\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe female body is such a mystery.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fertility specialist said it lightly, almost kindly, from behind his desk. I was there because my partner and I had been trying for a second child without success. At the time, our son was two. We had conceived him naturally and relatively quickly, so after months of negative pregnancy tests I knew that something was off.<\/p>\n
I told the specialist that I had been experiencing severe pain each month, and that it was getting worse. But it was as though the pain I was describing belonged to some unknowable realm beyond medicine, rather than to my actual body, sitting across from him.<\/p>\n
I went to a different fertility specialist and heard much the same thing. The pain was again treated as incidental, unrelated and something to be endured rather than investigated. I was prescribed ovulation-inducing medication and sent on my way.<\/p>\n
Over the next three years, I saw multiple specialists. Each time, the pattern repeated. Blood tests, charts, timelines and, always, eventually, the same conclusion: unexplained secondary infertility. I followed advice. I took medications and hormones. I changed my diet and my lifestyle. I tracked my cycle obsessively. I had blood drawn again and again, injected hormones into my stomach, had internal ultrasounds, timed intercourse and rounds of IUIs. I tried acupuncture, Chinese medicine and pretty much every fertility supplement my Instagram algorithm threw my way. I was monitored, measured, poked and prodded. My body became a site of constant intervention. All the while, I was told to relax. Stay positive. Don\u2019t think about it too much. I waited, I hoped and, every month, like clockwork, I watched another pregnancy test turn negative.<\/p>\n
Each negative result carried its own grief. But layered on top was something harder to name: the exhaustion of not being believed. The psychological toll of being told, implicitly, that your suffering is unrelated, irrelevant, or simply \u201cone of those things\u201d.<\/p>\n
IVF was presented as the logical next step: efficient, protocol-driven, almost inevitable. But something in me resisted. It wasn\u2019t denial, or fear, or a lack of understanding about IVF. It was a gut feeling, quiet but insistent, that we were overlooking something fundamental. That my pain mattered. That my body was trying to tell me something.<\/p>\n
Just as I was about to give up on that gut feeling, I heard an interview with a US-based obstetrician-gynaecologist who challenged the idea of \u201cunexplained infertility\u201d, suggesting it often means the work simply hasn\u2019t been done yet. That not all the rocks have been turned over. This idea lodged somewhere deep. It gave shape to what I\u2019d been feeling all along: that something had been missed. I booked an appointment with one last fertility specialist. One more opinion. One more rock.<\/p>\n
\u2018Unexplained\u2019 is not a diagnosis. It\u2019s a failure of imagination, time, or willingness<\/p>\n
So there I was again, in another consulting room, describing the pain \u2013 pain that by then was well and truly affecting my ability to work and function. I braced myself for the same response, but something different happened. She paused. She listened. And then said, almost casually, \u201cwe should do a laparoscopy\u201d.<\/p>\n
Within a month, I was in surgery. Within weeks, I was pregnant.<\/p>\n
The surgery itself revealed how much had been missed. What was expected to be a relatively straightforward procedure took far longer than anticipated. The laparoscopy found extensive endometriosis, some of it wrapped around nerves and forming its own blood supply. It was both devastating and vindicating. There it was, the thing I had felt in my body all along, finally named. The mystery evaporated instantly. My infertility was no longer \u201cunexplained\u201d. It had simply been ignored.<\/p>\n
I wish I could say the moment brought uncomplicated joy, but instead it cracked something open. Alongside relief and gratitude sat a grief so sharp it took my breath away. I grieved the years I had lost. Years of pain. Years of work opportunities that slipped away when my body couldn\u2019t conform to timelines that assume women\u2019s bodies won\u2019t interrupt progress. Years of emotional whiplash \u2013 hope, despair, repeat.<\/p>\n
Endometriosis affects an estimated one in nine women in Australia, yet diagnosis takes, on average, seven to 10 years. Women\u2019s pain is routinely minimised. In fertility medicine, this dismissal is compounded by an industry structured around efficiency and throughput rather than curiosity and care.<\/p>\n
IVF itself is not the villain here. For many, it is life changing and essential. But when it becomes the default response \u2013 when it is offered before underlying causes are thoroughly investigated \u2013 it risks becoming a conveyor belt. Women are processed rather than heard. Symptoms are managed rather than understood.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnexplained\u201d is not a diagnosis. It\u2019s a failure of imagination, time, or willingness.<\/p>\n
I am pregnant now. I am grateful. But that doesn\u2019t erase the cost of getting there. What remains is the knowledge that if I hadn\u2019t trusted my instincts, if I hadn\u2019t refused to accept \u201cmystery\u201d as an answer, I might still be waiting.<\/p>\n
When women\u2019s pain is repeatedly minimised, in medicine, in work, in systems designed for efficiency rather than care, something has to signal that harm has occurred. Sometimes, that signal is anger. Not as an overreaction, but as evidence. Not something to be soothed away, but something asking to be examined.<\/p>\n
So yes, I am angry for myself, but also for the countless women who are still being told gently, confidently, that their bodies are mysteries. They\u2019re not \u2013 they just deserve to be listened to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cThe female body is such a mystery.\u201d The fertility specialist said it lightly, almost kindly, from behind his desk. I was there because my partner and I had been trying for a second child without success. At the time, our son was two. We had conceived him naturally and relatively quickly, so after months of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44678,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[681,23145,14777,23144,3610,1956,14188,2315],"class_list":{"0":"post-44677","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-child","9":"tag-conceive","10":"tag-fact","11":"tag-inability","12":"tag-katie","13":"tag-mystery","14":"tag-simply","15":"tag-told"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/44678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}