Becca Chambers wishes she had someone to talk to at work during her fertility treatments.
Instead, she kept it to herself.
Chambers, director of public relations for a monitoring software company. ControlUpdescribed in detail her silent struggle in Post on LinkedIn it received over 3,000 reactions and comments from people thanking her for sharing her story.
“I went to work every day and did my job—I smiled, had a positive attitude, traveled to where I needed to go, did my best—and my co-workers had no idea what I was going through,” she wrote.
Chambers says if she had someone at work she could talk to about her mental struggles, all the obstacles and frustrations throughout the in vitro fertilization (IVF) process, and her general feelings and fears, it would have made a difference. would have been crucial when she was trying to conceive.
Combating infertility while working
An IVF cycle may require nearly daily doctor visits, daily hormone injections, invasive procedures, and side effects such as soreness at the injection sites, bloating, headaches, and fatigue.
Chambers spent three years trying to conceive, going through multiple unsuccessful cycles of intrauterine insemination (IUI), where sperm is inserted directly into the uterus through a catheter, and four cycles of IVF.
Working on fertility treatments meant Chambers took work calls on the way to doctor’s appointments and waited for the doctor to call her at work each day after egg retrieval with updates on symmetry and classification. This meant scheduling daily vaccinations around work expectations and experiencing the pain of constant pricking, prodding, prodding and testing.
Becca Chambers
“It’s so exhausting and dramatic, and we’re working on it,” she says. “We can’t take a month off to do this multiple times, we just work on it and work our way around it.”
Chambers says she has thought many times that it would be helpful if her team at work knew what was going on.
“The workplace is considered an inappropriate place to talk about fertility issues,” Chambers says. Luck. “It’s one of those death-like topics that makes people feel uncomfortable.”
She blames her reluctance to talk about her fertility journey in part on her lower status in the company at the time. She wasn’t sure how her senior colleagues, who were mostly men, would feel about her and stressed that talking about pregnancy and family planning in the workplace was often taboo, and many talking about it would negatively impact their careers.
In 2021 survey According to Carrot Fertility and Resolve: National Infertility Association, 56% of respondents said they would feel uncomfortable telling their boss they need time off for fertility treatment because people don’t talk openly about fertility at work. Seventy-six percent of respondents said they had never heard company management use terms such as “infertility,” “IVF,” or “miscarriage.” A further 34% were concerned that taking a break from fertility treatment would be considered unprofessional, and 30% feared it would jeopardize their job.
According to a 2016 survey conducted by the company UK Fertility Network50% of women did not tell their employer about their treatment due to fears that the employer would not take them seriously, and more than 40% did not tell their employer due to concerns about the negative impact the treatment would have on their career prospects.
Long-term infertility treatment can be stressful and mentally draining. Chambers says she’s never felt such “torture” in her life, so adding work stress into the equation seems counterproductive and irrelevant compared to the stress the body is under, she says. Under the supervision of a therapist, Chambers said she took a month off from work to focus on her mental health before starting IVF treatment.
Chambers believes employers should include leave for women trying to conceive, just as they do (and should) for maternity leave. And she’s not alone. Karo Fertility 2023 in Action report shows that 65% of respondents said they would consider changing jobs to access fertility benefits, which can include financial support for treatment, fertility preservation procedures, counseling, adoption costs and more. And yet in their 2021 report31% of respondents said they were uncomfortable being asked about them at their current job (this information was not clear in the last report).
Having to take daily injections at work also puts hopeful mothers in an awkward position, with only 2% of companies having a designated area for employees. give yourself injections. Instead, 38% of people inject in the toilet at work, while others inject as part of their work schedule.
“I would venture to say that trying to conceive was a thousand times worse for me than pregnancy, and much more emotionally and mentally challenging than having a newborn,” Chambers says.
That’s why in her post she emphasizes that you never know what someone is going through, so taking the time to check in on your co-workers or be gracious when someone asks for accommodation can make a big difference.
End the stigma around fertility discussions
Becca Chambers
Chambers’ fertility treatments eventually resulted in two viable pregnancies, and she gave birth to a 9-year-old son and a 7-year-old daughter. While the IVF process feels like it happened a lifetime ago, she says it also feels like a trauma from which she will never recover.
“It was a nightmare. It’s worth it, but it’s a nightmare,” she says.
Chambers says she was inspired to share her story after reading a post by another woman, Alicia Beaubien, about her own experience for miscarriage and infertility. She says she believes eliminating stigma comes from open conversations, which also encouraged her to share her journey.
“I’m happy to share my story if it helps normalize this experience for others,” she says.
Since Chambers spoke out, she has received many messages from people who wanted to comment on her post but weren’t afraid of being seen by a co-worker.
It’s clear “how necessary this conversation is,” she says.
“It’s so interesting to see that we all have the same feelings. The thread between all these women with similar experiences and feelings of isolation, shame and guilt is just crazy.”
Chambers suggests that if she were to undergo fertility treatment now where she is in her career, she would be “loud” about her experience and would likely share much of her journey with her colleagues, hoping to shatter the perception about how this is a taboo topic at work. But she hopes speaking out now will help erase some of the stigma around infertility at work.
“If you’ve been through it and are in a position to talk about it, talk about it if you can be the person that someone else will say, ‘Well, she did it and she’s still standing and she has a job,'” and that means everything,” she says.