Kate Emery: Children’s TV series Bluey tackles sensitive subject of infertility better than most

In an age when celebrities like Naomi Campbell and Janet Jackson can become mothers at 50 and one in 20 Australian babies is born via IVF, it’s easy to imagine that anyone who wants a kid can have one if only they try hard enough. Nope. Trust Australia’s collective cartoon obsession, Bluey, to tackle the subject of infertility and somehow do it better in seven minutes than the average adult drama. A new episode called “Onesies” has slipped beneath the nation’s guard to deliver a quietly devastating gut punch. For readers without access to the young children required to justify watching the endlessly charming ABC juggernaut, Bluey tells the story of the Queensland Heeler family, comprising dad Bandit, mum Chilli and daughters Bluey and Bingo. This particular episode introduces a new character, Chilli’s sister Brandy — voiced by actress Rose Byrne — who comes for a visit bearing gifts, the titular onesies that provide the ostensible plot. The real story, buried deep enough to bypass younger viewers who are just there for the gags, is that Brandy has been largely absent from her sister’s life because she cannot be a mum herself and finds it hard to be around the kids. Wisely the show never specifies whether Brandy is unable to have a child for medical or social reasons or whether she’s suffered pregnancy loss. Chilli puts it like this: “There’s something Aunty Brandy wants more than anything. . . but she can’t have it, and there’s not really anything anyone can do.” Most people of a certain age will know someone who has experienced infertility or pregnancy loss, whether they know it or not. But while options like IVF and surrogacy have become increasingly socially acceptable and understood, it is not always appreciated that some people will never have a baby, regardless of how much time, energy and money they expend. Unexplained medical infertility is a real thing, even if it might feel like a doctor’s way of admitting that life isn’t fair. There are also non-medical reasons someone cannot have a child, including the lack of a partner or sperm donor, a lack of resources to pursue fertility treatment or even the fact that, in WA right now, gay men do not have access to IVF or surrogacy services. For people who want a baby but cannot have one there is a particular agony in watching friends get pregnant when they cannot, fielding endless variations on the question of why they don’t have kids or attending the birthday parties of a child who would have been the same age as the one they couldn’t have. Infertility affects one in six Australian couples of reproductive age, while 10 to 20 per cent of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Perhaps that’s why “Onesies” has struck such a chord. Online infertility support groups and Bluey fan groups alike have seen particularly women either welcoming the spotlight Bluey has shone on the struggle or lamenting that the episode didn’t come with a trigger warning. Fertility Society of Australia and New Zealand director Manuela Toledo said the episode could be an important conversation starter. “It’s really important to understand it’s not just medical infertility where people try and they can’t have a baby,” Dr Toledo said. “There’s also lots of social factors that might come into it. Maybe she’s (Brandy) a single woman and hasn’t been able to find a sperm donor, or maybe she’s in a same-sex relationship and they haven’t been able to utilise sperm or they haven’t been successful with a sperm donor.” Bluey, which is threatening to go down in history as Australia’s greatest TV show, has given its audience plenty of lessons over three seasons. They include the correct way to play pass the parcel, the necessity of occasionally submitting to a child’s game when it’s the last thing you want to do and why you should never, ever try to make the notoriously difficult “duck cake” from the Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book. The lesson from “Onesies” is more like a timely reminder that the unintentionally childless are all around us and their grief is real. Before we “jokingly” reference someone’s biological clock, ask a casual acquaintance why they don’t have kids or berate a friend for missing a kid’s birthday party, think of Brandy first and maybe just don’t.