On Sunday 3rd November, S and I, as well as our good friend, went to The Fertility Show at London Olympia. We decided to go as we wanted to take the opportunity to get some tips relating to fertility as well as seeing if professionals could give us some advice in regards to TTC.
(I’m not going to lie, I am concerned that the process hasn’t worked yet, so why not visit the place that may give me the answers!)
Before arriving, we had a pretty good idea what to expect at the show – reading the title – but when we arrived we didn’t expect such a huge range of services and products. (Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take photographs, but I can assure you it was a huge turn out.) As usual, I was armed with the map so we didn’t miss a thing.
There must have been a good 80+ stalls that ranged from IVF clinics (home and oversea clinics), fertility doctors, alternative medicine stalls, as well as general helps stalls. I was very impressed. On top of this, we got to meet the lovely ladies from Pride Angel, who were constantly surrounded by ladies!
In addition to the stalls, there were a good dozen or so talks throughout the day ranging from diet doctors to surrogacy options. I was really impressed with the variety of talks, not to mention the price. Each talk was £1 and could hold over 50 people at a time. Although the majority of the talks were well populated, I could easily see that the headline talk was ‘Preparing for IVF’.
Regrettably, we didn’t attend any of the talks, but if we did we would have attended Natalie Gamble’s talk (which was directed especially to lesbian and solo women trying for a baby), as well as the various talks about ‘How to Get Pregnant’.
At the back of my mind, I genuinely didn’t expect to see many stalls friendly to the way we’re doing things in regards to our TTC journey. We were very much expecting to fit stalls around us, however I was very wrong. Plenty of stalls were open to all walks of life and, if anything, the way in which we were doing it didn’t seem to matter at the end of the day – we were a couple trying to get pregnant, but failing. Everyone we spoke to was super friendly and never asked how we were getting pregnant – to them we were just a couple TTC. The fact that we are doing it via home AI was irrelevant… and it felt great.
On top of this, I expected to be a very small minority in a large sea of majority – which almost put me off going – but again, I was wrong. Although most couples at the show were straight couples, there were tons of lesbian and gay couples there too, which reassured me that we weren’t alone and that lesbian/gay couples TTC in the UK is a very real and growing thing.
Although we met a ton of lovely people at the various stalls, our personal highlight of the show was meeting the guys from Stork for Women. Not only did we meet the CEO and founder, who I can only describe as a bundle of delicious joy but, in brief, Stork have created an ingenious and simple home insemination device that uses a cervical cap to inseminate.
Not only does it look a lot better than the surgeon’s selection of devices that we have to use at the moment to inseminate, but it’s just the ONE item. No syringes, no speculums, nothing. No need to keep the sperm warm whilst waiting. Just stick the the Stork device in and wait. It’s friendly for both the male party and the receiving party. It certainly is going to make the process a little bit more relaxed and ‘natural’ as natural can be.
We’ll be reviewing it more thoroughly when we get round to using it, but for the time being we want to take this opportunity to show them off to you guys. If you’re anything like us, when you see it, you will think that something has been created just for ladies just like us! I genuinely can’t wait to try it out.
If you would like to find out more, make sure you visit the Stork website. (Unfortunately for us Brits, they’re US based at the moment, but they’re hoping to come to stores near you soon. I would recommend keeping an eye on where they’ll be in case they’re back in the UK, or popping them a quick email.)
We would highly recommend visiting the Fertility Show if you’re TTC. Not only did we get tons of advice, information and help, but it really reassured us that we weren’t alone. The show itself is very new, so I can imagine that it will only grow with age. On top of this, the tickets were cheap and it was a relatively cheap day as I decided to drive. The only expenditure was buying our Stork kit.
If you would like to visit the next Fertility Show, you can find all the relevant information on the Fertility Show website.
K
1 comment
Glad to hear you had a good experience at the Fertility Show! I had every intention of going but things came up in the meantime, which was a shame. That Stork device looks quite interesting, look forward to hearing your reviews of it!
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