Beat Infertility Virtual Summit

“Don’t give up.” “It’ll happen for you.” “You’ll get there.”

How often have you been told this? Except not everyone does get there - so why is it somehow unacceptable to say this out loud? Our collective unwillingness to entertain the notion that not every journey ends with a baby makes it so much harder to deal with if it happens to us.

I’ll talk about why we need to acknowledge the elephant in the room, & how talking about the possibility of a childless future can help you cope with all different outcomes.

I’m thrilled to take part in the 2nd Beat Infertility Virtual Summit: taking place 1-7 November 2020, it features over 90 talks covering a range of different topics relating to fertility & infertility - mine being part of the ‘Childless Not By Choice’ stream.

Unlike lots of the talks from all sorts of professionals, mine doesn't have advice about how to get or stay pregnant - but I hope it provided an honest perspective from a patient point of view to help anyone facing a difficult journey feel less alone.

Titled 'What Happens If It Doesn't Happen?', it’s a frank conversation about why & how we can support ourselves and each other by talking about ALL outcomes. "You'll get there" is true - but "there" might not look like how you thought it might.

"There" might not mean a baby, or a baby in the way you'd hoped - but you will get there, and you will be OK.

BioNews Review: The Golden Egg

I was asked by BioNews - the flagship publication from the Progress Education Trust (PET) - to review The Golden Egg, a podcast which looks at ProFaM , the controversial new venture that offers ovarian tissue freezing to postpone the menopause. It asks the question: how did we end up here? It examines the pushing of boundaries between scientific advances and the ethical questions they raise, and the redefining of boundaries of who can procreate and how.

Moreover, it observes that amongst all this boundary-pushing, a lot of people made a lot of money: from the birth of Louise Brown, the world's first baby born through IVF, in 1978 to a global industry expected to be worth $40bn by 2027.

It’s a really thought-provoking listen, and I’m delighted to have got the opportunity to express some frank and honest views in my review - from IVF add-ons to fertility MOTs and egg freezing, to the medicalisation of women’s bodies to fix societal problems (and lots of men getting very rich off the back of this).


Read the review

BioNews: Podcast Review - The Golden Egg

Listen to the podcast

You can listen for free online, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or Spotify.

More from this series

This podcast is part of Tortoise Media's Big Egg' series, a really brilliant investigation into the dark side of the fertility industry (full disclosure: I was interviewed for Egged On, a piece all about IVF add-on treatments). Tortoise is members-only, but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial for access.