IVF is an emotional process at the best of times.
There’s the pain, anger and jealousy sometimes associated with a diagnosis of infertility. The stress of not knowing whether IVF will be successful. The joy and relief when it is.
And, although it’s not often openly discussed, there can be feelings of failure and guilt.
“You do feel that kind of judgement or stigma or maybe a degree or failure, that… you had to actually go and resort to it,” says Anne-Marie Pickard, who became pregnant with her son Sam using IVF five years ago.
“I know that it’s not a failure but internally I kind of feel it actually is; it’s kind of conscious and unconscious,” Ms Pickard, 46, says.
Ms Pickard is not alone: new research reveals a startling 85 per cent of Australian women aged 25-44 believe there’s a social stigma associated with seeking IVF treatment – and that 48 per cent believe that stigma is due to a perception that seeking such treatment means you have ‘failed’.
The study, released this week by Sydney fertility clinic Bump, also reveals that women may feel ‘guilty’ about seeking fertility treatments even when their partner has the fertility problem.
That’s a finding IVF expert Dr Kylie de Boer confirms is mirrored by her client’s experiences. “Women tell us that they still feel guilty themselves, which is very interesting,” she says.
“It’s probably due to expectations. There are expectations that society puts on you,” she says.
But she speculates that women may have a range of different reasons for experiencing IVF-related guilt – and that perhaps ‘maybe just women articulate it’ more than men.
In Australia, one in six couples suffer infertility, defined as the inability of a couple to achieve conception after a year of unprotected intercourse.
Many seek assistance from the more than 70 fertility clinics around the country, with Yahoo News reporting that there were more than 61,000 IVF cycles in Australia in 2011, according to the latest figures from the University of NSW.
Ms Pickard recalls that when she was considering IVF, public debate over whether IVF should be funded by Medicare highlighted a stigma toward older women seeking the treatment.
“The public in general were saying if women were actually trying to… have careers and were putting off going to have their kids in later in life. But in my case, I hadn’t met my husband earlier in life when I was in my so-called fertile years,” Ms Pickard says.
“I think I actually felt, not by my personal friends but potentially by other people… judged, because of my age, that I had to go down the track of using IVF,” she says.
“I’m the sort of person that the way I… deal with situations is go and talk about it. Whereas I know with a lot of people (who) that’s not the way that actually go. It would be very rare for them to actually go out and seek it.”
Dr de Boer says the overall message highlighted by the study’s findings is that ‘women in general find it difficult to talk about fertility’ – and need tools to be able to deal with their feelings about IVF.
“Women (need) to be able to discuss this, so it’s not feelings that they feel they have to keep to themselves,” Dr de Boer says.
“When we consider the social impact these misconceptions are having on couples, we know that normalising fertility treatment, by simplifying the process, empowering our clients and giving them as much control as possible is the only way forward.”