No woman should have to choose between work and IVF

I choose between my career and fertility the treatment I needed in hopes of having the baby I so desperately wanted was the easiest decision I’ve ever made. But I would never have to succeed.

For months I did everything I could to hide the fact that I was a subject IVF treatment. I went for early morning blood tests, snuck out for lunchtime imaging, tried every trick in the book to stay under the radar.

To begin with, my fertility treatment was my business. My job – a small financial firm – and my bosses didn’t need to know anything about it. Not only am I a private person, but the last thing I needed was for anyone to suggest that I wasn’t quite up to the task, or for colleagues to worry that I would break down at my desk.

I was also pretty sure they wouldn’t be desperately sympathetic to my situation.

Although I had never witnessed overt discrimination against pregnant women, I was quite senior in the company and knew that my maternity leave would cause a headache for the management team.

I might have avoided it for a while if there hadn’t been serious complications after the first egg retrieval.

Internal bleeding meant I spent two weeks in hospital. I also suffered from the life-threatening condition Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome (OHSS) – when the ovaries swell in response to hormones given during fertility treatment, causing excess fluid to leak into the rest of the body – and developed pleurisy and other complications. as a result, which meant I had another four weeks off.

I knew I would have to give the office a sick note when I got back. And when that letter contained the term OHSS, it would be game over.

I took it to work and had the conversation I dreaded – they were one Google away from solving everything themselves, so I figured I might as well make an excuse. Their immediate response was to tell me that they wanted to send me to work in an office abroad. When I told them I didn’t want to go because I wanted to continue IVF in the UK, they told me I had a choice: IVF or my career.

Like most women who go through IVF, I never expected to need medical help to have a baby.

I got married, bought a house and just assumed we were going to have kids. Although we had no reason to believe that either of us would have problems, it became obvious that nothing was happening, so we went to the doctor and after nothing much happened, we decided to try IVF.

I was in my mid 30s and although we might have been eligible for NHS treatment I felt time was of the essence and despite a huge mortgage we were lucky to be able to afford private treatment.

I wanted my career – of course I did – but more than that I wanted a baby. And when I had to choose, I chose IVF, although I didn’t tell my employers at the time. Instead, I told them I would consider a role overseas and get back to them.

Although the surgery caused complications, the clinic was able to successfully retrieve and fertilize my eggs, resulting in some embryos that were frozen. The next step was embryo transfer. Amazingly, it worked – I was pregnant.

But even then it was not simple. Complications meant I returned to hospital at the end of my first trimester for surgery to save my unborn baby’s life.

This coincided with the three-month deadline when you have to apply for employment at the employment tribunal.

There I was in hospital not knowing if my baby would survive or not and I had to take my employer to an employment tribunal for discrimination on the grounds that they effectively forced me out when I was told to choose between travel and IVF.

I’ve already won £20,000 in legal fees from the advice and we can’t afford to fight this forever so when they offered me a settlement on the condition that I sign a non-disclosure agreement which meant no I can never speak, it seemed like the only option.

It was a way for us to get a lump sum to see us through while I figured out who I was and what I could do if I couldn’t continue doing the work I love. Because I couldn’t. In finance, once you do something like that, there’s no going back.

Until then, I was always hunted on the head. They never called me again after that.

But I don’t regret any of it — how could I when my daughter was born? It took me nine years to talk about that period of my life without breaking down in tears. At the time it was so difficult to rework that I boxed it up and promised myself I would revisit it.

And so last year, when I saw that politicians were taking the menopause campaign seriously, I emailed my MP Nickie Aiken to raise the issue of discrimination against women undergoing IVF in the workplace and to urge her to press for a change in the law. .

If you read the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s guidance on gender discrimination in the workplace, it’s only considered discriminatory if you can demonstrate that you wouldn’t treat a man in a comparable situation the same way.

But there is no comparable situation for men. The ‘comparable’ example given is a man who has cosmetic dental surgery during his annual leave. Yes, they do compare cosmetic dental work to IVF.

Women shouldn’t be so vulnerable. I know I wasn’t the only one at the clinic who had to hide my treatment. You would hear the conversations: ‘What did you use as an excuse today?’ ‘I’m running out of excuses – there are only so many contacts I can claim to meet for lunch.’

Women deserve more dignity than this – and it affects men too. I often wondered how my old bosses would feel if their wife was treated the way I was and their ability to become a father was compromised.

Research by Fertility Matters At Work found that one-third of women undergoing IVF have considered leaving their job rather than face discrimination in the workplace.

The law is out of step with women’s lives. Infertility affects one in six couples in the UK, and in around half of those cases, part of the problem lies with the man – but it’s still the woman who will have to undergo all the invasive procedures and take time off work as a result. .

A bill being pushed through parliament would give employees the statutory right to take time off work to attend fertility clinic appointments and will have a second reading on March 24.

Meanwhile, businesses are being asked to voluntarily sign the Workplace Fertility Pledge to act before any legislation is passed to make their workplaces more flexible and supportive of people undergoing infertility treatment.

And many major employers, including the House of Commons, NatWest, the Co-op, Channel 4 and Metro Bank already are.

In part, I wrote the email that started all of this for my daughter. I realized that almost ten years after her birth, nothing had changed and I didn’t want her to get to this point in her life and still have the same situation – we all deserve better than that.

As told to Claire Coleman