Episode 48: Transcript

You are listening to episode 48 of the Path to Motherhood podcast.

Welcome to the Path to Motherhood podcast.

I'm your host and fertility life coach, Sarah Randell.

Join us each week as we walk through navigating your trying to conceive journey.

My mission is to share the skills of managing your mind, Processing emotions and living a full life to create a more authentic path to motherhood.

Hello, hello, and welcome to this week's episode.

I am super excited to share this episode with you guys and it is a longer one, so I'm going to dive right into it.

I had the idea to bring a group of women on to talk about their experiences of navigating pregnancy after going through infertility or pregnancy loss.

And so I got a handful of women to volunteer to come on and they just share their story.

And I think you're really gonna enjoy it.

It's a good representation of a couple different experiences.

Obviously we're all different in our experiences, but I think that they really open up and are vulnerable and I really think you're gonna enjoy just hearing all of their stories.

So I am going to kick it off with allowing them to go ahead and introduce themselves and then we'll dive into some questions and surprise.

Our conversation lasted almost two hours.

So what I plan to do is to split this up into a part one and a part two.

So I hope you enjoy.

Again, I think that it's just so amazing to be able to share these women's stories.

And I will talk to you all soon.

Welcome, everybody.

I am super excited to have tonight's episode all about talking about navigating pregnancy after infertility or loss and what that's like, cause it's definitely a whole new journey.

I have a handful of women here ready to open up and talk about their story.

So we're going to start off with just letting each of them introduce themselves and then we'll kind of go from there.

So Rebecca, do you want to go ahead and tell us a little bit about your story.

Sure.

Thank you so much for having us.

I know sharing our stories is big.

This is a big space to hold and I just want to thank you for doing this.

My name is Rebecca Janigan and I live in in Cincinnati, Ohio.

And my story is I started my pregnancy journey as a person seeking out information.

I was a young birth doula supporting folks in their pregnancy and labor delivery experiences when I turned 20 years old and started my pregnancy journey there learning.

My own personal pregnancy journey started when I was about 25.

And my experience with getting pregnant was very different people I had worked with experiences were.

I experienced recurrent loss fairly quickly into my journey.

Then after that experienced a preterm labor and delivery of a baby that I lost at 27 weeks.

And so that was a hard, hard experience that included a vaginal birth and my healing.

Then some recurrent miscarriages after that, and then the birth of my son who is now eight years old, And then my journey through continuing to support people through pregnancy, and now my journey in supporting people through loss and miscarriage as well, still birth experiences.

So that's a little bit about me and my experience.

I know that we're going to kind of get deeper into things as we go along, but that's me and that's what I bring to the table today.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Yes.

I mean, I know that your experience not only with your story, There's a lot there, but with all the women that you worked with is going to be just impactful to be able to share about.

So thank you very, very much.

Crystal, you want to go ahead and introduce yourself.

Sure.

So my name is Crystal Himery, and I am from a little town, a really small town, just outside of Atlanta, Georgia.

And it's real hot down here right now.

My story is, I started around the same time as, or as Rebecca said, around 25 and didn't really have any idea that it would be difficult, kind of jumped into it thinking it would be easy.

No one in my family has ever had any infertility or any struggling to conceive.

If anything, most of the children in my family were probably unplanned and so just never had any idea that it would be difficult.

We actually started seeing, I went to my OB and said, "We want to get pregnant.

" And the usual didn't get pregnant for a year, went back and she kind of brushed me off even though I just knew in my gut that something wasn't right.

But she kept telling me that I was young and had plenty of time and there wasn't a calcite concern yet and maybe there wasn't, you know, in her mind.

But I just didn't feel like my concerns were being taken seriously, which was really difficult.

But I didn't yet know how to advocate for myself.

And so we went another year where C again barely ran any tests and after that it made it really difficult to seek any other help.

I just again wasn't, didn't know how to advocate for myself yet.

So we did not get pregnant for six full years.

We did some treatments and medicated cycles, IUIs, things like that.

