Opening up about it: Part two
Do you tell your employer you're having fertility treatment? How much about it? And when?
Following on from talking to family and friends, this is the much stickier situation: do you tell your employer you’re doing IVF?
Historically, some sectors would actively not hire women over male rivals because they might be about to go on maternity leave. Even in recent years, I know someone who was told not to worry that she hadn’t been promoted – it wasn’t due to performance, it was just that she’d had a lot of time off in recent years on mat leave. She was doing just fine at her job, well, even, but she’d had two children so simply hadn’t been front and centre at the office.
Less, well…illegally, to be honest…a friend who has just started her mat leave has been given a leaving card where several well-meaning male colleagues have told her to enjoy her ‘time off’.
All this considered, it is no surprise that many women choose not to tell their work until they absolutely have to. Add in the fact that most people don’t reveal pregnancy until the 12-week stage anyway, it seems nothing short of bonkers to be questioning if you should tell your employer you’re just trying for a hypothetical baby.
After transfer, until such a point as a pregnancy is confirmed or the transfer is confirmed to have failed (in other words, the two week wait), a woman is considered pregnant for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010 and so sex-based discrimination laws apply. However, in the UK there isn’t currently a statutory right to time off for fertility treatments, even though it is a medical condition like any other.
The problem with IVF (ha, as if there’s just one) is that it is incredibly appointment-heavy, and those appointments due to their very nature are usually extremely short-notice.
For example, we are currently in the middle of our second round of egg stimulations (more on that another time). This has meant three appointments in a week and a half, all of which have been early in the day but nonetheless have meant me signing on at work at around 10.30 as opposed to my usual 8.30. With hybrid working, we are in the office two days a week, but the combination of appointments and the fact that my ovaries are now physically extremely uncomfortable has resulted in me only being in once.
On top of that, my egg collection has been moved three times, meaning I’ve had to replan the day of collection and recovery day after three times – including booking two days of short-notice leave from work when everyone is already off for the Easter Bank Holidays. There’s absolutely no way of predicting in advance when we can do it: it’s all dependent on the scans, and this time round I need longer stimulation.
It has made it much, much easier that both Matt and I have told our bosses what’s going on and why we need to be flexibly unavailable.
There’s also a huge emotional element: IVF isn’t just difficult when a transfer doesn’t work; there are weeks upon weeks where you are injecting stupid amounts of hormones into your body. You’re tired, you’re uncomfortable, you’re cranky, you’re weepy. Having employers who know why this is and can support you, or at least allow you the space to manage it, is huge.
We have both been very lucky. I suppose it’s a case of reading your workplace: over the last few years I have sought mental health support from my line manager and director and so was fairly confident that they would both be understanding and supportive people. I have to be honest, it helps that they’re both women and I can say ‘I can’t say when my scan will be in the next few days: it depends on my cycle’. All women have ‘been there’ and know it’s unpredictable, and are also far less likely to get ‘the ick’ than a male manager being told about periods.
Matt, too, felt that his job would be understanding based on previous experience. They have been, and not just in the space of giving him time off to accompany me to appointments: a line manager telling him to take some time to look after himself after a failed transfer; a colleague calling him to say he was about to announce his wife’s second pregnancy to the team and letting Matt know in advance to avoid triggering him.
Not all workplaces will be like ours, although in 2025 it’s to be hoped that the stigmas around fertility and female productivity are being slowly chipped away.
If you’re not sure about how your employer would handle it, ask yourself how they’ve handled other emotional situations; look around you to see how many people have had maternity/paternity leave and how they’ve transitioned back to work afterwards; or confidentially discuss maternity/paternity allowances with HR. A picture will form of how they might (or might not) support you.
And if you’re an employer and you’re reading this, unsure of the best way to handle an employee who had told you they’re about to have IVF, take me as a case study. I’ve needed quite a bit of time away from my desk, at short notice. I’ve been tired and emotional at times. At some point, the hope is that I will need to disappear altogether for months of maternity leave.
But the support my line manager and director have afforded me during all of this has engendered gratitude and a commitment to the organisation that has been committed to supporting me. I make sure that nothing of my workload is abandoned when I’m going for appointments, because my team cares about me and that’s made me care about the impact my absence might have on them. At a time that can be overwhelmingly negative, they have made the work part of my life a positive experience – and that counts for a lot.
Experiences of talking to employers about fertility treatments has been a topic on the Possibly Parents chat: join the conversation here
