'My IVF journey made me feel like a product on a conveyor belt'

When Kareena Kapoor Khan launches into that raw monologue about IVF and pregnancy in Good Newwz, it instantly strikes a chord. Many women feel seen in the way she lays bare the realities they are expected to quietly endure, from the hormone injections during IVF that trigger mood swings and discomfort, to the hair loss, acne flare-ups, and urinary incontinence that come with pregnancy. Through it all, she says, women are still expected to smile.

IVF is emotionally and physically draining, and women often experience deep anxiety. While conversations around postpartum depression have become more visible, experts say mental health screening should begin much earlier, even during fertility treatments. In a Reddit thread on IVF, many women shared that they spent weeks worrying about whether the egg would fertilise, how many embryos they would get, or if they would get any at all. Many also pointed out that people around them often lack sensitivity when speaking about fertility treatments.

Neha Motwani, entrepreneur and founder of Luma Fertility in Mumbai, became intimately acquainted with this anxiety years before she would open her own IVF clinic. Married since 2013, she never wanted children until 2020. “I don’t know how I changed my mind. Maybe it was the existential crisis of the pandemic,” she says. She began trying to conceive at 34, and when tests showed her AMH levels were low, she decided to pursue IVF at 35.

Looking back, she wishes she had frozen her eggs in her twenties, when women typically have peak fertility. “Preserving my eggs would have given me biological freedom and more options later in life.” (If you’re looking to freeze your eggs, here’s everything you should know.) It might have also saved her from the nightmare her IVF journey turned out to be.

The bumpy road to a baby bump

Between 2021 and 2023, Motwani underwent three IVF cycles before finally having a baby. With multiple IUIs, egg retrievals, and embryo transfers, each cycle came with its own emotional and physical toll. But what troubled her most was the impersonal and often dismissive treatment she encountered at clinics. “There would be long wait times with no explanation and if any of us objected, the staff would mutter about why we waited so long to have a baby,” Motwani says.

When infertility already carries stigma and shame, the least women expect is some kindness and courtesy. But instead, Motwani found herself being moved along clinically through a system that treated vulnerability and caregiving as inconveniences. “I felt like a product on a conveyor belt, prodded like a cow and moved around without any concern,” she says. She also noticed on a few occasions how women who were looking to freeze their eggs were asked to put down their husband’s name, without taking into account that they may be single.

As she went through the treatment, Motwani found herself venting almost daily to her husband about the flaws in the system. “The process needed extensive project management, including coordinating tests, scans and appointments. It felt like a full-time job,” she says. She thought it extremely problematic that women had to put their regular schedules on hold to go to the clinic for days in a row, and wait for hours at a time, for their injections during IVF. Motwani saw how this could adversely affect women and create potential setbacks for them, especially at work. She’d wonder why there were no at-home services offered by these clinics.

Turning pain into power

Her husband eventually encouraged her to turn that frustration into something constructive. Especially since it wouldn’t be her first time doing something like that. Years earlier, after struggling to find a decent yoga class and ending up at a particularly terrible one, she founded Fitternity, a fitness aggregator that later got acquired by Cult.

But Motwani first wanted to understand whether her experience was personal or part of a larger pattern. Through friends and friends of friends, she spoke to 200 women across the country who had undergone fertility treatments. And every single one of them described feeling dehumanised at some stage in their IVF journey. Motwani then visited 50 clinics across India to observe how systems were structured and where exactly patients fell through the cracks. She found that very few of them were trained to handle patients with care and sensitivity.

To bridge that gap, she founded Luma Fertility in 2024 in Mumbai. Her intention was to rethink the experience surrounding fertility treatments to centre the comfort and humanity of patients.

A kinder approach to IVF

At Luma Fertility, rather than requiring patients to navigate several rooms and procedures, the clinic redesigns appointments so that nearly all the steps—consultation, blood work, and prescribed injections—occur in one room, with the patient seated throughout. Ultrasound rooms have attached washrooms stocked with pads and tampons, a small but uncommon consideration at most other clinics.

Each patient is paired with a care navigator with a background in psychology, someone who can partner them through both the emotional and administrative load. Routine elements like appointment reminders, injection schedules, and test updates are moved onto an app to reduce mental clutter. Luma also facilitates at-home delivery and administration of IVF injections required during the treatment.

“Uncertainties such as not knowing how many eggs will be retrieved or whether the cycle will give a successful outcome during my IVF was one of the major triggers of anxiety,” Motwani shares. She says this is the reason she wanted transparency to be a key element at Luma. Their embryology lab’s RI Witness system, which ensures accuracy and traceability of eggs, sperm, and embryos, is therefore integrated with the clinic’s app that allows patients to trace exactly what’s happening in their IVF cycle. 

When building the core medical team, too, Motwani focused on hiring people who understood the need for empathy along with having strong expertise. She says Luma’s team of experts—especially medical director, Dr Radhika Sheth, a leading IVF practitioner with 18 years of experience—are aligned with her vision.

In the past year, Motwani says, they’ve had 25 embryo transfers and a 9.5 out of 10 satisfaction rate.

The IVF process will always involve uncertainty, difficult decisions, and an emotional intensity that is hard to articulate. What it should not involve is judgment or neglect. “My child is now two years old. Being able to conceive even later in life is a wonderful gift,” she says. “I hope that other women too find their way through their fertility journey, without the additional stress I had to go through, but with support and empathy.”