March 7, 2025 • 48 mins
After a 14-month surprise infertility battle, Lisa is emerging from what she calls the “infertility underworld” to share her path to pregnancy.
Getting pregnant with her first child was effortless, but this time, she felt like a science project. Determined to solve her fertility challenges naturally, she spent months trying to “fix” things on her own—only to realize that she needed outside help. Despite her initial resistance to fertility treatments, she ultimately turned to medical professionals. However, finding the right team was not easy. The so-called “best and top” specialists often made her feel broken rather than supported. Through trial and error, she learned that pregnancy and birth are a time to surround yourself with people who make you feel whole, not like a problem to be solved.
For those still navigating infertility’s “underworld,” Lisa sees and is rooting for you!
In this episode, Lisa covers:
- Her journey to getting pregnant with her second child
- The gap in fertility support—why there’s little guidance for women before resorting to costly medical treatments
- Maternal preoccupation—how can modern, working women balance careers when fertility planning takes over their lives?
- “You’ve got time!”—is this reassuring or misleading? Why women deserve real education about their individual fertility
- Technology & fertility tracking—the best high-tech and low-cost options for understanding cycles and hormones
The Truthiest Life on Instagram: @thetruthiestlife
Host: @lisahayim
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Edited by Houston Tilley
Intro Jingle by Alyssa Chase aka @findyoursails
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
No, you'll be Even when times gethard and you feel
you're in the you see just how beautiful.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Life can be.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
When you saften your heart, you can finally start to
live your to see us life.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hello, everybody, welcome back.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
It has been a really long time, and I think
the topic that we're talking about today and everything I'm
going to share hopefully sheds light on where I've been
and how all consuming infertility can be. I know that
most women do truck on with their jobs, and I
(00:54):
am sitting there clapping for them, because for me, the
all consuming nature of infertility for the past I mean,
I went through it for a year and a half,
but the last two years of life where I went
through a loss and then just a lot going on
at home and then trying and then infertility really kind
(01:14):
of sucked me under tow And I think that it's
important to call out what is called maternal preoccupation, where
your brain is just really preoccupied by motherhood. I think
it's something that's really primal. And the first time that
I heard that phrase, I felt really validated because I
(01:35):
was all consumed with all of it and finding it
very hard to be a modern woman that does all
the other things in the world and does it all
and does it well and defines herself by being productive
and efficient and multitasking when my brain was so bogged
down with infertility and tracking and taking supplements and visiting
(01:57):
doctors and more doctors and appointments, and I just think
about all the women out there, how they're juggling it all,
and I just I bow down to all of you.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
In case you missed it.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
On social media, I shared that I am expecting, and
I shared so in a way that was hopefully most
sensitive to anybody who's going through infertility right now or
in the past. One of the main reasons I was
really weary and struggling to figure out how to share
this on social media for the last I'm twenty seven
(02:28):
weeks pregnant today, so for the last twenty seven weeks
was because how do you emerge from this dark, lonely,
secret underworld that you didn't know existed before and then
just share your happy news and pretend like emerging was like,
you can't forget about where you kind of came from
(02:50):
once you've experienced any sort of struggle, right, And I
didn't want to because my experience, although not as extreme
as most and I recognize that. We'll talk about a
little bit more about that in a minute. My experience,
although it sucked, and it sucked me dry of finances,
(03:11):
of time, of energy, of headspace, of all of that,
it really connected me without connecting me, because I actually
felt quite lonely, but it really connected me with what
it means to be a woman and another experience that
I previously didn't have, having gotten pregnant very easily with
my first And even as I was going through it,
(03:32):
I would have said, I'm grateful for this experience because
you know, I remember when I posted sharing that I
was pregnant with solely, and I think I might have
put a disclaimer on if anybody's trying, I understand that
you don't, you know, you can unfollow me. I am
not going to take that personally. I understood that like cognitively,
but to understand that from an embodied perspective is such
(03:56):
a gift of And I'm not trying to be like
toxically positive here, I just I do mean this. It's
such a gift to experience more of what it's like
to be a woman in this modern world and share
that experience with other women, even if you're not talking
about it all the time. With that being said, I
can't tell you how many times when I was going
through it and I was frustrated that I just wanted
(04:17):
to get on this microphone and share with you about
what the underworld was like. But something in me, and
this isn't just my story, right, it's mine and Evans,
it just didn't feel right for me to take you
along for that ride. I also knew that I didn't
want that attention. I didn't want to be labeled as infertile.
(04:40):
I didn't want that to become my online identity, mainly
because I didn't want to be thinking and talking about
it more than I all ready was, and so this
was private. It was also private to our family. I
just didn't want people to know what I was going through.
I don't know why. I'm not somebody that's afraid to
ask for help. I think this other part of me
(05:02):
really loves a good surprise and being able to shock
family and friends, and I knew that by you know,
at one point, sharing this with them would kind of
blunt the eventual, hopefully eventual announcement of being pregnant. I
also had pregnant people in my family, and I just
(05:22):
didn't want to taint anybody's experience at all. So this
was something that was private between me and Evan, my husband,
but really more me as it shared about what it's
like living in the underworld in that Instagram post. If
you missed it, please do read it. It's really important.
It was a really lonely experience because so much of
(05:42):
the burden does fall on the woman, even if it's
not necessarily her fault, because you can also have male
infertility or you don't know why you can't get pregnant,
it's just where the burden falls. And the woman does
a lot to take care of her mind, her body,
go to the doctor's appointment, and she's really the leader
of all of that. So I in some way apologized
(06:05):
that I didn't take you on that ride because I
think it's so important and I love when women are
sharing their journeys. But for me, that just wasn't something
that I wanted to share and I didn't have capacity
to do so, to be honest, and I'm glad that
I'm old enough and wise enough to kind of recognize that,
because there was not a lot of left of me
at that point. So, like I said, I've already put
(06:27):
this out there on social media, and before we jump
into this episode where I share as succinctly as possible
a bit about my story, I hope to include education
points as well about women's health and things that I
wish that I knew, and then also how I got pregnant.
Of course, there are two things that I want to
say that I think are really important, and the first
(06:49):
one is that despite it being a struggle for me,
I had it really really easy.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Comparatively.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
I tried for fourteen months consecutively, and although those fourteen
months felt really long to me, this is not very
long for fertility warriors. I also did successfully get pregnant
the first time I saw my fertility doctor and tried
a treatment. That treatment was not IVF. IVF is far
(07:19):
more intensive, so is IUI. So I got very lucky.
And I'm not putting this out there because I'm trying
to be on the same level as those incredible women,
and I think it's kind of important to just kind
of recognize that I'm not trying to be relatable to everyone,
and I am, however, trying to be sensitive to everybody
(07:41):
because this was my reality and I do think that
through this meandering story there's so much to learn about
women's health, and again, just a compassionate understanding of the
people in your life of you really just never know,
like the fire that somebody's walking through. And the second
thing that I want to say, which I would only
kind of saying now after sharing a little on social
(08:02):
media and realizing where people stand with all of this,
is that and just hear me out on the whole
thing here. I'm not trying to share this and be
a beacon of hope. I do sort of have a
strange stance on hope in general, but I am not
here to say I did it and you should do
this too, and then you'll get pregnant. I of course
(08:24):
want you to achieve in your life and your family
whatever it is that you want, But I'm not sharing
this in any way that I hope would provide false
hope for somebody. I think we all have really individual
situations when it comes to fertility. It's not a blanket
thing as to why it's not working. And so I
(08:46):
don't want anybody to listen to this and be like, Okay,
this girl doesn't need to be on the microphone she's
giving false hope to people. That's not why I'm doing this.
So if my story or anything that I've even said
in these last ten minutes is triggering to you anyway,
I just want to let you know I'm not offended
if you stop listening or if you un follow me
in this season of being pregnant and showing up online
(09:08):
and in other places. So let's get a little bit
into my history. So my first or second try trying
to get pregnant with my daughter solely, who's three and
a half years old. I got pregnant easily, Wham bam done,
no thoughts about how difficult it might be for somebody
to get pregnant. Then two years later I had a
complete surprise, unplanned pregnancy. I was in total shock, fear,
(09:33):
then eventual excitement, but unfortunately it ended up being a
topic which means that implantation happened in the wrong place,
It got stuck in a fallopian tube, and when this happens,
that means that that's not a viable pregnancy, not safe
for me as well. To treat this, I was given
two shots of a drug called methotreks eate. They basically
(09:54):
flip you over in the er and inject you right
in the tushy, very let's say, not so humanizing, but
this stops the pregnancy from growing and creating any sort
of long lasting damage to the tubes. This is technically
classified different than a miscarriage, but it is a loss nonetheless,
(10:14):
and they advise you not to begin trying to have
another baby for six months to three to six months
because of the methotrex eight that's in your body, which
is in different dosages used as a strong chemotherapy medication.
So just so you know the type of medication that
we are kind of talking about here, it's really strong stuff.
(10:35):
At that point in time, I was not trying to
have a baby, nor did I know that I wanted
another child. That was a complete surprise accident, all of
the things, and so I had no problem waiting six
months until that medicine was definitely out of my system
to even begin thinking about it. And by the time
that rolled around, I would not say that I was
(10:56):
ready for another child, but I guess my reasons for
having a second or I wouldn't say necessarily unique, and
I'm not going to get into it in this episode,
but it wasn't because I was dying to have another baby.
I am so fulfilled by my number one. I find
babyhood to be really challenging, and it nearly killed me
the first time, really hoping it doesn't the second time
(11:18):
and that the hazing period's over. I love that terminology
my midwife is the other day. It's just such a
jolting experience being a first time mom, at least it
was for me. But I know what I'm doing a
little bit more. I'm confident I am a mother in
my bones now, and my intuition is on fire, and
my ability to advocate for self and babies is intact.
