Just going about my everyday tasks, I happen to be standing facing the office door when it happens. The buggy emerges through the double doors. At first unnoticed as the new mother does not work in our team, the buggy is wheeled down the aisle between the filing cabinets. Then suddenly it starts. The female voices raise, the chairs pull back and desks are emptied as most women rush to greet the new mother and baby. Excitedly asking lots of high-pitched questions and staring smiling into the buggy the volume around me takes over my senses. With the space taken up by the buggy and the people I am unable to escape from my desk. Instead, I continue with my task with my back to the throng around me. Heart racing, face burning I am overwhelmed by the need to run but I am trapped. Physically trapped and once more mentally trapped in the vice that is infertility.
I had been through a few IVF cycles by this point and had opened up to my small immediate team about what was I was going through to at least try to explain some of my absences from the office. The vulnerability that bought out in me was immense. I’m normally quite open about personal things at work but this was different. I was adamant I didn’t want the pity or to be treated any differently in a professional capacity. All I could think of in that moment was that my team must all be looking at me, feeling sorry for me. In reality everyone is wrapped up in their own world so they probably didn’t think of me at all, but not being able to get away was excruciating. Simultaneously wanting to run but also being frozen to the spot. Mortified that my very personal experiences outside of work were in that moment colliding with the place where we are all supposed to just pretend we are ok and get on with things. I’m totally convinced this experience will stay with me forever.
Sadly I have a number of other experiences from my workplace of inappropriate and insensitive conversations around me. I believe largely to be due to what I now know to be pronatalism and a total lack of awareness of the privilege that parenthood brings. I’m passionate about others not having to experience what I did and have volunteered to be a part of my company’s Inclusion and Diversity journey. Already facing an uphill battle to present childlessness as a very real and common workplace concern when pitching against the more media-publicised diversity issues, I am continuing to share my story with colleagues where appropriate and hopefully slowly but surely bring it into my workplace consciousness.
Caroline T