World Fertility Awards with Andrea Syrtash

In this episode, Natalie is speaking to an amazing fertility advocate who she’s known in this space for almost a decade, yet this is the first conversation the pair of them have had on the podcast. Andrea Syrtash is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Pregnantish.

Pregnantish went live in 2017, and Andrea describes it as “the state you’re in when trying to conceive,” which the pair go on to discuss.

What Was Discussed:

• Andrea’s diagnosis of Endometriosis at 14 years old and how she was put on the pill and could go to school and function, having been really suffering
• Andrea discusses the 18 treatments she had: IUIs, egg retrievals over many years
• How she got pregnant from IUI and why she continued down that route—despite that pregnancy not continuing—as they had access to unlimited IUI and 3 rounds of IVF
• How in Year 5 a Canadian doctor told her: “It should have worked by now. You produce beautiful embryos and should be pregnant by now,” and that she needed to consider gestational surrogacy
• The grief and acceptance of not being able to use her own body—and the relief she felt having had to deal with so many losses anymore
• Her work as an author and relationship coach and the impact it had on her relationship, and how her TV profile impacted her life at that time
• How she launched Pregnantish as a relationship platform
• “This is as much a relationship issue as a physical, financial, mental and emotional journey.”
• How launching the platform was the greatest gift—sharing other people’s stories helped her navigate her own experience, and Natalie talks about how the podcast was also her therapy
• How her cousin Alana was her surrogate and their surrogacy pathway was in Canada, yet two dropped out including one ghosting her just before the transfer
• In 2018, her depression after the second surrogate had dropped out and how her cousin offered to be her surrogate, using Andrea’s frozen embryo which had been in the freezer for 2 years
• Her retrieval was two years to the day before it was transferred into her cousin
• How her cousin sought advice from her Rabbi and how the Jewish press reacted, as it hadn’t been spoken about
• The significance of trying to rebuild their family as so many members of their family were lost in the Second World War, in Hungary
• The selflessness of surrogates and what surrogates have to tell their family and friends—how her cousin talked to her children and how they were scared to see Andrea as they thought her belly was broken and would be bleeding
• Link to previous episodes about Surrogacy, Donation, and Pregnantish
• The World Fertility Awards—happening in New York in December for all patient advocates
• Host committees across around 10 regions worldwide: Europe, Middle East, Africa, Latin America, North America, India, and Australia
• Pregnantish reaches hundreds of thousands of people each month, sometimes over 1 million—it’s a global audience
• Join the pledge for the World Fertility Project—asking people to take a pledge, aiming for 1 million signatures to change the conversation
• How Andrea feels about the fertility conversation in the patient space today
• Regions of the world where people are so scared about saying out loud they are infertile
• Natalie shares a story she had printed in a tabloid
• How more companies are giving people the chance to opt out of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day emails

Links:

World Fertility...