The waiting room at Hull IVF Clinic is a very strange place. For some reason they have all the chairs in a square, facing each other, which is strange given most clients don’t want to look at anyone else or be seen by anyone else. They then have what I always thought was the most bizarre collection of fake Irises in the centre, which I guess could perhaps be strategically placed to disguise clients? And they then have a couple of coffee tables with magazines, which is where I first came across Fertility Road magazine.
Now don’t get me wrong, it’s a lovely waiting room, very calming, with lovely personnel attending to you. There is a water machine, tea and coffee station and lots of information on the walls to read whilst you are waiting. There is also a board full of photos of babies obviously successfully born with the assistance of the wonderful team there.
And yet, as I used to sit there, head down avoiding eye contact, I couldn’t help but look at the next person through the door, check out the next couple leaving the consultants’ rooms or the next lady calling at reception to collect her drugs. It was like a flipping car crash that even though you didn’t want to look you just couldn’t help rubber necking!!
And so, Fertility Road magazine became my life saver. I’d stare at the pages of the latest edition trying to focus on anything but anyone else around me! It was also jam packed of information targeted at people like us, unlike any other publication around. It was so refreshing!
As my mission to raise the profile of Secondary Infertility got new impetus this year, I was so delighted when the Editor agreed to publish a short article I wrote about my ambitions to break taboos and encourage people to talk about all kinds of infertility.
If only I could have told that broken girl in the waiting room the journey she would go on and how one day she might end up in that magazine she was holding.
Then again, she would never have believed me!
