need some help in that area, then that's cool. Whatever your situation. So you decided not to settle down with the boy you had your first date with at the local bowling alley, that you're a girl who likes girls, or a boy who likes boys, maybe you didn't meet anyone who floats your boat. Maybe your reproductive bits aren't working quite as they should. But you're not broken. Sure, your situation is different to the norm. But normal is simply not fitting in with the rest. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Everything's changing. Along with society's views of what's normal. I read in the news the other day that a transgender man who gave birth to his child wants the birth certificate to state him as the father not mother. It's a case that's gone to the High Court, and if successful, the child will be the first to be born in England and Wales without a mother.
It's all about evolution. Literally. Just because genetically 'messing with' an embryo in a Petri dish, or using a sperm donor, or egg donor, or another woman's uterus to carry your child, or your child having two mums, or two dads, or only having one parent on the birth certificate isn't normal now, doesn't mean that it's not going to be the way of the future. I hope someday we'll be met with: "What, you're waiting to meet someone to have a baby?" Because if you want a baby, there will be no stigma in using a sperm donor and raising one on your own.
So to everyone who doesn't fit in to what society thinks is normal, reproductively speaking, it's a tough road, but it's amazing that you're going down it. And you'll do it, you'll get there. I want you to feel empowered not shamed. As my boyfriend said: "Fuck normal. We're going to make a better baby than theirs."