Never got pregnant, never was successful, and got pregnant off cycle very unexpectedly with my son who is now five.

had a very easy pregnancy but a very traumatic delivery and after that took some time to try to decide if we wanted to try again and we have now been trying for three years for our second child and I've had one miscarriage and we did a round of IVIA that resulted in three embryos but two of them arrested.

We transferred the last one and that transfer failed and so now we are kind of just in a place of deciding how to move forward from that and what that will look like for us.

That's kind of my story in a nutshell, but really appreciate you having us on to do this.

I think this is an incredible way to help people feel less alone.

And like Rebecca said, it's a big space to hold, but I feel like there's so many stories that women who came alongside me along this journey that have been such an encouragement and such a help and it's so isolating.

It can feel so lonely and doing this, if it can just help one person not feel so alone, I think it's worth it.

So I really appreciate you doing this and putting this out there.

I think it's going to be really great for a lot of people.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for sharing your story.

And I agree.

I just know that all of our stories are so different, but also we can all connect to pieces of them.

And I think that's what's so beautiful to be able to hear the stories and be able to pick up those pieces that you can connect to.

So thank you.

Elise, you want to introduce yourself.

Yeah, hi.

I'm Elise.

I've been on the show once before.

So if you heard Sarah and I before, we've had a little bit of a conversation about my story, but I started trying to conceive when I was about 26 years old, very similar situation wherein nobody in my family has ever had any fertility problems to my knowledge.

I was young, seemingly healthy, felt like it was going to be quick.

It ended up not being quick.

We were trying for about nine months before we did get pregnant and that pregnancy ended in a missed miscarriage.

So we went in for our first ultrasound, very excited, very anxious, like most first-time parents.

And unfortunately, we're met with the the news that there was no heartbeat.

And I didn't really have a firm understanding of what that meant at the time.

I kind of had thought that miscarriages were something that I would have seen physical symptoms of and I hadn't.

So I was very taken off guard by, you know, finding out that I was having one without really knowing.

And I did end up getting a DNC the next day, a surgery to, you know, have everything removed.

And that was the recommendation of my doctor and that process in and of itself, I'm sure.

I can talk and speak more to later, but that was quite traumatic of an experience to go through.

And that was my first and only ever surgery.

But three months later, as awful as that experience was, three months later, I did find myself pregnant again.

And this time I had a successful pregnancy that was seemingly healthy.

I did go into labor at 35 weeks, which was not part of the plan, but he was a big healthy boy over seven pounds and his name is Teddy and today it's his four month birthday.

So he is doing very well and, you know, but I did struggle a lot emotionally with pregnancy after loss.

So you can definitely speak to that and what that was like for me because it was, I feel like I was very robbed of joy.

And I think a lot of families are having pregnancy after loss, but I will say the joy that I have felt holding my son was every bit worth it.

So excited to talk about that.

- Thank you, thank you, Elise.

Yeah, I was trying to remember, I'm like, when we talked, which I'll link our episode in the show notes, but when we talked, you were what, like six months pregnant, somewhere around, I don't know.

- Yeah, I was around six months and I knew he was big then.

(laughing) I didn't expect to go like completely full term, but I also didn't expect for it to come as early as it did, but thankfully he was, you know, just ready to go.

So absolutely.

So again, thank you guys for being here.

You kind of alluded, at least, to the topic that I want to kick things off with.

And that is that pregnancy after these journeys, after loss, after infertility, whatever, it definitely brings up a lot of emotions, a lot of experiences.

I have said and didn't have heard so many times, especially lost, steals joy from future pregnancies.

But even so, no loss, just having gone through years of setbacks, years of negative tests, that in and of itself, you know, creates a lot of mind drama when you finally have the positive.

So I would love to just hear for each of you, what has been the main emotions that have shown up for you in that pregnancy process.

What did you kind of have to navigate through that will be obviously the biggest topic that we're going to start off with.

And we'll kind of go from there.

Crystal, do you want to start.

Sure.

And I'll start.

So like I said, it was a sick year journey for me to finally become pregnant.

I had a really healthy pregnancy.

I had an uncomplicated pregnancy, thankfully, but I also did not always enjoy being pregnant.

