Around The Beanstalk

Infertility

Oct 23

Friends! I’m so excited to bring you another guest post! Tina Heinnickel is the owner of Around The Beanstalk, a company and corresponding products born out of her own IVF journey and the overwhelming need to try to organize life when you’re experiencing infertility. When I first learned about the Beanstalk Binder, I reached out to Tina and asked if she would be willing to share her story and introduce her company to my readers! She’s the kindest person and someone doing incredible work in destigmatizing infertility, and I can’t wait for you to read her story!

IVF: it’s a daunting journey to go through.

The appointments, the anxiety, the finances, the injections….it’s easy to feel completely overwhelmed at every turn. I know first-hand, because I went through IVF myself….and in many different capacities.

My husband and I struggled with unexplained infertility for years. When we moved on to IVF, we were lucky enough to get pregnant on the first transfer! We were thrilled, and so excited to welcome our baby boy into the world. But unfortunately, my pregnancy took a turn for the worse. I developed a severe case of pre-eclampsia and my body started shutting down. I ended up delivering our son, Jack, at 23 weeks, and he lived with us here on earth for just 2 short hours. In addition to his loss, it was recommended that I not carry another pregnancy. I was shattered.

Eventually, through time, we decided to pursue surrogacy.

My amazing sister offered to carry a baby for us and we were beyond thrilled! Our daughter was born in 2017 and it was the best moment in my entire life. Later, we embarked on another surrogacy journey with an independent surrogate. Our son was born in 2019 and our family is now complete – which is something I feared would never come for us.

I clearly know the overwhelm of the IVF world. It was a long, hard road for us. I didn’t want other women to feel as overwhelmed as me, so I decided to do something about it. I started up a brand new business called Around the Beanstalk, as a nod to the son we lost, Jack. I wanted to create a legacy for him.

With Around the Beanstalk, I’m creating products to help support anyone going through IVF.

I’m providing tools for people to navigate the IVF world – partially in physical products, partially through the development of a community and support system. It's my goal to build a large community of IVF warriors….a place where we can all feel safe to chat, vent and ask questions. A space to lift each other up and get through the crazy IVF world together.

The first product I created is the Beanstalk Binder, which is essentially an IVF journal. It’s a space to track, journal, document and organize your whole IVF journey. You can document your entire pregnancy as well! For those of us in the IVF world, I’ve found that a traditional pregnancy journal wasn’t appropriate because there is a whole separate side with IVF – keeping track of medicines, injections, extra appointments, procedures, expenses – the list goes on. The Beanstalk Binder goes above and beyond the traditional pregnancy journal.

IVF already makes you feel like you’re different, and not experiencing a “normal” pregnancy. I wanted to create a product that would give people going through IVF the same experience journaling and tracking the pregnancy, but I also wanted a place for all the things that are included in the IVF portion that are not included with traditional pregnancy.

Here are some of my favorite aspects of the Beanstalk Binder:

It’s specifically designed as a custom 3 ring binder because we all know there are no two IVF journeys that look the same. You can add in as many IVF packs you need, to document each transfer/retrieval along the way. Does your IVF journey include donor egg/sperm/embryo or surrogacy? We have dedicated paper packs for that as well!
It’s the perfect way to document your baby from the VERY beginning – before they were even created!
There is a financial log to help keep everything organized – it’s such a huge aspect of the IVF world.
There is space to keep you organized and on track, but there are also lots of places for you to journal about your feelings….which is so important when you’re struggling with infertility.

It’s always my hope that the Beanstalk Binder helps all of the IVF warriors out there feel less overwhelmed throughout their IVF journey. I often think: how amazing will it be to share with your children one day? They can see all of the sacrifice you went through to bring them into the world. Who wouldn’t feel even more loved seeing that?