(11:39):
These are just things I didn't have before, but nonetheless Okay,
So after my ectopic, I took the methatrek s eate
and I end up having regular periods within a month
or two. And by regular periods, I mean my period
is coming every twenty eight to thirty three thirty something days,
and everything kind of looks normal on the outside like
(12:01):
it always did when I begin trying. In June, I
again I'm like, okay, well, my period is regular, and
so all I need to do is figure out when
I'm ovulating and to do what I did last time
time your intercourse for that and why I'm bam bayam,
You'll be good, Lisa. And as soon as I started
tracking a little bit, I did notice that something was
(12:24):
a bit different. But I was ovulating according to my
opk's ovulation predictor kits to terminology. You'll get to know
if you ever find yourself trying to get pregnant and
using these sort of things. But it wasn't kind of
adding up. I had regular periods, I was ovulating, I
was having timed intercourse and it wasn't sticking. And what
(12:46):
I now know is that I had something that is
for some reason debated in the medical world. But I'm
comfortable giving myself this diagnosis. And I'm fairly certain, although
you can't ever be one hundred percent certain that this
was my issue. You and why I couldn't get pregnant.
And it's called luteal phase defect. According to a quick
Google search, ludial phase defect is a condition where the
(13:09):
corpus ludium, the temporary gland formed after ovulation, does not
produce enough progesterone. Pgesterone is essential for preparing the uterus
for implantation and maintaining pregnancy. The causes are unknown, okay,
great hormonal imbalances, thyroid disorders, autoimmune disorders, or stress. And
typically luteal phase defect is depicted as a luteal phase
(13:33):
as less than ten days or a regular period, and
you'll probably be alerted if you are having infertility or
recurrent miscarriages. I had no miscarriages, but just to break
down the cycle a little bit, because I do want
this to be educational and these are things I wish
I paid more attention to. A twenty eight to thirty
day cycle is a good marker of a healthy cycle
(13:57):
in general, but it's really important to at the specifics
of that cycle. So the first half is the follicular
that's the first part of the menstrual cycle. It starts
on the first day of your period, so the second
you start bleeding, that's day one, and it ends when
you ovulate, when the egg is released. And the luteal
phase begins after ovulation and ends at the start of
(14:20):
your next period. So you've got the first half the
follicular phase, the second half the luteal phase. And this
luteal phase is really important for basically preparing the uterine
lining to be like juicy and thick and fluffy, so
that when the sperm travels it's like a cushiony place
to I'm just gonna say, bite into and land and
(14:42):
you know, create the magic in there. So although I
looked like I had a perfect cycle of twenty eight
thirty days when I started to break it down, where
I was ovulating was late, which can be okay, but
the second half of my cycle was inconsistent and often
short less than ten days. And so once that progesterone
(15:03):
drops and you start bleeding, you no longer have a
chance to get pregnant. So even if there was attempts
to attach the sperm into the uterine lining, it didn't
get a good grip. And I'm pretty certain, based on
the fourteen months of intensely studying my own body, that
that's what's happened. And I'm also pretty certain because of
(15:27):
how I ended up getting pregnant and the intervention, but
like very low intervention that I had that took place
on its first try, So that is important to kind
of know that. I think the reason I couldn't get
pregnant was because of a luteal phase defect. Again, I
don't know why some doctors don't consider this to be
(15:48):
a real diagnosis, but nonetheless, I wanted to fix this,
and I tried a lot of things to fix this,
and sometimes I was successful during certain months, or maybe
it was just coincidence that I was able to extend
the luteal phase to close to ten days, but I
couldn't really get it consistent, and nonetheless, I had no
(16:10):
luck getting pregnant even if I made a dent in
the cycle ratio. So once I noticed that there was
an issue with my luteal phase, paired with the fact
that I couldn't get pregnant on my own, I wanted
to see somebody that could help me learn more about
how I could fix this and hopefully get pregnant naturally.
(16:31):
So my brain went to Okay, go to a fertility doctor.
They know all about fertility. So within three months I
think of trying, which is not a long time at all.
I went to a fertility doctor and I shared with
them my findings, and I had all of my blood work.
Because I'm kind of somebody that takes like a lot
(16:53):
of the health into my own hands, I do a
lot of research on my own, and doctor's visits can
be so costly and so many visits to figure things
out that my brain's kind of like, Okay, if I
can bring more pieces of the puzzle to a doctor
and help them solve it, rather than being a patient
that sits back and leaves it in the hands of
a busy doctor, I'm like, I can help them figure
(17:16):
it out. So I roll up to this doctors I
meant with so many types of tests. I want to
show them that there's nothing autoimmune going on, nothing thyroid,
because I know that they're.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Going to want to test all of that.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
And when I roll up to this appointment, I am
quickly woken up for my naive ativity and whatever you
know I'm trying to say here, And I learn that
fertility doctors are not necessarily focused on what I.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Was focused on.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
They want to get you pregnant, which most people, by
the time they roll up to a fertility doctor, that's
what they want to And although I wanted to get pregnant,
I wanted the doctor to help me figure out what
was wrong with my body so that I could get
pregnant on my own. Nonetheless, I followed their instructions with
the things that they want me to do, and there's
(18:07):
a big gap in the market when it comes to
knowing something is off with your body, wanting to improve
your fertility, but not necessarily being ready for a fertility
clinic that's going to offer you solutions pretty quickly with
medication IUI or IVF, and they're going to do diagnostic
stuff as well. Of course, I think it's important for
(18:37):
people to realize that of how important this business is
fertility and having these options, but how lucrative it is
as well.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Fertility is a business.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
And I went to one of the best places and
then also the next best place when I went to
a second doctor because I didn't like this one, and
I can't tell you how sterile and cold the experience was.
And they're just things that I that I wish that
I knew. And one thing that I wish that I
(19:10):
knew is that the higher probability of you getting pregnant,
the more dollar signs above your head they are seeing.
For example, if you are under thirty five, if you've
had a baby before, other sorts of you know, healthy
fertility markers. They want to acquire you as a patient
because you're likely to be a success story, especially with intervention,
(19:35):
because they know that you're of younger age and that
your body is capable of having a pregnancy. So anyway,
the first place that I went to, you know, I
didn't dismiss them immediately. I know that it felt very
sterile and cold and like a factory. But who was
I to say otherwise? I know, I made this appointment
and I didn't know where else to go, and trust me,
(19:56):
I looked into who else could help me with this,
and I I'm somebody that knows a lot of health practitioners,
and I could not find the people that would be
the gap in this market that I was looking for.
So the first thing they wanted to do was diagnostic,
was to assess my tube. So given that I had
a tuble ectopic pregnancy last time, it is very logical
(20:17):
that they would want to There's two types of ways
to do this, do a water test or a h
SG with die and radiation to assess if there's anything
blocking or causing an issue with my Philippian tubes. So
I ended up having a procedure where basically they squirt
water up your Philippian tubes and they make sure that
(20:38):
it comes out the other side. This was marketed as
being less intense than an HSG, which uses dye and radiation,
and given that I had only tried for three months
at this point, that felt like the right thing for
me to do. I just have to mention that at
this point by now, like I'm where I'm sitting today,
I've also had the HSG, which uses the dye in radiation.
(21:02):
And I was so terrified going into the HSG because
the water one was so painful and I was not
expecting it. That the HSG was actually like nothing. And
I don't know if that has to do with the
fact that a resident did this or not versus the
doctor who did the HSG. But the water I'm sorry
forgetting the name of what this was called. But the
(21:22):
water one, Oh my gosh. I was so unprepared for
I could barely walk. Driving was dangerous. I remember I
had to call my best friend and like, keep in mind, guys,
I'm somebody who had an unmedicated berth. I do have
a fairly high pain tolerance. This was so painful and
scary for me. After this experience where I went to
(21:46):
one of the big names in fertility, I tried to
communicate with my doctor many times and I had such
a bad experience at this place. I couldn't get my
patient records, I couldn't get my doctor to call me back,
and I ended up up having to call patient advocacy,
which is important for you to know if you ever
have an experience with a hospital, you can go through
(22:07):
patient advocacy and they will help you get to the
bottom of whatever you need.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Evan actually called for me.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
I don't know if I would have called myself, but
once I went this method, they take you very seriously.
So it was only after I got in touch with
my patient advocate was I able to get a response
and obtain my health records. The important thing about obtaining
my health records was I knew that I would probably
have to go somewhere else and I needed to get
and gather all the blood work that we you know,
(22:35):
I was at this place for a month. I had
to get my blood work and even the results from
that test and just continue to build my health record
and take that to the next place that I probably
would go to and gave it a break for a minute.
But eventually I did try another doctor in a different
health system again, one of those big name hospitals that
have all the accolades and the affiliations with the Ivy
(22:59):
League schools, and this felt a little smaller than the
first one, but still definitely felt very sterile as a place.
And when I met with this doctor, I remember I
brought like a folder of all of my labs and
evans a doctor and he's kind of warned me about, Okay,
the patients that show up with all this information, like
it doesn't necessarily make the doctor's jobs easier. It can
(23:22):
be much more complex, especially because labs are different per
hospital and so they do want to retest. But like
I said, I just thought, maybe this is the type
of collaborative woman health doctor that'll sit with me, go
through it and find what I'm missing. And again, I've
gone through blood work after blood work specialist after specialists.
At this point like if I could just provide those
(23:43):
puzzle pieces, maybe they could help me. So she begins
to kind of look through my health records and at
this point they're like six months older because they're from
when I saw the first fertility person, and I remember
her eyes kind of get a little squinty, and she goes,
did they ever talk to you about your AMH? And
I'm like, no, they told me that everything was fine,
(24:06):
that there was no red flags in my blood work.