I was sick for a lot of the first time, like a lot lot of people are.

I'm not terribly, but I just felt car sick pretty much every minute of every day for 12 weeks.

And I struggled.

The main thing that I struggled with early on was I started with guilt for not loving every second of it, not feeling like I was enjoying every second of something that I had waited and prayed for for years to get to and that was really difficult for me because I felt like, you know, I wasn't being grateful enough or I wasn't being thankful enough for finally, you know, getting this thing that I wanted for so long.

And so guilt was a big emotion that I was unprepared for.

And I obviously spent a lot of time being nervous and scared and holding my breath between appointments.

I had not had a a loss at that point.

So it really was just the being terrified of wanting this for so long, not having it, finally having it and the idea that I could lose it.

And as I'm sure that's a common theme for any pregnancy after infertility or loss, but the guilt was something I was really unprepared for.

And thankfully, I had a sweet friend who also had struggled to conceive and came alongside me and said, you know, you can be two things that once you can be grateful and you cannot enjoy every second of it.

Absolutely.

You can be those two things.

And that was really incredibly helpful for me.

It was just an emotion I wasn't prepared for to start with for sure.

I knew the nervousness, the anxiety, all those things felt expected, but the guilt was not something I expected.

And I know there's a lot of people who adore every second of the improvement in Zolgrait.

That just was not my experience and I didn't know how to move forward with that.

Yeah, that's good because guilt is an interesting one because it comes up in a couple different ways and I'll share some of those if we don't bring it up.

But definitely I have heard time and time again from women, you know, like, I'm supposed to love this because I wanted it so badly.

Right.

So, yeah, thank you.

Rebecca, what about you.

Yeah, my fertility journey was about nine years in the making from the 25 year mark.

I'm 42 now.

And I had a rose colored glasses with pregnancy and had all of these images that the media portrays about glowing faces and big beautiful bodies.

And my experience was riddled with fear and concern.

My first few miscarriages, I've had nine plus miscarriages.

My first few miscarriages were early losses.

And so I started training my body to really be scared of the early pregnancy time.

I also experienced a good deal of bleeding and extra bleeding with kind of partial hemorrhaging with some of those miscarriages, which was very scary.

And so I was just constantly concerned.

It wasn't in a space where like, I wasn't in a space where I was googling a lot of things.

I was just trying to let be what was, knowing that this is a natural part of the process, and just kind of reconciling that this was part of my journey.

I had a miscarriage and multiple D&Cs.

So my heart is with all of the moms here that have experienced DNC surgical procedures after their miscarriages.

I had experienced a miscarriage, sorry, without a DNC and was starting to feel pretty sick afterwards and went back to the doctor, advocating for myself and concerned about my health and found that we had a vanishing twin And so I was still pregnant after coming to terms with that pregnancy being gone.

And so continued to that pregnancy, that was the pregnancy that I had preterm rupture.

So it was PPROM, so my water broke at 27 weeks, which started my labor process, which ended in the delivery of my first baby.

After that, I allowed for my body to recover and heal, and I tried to get into a better emotional space.

And my husband and I tried again.

I have not experienced fertility treatments, IUI or IVF.

I was able to get pregnant very easily.

The retention of the pregnancy was something that my body always struggled with.

So the amount of bleeding that I had in early pregnancy was always a big concern.

I got pregnant with my son Oliver, who's eight, I've said that.

Every year I celebrate his birth.

And before this we're like, our babies are this many years old because it's just such a wonderful, like I did, you know, I got through this and here's my prize and my present.

With his pregnancy early on, I was diagnosed with something called vasoprevia, which is a placental abnormality where the veins, essentially attaching to the placenta cover the cervix and the cervical canal.

And so I was put on bed rest for fairly immediately at about eight weeks pregnant.

And so again, fear, concern, trying not to dive deep onto the internet, trying to gather information.

So I spent the next six months in bed, on bed rest, trying to make sure that I kept myself and my baby safe, knowing that if I stood up or went vertical for very long, I had the possibility of losing my baby.

So it was a terrifying time.

I hated pregnancy.

I hated pregnancy.

I did not like it.

It was not ever.

