I was told my inability to conceive a second child was a ‘mystery’. In fact I was simply ignored

Women’s pain is routinely minimised, normalised, or psychologised. In fertility medicine, this dismissal is compounded by an industry structured around efficiency rather than care

“The female body is such a mystery.”

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.

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.

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.