What’s a Lemon Squeezer Doing in My Vagina? A Memoir of Infertility.
Author: Rohini S. Rajagopal
When you are denied something, its value is grossly overestimated in your mind. I rejected all the gifts in our life and dwelled on its single deficiency.
Pregnancy was an exclusive club and I wanted to break in.
This book is the author’s memoir of her five-year-long battle with infertility, told with equal amounts of ardor and wit. As she reminisces the events of her past, she takes us along on a journey down a zigzag path. The accounts of her ordeals remind us that battling with infertility is hard enough without the scrutinization that she is subjected to by friends, family, and strangers. She doesn’t hold back as she recounts the invasive and indignant medical procedures that she subjected herself to, and the anxiety that it caused her. We are silent spectators to her agony as she comes to terms with the fact that fertility treatment will always be a lopsided equation due to biological factors. We learn about her multiple attempts at being a mother, and the multiple miscarriages that followed. We know that her narrative ends in motherhood, so every time she sees a ray of hope in her life we think this is it! But unfortunately, life isn’t that simple and neither is her story. She didn’t get to skim the pages to get to the last chapter, and nor do we. Just like her, we impatiently wait through a bunch of pills, tests, and medical procedures. As she aptly puts it,
I came to recognize not only how far modern medicine can go but also that it can go only this far.
The author speaks out about the unending trials and tribulations she dealt with on the bumpy road to her motherhood as society continued inflicting pain both silently and verbally. It reminds us of the toxic society that we live in, which sometimes contributes to the toxicity even at home. It is heart-wrenching as she describes the moments in her life where she looked up to her family for love and support only to receive apathy and indifference. The very same family members find it justified to own her story and to talk about how much hurt they have been through, without deeming it necessary to think about how it would affect the very person who underwent all the emotional and physical trauma. As the author clearly states at the very beginning, this book is her attempt to take back her own narrative and to appropriate her story back to herself.
What stands out for me in this book is how the author continues to carry hope throughout the multiple procedures that she underwent, enabling her to tell this story today while also acknowledging the fact that many people out there aren’t as fortunate. This book is not solely a story of her triumph, but also one of empathy for her fellow sisters who don’t end up with the same results. It is a complete rollercoaster of emotions- sadness for what she couldn’t have, jealousy for what seemed so easy for women all around her, hope for her rainbow baby, and finally the happiness she experienced as she held her newborn son. It isn’t all sadness and horror for the reader because she draws us in with enough humor and wit and keeps us engaged until the very end.
Towards the end of the book, the author asks- “Why then did I want children?” Other than the human tendency of desiring what’s denied, she attributes her obsession to wanting a child to her need to fit into the template of an ‘ideal life’ defined by society. We as readers are left contemplating this sad yet true revelation which forces us to think about the judgment and stigma that we subject women to because we believe that they have failed as a woman if they fail to be a mother. Infertility affects at least 10% of women. It is time we opened our eyes to the reality around us and started supporting them instead of inflicting pain upon them. And in rare cases like this when they speak up, let us make sure we lend an ear.