So here I am six months later, panicking that there
has been some sort of problem all along, and she
basically tells me that my AMH, this number, which I'll
explain a minute, is low and that I don't really
have that much time or SHO doesn't think of that
(24:28):
much time, and so I'll need to go a little
bit more aggressive with my plan of how I'm going
to get pregnant. After of course, I do an HSG
with her, that is the scan of my tubes. She
wants to check them out for herself because of my
past history with a tubul pregnancy, which I agreed to do.
But AMH stands for anti malarian hormone, and it's a
(24:52):
hormone that helps doctors estimate a woman's egg count or
ovarian reserve. So the AMH level can help a doctor
determine the best treatment, such as IVF, IUI, or whatever
it is. High levels are going to mean that a
lot of eggs are available, where low number is going
to mean that reserve is shrinking with time. So I
(25:14):
believe my number was something like one point three six
months ago, and she said that two point two is
average for my age, and she kind of treaded lightly ish,
but the vibe was like, you're a dying woman. We
don't know when your menopause is going to come on,
we don't know what your current number is right now,
we don't know if menopause is going to linger for
(25:36):
a while, and so basically, we want to be a
little bit more aggressive with your treatment plan. I walked
out of there a different person, my fear response so high,
and truly feeling like a dying woman, Like I am
not a woman that equates woman's worth and life with
(25:58):
her ability to reproduce. But in that moment, it felt
like my whole life had been robbed from me right
Like everybody said, no, rush to have kids, do your
career first, and here I was, at this point in
my life, like fully embodied as a mother. There's nothing
I care more about than my daughter, Soli, and my
brain is fully occupied by motherhood and trying to get pregnant,
(26:22):
and I'm fighting time. I'm fighting a biological clock that
I truly didn't think that I had to worry about,
especially because getting pregnant with my daughter, I guess with
Solia was probably thirty four, like it was no problem.
I know that at thirty five they say things get
significantly harder and you're technically a geriatric pregnancy. But actually
(26:43):
that was something that I completely threw out the window
thought was garbage.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
And I still do think it was garbage.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
I think what has happened to me is not necessarily
indicative of what happened at thirty five. I joke and
call this my geriatric pregnancy because there have been so
many things, but I think it's really I still hold
truth that it's ridiculous that a woman becomes high risk
once she's thirty five. Obviously, I know statistics are statistics,
and so it is harder to get pregnant statistically after
(27:11):
you're thirty five.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
But I truly.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Thought that this was garbage, and all of a sudden
I was like, Okay, it's not garbage. And I was
the one lying to myself, and I say that it's
garbage because I think anybody listening to know I have
so many friends that have gotten pregnant thirty five and
above naturally or with IVF, but they have held on
to a pregnancy, and I think that it just trips
up a lot of people in a completely other way.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
So I think it is important to know.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
That there is of course a biological clock within all
of us, and that our body is going through body
changes as we get older. But it's equally, if not more,
important to know that thirty five is not a magic number.
Just because you turn thirty five doesn't mean that, like
everything changes technically from a medical standpoint, you get put
into this high risk category. But that doesn't mean that
(27:57):
you are necessarily high risk, or that your body is
just automatically stopped working at this exact.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Moment in time.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
There are a lot of people whose bodies continue to
work optimally, can get pregnant with ease, can birth how
they want, well above age forty even one of the
questions that I had gotten on my Instagram after I posted.
I've kind of shared answers to these most of the
questions as we're going through this episode, But one question
I got specifically was how to know if you're ovulating
(28:27):
and if you pay actually close enough attention to your body,
you might be able to feel it. I got so
in tune with the different things and feelings in my
body that at this point I not right now, I'm
not ovulating because I'm pregnant. But prior to this, I
could tell when I was ovulating, but i'd still double
check it with an OPK, an ovulation predictor kit. These
can vary in how expensive they are based on the
(28:48):
technology that you're using. I started with the more basic
ones and then I evolved and use something called the Mira.
Mira is this like very advanced technology where you're on
a stick and then you put that stick in this
little machine and the machine gives you I think it's
four different variables, at least when I started. When I
(29:09):
was using it. About your cycle. I started using this
at about six months after trying. I made the investment
in the Mira because, like I said, I was trying
to find more pieces of the puzzle and figure out
is there something that I can figure out on my
own and remove one of these doctors and people and
appointments that I have to go through. I know that
(29:29):
for some people they might be listening to this and
be like, oh, give it a break, just go see
an expert, and I was right. But I also want
to be involved in my care because nobody knows their
body better than me, and nobody's paying closer attention to
the changes going on in their body than me, right,
the same as it should be for all of us.
So kind of ironically, I had a call with a
MIRRA specialist setup. I think it's like seventy five dollars
(29:52):
on their website where you can meet with somebody who
works for MIRA. Some are registered dietitians, not all of
them are, are just fertility specialists and you can have
a call with them where they see everything that your
mirror reports and they can help assess and see if
there's any sort of red flag or provide any sort
of insight. So given that it was seventy five dollars,
(30:15):
which I consider to be a low amount of money
for anything fertility wise at this point, oh, let me
also just mention that my insurance doesn't cover fertility, so
everything that I'm doing is adding up very quickly, including
these very costly diagnostic tests which are coming back as clear,
which I just intuitively knew. But anyway, so seventy five
(30:38):
dollars and like, okay, well, maybe there's something here. At
this point, I have six months worth of peeing on
a stick every single day. Maybe there's a piece of
data that I'm missing, so I sign up for this
call and it happens to coincide the same week as
I went to this second fertility doctor and I share
with her my AMH and she just had such a
different energy compared to the and shared with me a
(31:02):
couple of things. Number One, that AMH or any lab
value can vary from from lab to lab, so where
I was one point three somewhere else, I might be
one point eight at a different lab. And she also
mentioned that this number wasn't as gravely indicative of not
being able to have children or my biological clock ticking
(31:23):
as the first doctor made me feel. And I guess
she didn't even say anything so distinctly different, but it
was the way she looked at me and treated me
that kind of began to began to melt that fear,
and more importantly pointed me in the direction of knowing
that I didn't feel safe around doctor number two either.
(31:45):
That left me completely out of doctors. I went to
the two best hospitals in the area. I went to
the two best you know names in this stuff, and
I just felt so disconnected on heard and kind of
like fear was meant to be put into me. The
first one, I felt abandoned. The second one, I felt
like fear being put into me, and I was like,
(32:07):
I can't with fertility, Like I'm not there yet.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
I'm not willing to.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
I'm gonna say I'm not willing, but I just I
didn't want to introduce medicine in that way, especially when
I was in this fearful state. A few months later,
I run into my friend who has twins. And this
(32:34):
isn't somebody I see often, but she's lovely, and when
I see her in her twins, I just like, am
very off the cuff, asking questions like do twins run
in your family? And she's like no, it was the
fertility medication. And I'm like, oh, well, not that I
want twins, but actually I secretly did, but I'm not
having twins some worry. But I was like, who is
(32:55):
your doctrine? And she's like, I love my doctor. Told
me his name and I asked a couple questions about him,
and she was like, no, he was amazing. I love
him as a person. And I was like, what is
it like to love your fertility doctor as a person?
But something about it just felt really right. The way
she spoke about him her experience there. So I called
(33:19):
and made an appointment immediately, and the second I stepped
foot into doctors Apantas's office in Long Island, who is
not affiliated with one of the big name hospitals or institutions,
it felt so different than those big box places. I'm
not saying it's not a business, like I said before,
(33:39):
all fertility is a business, but it didn't feel like
a white sterile factory similar to the other doctors. He
wanted to do routine testing with me, and I agreed.
I just felt so safe in his hands. And ironically,
the past two doctors that I had seen were women
and this was a male. I am somebody that definitely
(34:01):
prefers female doctors, especially when dealing with things fertility, So
this was incredibly shocking that this was the place and
this was the person where I was starting to feel trusting.
So long story short, you know, he recognized the ludial
phase defect thing, and he suggested that I start a
medication called letrasol and then get an ovulation shot which
(34:25):
basically triggers my body to ovulate, and then have timed intercourse.
This was kind of step one, and then follow that
up with taking progesterone suppositories. This was still scary for me,
but by the time I arrived here, I was ready
to take the next step. And you know, he's like,
we could try this for once or two cycles, and
(34:45):
then we can you know, try IUI, and then when
IUI fails, you move into IVF. At this point in time,
like I said, like, my my itch for another child
was not coming from this need to have another baby.
I'm hesitanting this episode to share kind of my motivation
around that, But I don't know if I ever would
have escalated to IVF with already having a living, beautiful
(35:10):
child that fulfills me very much. That's not to say
that I have any issue with IVF in general or
anyone else doing IVF. It just felt like, I know,
it is a lot of work and a big commitment,
and I don't know if I was ready for that.
But the letters, all the medication, the ovulation shot, all
(35:30):
of this.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
It scared me.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Because I had a natural pregnancy last time. I have
reservations about what it's like to bring science into this
for my own self, not for other people. When I
shared little parts of this on Instagram, somebody wrote back
to me and to it sounds like you're not a
proponent of IVF, And oh my gosh, that kind of
shattered me because I fully support I think IVF is
(35:53):
a beautiful use of science supporting women, and I have
no problem with it. And I never questioned fertility until
it came to kind of my own situation with it.
And then it got thinking, as somebody who's not super
religious or God focused, just what does this mean for me?
And why is this bringing up thoughts for me? And
(36:14):
I'm scared to say this again because of how it
landed with this one person, which means it inevitably landed
with other people too, because I don't want to offend
anybody and I don't want to be misunderstood. I one
hundred percent support a woman doing whatever she wants with
her body and her health, and that very much includes IVF.
