Find Space for Your Heart Here
In the midst of busy lives, uncertainty & so much more, I hope that this blog will be a soft landing space for you. Find some of my heart, stories, and resources below, and please reach-out to me however I can support you. If there are additional topics you’d like to see on the blog, please feel free to email me!
Loss of Finding Out | Guest Post
When you experience loss in your journey to parenthood, ranging from difficulty conceiving to infertility to fertility treatments to miscarriage to prematurity and infant loss, it wears on you. But, what most people fail to understand in this process is that loss is not just a one and done, the loss continues to happen to you over and over again, and even worse, it starts a spiral that feels never ending, the spiral of secondary losses. Those secondary losses that come as a result of your primary loss and can range from friends who you cannot rely on anymore to a personal instinct and intuition you no longer can believe in to the picture of what you had expected your family to look like changing and evolving.
The Mental Load of Motherhood for my Embryos
The mental load of motherhood for my embryos means thinking constantly, sometimes non-stop, about what the next steps are, what I am doing to move them forward, and what has to happen to ensure one or both of these babies get to grow and thrive and join us earth side. It means thinking about my body, and our TTC journey, and the medications I’ve been on, and the one’s I’ve asked about but haven’t tried, and the failures we’ve had, and how those can keep pushing me forward. It includes plan A, and plan B, and plans C, D, E, F and G. It means thinking about contingencies and roadmaps and whats next and what’s lost and what can still happen. It’s finding patience in the wait. It’s finding ways to manage the anxiety in the wait. It’s all for my embryos. For our babies to be.
How to Ask for Support during Infertility
I’m trying to become the queen of messages that say “I see you” and “You’ve got this” and “You’re not alone” - they don’t have to be long, or wordy, overly dramatic or full of emojis and graphics. They just need to be sincere. They need to expect no response. They need to come with no strings attached. They just need to be deposited, from sender to receiver, on the regular.
I Wish You Could Come With Me.
A letter to my husband while we navigate a new round of IVF during a Global Pandemic.
A Mosaic of Emotions: The Next Adventure
Today I walked back into my RE’s office and found myself drifting through the motions….
Check-in, answer screening questions, have my temperature checked, get my parking validated, wait for a few minutes. Get called by a nurse, have my blood drawn (today took three sticks), return to the waiting room. Scroll absentmindedly on my phone while trying not to make eye contact with any other woman doing the exact same thing in another chair six feet apart from me. Hear my name called again. Walk to an exam room. Undress from the waist down, but never remove my mask…
A Mosaic of Emotions: Returning to the RE & Seasons of Loss
Returning to the RE’s office had me full of mixed emotions.
On one hand, I was hopeful. I was ready to transfer one of our embabies back and to begin another pregnancy.
On the other hand, I was disappointed. I really had come to hope in the time since having my daughter that I’d be able to get pregnant on my own.
A Mosaic of Emotions: Motherhood & TTC All Over Again
Becoming a mom broke me open in ways I couldn’t have predicted.
48 hours after her birth, my daughter had some respiratory distress right as we were getting ready for hospital discharge. She was routed to the NICU for some additional monitoring, and I remember sitting cross legged in the chair next to her isolette, sobbing. I turned to my husband and told him that all of a sudden, it felt like my heart was living outside of my body.
A Mosaic of Emotions: When IVF Turns Out Successful
In September, 2018, we prepared for a frozen embryo transfer. This time, we felt more sure of ourselves. The procedures were familiar, the embryo genetically normal, our hearts a little stronger from the wear.
Once the embaby was on board, we began talking to her.
A Mosaic of Emotions: Our First IVF Loss
On August 12, 2018, we had our very first embryo transfer. It was nerve wracking and exciting and exactly as we had hoped it to be.
When it registered as negative, I felt numb.
A Mosaic of Emotions: Infertility, Marriage & Communication
Early in our dating days, my husband and I enthusiastically agreed that we wanted to become parents.
We hoped for a big family, and like many new couples, dreamed of what it might be like, how we wanted to raise our children, and how we thought we’d be as parents. We once thought our biggest challenges would be deciding who was the stricter parent.
A Mosaic of Emotions: From IVF Baseline to Retrieval Recovery
Here's the thing about living with infertility - I’ve learned to hold hope in just a small pocket of my heart, sometimes hidden from my conscious all together, and oftentimes I’ve made it my business to charge ahead without expecting anything at all.
A Mosaic of Emotions: From IUI to IVF - How Failed Treatments Pushed us Forward
Infertility. Was it a sentencing? Or a reckoning?
