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

“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 tried for a second child without success. At the time, our son was two years old. We had conceived naturally and relatively quickly, so after months of negative pregnancy tests, I knew something was wrong.

I told the specialist that I was experiencing severe pain every month and it was getting worse. But it was as if the pain I was describing belonged to some unknowable realm beyond medicine, rather than to my actual body sitting in front of it.

I went to see another fertility specialist and heard pretty much the same thing. Pain was once again treated as accidental, unrelated, and something to be endured rather than investigated. I was prescribed ovulation inducing medication and discharged.

Over the next three years, I saw several specialists. Each time, the pattern repeated itself. Blood tests, graphs, delays and, ultimately, always the same conclusion: unexplained secondary infertility. I followed the advice. I took medication and hormones. I changed my diet and my lifestyle. I tracked my cycle obsessively. I had blood drawn again and again, hormones injected into my stomach, internal ultrasounds, timed sex, and rounds of IUI. I’ve tried acupuncture, Chinese medicine, and just about every fertility supplement my Instagram algorithm came up with. I was watched, measured, poked and prodded. My body became a site of constant intervention. All the while I was being told to relax. Stay positive. Don’t think about it too much. I waited, I hoped, and every month, like clockwork, I saw another pregnancy test come back negative.

Each negative result brought its own sorrow. But on top of that, there 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 just “one of those things.”

IVF was presented as the logical next step: effective, protocol-driven, almost inevitable. But something in me resisted. This was not denial, nor fear, nor a lack of understanding of IVF. It was an instinctive feeling, discreet but insistent, that we were forgetting something fundamental. That my pain mattered. That my body was trying to tell me something.

Just when I was about to abandon this hunch, I heard an interview with a US-based obstetrician-gynecologist who challenged the idea of ​​”unexplained infertility”, suggesting that it often means the work simply hasn’t been done yet. That not all the rocks have been turned over. This idea was deeply rooted. It gave shape to what I felt all along: that something had been missed. I made an appointment with a final fertility specialist. One more opinion. Another rock.

So there I was again, in another consulting room, describing pain – pain that was then indeed affecting my ability to work and function. I prepared myself for the same response, but something different happened. She paused. She listened. And then he said, almost casually, “we should do a laparoscopy.”

In less than a month, I was in surgery. Within weeks, I was pregnant.

The operation itself revealed how much had been missed. What should have been a relatively simple procedure took much longer than expected. Laparoscopy revealed extensive endometriosis, some of which was wrapping around the 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 “unexplained.” It had simply been ignored.

I wish I could say that this moment brought simple joy, but instead it opened something. Alongside the relief and gratitude was a grief so acute it took my breath away. I mourned the years I had lost. Years of pain. Years of work opportunities gone when my body couldn’t conform to deadlines that assume women’s bodies won’t interrupt progress. Years of emotional whiplash – hope, despair, repetition.

Endometriosis affects around one in nine women in Australia, but it takes an average of seven to ten years to diagnose. Women’s pain is systematically minimized. In fertility medicine, this rejection is compounded by an industry structured around effectiveness and efficiency rather than curiosity and care.

IVF itself is not the villain here. For many, it is life-changing and essential. But when it becomes the default response – when it is offered before the underlying causes have been thoroughly explored – it risks becoming a treadmill. Women are treated rather than heard. Symptoms are managed rather than understood.

“Unexplained” is not a diagnosis. It’s a lack of imagination, time or will.

I’m pregnant now. I am grateful. But that doesn’t erase the cost of getting there. What I’m left with is the certainty that if I hadn’t trusted my instincts, if I hadn’t refused to accept “mystery” as an answer, I might still be waiting.

When women’s pain is repeatedly minimized, in medicine, in the workplace, in systems designed for efficiency rather than care, something must signal that harm has occurred. Sometimes that signal is anger. Not as an overreaction, but as proof. Not something that needs to be appeased, but something that needs to be examined.

So yes, I am angry at myself, but also at the countless women who continue to be told gently and confidently that their body is a mystery. This is not the case – they simply deserve to be listened to.