It never had a beautiful face for me ever.

I love being able to support women through beautiful pregnancies because I know it can happen.

It was just not my journey.

My son was delivered at 36 weeks via C-section, which was not the trajectory of the delivery that I thought after working with moms for a long time delivering naturally or in home birth situations.

But I came to terms with all of that.

There was just a lot of reconciliation.

I think, though, because I was never in emergency space and I was able to have a lot of time to sit and ponder, I kind of just was like, this is what it is.

And so how can I start to embrace this and make this the story that I'm going to be empowered by and that I'm going to carry with me.

Because this is the birth of my child.

So he was delivered at 36 weeks premature and spent the first 14 days in the Nick unit.

He also like a little baby, oh, I'm sorry, like Elise's baby hefty little dude and was born, you know, in seven plus pounds.

And it was just like, I'm so grateful for that because with that experience, he was, you know, with that, that veracity at his early life, he was able to kind of rebound from that, that preemie experience.

We tried again a couple of times after Oliver was delivered and just didn't work.

And so we took steps in our family.

My husband got a vasectomy immediately.

He was like, okay, we had to have a hard decision about whether we were going to continue the piled ride after so many surgeries, so many losses, so many days in the hospital, I was in hospital before the delivery of my son, Oliver for three weeks before he was delivered.

And then we were there for two weeks afterwards as the delivery of him.

And so it's just like, when is enough.

And we had to have a hard conversation that it was enough.

And then last year I was diagnosed with endometriosis and had my fallopian tubes removed.

And that really gave me a sense of like, just like, oh, thank goodness, this is all over now.

This is all over now.

I am scared of pregnancy for myself.

And so that was a really nice way to be in control of the situation, to opt into that.

So yeah, I start to finish it whole, a whole ordeal, but I have a really healthy little and I have been able to use my story to empower people through their pregnancy or needs as well.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

I think, you know, This was an unplanned question, but I think the thing that I think of the most listening to your story is how you were able to hold space for, "Hey, I see all these beautiful pregnancies that are in all these different, you know, arrays of how they present with who I'm working with.

" And I'm also acknowledging that that's not what I was dealt, right.

Like, that's just not going to be my story.

Is that something that just you think came with time being able to accept that.

Is that something you felt like you had to work at to accept or I don't know, because I think that's that challenge.

Any version of that challenge is something that so many women are going through.

Yeah.

Oh, completely.

It's a really great question.

And I have to tell you that it took a lot of therapy and a lot of space and time.

I stepped back from birth work for a number of years.

My first birth back was a friend of mine when my son was nursing and it was just like the surreal experience where I got to experience the birth that I didn't have.

I am living vicariously through these experiences, but every single time I see a birth or get to participate in somebody's birth story, I get to reclaim my experience.

I have a whole entire spectrum of births that I attend and some of them are highly medicalized and some of them are not.

Some of them are super beautiful in the medical space and some of them are super like powerful in a trauma sense on the other side of things in the natural birth kind of way and it's just like it's all over the place but after stepping back recognizing that we are all on our own paths this is not my path but I have a power in being able to support people through this, that I'm not there to support my journey.

I'm up there as a third party to be able to support this person.

So it took some space and time.

It catapulted me to learn about bereavement, to learn about loss, and to learn about the capacity that bereavement doles hold when it comes to end of life, geriatric or illness end of life, or when it comes to the end of life for a miscarriage or a stillbirth situation.

So yeah, it's a lot of therapy, but a lot of just talking through it, you know, and being in a space I'm supported by a ton of people that want to hear the story.

So I get to say it and every time I say my story, I get support and power through that.

And so that's why I'm able to continue forward.

Yeah, definitely.

I think that's beautiful.

I know that there are absolutely women listening that are apprehensive to share their story.

And I always say, even if it is written in a book to no one, like just getting that out of you is such a cathartic thing.

So I love that.

Elise, you want to share about your experience.

Yeah, I think like the emotions that it brought up, you know, pregnancy after loss for me, there was definitely, you know, a lot of guilt in regards to trying to hold my emotions at bay.