But for me opening this can of worms, which I
(36:38):
you know, nobody wants to be in the situation where
you are the subject to intervention to get pregnant, right,
So I wanted to be here, But once you're here,
thoughts and feelings and fears start to emerge. So I
agree to take the medication called letrasol, and this is
not technically a fertility medication. It's used off label and
(36:58):
it's found to increase ovulation, increase the chance of pregnancy.
But before I like fully fully commit fill the drug
prescription take it, I ask the doctor, Okay, can we
just look at my problem for a second, Right, I
have a ludial phase defect, and I believe that this
is related to my progesterone dropping too quickly in the
second half of my cycle. So I ask him, in theory,
(37:22):
could I try just taking the progesterone at the end
of my cycle and trying to get pregnant naturally, no letrasol,
no ovulation shot. It's like, we know that I'm ovulating,
So if I could just extend that second half of
my cycle with the progesterone, could I do that? And
this is what I loved. He said, there's no research
to support that. I've never done it before, but sure
(37:45):
we could try that. This means it was not lucrative
to him at all, Right, Like, these are a progesterone.
That'd be one appointment progesterone that I get from a pharmacy,
like probably no money in their pockets and probably not
even considered a success story, honestly, and I thought about
that for a while because that felt the most natural
to me. And then I realized, like, I'm here because
(38:08):
I want to get help, and I'm really losing my marbles.
Let's do this the right way, and so I agreed
to the letrozol, the ovulation shot, and the progesterone as
a first step. So the letrasol is a oral medication,
and basically what would happen is I would take that
and then I would go in around the time of ovulation,
(38:30):
and they would look at the follicles, the follicle size
and the juiciness, and if they were kind of like
almost ready to ovulate, they would use the ovulation shot
to trigger ovulation. I would be told to have sex
and go home and then, oh my god, I totally
forgot about this next part I'm about to say. And
then I would be put on progesterone suppositories. The part
(38:50):
that I forgot is how stressful this was because of
my inability to ever know when I was going to ovulate.
Even with the letrasol, I thought it would make me
more normal, like I would ovulate day twelve, thirteen fourteen,
which is what I would do previously, and I then
needed my partner to be available to have sex. My
husband's travel schedule is absolutely insane, and during that time
(39:13):
he was like here here, there, there, there, there there,
and I'm like, no, I'm not going through this for
you to be like traveling.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
We need to figure this out.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
And so I went back to the doctor on day
whatever it was thirteen, fourteen fifteen, and they're like, Okay,
your follicles look okay, but they look nowhere near ovulation.
We're going to repeat the medication and you're going to
come back in a couple of days. I think it
was maybe five or six days. So at this point
I'm like, okay, I need my husband to now be
(39:41):
available in another five days. He has another trip planned,
and it's like chaos in my brain and fear of
like did I do this for absolutely nothing? Because he
has things that completely can't be moved and I have
this moving target of ovulation. So I think it was
day twenty one, which is crazy in my cycle, that
I came back and they said, Okay, you look like
you're ready to ovulate. We're going to trigger the shot.
(40:03):
Go home, have sex for two days, and then you
wait for two weeks and you begin the progesterone suppositories
that go good to know in your vagina, not your butt.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
That was something I didn't know, so that's what we did.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
And I remember the night that I went home and
Evan is learning a little bit about the ovulation shot
that I received, and he's like, just so you know,
and the doctors didn't tell me this, so I went
to a fertility doctor in place that I love, but
nobody told me this, So I'm going to share it
with you in case you're in this situation. He's like,
I'm learning about the ovulation shot and it contains hCG,
(40:36):
which is the pregnancy hormone. So whatever you do in
these next two weeks, do not take a pregnancy test,
which at this point I was taking like candy every
month for the last fourteen months. I was taking them
as early as a week after I bled, and then
holding onto false hope for far longer.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Whatever.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
If you've been there, girls that get it, get it
type of a thing. He's like, whatever you do, don't
do it because you could.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Get a false pose.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
And I'm like, okay, thank you for telling me. I'm
obviously not going to be that crazy person. I'm going
to wait and just have them tell me on my
blood test if I'm pregnant or not, and that will
be that a big part of me also didn't think
that it would work because I didn't aveel until day
twenty one, Like that's very late in a cycle. But
what the doctor explained to me is, we don't really
(41:22):
care how long the follicular phase is if we can
extend the luteal and with the progesterone, my uterine lining
didn't shed and so I didn't bleed because the progesterone
was keeping the levels high. So that was I think
again why it ended up working. So seven days go
(41:43):
by and I can't help it. I am already ordering
the pregnancy test and I'm taking them and they're coming
back positive, and I'm like, okay, you know what, At
this point, it just feels good to get a positive
after fourteen months of not getting positives. I don't even
care if this is false hope. So I'm testing every
day and I remember at one point like telling Evan like,
I don't know, it's like ten days it's still positive,
(42:04):
and me and Evan one hundred percent. Evan specifically was
like yes, but that's the shot in your body, Lisa,
stop it. And so he completely gaslighted me, and I
didn't believe I was pregnant to the point when I
rolled into my appointment fourteen days later, I knew that
it was still testing positive, but I didn't believe that
I could be pregnant. And I remember I went to
(42:25):
we got the blood test, and she's like, so, did
you test at home? And I'm like yeah, and she's
like what it's say and I'm like, well, it said
it was positive, but the trigger shot has the h
CG in it, like I don't. And she's like congratulations,
and I'm like what, Like I was so not prepared
for anybody to say congratulations, And I'm like, what do
you mean? And she's like, it is definitely out of
your system by now at fourteen days. It was an
(42:47):
out of body experience and in no way felt like
a celebration to me with my ectopic pregnancy. I got
a positive pregnancy test, and that number that hCG in
my body was wonky. It didn't double as it should
every forty eight hours and ended up showing signs of
a not healthy pregnancy, which once you have aniktopic once
(43:09):
you are at risk for it again. So she's like, congratulations,
And technically, I guess that's the moment I quote unquote
found out I was pregnant, but I don't know. First
of all, I needed to see blood work, and at
this point I'm just in pure denial, like I don't
think that it could have worked on the first try. Nonetheless,
after fourteen months of just not believing at this point
I could even be pregnant again, like, it just didn't
(43:29):
feel real. So that number comes back a couple hours
later and it's in the three hundreds, which is like, Okay,
that's that's not the trigger shot, that's a real number.
But again, like I at least needed a double to
quote unquote to begin to accept it. So I go
back two days later and the number does double, and
I'm like, whoa, that's that's a good sign. That's a
(43:49):
really good sign. But again, given the history of kind
of where I came from, just because I technically was pregnant,
there was a lot of disbelief around it. There was
a lot of fear, and although you know, there was
this silent happiness, the overwhelming sense of fear and you know,
going into a protection mode of fear of losing it,
(44:11):
not getting too attached was really high, and to be honest,
I don't remember when it really started to get real.
I think probably around twelve thirteen, fourteen weeks when I
got off of the progesterone entirely.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
And you know, there's still fear.
Speaker 3 (44:24):
There's always fear once you have gone through any sort
of loss. This pregnancy on its own is just completely
different than with Solly. With Solly's I was so naive.
I you know, hadn't experienced loss before. I didn't have
many friends that had and had spoken about it. In
the last three and a half four years, how many
more conversations I have had with women about miscarriages, loss, infertility,
(44:48):
the difficulties of pregnancy. It's like I was living in
this pretend world before and once you know it, you
can't be unshaken. And so you live in a very
different place than somebody going through their first price ignancy
that has had no problems and is maybe younger, so
they don't have friends that have gone through the types
of things that so many of my friends have gone through.
(45:08):
But you're living in a really different state. I mean,
with solely, I also was nervous. I had, you know,
a difficult start to the pregnancy, but nothing like this.
This was like just kind of just waiting and waiting
and waiting for far longer than you know. The first
time I saw heartbeat. Even then, it was just very
(45:29):
hard to get to believe it and to think that
this could be real.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
So that's my story.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
As of now, I'm currently twenty seven weeks pregnant. It's
kind of hard to believe it's going so fast. This
is my last pregnancy, given what it took to get
here for me, which was a lot, given what I
feel I'm capable of, given the difficulty in this pregnancy,
which we will cover a little bit more in the
next episode, where I'll talk about why I had a
(45:58):
hospital procedure and so of the other things that have
tripped me up so far. But like I said, I
felt complete with Soley, my daughter, and now once this
baby comes, it's like I'm good, thank you God. So
that that's a little bit of the story, and that's
that's how it happened for me. Again, I recognized that
this was far easier than what so many women have
(46:18):
gone through with IVF and transfers and failed transfers and
more diagnostic procedures and question marks, question marks years after years,
some people getting, you know, never being able to have
a child of their own. So I hope that by
sharing this I didn't make anybody feel like I get it,
get it. I get it to the most that I
(46:39):
possibly can. And I stand with anybody going through this journey,
especially those going through it silently that might feel alone.
I need you to know how not alone you are.
That there are so many living in the underworld every
day trekking appointment to appointment, acupunctured blood tests, spending all
of their time googling, listening to podcasts looking for that solution,
(47:01):
trying to schedule with their partner, who's life just trucks
on business as usual. Just all of it is so
all consuming and quietly all consuming. Especially if you work
for somebody and you're making these really early morning appointments
to your fertility clinic. It's like your life is just fertility, fertility, fertility,
(47:23):
or I should say infertility, infertility, infertility. So although my
story might look different than yours, I need you to
know that I stand for you and I protect you,
and I hope that this episode lands as gently as possible,
and I hope that if you stick around my content,
you know that with everything that I post, I am
thinking of you and praying and holding you as tightly
as possible too.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
So with that, I.
