Candour with a dash of wit

This is a funny and poignant memoir that tackles a subject which many women find it hard to discuss about, even among their peers.

Having peaked the reader’s curiosity with an intriguing title, What Is A Lemon Squeezer Doing In My Vagina, author Rohini S Rajagopal goes on to tell a compellingly funny and poignant story with a powerful message. This is an engaging memoir that opens the lid on a subject many women find it hard to discuss about, even among their peers.

Rohini’s memoir, at its heart, is a woman’s quest to have a baby and her decision to approach the fertility clinic when she does not succeed in her attempt to conceive naturally with her husband Ranjith. When she emerges from the process, with a baby of course, her understanding of infertility, medically assisted pregnancy and motherhood is totally and inexorably altered.

You’d like this book not because it has a message, but because Rohini sets out to tell a story in an interesting and engaging way. Rohini uses the quest to get pregnant as a theme to recount her life, right from the time she was a school-goer in cozy Trivandrum, moving to the ever-bustling Hyderabad for further studies and work, and the adjustments she makes when she finally arrives in Bengaluru as a married woman.

Not straightforward

She gives us a peak into her single-mindedness and goal-oriented approach to finding a suitable job. By extension, the reader will know that this woman won’t quit so easily. Her childhood and experiences trying different jobs set us up for the real story.

Inability to conceive a child becomes an obsession and a blip in an otherwise successful married life. Rohini approaches medically assisted fertility with the same single-mindedness that she had employed for one of her projects or goals; only here, she discovers that even medical assistance does not render the issue straightforward.

When The IUI (Intrauterine Insemination), which is “quite close to natural conception,” fails, she resorts to IVF (In Vitro Fertilisation) that gives “no chance at feigning” that it’s ‘natural’. Besides being expensive, each IVF cycle turns out to be a rollercoaster ride, beginning with eager anticipation, swelling into positive expectation, and ending in a crushing blow that leaves Rohini to pick up the pieces and search inside for any remnants of strength to begin the next cycle.

Being an easy-to-read memoir, this book does the opposite of weighing down the reader with technical terms and medical procedures with convoluted names. “IVF is like watching a food show on TV and then trying to recreate the dish at home by following the recipe,” Rohini writes. “Even if you have the exact ingredients and measurements and follow the same techniques, the final product may not match the original inspiration.”

Emotional challenges

Of course, Rohini makes it clear that the book is more a way to prepare a couple for the emotional challenges rather than delivering medical advice, which, of course, only a doctor is qualified to do so. Rohini’s tone is friendly, as if she’s sitting across from a childless couple considering medically assisted pregnancy and letting her experience help them.

Probably like the author herself, we only wish that the society never pins the blame of infertility on women and stigmatise them for that. Reading Rohini’s story will also inspire women to take leadership in approaching infertility and find (or even build) emotional support among themselves, while going through the treatment.

There can’t be a more appropriate book in these times. You only have to notice the number of fertility clinics advertising from tier-2 cities to understand the need to discuss infertility. While the boldness to share her experience deserves appreciation, Rohini’s clarity and candour must be applauded even more, without which this book may not have been so helpful to many ordinary women and couples struggling with infertility.