So the first time I had gotten pregnant, you know, we had been trying for nine months, which felt like forever, you know, at the time.

And so we, you know, it was like, oh, my goodness, finally.

And, you know, I was so excited.

And I had those blinders on.

I I didn't think, you know, I went into that appointment thinking if something was wrong, I would know because I would have experienced something, whether it be pain or bleeding or, you know, something I would have had a sign that something wasn't right.

And I had no sign physically.

So, you know, I was completely taken off guard by what happened.

And I think that was, you know, part of the trauma was, you know, you go in at 10 a.

m.

for an appointment the next morning, I was having a DNC.

it wasn't even 24 hours after finding out about my loss that I was having surgery.

And so there was definitely anger with that.

But then, you know, as we continued to try and I got pregnant again, the first emotion that I had, you know, of course there was joy in it, but it was also fear.

And I was angry.

I, you know, I felt guilty that, you know, I'm going to look back on Teddy's life.

That's my son Teddy.

I'm gonna look back on Teddy's life and realize that the first, you know, emotions that I had for him were more fear than anything.

And I was angry that like I felt like I was robbed of, you know, I was like, if, if this, you know, and I kept saying if too, I would say, if this baby makes it, you know, I will remember that it was always, you know, I always thought of him as an if, um, that I wasn't, you know, over the moon excited, that I had this fear, that I had this anxiety.

And I didn't want that to somehow feed into who he was going to be as a person, whether he could feel my anxiety or feel that from me.

I just felt this immense guilt.

And then as the pregnancy progressed, I felt increasingly angry.

And it was a lot of things.

I didn't want that to be my story.

And I hated because so many people would ask, oh, is this your first pregnancy.

And it's like, you don't know what to respond because no, it's not my first pregnancy.

And if I say it's not my first pregnancy, then I have to tell you why it's not my first pregnancy and get into the whole backstory.

But if I say, yes, it is my first pregnancy or my first viable pregnancy or whatever you wanna call it, is that me creating a narrative that then harms women because it's not honest.

And I know that talking about your miscarriage might make somebody uncomfortable, especially if they haven't experienced it, but I didn't wanna lie and I also didn't want to consume the conversation about me and my loss.

So it was this fine line.

I mean, just the other day I was talking to somebody and they said, "Oh, was that your first pregnancy.

" And it's weird because they don't say, "Oh, is this your first baby.

" Or is it, you know, and even so, you know, you could say it wasn't my first baby either, but the first pregnancy, the question with the word pregnancy is really hard to answer and very triggering.

So, you know, I was angry about that.

I'm angry that anytime I go to the dentist and they ask me if I've had any surgeries, I have to disclose my DNC because that has no relevance to being at the dentist, but it's a surgery.

And so then you have to talk about, you know, that.

And so I was angry that that was forever going to be this mark almost, you know, like a black mark on my, on my medical records and such.

And then it was also anger at the outside world and anger at myself because I would get angry at other people and then angry at myself for getting angry because I would see other women that were pregnant at the same time as me and they would be filling up their baby registries and they'd be so excited and I was, they might have only been in the first trimester and they'd just announced that they were pregnant and they're already posting their registries and I'm thinking, you're an idiot, like you should not be posting this yet, like so much can happen between now and then And then I was like, why am I mad that other people are joyful.

And why am I mad.

And so then it brings up this whole other emotion of, I'm really mad at myself for even looking at another woman and thinking that they're being naive.

Because how wrong is that.

I should be celebrating that someone else hasn't had to go through the loss that I have, that they can get excited about building a nursery.

And for whatever reason, I can't.

My husband and I, we waited until after the anatomy scan to buy anything for our baby's room.

And I know women who, you know, in the first trimester, they've got the registry done, they've got the room painted, they're setting up things, they're, you know, ordering all of the stuff.

And I mean, I didn't even look at anything because I was so scared that if I looked at it, I would somehow jinx it.

You know, if I buy the chair for the nursery, then, you know, that's me being presumptuous and I'll never need it or never use it.

So there was a lot of like complicated and complex emotions because I was seeing so many people.

