'I’m pregnant' are two words I never got to say.

'We’ve found something serious Jodie' are five vastly different words…words you never want to hear.

I grew up in a big family, one of seven and always wanted a family of my own. Like most people I took it for granted that when the time was right it would just happen, but it didn’t. My infertility journey began in 2011, when my partner at that time and I were trying for a baby, and nothing was happening. For years before I had issues around my stomach and was repeatedly told it was IBS. Change your diet, reduce your stress, the usual advice.

When things did not improve, I was sent for a pelvic ultrasound. I could tell from the clinician’s face that something was very wrong. The next day I was told there was a tumour the size of an orange on my ovary. Two weeks later, I had major open abdominal surgery to remove it. More surgeries followed, resulting in a partial removal of my remaining ovary and removal of my fallopian tubes.

I was still just in my 30’s.

Trying for a baby through IVF became the only option available to us. I had not grasped what IVF would ask of me, mentally, physically, emotionally, financially. Injections, hormones, the egg retrievals, the transfers, and the waiting. Hopeful and heart breaking at the same time. Naively, I assumed it would work. I had two rounds and both failed. As my tumour was hormone based, I was advised that continuing could be harmful to my health, so we parked IVF altogether and I buried how I felt. It was too painful to acknowledge myself, let alone to anyone else.

The grief around wanting a child and not being able to have a child, doesn’t end with a failed attempt or acceptance of what is. You think of the ‘what ifs’ long after the opportunity for having children has passed. Some people struggle to get pregnant, while others get pregnant easily. It can be a very confusing time.

You feel every emotion and ask yourself ‘Why me?’ You sadly compare yourself with your friends and their children, as they move through various life stages and milestones you thought you’d experience too; birthdays, a first day at school, Mother’s Day, the buzz of Christmas Eve anticipating the arrival of Santa.

Since then, grief and loss have become far too familiar. Alongside my infertility challenges, my brother died suddenly in 2021. My mother died from cancer later that year, and my sister also died from cancer in 2023. Grief, loss, hope and love can exist side by side; they are in many ways deeply connected. As we move through grief in any form, we are not looking for someone to solve or fix our loss. How could they? Most of all, we want our grief to be acknowledged. We want to be able to talk about it and be heard without interruption, judgement or attempts to fix things.

I think back to the IVF clinic waiting room, full of people on the same journey as me/us and how silent and lonely that felt. There is still a stigma, a taboo if you like, around infertility, for both men and women, even though it touches so many of us. It does not discriminate.

It’s very much the elephant in the room and I would love to change that in my own way, to bring it more into the open so people do not have to do this alone, to bring greater awareness to a subject that should be able to be talked about.

That is why ‘The Elephant in the Room ’ Initiative is so important to me. Their mission is to ‘give people everywhere permission to talk about their mental health as openly as they would discuss a physical ailment, without judgement or discrimination, for the better well-being of the individual, family, workplace and society.’

My goal is to fundraise to place two wonderfully decorated 4FT Elephants, in places that mean something to me, hopefully one where I had my IVF Treatment and the other in the hospital where I had my numerous surgeries.

Eventually, my dream is to have an Elephant in every public and private hospital on the island of Ireland that offers fertility advice, fertility treatment, cancer treatment and associated therapies. I want to create greater awareness about these issues and the negative impact they can have on your mental health, the relationships in your life, your own identity and most significantly, the relationship you have with yourself.

I want others to know there is hope after IVF, whatever the outcome. It might not be the life you originally planned, but it can still be whole, full of possibility and love and full of gratitude for who we are and what we have, rather than what we lack.

And for me, that starts with a conversation.

I'm sure if there had been an ‘Elephant in the Room’, visible to me during my challenges I may have been able to rub it's head, and it would have given me the courage to turn and talk to the person next to me or vice versa. Maybe we would have had a moment, felt seen, understood and supported by each other.

How empowering that might have been ? After all none of us can do this world alone, we all need love, support and hope at various times.

For me, there is a real power in having meaningful conversations about what really matters in life. With the support of my family and friends, I would love to make an impact for anyone going through IVF, no matter what stage they are at, and to enable people to have brave conversations, so they do not feel so alone through what can be a very isolating time. To not leave anyone in the dark anymore.

Recently, I met with Brent and he gave me the answer that I was looking for, 'Let’s do this' but it came with a caveat when he said 'Jodie you will have to be prepared, like me, to share your journey, no holding back, tell it like it is.'

I don’t have a public profile. I’m an ordinary person trying to give back to others who may be struggling, and for women and men to be able to talk about it, to not have to live with the judgement, shame and loneliness of how infertility, cancer and disease can feel.

So, if this resonates with you or anyone in your circle, please share and donate what you can.

We are setting the fundraising goal at €5,000. This will get us into at least two places with these inspiring elephants, which will forever symbolise being held with care, and permission that it is never weak to speak, as Brent tells me, 'It may just be your strength when you need it most.'

It is not an easy thing to share a story like this one, but I guess that’s the whole point, to talk more openly about it and in the process, help others who may be on a similar journey.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and for the opportunity to bring this topic out of the shadows and into the light, exactly where it belongs.

Jodie