An Inverness woman has revealed the grief that comes with infertility after she was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) as a teenager which gravely impacted her fertility.
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00:00 I'm Maureen Camiria McLennan, I'm an independent fertility nurse specialist. I live and work in Inverness and I serve the wider Scotland and the UK with my fertility services.
00:11 I was diagnosed with PCOS at the age of 16. I had a variety of symptoms going on. I had herpes-utism, which is a typical hair growth symptom seen in PCOS patients.
00:22 I had a regular menstrual cycle. My mental health was also quite fluctuating. I looked back and realised that was the whole world of services that I was suffering from at the time.
00:34 I spent the next 10 years or so really panicking about what that was going to mean for my life. I'd been told at 16 that I wouldn't conceive easily and if I did I'd potentially miscarry.
00:47 I actually did before I was 30. I met my husband at 26 and we did struggle. It took us four years to have my oldest son and I was 29 just before I was 30 and I had him.
01:00 I've subsequently gone on to have another son so we're very lucky now we've got two little boys.
01:14 It was an incredibly challenging time. PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome, is a common condition found in women of reproductive age.
01:21 It's typically where you find a mismatch in the ratio between the follicle stimulating hormone and the mutilising hormone, which are the two hormones which regulate when you operate and when you've operated.
01:33 It's more complicated than that really but that's the one you typically see in PCOS is the wrong way round.
01:41 When I was diagnosed as well it was really frightening and you essentially start to grow up feeling like you're less of a girl, you're less of a woman because you're not able to fulfil this role of motherhood.
01:54 It's a really dangerous trap to fall into as a society that we think that women's worth is dependent on their ability to reproduce but it's unfortunately a really common thing that I hear from patients and friends and family who are going through infertility.
02:06 It was a stage in my life where you just want to be enjoying yourself, you've got your exams, you want to be with your friends.
02:15 Instead it meant as I grew up and into my twenties it meant that dates I went on were more loaded because you worry that that person might be the person you're supposed to be with and you don't want to miss the opportunity in case you run out of time.
02:28 And actually when you slow it down you realise that there's a lot of women with PCOS do conceive, whether it be natural or with assistance.
02:37 I wish that's the kind of information I was told as a young person that wouldn't have turned me into this panicked young girl, this panicked young woman that I became.
02:45 Grief is a huge, huge part of fertility. Grief and loss.
02:50 It's the grief of what you thought you were going to have, it's the grief of the situation not being how you think it's going to be, it's not going to be so easy.
02:58 In school you're taught to stay about six feet away from somebody because you're so fertile.
03:02 So when you're landed with something as an adult that doesn't work like that it's really quite confusing.
03:08 And obviously the recurrent grief that comes with failed cycles of treatment or diagnosis, changing diagnosis, evolving diagnosis over the years.
03:19 And of course baby loss that can come as well with miscarriage.
03:24 And it's a complicated kind of grief. No grief is linear but I think in fertility it's even less so linear because every cycle you go into has got this hope and loss attached to it.
03:37 And so you've got this excitement and this real drive to kind of go through another cycle but at the same time you're desperate to protect yourself from the fact that it might not happen.
03:48 And so that loss is really complicated.
03:51 We know there is for some people this feeling of a genetic loss.
03:55 So this loss of your own genetics not being passed down into your family line.
04:00 But when you're dealing with that diagnosis and you're dealing with that numerality it's a very isolating and scary place.
04:07 And it extended for me way past my infertility and extended into my pregnancy with my oldest and into motherhood with my oldest and in some extent to my youngest as well.
04:20 When I was pregnant with my oldest I really felt like I couldn't connect with other pregnant mothers because I didn't feel like they would understand what kind of mother I was if that made sense at that point.
04:30 I've got quite a different perspective on it now but at that point we knew postpartum and that's a really lonely and isolating place to be.
04:36 My coping strategy was to study and research, learn everything I could so that it meant that I knew what I was going to ask when I went to an appointment.
04:44 What they were going to ask me and what the answer was going to be.
04:47 And it meant that I came out with an assignment with this Wealth Acknowledgement which has now meant that I'm able to do what I'm doing now.
04:54 So I was doing medical courses when I was trying to conceive for example and so I've managed to build on that since to be able to do what I'm doing now.