I'm 28, so I'm at that age where a lot of people are pregnant for the first time.

And again, it wasn't my first pregnancy, technically.

So there was some of that.

And then just seeing how excited everyone was and feeling like I don't get that.

And even now it makes me sad to think I may never have that.

I have my cousins pregnant right now.

And I am so happy for her that she doesn't know what I know about pregnancy and, you know, trying to be grateful that she doesn't have to experience something like that.

But also, you know, kind of mourning my own loss that I will, you know, I always wanted to be a mother.

I always wanted to be pregnant.

I couldn't wait to experience it.

And I did have a, you know, seemingly great experience with my son, but I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

And that was really, really difficult.

And, you know, I think I have a lot of guilt associated with the negative emotions I had around pregnancy and thinking that somehow he came from a negative place.

But he's the happiest little baby I'll ever meet.

So he didn't get that from me, but, you know, he's okay is what I'm saying.

So if you're anxious, don't think it translates to your kid because, you know, it did not translate to him, but I felt a lot of that at the time.

- The thing that you guys are making me think about is one of my favorite phrases that people who listen to podcast will know is, of course, it is my reminder that when I get to like start judging myself and question myself for whatever is coming up, like, no, no, no, no, of course I feel like that.

Like, of course I feel angry.

Of course I feel stressed out.

Of course I feel anxious.

That's like my one thing that I'm like constantly reminded myself because we're so quick to judge ourselves for whatever we're thinking.

So you guys are just making me think about that.

And my hope is that this episode really highlights how diverse people experience, everybody's experience is super diverse, but also not just for women who maybe are like hopeful, they're gonna go through this pregnancy sometime soon or in it, they're pregnant after infertility or loss.

But also honestly, I hope that this episode gets shared with people who haven't been through it, right.

And just because I think it can be so eye-opening to really hear us talk about it, 'cause a lot of times they don't fully understand it.

And we'll talk about that in a little bit.

But it was Crystal that talked about guilt and like guilt about how we experienced, our pregnancy, which I can relate to.

I've been pregnant five times.

I really didn't have symptoms with my miscarriages, so I can't really refer to those.

My first pregnancy that went to full term with my daughter was easy.

I enjoyed every moment of it.

It was not stressful, no complications.

I'm super grateful.

I'm pregnant now, not been so easy.

So I can relate to that of like, man, like it's supposed to be like the last one, but also feeling guilty that I'm frustrated about the not so easy.

So the other kind of guilt that I hear women talk about, I had some people submit some questions about.

And for me, I didn't feel this the first time because I wasn't as plugged into the virtual infertility space.

But I wanted to know if any of you have navigated guilt that you are going towards the positive side of having a baby and there are women out there who are still in the thick of it and haven't had a baby.

That that is another type of guilt that comes up.

I just wanna know if any of you had anything say about that.

Yeah, at least go ahead.

Yeah, I mean, even like, like, in this conversation, you know, and hearing about people who have had multiple miscarriages, like I feel guilty, like do I even deserve to be part of the conversation because I haven't experienced that level of loss, you know, so there's like, even like that big of a loss.

And then going on to have a successful pregnancy, you know, three months after I had friends who, you know, have been trying for much longer and couldn't get pregnant or are still in the thick of it.

And for me, I remember people telling me, like, you're going to get there.

It's going to happen.

And I'd be so frustrated with that because I'm like, you don't know.

Like you don't know.

And I hoped for it.

And in my case, I was lucky enough that it, you know, it did happen for me, but I can't play God for other people.

And so I get frustrated and feel guilty when, you know, other people come to me struggling with infertility and are in the thick of it.

And I don't know how to help because I know from my experience that I can't make promises to someone or give that false sense of hope.

All I can do is be empathetic and say, this really sucks.

Like there is just no way around it.

And I can be there and be a sounding board, but it's hard.

And I do, I feel like, you know, it's hard because I, you know, I'm a reader, I read all the time.

And I'm a book person and I always think, oh, I want to write about this.

But then I'm like, who needs to hear my story.

It wasn't as big of a loss as other people experience.

And I did get my happy ending, so to speak, with my son.