When my husband and I were diagnosed with Unexplained Infertility, we both felt lost. We didn’t know anyone who had previously talked openly about their experience with trying to conceive, and we were angry about the stigma still silencing many walking the same path. We never imagined this would be our story, but when it became our story, we chose to embrace it full stop.
A Mosaic of Emotions: The Beginning
In the early days of dating my now husband, we had all of the obvious conversations - what are you looking for in a partnership, what dreams and plans do you have for your career, your passions, and really, most importantly, what do you hope for in a family?
It was never a doubt, or even a second thought for us, combined, that we wanted 3-5 kids. My husband grew up as an only child, and to this day feels pangs of sadness about not having a sibling to do life beside. Together, my husband and I yearned for a pack of kiddos - one that would fight hard and love fiercely, everything siblings are supposed to do together.
A Mosaic of Emotions: Music First, Foremost & Always
Music has been an integral part of my life, of my husband’s life, and of our life together, so it came as no surprise to me when I realized that each part of my journey to motherhood has had some sort of anthem, whether I’ve recognized it at the time or only in hindsight.
There were constantly playlists running in the background of our lives - starting from the early days of trying to conceive at home, in the old-school, “natural” sense. Then, of course, there was the music that comforted us on our early morning drives to the fertility clinic, day after day, month after month, the songs that pumped us up during injection seasons, the lyrics that sat beside us in grief and the ones that we shouted in celebration, once we finally made it into the “safe zone” with my pregnancy in 2018. There was the song that I listened to over and over again when I was in labor, and there were very specifically curated playlists created for my daughter when she was born.
This most recent season has looked no different for me, or for our family, when it comes to music. I have often been grateful to lyrics that say what I cannot, or express more eloquently what I am feeling, especially in the wake of loss, or grief, trauma or hurt.
The Crippling Costs of Infertility
Four years ago, I learned how expensive it was to struggle with Infertility.
I live in one of the 16 states that offer SOME insurance coverage for Infertility treatment. I should consider myself "blessed"
However, I'm currently ignoring the growing pit in my stomach as I start putting my ducks in a row for our next round of IVF.
IVF Update: What I Did Differently This Time
Starting a new FET cycle is challenging.
Starting a new FET cycle after a FET failure adds a whole new level of complicated.
Here’s what I did differently this time around.
Sendoff Sex - Intimacy Before IVF
Scheduled intercourse month after month in our TTC days had worn deep into our psyche, and then the dictated rules about when we were intimate during fertility treatments felt like we were barely in control of when and how we enjoyed each other. With Sendoff Sex, we found joy in the intentionality that that time would be special and that it would carry us through until the next time it was safe for us to be together that way.
I busted out the lingerie. We put together a playlist. We turned our phones on silent and really, connected. We both came with a freedom we had been missing, and it felt like an explosion of hope and frustration and anticipation of the months both behind and ahead of us.
Are We Just Standing Still?
I think Infertility can often feel like a complete and utter stand-still.
Infertility takes away a lot of the control, the planning, the timelines that we dream about. It leaves us feeling overwhelmed, asking questions that have no easy answers, wondering if we have the strength to keep going when all we want to do is quit. Infertility makes me feel like the world is passing me by. That all of the things I wanted are just beyond my reach, all while I watch others seemingly celebrate every milestone I’m still waiting for.
This season, I urge you to acknowledge your feelings about Infertility.
A Letter to my Partner as we Struggle Through Infertility
When I think of our family, of our IVF miracle daughter and the other babies we’re still hoping to have, I think of you first and foremost. I think of the ways that we’ve come together. The things we’ve gone through to get to this point, and the things still ahead on our path. I think about the ways in which my heart can’t make up for the things my body has fallen short on, and the silent frustrations you’ve been forced to carry. I think about the passionate, fierce advocate you are for all things silenced and stigmatized - first, mental health, suicide awareness & prevention, and now infertility and fatherhood too - and I feel a lump in the back of my throat. How did I get so lucky to find a partner so encouraging, so compassionate, so faithful, so strong?
What Not To Say…
It’s really really difficult to live a normal life alongside one with Infertility. What I mean by that is it’s really hard to pretend that everything is okay when it’s not. That it takes increasing amount of energy to move your thoughts of wanting a baby, TTC, doctors appointments, medications, procedures, cycles, waiting, hope and disappointment to the back of your mind to focus on other things and other people’s stories. That it’s continually challenging to hear about anyone who just got pregnant, is pregnant, or is parenting a baby, while not also being acutely aware of the ache in your heart to be further along in your story. To be honest, I’ve even found that it can feel difficult to celebrate with friends after IVF successes while I’m still reeling from my IVF failure.