Speaker 3 (47:45):
Will conclude this episode and this season of life, I guess,
and just send all my love. Thank you so much
for listening. If you have any questions, feel free to
DM or email me. I'm so grateful that you're here,
that you've in here, and that you have stuck around.
I know that we haven't been quite consistent on here,
and now you kind of know why it was hard
(48:06):
to do it all when it came back to social
media and just managing all this. You know, I kind
of feel like I was hiding a part of myself
because I couldn't show up so fully. And now that
I'm here, this pregnancy is very sacred to me, and
so showing up fully doesn't mean I'm sharing every single
thing either, figuring out how to really protect what's going
(48:28):
on in my body and focus on that and then
share the parts that are relevant to women out there
going through. So sending all my love, thank you for listening,
No, you'll be Even when times gethard and you feel
you're in the you see just how beautiful.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Life can be.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
When you saften your heart, you can finally start to
live your to see us life.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hello, everybody, welcome back.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
It has been a really long time, and I think
the topic that we're talking about today and everything I'm
going to share hopefully sheds light on where I've been
and how all consuming infertility can be. I know that
most women do truck on with their jobs, and I
(00:54):
am sitting there clapping for them, because for me, the
all consuming nature of infertility for the past I mean,
I went through it for a year and a half,
but the last two years of life where I went
through a loss and then just a lot going on
at home and then trying and then infertility really kind
(01:14):
of sucked me under tow And I think that it's
important to call out what is called maternal preoccupation, where
your brain is just really preoccupied by motherhood. I think
it's something that's really primal. And the first time that
I heard that phrase, I felt really validated because I
(01:35):
was all consumed with all of it and finding it
very hard to be a modern woman that does all
the other things in the world and does it all
and does it well and defines herself by being productive
and efficient and multitasking when my brain was so bogged
down with infertility and tracking and taking supplements and visiting
(01:57):
doctors and more doctors and appointments, and I just think
about all the women out there, how they're juggling it all,
and I just I bow down to all of you.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
In case you missed it.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
On social media, I shared that I am expecting, and
I shared so in a way that was hopefully most
sensitive to anybody who's going through infertility right now or
in the past. One of the main reasons I was
really weary and struggling to figure out how to share
this on social media for the last I'm twenty seven
(02:28):
weeks pregnant today, so for the last twenty seven weeks
was because how do you emerge from this dark, lonely,
secret underworld that you didn't know existed before and then
just share your happy news and pretend like emerging was like,
you can't forget about where you kind of came from
(02:50):
once you've experienced any sort of struggle, right, And I
didn't want to because my experience, although not as extreme
as most and I recognize that. We'll talk about a
little bit more about that in a minute. My experience,
although it sucked, and it sucked me dry of finances,
(03:11):
of time, of energy, of headspace, of all of that,
it really connected me without connecting me, because I actually
felt quite lonely, but it really connected me with what
it means to be a woman and another experience that
I previously didn't have, having gotten pregnant very easily with
my first And even as I was going through it,
(03:32):
I would have said, I'm grateful for this experience because
you know, I remember when I posted sharing that I
was pregnant with solely, and I think I might have
put a disclaimer on if anybody's trying, I understand that
you don't, you know, you can unfollow me. I am
not going to take that personally. I understood that like cognitively,
but to understand that from an embodied perspective is such
(03:56):
a gift of And I'm not trying to be like
toxically positive here, I just I do mean this. It's
such a gift to experience more of what it's like
to be a woman in this modern world and share
that experience with other women, even if you're not talking
about it all the time. With that being said, I
can't tell you how many times when I was going
through it and I was frustrated that I just wanted
(04:17):
to get on this microphone and share with you about
what the underworld was like. But something in me, and
this isn't just my story, right, it's mine and Evans,
it just didn't feel right for me to take you
along for that ride. I also knew that I didn't
want that attention. I didn't want to be labeled as infertile.
(04:40):
I didn't want that to become my online identity, mainly
because I didn't want to be thinking and talking about
it more than I all ready was, and so this
was private. It was also private to our family. I
just didn't want people to know what I was going through.
I don't know why. I'm not somebody that's afraid to
ask for help. I think this other part of me
(05:02):
really loves a good surprise and being able to shock
family and friends, and I knew that by you know,
at one point, sharing this with them would kind of
blunt the eventual, hopefully eventual announcement of being pregnant. I
also had pregnant people in my family, and I just
(05:22):
didn't want to taint anybody's experience at all. So this
was something that was private between me and Evan, my husband,
but really more me as it shared about what it's
like living in the underworld in that Instagram post. If
you missed it, please do read it. It's really important.
It was a really lonely experience because so much of
(05:42):
the burden does fall on the woman, even if it's
not necessarily her fault, because you can also have male
infertility or you don't know why you can't get pregnant,
it's just where the burden falls. And the woman does
a lot to take care of her mind, her body,
go to the doctor's appointment, and she's really the leader
of all of that. So I in some way apologized
(06:05):
that I didn't take you on that ride because I
think it's so important and I love when women are
sharing their journeys. But for me, that just wasn't something
that I wanted to share and I didn't have capacity
to do so, to be honest, and I'm glad that
I'm old enough and wise enough to kind of recognize that,
because there was not a lot of left of me
at that point. So, like I said, I've already put
(06:27):
this out there on social media, and before we jump
into this episode where I share as succinctly as possible
a bit about my story, I hope to include education
points as well about women's health and things that I
wish that I knew, and then also how I got pregnant.
Of course, there are two things that I want to
say that I think are really important, and the first
(06:49):
one is that despite it being a struggle for me,
I had it really really easy.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Comparatively.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
I tried for fourteen months consecutively, and although those fourteen
months felt really long to me, this is not very
long for fertility warriors. I also did successfully get pregnant
the first time I saw my fertility doctor and tried
a treatment. That treatment was not IVF. IVF is far
(07:19):
more intensive, so is IUI. So I got very lucky.
And I'm not putting this out there because I'm trying
to be on the same level as those incredible women,
and I think it's kind of important to just kind
of recognize that I'm not trying to be relatable to everyone,
and I am, however, trying to be sensitive to everybody
(07:41):
because this was my reality and I do think that
through this meandering story there's so much to learn about
women's health, and again, just a compassionate understanding of the
people in your life of you really just never know,
like the fire that somebody's walking through. And the second
thing that I want to say, which I would only
kind of saying now after sharing a little on social
(08:02):
media and realizing where people stand with all of this,
is that and just hear me out on the whole
thing here. I'm not trying to share this and be
a beacon of hope. I do sort of have a
strange stance on hope in general, but I am not
here to say I did it and you should do
this too, and then you'll get pregnant. I of course
(08:24):
want you to achieve in your life and your family
whatever it is that you want, But I'm not sharing
this in any way that I hope would provide false
hope for somebody. I think we all have really individual
situations when it comes to fertility. It's not a blanket
thing as to why it's not working. And so I
(08:46):
don't want anybody to listen to this and be like, Okay,
this girl doesn't need to be on the microphone she's
giving false hope to people. That's not why I'm doing this.
So if my story or anything that I've even said
in these last ten minutes is triggering to you anyway,
I just want to let you know I'm not offended
if you stop listening or if you un follow me
in this season of being pregnant and showing up online
(09:08):
and in other places. So let's get a little bit
into my history. So my first or second try trying
to get pregnant with my daughter solely, who's three and
a half years old. I got pregnant easily, Wham bam done,
no thoughts about how difficult it might be for somebody
to get pregnant. Then two years later I had a
complete surprise, unplanned pregnancy. I was in total shock, fear,
(09:33):
then eventual excitement, but unfortunately it ended up being a
topic which means that implantation happened in the wrong place,
It got stuck in a fallopian tube, and when this happens,
that means that that's not a viable pregnancy, not safe
for me as well. To treat this, I was given
two shots of a drug called methotreks eate. They basically
(09:54):
flip you over in the er and inject you right
in the tushy, very let's say, not so humanizing, but
this stops the pregnancy from growing and creating any sort
of long lasting damage to the tubes. This is technically
classified different than a miscarriage, but it is a loss nonetheless,
(10:14):
and they advise you not to begin trying to have
another baby for six months to three to six months
because of the methotrex eight that's in your body, which
is in different dosages used as a strong chemotherapy medication.
So just so you know the type of medication that
we are kind of talking about here, it's really strong stuff.
(10:35):
At that point in time, I was not trying to
have a baby, nor did I know that I wanted
another child. That was a complete surprise accident, all of
the things, and so I had no problem waiting six
months until that medicine was definitely out of my system
to even begin thinking about it. And by the time
that rolled around, I would not say that I was
(10:56):
ready for another child, but I guess my reasons for
having a second or I wouldn't say necessarily unique, and
I'm not going to get into it in this episode,
but it wasn't because I was dying to have another baby.
I am so fulfilled by my number one. I find
babyhood to be really challenging, and it nearly killed me
the first time, really hoping it doesn't the second time
(11:18):
and that the hazing period's over. I love that terminology
my midwife is the other day. It's just such a
jolting experience being a first time mom, at least it
was for me. But I know what I'm doing a
little bit more. I'm confident I am a mother in
my bones now, and my intuition is on fire, and
my ability to advocate for self and babies is intact.
(11:39):
These are just things I didn't have before, but nonetheless Okay,
So after my ectopic, I took the methatrek s eate
and I end up having regular periods within a month
or two. And by regular periods, I mean my period
is coming every twenty eight to thirty three thirty something days,
and everything kind of looks normal on the outside like
(12:01):
it always did when I begin trying. In June, I
again I'm like, okay, well, my period is regular, and
so all I need to do is figure out when
I'm ovulating and to do what I did last time
time your intercourse for that and why I'm bam bayam,
You'll be good, Lisa. And as soon as I started
tracking a little bit, I did notice that something was
(12:24):
a bit different. But I was ovulating according to my
opk's ovulation predictor kits to terminology. You'll get to know
if you ever find yourself trying to get pregnant and
using these sort of things. But it wasn't kind of
adding up. I had regular periods, I was ovulating, I
was having timed intercourse and it wasn't sticking. And what
(12:46):
I now know is that I had something that is
for some reason debated in the medical world. But I'm
comfortable giving myself this diagnosis. And I'm fairly certain, although
you can't ever be one hundred percent certain that this
was my issue. You and why I couldn't get pregnant.