And if that's the only child I ever have, like I'm beyond grateful for that.

But, but yeah, I mean, it's hard.

It is hard and I spend a lot of my time thinking like being very self-deprecating, I guess, which is which is weird because I'm a very positive person and I like to encourage other people.

But when it comes to pregnancy, it's like I feel like I'm a completely different person, which is hard to reconcile in my mind.

Yeah, yeah, I'm going to open up to others, but I will say we're coming on the heels of an episode I did about comparison and it is like that is one of the exact topics I talk about is it's So easy to almost like pain compare of like, oh, their pain is heavier than my pain or my pain is heavier than their pain and it's work, right.

We have to do work to make this happen.

But I just always think like all we can do is acknowledge what we're going through and it makes us more compassionate to others.

But yeah, the comparison stuff is hard.

So I feel you for going through that.

Crystal, I saw some lots of head nods.

What were you going to say about that guilt.

Yeah, I was going to say how what happened for me was I wasn't kind of like you.

I wasn't my son, Connor.

He's five.

He just turned five this day.

And, you know, I was, I had, I did have a great support system, but I wasn't necessarily as plugged into like virtual infertility groups.

There's either there maybe weren't as many or maybe I just wasn't as good at finding them.

But I since having him and now coming kind of into this space, a lot of times I almost feel guilty even saying, I got to have a baby.

And I don't want to feel like that.

I mean, he's, you know, the light of our lives.

I mean, my husband and I are overjoyed to be his parents.

And I never want to, you know, portray anything different.

And I think that there's some guilt that comes in when you're coming to try to encourage someone else in the trenches.

And kind of like Ellie said, you know, you can't make promises.

I mean, you can't ever say like it'll happen for you because you just never, I mean, you don't know how things are going to work out.

I almost feel guilty saying it did work out for me, which is kind of difficult to reconcile with how grateful I am that it did.

And also too, I have dealt with coming into groups and sharing a story and almost being kind of excluded from that conversation.

And like, like you said, I think everybody's story is so different and there's so many ways to to end up, you know, at the end of it, or even if people aren't at the end of it.

And there's so many stories, there's so many layers, there's so many ways you can get there.

And I think they're all valid and they all matter because I think, like you said, we can all find some, you know, Fameness in that in those storylines and so and that but anyway, that's what I was thinking about guilt was how sometimes it feels like We're Once you have a baby you're no longer infertile and that that's just not true I mean it just isn't it doesn't solve it.

It doesn't go away It doesn't make those those years or those months or however long it took you to get there and it doesn't negate that journey Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I think it's been interesting Trying for a second how many times people in the infertility space have assumed that I have secondary infertility Yes, and that's been the same for me too.

It's kind of funny Kind of it's almost like you have to explain like they don't know this is this was this was true before yeah Yeah Rebecca I'd love to hear what you have to say about this Yeah, I'm trying to I am now so removed from this because it's been It's been nine years since the start of my pregnancy with my son.

I don't remember feeling a lot of terrible guilt.

What I remember feeling was dissatisfaction and anger with my body.

And because of that, I am feeling guilt now with not trusting my body and questioning, because I think that put me in a space of just always negative self-talking.

What is wrong with me.

Why isn't my body doing this.

Why can't I do this and everybody else can.

And so it wasn't so much guilt.

In the moment it was a feeling of like just jealousy and then once my son was in my arms it was just extremely.

.

.

So guilt for me wasn't big, it just wasn't there.

But the whole self-talk piece, the negative self-talk piece is something that I'm feeling guilty about now in reflection that now that I'm processing through that space.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I can totally relate to that of for me, I think that how that showed up was like feeling very disconnected, right.

Like disconnected from my body.

And being more connected with my body has been a huge gift in this journey that I've been able to do that over the last few years.

That concludes our first part of our conversation about pregnancy after infertility and loss.

I know that you guys can hear such amazing wisdom and these women's stories and I'm just so grateful to them for opening up.

Their links to connect with them will be in the show notes.

If you want to reach out to one of them, if you want to connect with them, make sure you do that and also make make sure you tune in next week for part two of our conversation.

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