Facing the pressure to start a Jewish family

This is the first instalment of a six-part series, Be Fruitful: Fertility Journeys in Modern Jewish Lives, which explores the complex and sometimes taboo journey to parenthood in the Jewish community.

Lauren Placks thought it would be easy to start a family. She married at 24 and prepared to have her first child soon after.

“I felt that when I wanted to have a child, it should happen quite easily. We were surprised that when we did start to try, we had no success. I wasn’t ovulating properly.”

A raft of attempted organic remedies followed, from acupuncture to naturopathy, before Placks moved onto medical intervention from a fertility specialist, but all of it failed to kickstart her ovulation. At 26, she started IVF.

“I was very young. I knew little about IVF and none of my friends were even married, let alone trying for a baby themselves. It was an isolated, lonely time.

“There's a lot of new terminology, new concepts from doctors, needles and hormones. It’s quite an overwhelming process. While my family and friends tried and were as supportive as they could be, it was hard for them to fully understand what I was going through.”

Placks successfully conceived through IVF on her second cycle and had her first child. A surprise natural conception around a year later then resulted in a stillbirth at 26 weeks – a “horrible thing to go through” – before she underwent further rounds of IVF, one ending in a miscarriage. Today, Placks is "blessed" with a daughter, now 12, and two sons, 9 and 5.