And it's called luteal phase defect. According to a quick
Google search, ludial phase defect is a condition where the
(13:09):
corpus ludium, the temporary gland formed after ovulation, does not
produce enough progesterone. Pgesterone is essential for preparing the uterus
for implantation and maintaining pregnancy. The causes are unknown, okay,
great hormonal imbalances, thyroid disorders, autoimmune disorders, or stress. And
typically luteal phase defect is depicted as a luteal phase
(13:33):
as less than ten days or a regular period, and
you'll probably be alerted if you are having infertility or
recurrent miscarriages. I had no miscarriages, but just to break
down the cycle a little bit, because I do want
this to be educational and these are things I wish
I paid more attention to. A twenty eight to thirty
day cycle is a good marker of a healthy cycle
(13:57):
in general, but it's really important to at the specifics
of that cycle. So the first half is the follicular
that's the first part of the menstrual cycle. It starts
on the first day of your period, so the second
you start bleeding, that's day one, and it ends when
you ovulate, when the egg is released. And the luteal
phase begins after ovulation and ends at the start of
(14:20):
your next period. So you've got the first half the
follicular phase, the second half the luteal phase. And this
luteal phase is really important for basically preparing the uterine
lining to be like juicy and thick and fluffy, so
that when the sperm travels it's like a cushiony place
to I'm just gonna say, bite into and land and
(14:42):
you know, create the magic in there. So although I
looked like I had a perfect cycle of twenty eight
thirty days when I started to break it down, where
I was ovulating was late, which can be okay, but
the second half of my cycle was inconsistent and often
short less than ten days. And so once that progesterone
(15:03):
drops and you start bleeding, you no longer have a
chance to get pregnant. So even if there was attempts
to attach the sperm into the uterine lining, it didn't
get a good grip. And I'm pretty certain, based on
the fourteen months of intensely studying my own body, that
that's what's happened. And I'm also pretty certain because of
(15:27):
how I ended up getting pregnant and the intervention, but
like very low intervention that I had that took place
on its first try, So that is important to kind
of know that. I think the reason I couldn't get
pregnant was because of a luteal phase defect. Again, I
don't know why some doctors don't consider this to be
(15:48):
a real diagnosis, but nonetheless, I wanted to fix this,
and I tried a lot of things to fix this,
and sometimes I was successful during certain months, or maybe
it was just coincidence that I was able to extend
the luteal phase to close to ten days, but I
couldn't really get it consistent, and nonetheless, I had no
(16:10):
luck getting pregnant even if I made a dent in
the cycle ratio. So once I noticed that there was
an issue with my luteal phase, paired with the fact
that I couldn't get pregnant on my own, I wanted
to see somebody that could help me learn more about
how I could fix this and hopefully get pregnant naturally.
(16:31):
So my brain went to Okay, go to a fertility doctor.
They know all about fertility. So within three months I
think of trying, which is not a long time at all.
I went to a fertility doctor and I shared with
them my findings, and I had all of my blood work.
Because I'm kind of somebody that takes like a lot
(16:53):
of the health into my own hands, I do a
lot of research on my own, and doctor's visits can
be so costly and so many visits to figure things
out that my brain's kind of like, Okay, if I
can bring more pieces of the puzzle to a doctor
and help them solve it, rather than being a patient
that sits back and leaves it in the hands of
a busy doctor, I'm like, I can help them figure
(17:16):
it out. So I roll up to this doctors I
meant with so many types of tests. I want to
show them that there's nothing autoimmune going on, nothing thyroid,
because I know that they're.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Going to want to test all of that.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
And when I roll up to this appointment, I am
quickly woken up for my naive ativity and whatever you
know I'm trying to say here, And I learn that
fertility doctors are not necessarily focused on what I.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Was focused on.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
They want to get you pregnant, which most people, by
the time they roll up to a fertility doctor, that's
what they want to And although I wanted to get pregnant,
I wanted the doctor to help me figure out what
was wrong with my body so that I could get
pregnant on my own. Nonetheless, I followed their instructions with
the things that they want me to do, and there's
(18:07):
a big gap in the market when it comes to
knowing something is off with your body, wanting to improve
your fertility, but not necessarily being ready for a fertility
clinic that's going to offer you solutions pretty quickly with
medication IUI or IVF, and they're going to do diagnostic
stuff as well. Of course, I think it's important for
(18:37):
people to realize that of how important this business is
fertility and having these options, but how lucrative it is
as well.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Fertility is a business.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
And I went to one of the best places and
then also the next best place when I went to
a second doctor because I didn't like this one, and
I can't tell you how sterile and cold the experience was.
And they're just things that I that I wish that
I knew. And one thing that I wish that I
(19:10):
knew is that the higher probability of you getting pregnant,
the more dollar signs above your head they are seeing.
For example, if you are under thirty five, if you've
had a baby before, other sorts of you know, healthy
fertility markers. They want to acquire you as a patient
because you're likely to be a success story, especially with intervention,
(19:35):
because they know that you're of younger age and that
your body is capable of having a pregnancy. So anyway,
the first place that I went to, you know, I
didn't dismiss them immediately. I know that it felt very
sterile and cold and like a factory. But who was
I to say otherwise? I know, I made this appointment
and I didn't know where else to go, and trust me,
(19:56):
I looked into who else could help me with this,
and I I'm somebody that knows a lot of health practitioners,
and I could not find the people that would be
the gap in this market that I was looking for.
So the first thing they wanted to do was diagnostic,
was to assess my tube. So given that I had
a tuble ectopic pregnancy last time, it is very logical
(20:17):
that they would want to There's two types of ways
to do this, do a water test or a h
SG with die and radiation to assess if there's anything
blocking or causing an issue with my Philippian tubes. So
I ended up having a procedure where basically they squirt
water up your Philippian tubes and they make sure that
(20:38):
it comes out the other side. This was marketed as
being less intense than an HSG, which uses dye and radiation,
and given that I had only tried for three months
at this point, that felt like the right thing for
me to do. I just have to mention that at
this point by now, like I'm where I'm sitting today,
I've also had the HSG, which uses the dye in radiation.
(21:02):
And I was so terrified going into the HSG because
the water one was so painful and I was not
expecting it. That the HSG was actually like nothing. And
I don't know if that has to do with the
fact that a resident did this or not versus the
doctor who did the HSG. But the water I'm sorry
forgetting the name of what this was called. But the
(21:22):
water one, Oh my gosh. I was so unprepared for
I could barely walk. Driving was dangerous. I remember I
had to call my best friend and like, keep in mind, guys,
I'm somebody who had an unmedicated berth. I do have
a fairly high pain tolerance. This was so painful and
scary for me. After this experience where I went to
(21:46):
one of the big names in fertility, I tried to
communicate with my doctor many times and I had such
a bad experience at this place. I couldn't get my
patient records, I couldn't get my doctor to call me back,
and I ended up up having to call patient advocacy,
which is important for you to know if you ever
have an experience with a hospital, you can go through
(22:07):
patient advocacy and they will help you get to the
bottom of whatever you need.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Evan actually called for me.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
I don't know if I would have called myself, but
once I went this method, they take you very seriously.
So it was only after I got in touch with
my patient advocate was I able to get a response
and obtain my health records. The important thing about obtaining
my health records was I knew that I would probably
have to go somewhere else and I needed to get
and gather all the blood work that we you know,
(22:35):
I was at this place for a month. I had
to get my blood work and even the results from
that test and just continue to build my health record
and take that to the next place that I probably
would go to and gave it a break for a minute.
But eventually I did try another doctor in a different
health system again, one of those big name hospitals that
have all the accolades and the affiliations with the Ivy
(22:59):
League schools, and this felt a little smaller than the
first one, but still definitely felt very sterile as a place.
And when I met with this doctor, I remember I
brought like a folder of all of my labs and
evans a doctor and he's kind of warned me about, Okay,
the patients that show up with all this information, like
it doesn't necessarily make the doctor's jobs easier. It can
(23:22):
be much more complex, especially because labs are different per
hospital and so they do want to retest. But like
I said, I just thought, maybe this is the type
of collaborative woman health doctor that'll sit with me, go
through it and find what I'm missing. And again, I've
gone through blood work after blood work specialist after specialists.
At this point like if I could just provide those
(23:43):
puzzle pieces, maybe they could help me. So she begins
to kind of look through my health records and at
this point they're like six months older because they're from
when I saw the first fertility person, and I remember
her eyes kind of get a little squinty, and she goes,
did they ever talk to you about your AMH? And
I'm like, no, they told me that everything was fine,
(24:06):
that there was no red flags in my blood work.
So here I am six months later, panicking that there
has been some sort of problem all along, and she
basically tells me that my AMH, this number, which I'll
explain a minute, is low and that I don't really
have that much time or SHO doesn't think of that
(24:28):
much time, and so I'll need to go a little
bit more aggressive with my plan of how I'm going
to get pregnant. After of course, I do an HSG
with her, that is the scan of my tubes. She
wants to check them out for herself because of my
past history with a tubul pregnancy, which I agreed to do.
But AMH stands for anti malarian hormone, and it's a
(24:52):
hormone that helps doctors estimate a woman's egg count or
ovarian reserve. So the AMH level can help a doctor
determine the best treatment, such as IVF, IUI, or whatever
it is. High levels are going to mean that a
lot of eggs are available, where low number is going
to mean that reserve is shrinking with time. So I
(25:14):
believe my number was something like one point three six
months ago, and she said that two point two is
average for my age, and she kind of treaded lightly ish,
but the vibe was like, you're a dying woman. We
don't know when your menopause is going to come on,
we don't know what your current number is right now,
we don't know if menopause is going to linger for
(25:36):
a while, and so basically, we want to be a
little bit more aggressive with your treatment plan. I walked
out of there a different person, my fear response so high,
and truly feeling like a dying woman, Like I am
not a woman that equates woman's worth and life with
(25:58):
her ability to reproduce. But in that moment, it felt
like my whole life had been robbed from me right
Like everybody said, no, rush to have kids, do your
career first, and here I was, at this point in
my life, like fully embodied as a mother. There's nothing
I care more about than my daughter, Soli, and my
brain is fully occupied by motherhood and trying to get pregnant,
(26:22):
and I'm fighting time. I'm fighting a biological clock that
I truly didn't think that I had to worry about,
especially because getting pregnant with my daughter, I guess with
Solia was probably thirty four, like it was no problem.
I know that at thirty five they say things get
significantly harder and you're technically a geriatric pregnancy. But actually
(26:43):
that was something that I completely threw out the window
thought was garbage.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
And I still do think it was garbage.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
I think what has happened to me is not necessarily
indicative of what happened at thirty five. I joke and
call this my geriatric pregnancy because there have been so
many things, but I think it's really I still hold
truth that it's ridiculous that a woman becomes high risk
once she's thirty five. Obviously, I know statistics are statistics,
and so it is harder to get pregnant statistically after
(27:11):
you're thirty five.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
But I truly.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Thought that this was garbage, and all of a sudden
I was like, Okay, it's not garbage. And I was
the one lying to myself, and I say that it's
garbage because I think anybody listening to know I have
so many friends that have gotten pregnant thirty five and
above naturally or with IVF, but they have held on
to a pregnancy, and I think that it just trips
up a lot of people in a completely other way.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
So I think it is important to know.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
That there is of course a biological clock within all
of us, and that our body is going through body
changes as we get older. But it's equally, if not more,
important to know that thirty five is not a magic number.
Just because you turn thirty five doesn't mean that, like
everything changes technically from a medical standpoint, you get put
into this high risk category. But that doesn't mean that
(27:57):
you are necessarily high risk, or that your body is
just automatically stopped working at this exact.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Moment in time.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
There are a lot of people whose bodies continue to
work optimally, can get pregnant with ease, can birth how
they want, well above age forty even one of the
questions that I had gotten on my Instagram after I posted.
I've kind of shared answers to these most of the
questions as we're going through this episode, But one question
I got specifically was how to know if you're ovulating
(28:27):
and if you pay actually close enough attention to your body,
you might be able to feel it. I got so
in tune with the different things and feelings in my
body that at this point I not right now, I'm
not ovulating because I'm pregnant. But prior to this, I
could tell when I was ovulating, but i'd still double
check it with an OPK, an ovulation predictor kit. These
can vary in how expensive they are based on the
(28:48):
technology that you're using. I started with the more basic
ones and then I evolved and use something called the Mira.
Mira is this like very advanced technology where you're on
a stick and then you put that stick in this
little machine and the machine gives you I think it's
four different variables, at least when I started. When I
(29:09):
was using it. About your cycle. I started using this
at about six months after trying. I made the investment
in the Mira because, like I said, I was trying
to find more pieces of the puzzle and figure out
is there something that I can figure out on my
own and remove one of these doctors and people and
appointments that I have to go through. I know that
(29:29):
for some people they might be listening to this and
be like, oh, give it a break, just go see
an expert, and I was right. But I also want
to be involved in my care because nobody knows their
body better than me, and nobody's paying closer attention to
the changes going on in their body than me, right,
the same as it should be for all of us.
So kind of ironically, I had a call with a
MIRRA specialist setup. I think it's like seventy five dollars
(29:52):
on their website where you can meet with somebody who
works for MIRA. Some are registered dietitians, not all of
them are, are just fertility specialists and you can have
a call with them where they see everything that your
mirror reports and they can help assess and see if
there's any sort of red flag or provide any sort
of insight. So given that it was seventy five dollars,
(30:15):
which I consider to be a low amount of money
for anything fertility wise at this point, oh, let me
also just mention that my insurance doesn't cover fertility, so
everything that I'm doing is adding up very quickly, including
these very costly diagnostic tests which are coming back as clear,
which I just intuitively knew. But anyway, so seventy five
(30:38):
dollars and like, okay, well, maybe there's something here. At
this point, I have six months worth of peeing on
a stick every single day. Maybe there's a piece of
data that I'm missing, so I sign up for this
call and it happens to coincide the same week as
I went to this second fertility doctor and I share
with her my AMH and she just had such a
different energy compared to the and shared with me a
(31:02):
couple of things. Number One, that AMH or any lab
value can vary from from lab to lab, so where
I was one point three somewhere else, I might be
one point eight at a different lab. And she also
mentioned that this number wasn't as gravely indicative of not
being able to have children or my biological clock ticking
(31:23):
as the first doctor made me feel. And I guess
she didn't even say anything so distinctly different, but it
was the way she looked at me and treated me
that kind of began to began to melt that fear,
and more importantly pointed me in the direction of knowing
that I didn't feel safe around doctor number two either.
(31:45):
That left me completely out of doctors. I went to
the two best hospitals in the area. I went to
the two best you know names in this stuff, and
I just felt so disconnected on heard and kind of
like fear was meant to be put into me. The
first one, I felt abandoned. The second one, I felt
like fear being put into me, and I was like,
(32:07):
I can't with fertility, Like I'm not there yet.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
I'm not willing to.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
I'm gonna say I'm not willing, but I just I
didn't want to introduce medicine in that way, especially when
I was in this fearful state. A few months later,
I run into my friend who has twins. And this
(32:34):
isn't somebody I see often, but she's lovely, and when
I see her in her twins, I just like, am
very off the cuff, asking questions like do twins run
in your family? And she's like no, it was the
fertility medication. And I'm like, oh, well, not that I
want twins, but actually I secretly did, but I'm not
having twins some worry. But I was like, who is
(32:55):
your doctrine? And she's like, I love my doctor. Told
me his name and I asked a couple questions about him,
and she was like, no, he was amazing. I love
him as a person. And I was like, what is
it like to love your fertility doctor as a person?
But something about it just felt really right. The way
she spoke about him her experience there. So I called
(33:19):
and made an appointment immediately, and the second I stepped
foot into doctors Apantas's office in Long Island, who is
not affiliated with one of the big name hospitals or institutions,
it felt so different than those big box places. I'm
not saying it's not a business, like I said before,
(33:39):
all fertility is a business, but it didn't feel like
a white sterile factory similar to the other doctors. He
wanted to do routine testing with me, and I agreed.
I just felt so safe in his hands. And ironically,
the past two doctors that I had seen were women
and this was a male. I am somebody that definitely
(34:01):
prefers female doctors, especially when dealing with things fertility, So
this was incredibly shocking that this was the place and
this was the person where I was starting to feel trusting.
So long story short, you know, he recognized the ludial
phase defect thing, and he suggested that I start a
medication called letrasol and then get an ovulation shot which
(34:25):
basically triggers my body to ovulate, and then have timed intercourse.
This was kind of step one, and then follow that
up with taking progesterone suppositories. This was still scary for me,
but by the time I arrived here, I was ready
to take the next step. And you know, he's like,
we could try this for once or two cycles, and
(34:45):
then we can you know, try IUI, and then when
IUI fails, you move into IVF. At this point in time,
like I said, like, my my itch for another child
was not coming from this need to have another baby.
I'm hesitanting this episode to share kind of my motivation
around that, But I don't know if I ever would
have escalated to IVF with already having a living, beautiful
(35:10):
child that fulfills me very much. That's not to say
that I have any issue with IVF in general or
anyone else doing IVF. It just felt like, I know,
it is a lot of work and a big commitment,
and I don't know if I was ready for that.
But the letters, all the medication, the ovulation shot, all
(35:30):
of this.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
It scared me.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Because I had a natural pregnancy last time. I have
reservations about what it's like to bring science into this
for my own self, not for other people. When I
shared little parts of this on Instagram, somebody wrote back
to me and to it sounds like you're not a
proponent of IVF, And oh my gosh, that kind of
shattered me because I fully support I think IVF is
(35:53):
a beautiful use of science supporting women, and I have
no problem with it. And I never questioned fertility until
it came to kind of my own situation with it.
And then it got thinking, as somebody who's not super
religious or God focused, just what does this mean for me?
And why is this bringing up thoughts for me? And
(36:14):
I'm scared to say this again because of how it
landed with this one person, which means it inevitably landed
with other people too, because I don't want to offend
anybody and I don't want to be misunderstood. I one
hundred percent support a woman doing whatever she wants with
her body and her health, and that very much includes IVF.
But for me opening this can of worms, which I
(36:38):
you know, nobody wants to be in the situation where
you are the subject to intervention to get pregnant, right,
So I wanted to be here, But once you're here,
thoughts and feelings and fears start to emerge. So I
agree to take the medication called letrasol, and this is
not technically a fertility medication. It's used off label and
(36:58):
it's found to increase ovulation, increase the chance of pregnancy.
But before I like fully fully commit fill the drug
prescription take it, I ask the doctor, Okay, can we
just look at my problem for a second, Right, I
have a ludial phase defect, and I believe that this
is related to my progesterone dropping too quickly in the
second half of my cycle. So I ask him, in theory,
(37:22):
could I try just taking the progesterone at the end
of my cycle and trying to get pregnant naturally, no letrasol,
no ovulation shot. It's like, we know that I'm ovulating,
So if I could just extend that second half of
my cycle with the progesterone, could I do that? And
this is what I loved. He said, there's no research
to support that. I've never done it before, but sure
(37:45):
we could try that. This means it was not lucrative
to him at all, Right, Like, these are a progesterone.
That'd be one appointment progesterone that I get from a pharmacy,
like probably no money in their pockets and probably not
even considered a success story, honestly, and I thought about
that for a while because that felt the most natural
to me. And then I realized, like, I'm here because
(38:08):
I want to get help, and I'm really losing my marbles.
Let's do this the right way, and so I agreed
to the letrozol, the ovulation shot, and the progesterone as
a first step. So the letrasol is a oral medication,
and basically what would happen is I would take that
and then I would go in around the time of ovulation,
(38:30):
and they would look at the follicles, the follicle size
and the juiciness, and if they were kind of like
almost ready to ovulate, they would use the ovulation shot
to trigger ovulation. I would be told to have sex
and go home and then, oh my god, I totally
forgot about this next part I'm about to say. And
then I would be put on progesterone suppositories. The part
(38:50):
that I forgot is how stressful this was because of
my inability to ever know when I was going to ovulate.
Even with the letrasol, I thought it would make me
more normal, like I would ovulate day twelve, thirteen fourteen,
which is what I would do previously, and I then
needed my partner to be available to have sex. My
husband's travel schedule is absolutely insane, and during that time
(39:13):
he was like here here, there, there, there, there there,
and I'm like, no, I'm not going through this for
you to be like traveling.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
We need to figure this out.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
And so I went back to the doctor on day
whatever it was thirteen, fourteen fifteen, and they're like, Okay,
your follicles look okay, but they look nowhere near ovulation.
We're going to repeat the medication and you're going to
come back in a couple of days. I think it
was maybe five or six days. So at this point
I'm like, okay, I need my husband to now be
(39:41):
available in another five days. He has another trip planned,
and it's like chaos in my brain and fear of
like did I do this for absolutely nothing? Because he
has things that completely can't be moved and I have
this moving target of ovulation. So I think it was
day twenty one, which is crazy in my cycle, that
I came back and they said, Okay, you look like
you're ready to ovulate. We're going to trigger the shot.
(40:03):
Go home, have sex for two days, and then you
wait for two weeks and you begin the progesterone suppositories
that go good to know in your vagina, not your butt.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
That was something I didn't know, so that's what we did.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
And I remember the night that I went home and
Evan is learning a little bit about the ovulation shot
that I received, and he's like, just so you know,
and the doctors didn't tell me this, so I went
to a fertility doctor in place that I love, but
nobody told me this, So I'm going to share it
with you in case you're in this situation. He's like,
I'm learning about the ovulation shot and it contains hCG,
(40:36):
which is the pregnancy hormone. So whatever you do in
these next two weeks, do not take a pregnancy test,
which at this point I was taking like candy every
month for the last fourteen months. I was taking them
as early as a week after I bled, and then
holding onto false hope for far longer.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Whatever.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
If you've been there, girls that get it, get it
type of a thing. He's like, whatever you do, don't
do it because you could.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Get a false pose.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
And I'm like, okay, thank you for telling me. I'm
obviously not going to be that crazy person. I'm going
to wait and just have them tell me on my
blood test if I'm pregnant or not, and that will
be that a big part of me also didn't think
that it would work because I didn't aveel until day
twenty one, Like that's very late in a cycle. But
what the doctor explained to me is, we don't really
(41:22):
care how long the follicular phase is if we can
extend the luteal and with the progesterone, my uterine lining
didn't shed and so I didn't bleed because the progesterone
was keeping the levels high. So that was I think
again why it ended up working. So seven days go
(41:43):
by and I can't help it. I am already ordering
the pregnancy test and I'm taking them and they're coming
back positive, and I'm like, okay, you know what, At
this point, it just feels good to get a positive
after fourteen months of not getting positives. I don't even
care if this is false hope. So I'm testing every
day and I remember at one point like telling Evan like,
I don't know, it's like ten days it's still positive,
(42:04):
and me and Evan one hundred percent. Evan specifically was
like yes, but that's the shot in your body, Lisa,
stop it. And so he completely gaslighted me, and I
didn't believe I was pregnant to the point when I
rolled into my appointment fourteen days later, I knew that
it was still testing positive, but I didn't believe that
I could be pregnant. And I remember I went to
(42:25):
we got the blood test, and she's like, so, did
you test at home? And I'm like yeah, and she's
like what it's say and I'm like, well, it said
it was positive, but the trigger shot has the h
CG in it, like I don't. And she's like congratulations,
and I'm like what, Like I was so not prepared
for anybody to say congratulations, And I'm like, what do
you mean? And she's like, it is definitely out of
your system by now at fourteen days. It was an
(42:47):
out of body experience and in no way felt like
a celebration to me with my ectopic pregnancy. I got
a positive pregnancy test, and that number that hCG in
my body was wonky. It didn't double as it should
every forty eight hours and ended up showing signs of
a not healthy pregnancy, which once you have aniktopic once
(43:09):
you are at risk for it again. So she's like, congratulations,
And technically, I guess that's the moment I quote unquote
found out I was pregnant, but I don't know. First
of all, I needed to see blood work, and at
this point I'm just in pure denial, like I don't
think that it could have worked on the first try. Nonetheless,
after fourteen months of just not believing at this point
I could even be pregnant again, like, it just didn't
(43:29):
feel real. So that number comes back a couple hours
later and it's in the three hundreds, which is like, Okay,
that's that's not the trigger shot, that's a real number.
But again, like I at least needed a double to
quote unquote to begin to accept it. So I go
back two days later and the number does double, and
I'm like, whoa, that's that's a good sign. That's a
(43:49):
really good sign. But again, given the history of kind
of where I came from, just because I technically was pregnant,
there was a lot of disbelief around it. There was
a lot of fear, and although you know, there was
this silent happiness, the overwhelming sense of fear and you know,
going into a protection mode of fear of losing it,
(44:11):
not getting too attached was really high, and to be honest,
I don't remember when it really started to get real.
I think probably around twelve thirteen, fourteen weeks when I
got off of the progesterone entirely.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
And you know, there's still fear.
Speaker 3 (44:24):
There's always fear once you have gone through any sort
of loss. This pregnancy on its own is just completely
different than with Solly. With Solly's I was so naive.
I you know, hadn't experienced loss before. I didn't have
many friends that had and had spoken about it. In
the last three and a half four years, how many
more conversations I have had with women about miscarriages, loss, infertility,
(44:48):
the difficulties of pregnancy. It's like I was living in
this pretend world before and once you know it, you
can't be unshaken. And so you live in a very
different place than somebody going through their first price ignancy
that has had no problems and is maybe younger, so
they don't have friends that have gone through the types
of things that so many of my friends have gone through.
(45:08):
But you're living in a really different state. I mean,
with solely, I also was nervous. I had, you know,
a difficult start to the pregnancy, but nothing like this.
This was like just kind of just waiting and waiting
and waiting for far longer than you know. The first
time I saw heartbeat. Even then, it was just very
(45:29):
hard to get to believe it and to think that
this could be real.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
So that's my story.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
As of now, I'm currently twenty seven weeks pregnant. It's
kind of hard to believe it's going so fast. This
is my last pregnancy, given what it took to get
here for me, which was a lot, given what I
feel I'm capable of, given the difficulty in this pregnancy,
which we will cover a little bit more in the
next episode, where I'll talk about why I had a
(45:58):
hospital procedure and so of the other things that have
tripped me up so far. But like I said, I
felt complete with Soley, my daughter, and now once this
baby comes, it's like I'm good, thank you God. So
that that's a little bit of the story, and that's
that's how it happened for me. Again, I recognized that
this was far easier than what so many women have
(46:18):
gone through with IVF and transfers and failed transfers and
more diagnostic procedures and question marks, question marks years after years,
some people getting, you know, never being able to have
a child of their own. So I hope that by
sharing this I didn't make anybody feel like I get it,
get it. I get it to the most that I
(46:39):
possibly can. And I stand with anybody going through this journey,
especially those going through it silently that might feel alone.
I need you to know how not alone you are.
That there are so many living in the underworld every
day trekking appointment to appointment, acupunctured blood tests, spending all
of their time googling, listening to podcasts looking for that solution,
(47:01):
trying to schedule with their partner, who's life just trucks
on business as usual. Just all of it is so
all consuming and quietly all consuming. Especially if you work
for somebody and you're making these really early morning appointments
to your fertility clinic. It's like your life is just fertility, fertility, fertility,
(47:23):
or I should say infertility, infertility, infertility. So although my
story might look different than yours, I need you to
know that I stand for you and I protect you,
and I hope that this episode lands as gently as possible,
and I hope that if you stick around my content,
you know that with everything that I post, I am
thinking of you and praying and holding you as tightly
as possible too.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
So with that, I.
Speaker 3 (47:45):
Will conclude this episode and this season of life, I guess,
and just send all my love. Thank you so much
for listening. If you have any questions, feel free to
DM or email me. I'm so grateful that you're here,
that you've in here, and that you have stuck around.
I know that we haven't been quite consistent on here,
and now you kind of know why it was hard
(48:06):
to do it all when it came back to social
media and just managing all this. You know, I kind
of feel like I was hiding a part of myself
because I couldn't show up so fully. And now that
I'm here, this pregnancy is very sacred to me, and
so showing up fully doesn't mean I'm sharing every single
thing either, figuring out how to really protect what's going
(48:28):
on in my body and focus on that and then
share the parts that are relevant to women out there
going through. So sending all my love, thank you for listening,
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