Episode 55: Transcript

You are listening to episode 55 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.

Welcome to another week of the Path to Motherhood podcast.

I am so grateful that you are here.

We are following up on something we talked about last week, but before we get started, I guess I can give you guys a little bit of an update.

I just came back from like the most beautiful walk.

For those of you that don't know, if you haven't been listening to these in order, I am currently pregnant after three and a half years of trying for our second.

This is our first IVF baby.

I am 18 weeks.

I start to blur together.

Yeah, I'm 18 and a half weeks, and it's been rough.

It's not been an easy pregnancy, but we are getting through it.

I've got some guilt just around the fact that my first pregnancy that went to term, I was very active.

I was actually going to orange theory and I was able to do it.

It wasn't that it was no problem, but it was no problem.

Like I felt the energy, I felt good doing it, I felt happy to do it.

It was great.

This time I was pretty active going into this pregnancy, but around nine weeks I hit a wall and I felt like I feel I feel like I haven't ever come out of it.

So exhaustion has been really tough this time around.

Naja has been really tough.

And it just goes to show you they're all different and you have to meet yourself where you are.

So there's been a lot of days with no activity but I've actually been having a lot of soreness and like trouble sleeping just 'cause I'm so sore and I'm early enough that it's really not from a size thing or anything like that.

I haven't gained any weight yet just because I don't need to gain any weight.

And so I decided I woke up this morning.

I'm like, I need to go on a walk.

I need to get some more movement back into my days.

I love going on walks.

And I think it's gonna help me feel better.

So I did that this morning.

It's a beautiful fall morning.

And it was nice to do that.

And nice to do that with my husband before we kicked off our days.

So that's what I've been up to.

That's what's been going on.

I think I've said in previous episodes because of that, it's just been hard balancing it all, right.

Like I got to focus on things that are most important.

That's family and my clients.

So I spent a lot of time with my family.

I spent a lot of time working with my clients.

I show up on here for you guys.

You guys fall on that list.

The listeners to this podcast fall on that list of really important and I'm grateful to you and I'm grateful and proud honestly that even when I've been struggling, even when I haven't been feeling very good, I have made it on here every single week and I'm really proud of that because we are coming up on our one year anniversary, which is so amazing.

And also I have been falling down in other areas and that's okay.

So I haven't been on social media as much.

I haven't been sharing on Instagram as much and it is nothing against those things but you just gotta draw the line somewhere of your capacity and that's where I've drawn the line.

So I've been on there a little bit more recently as my energy has been not quite as terrible And I'm sure that that will evolve over time, but that's what's going on.

That's what's up.

So as I said, today I want to follow up on last week's episode.

Last week's episode is one that I'm super proud of, one that I want you all to be working on is building that confidence that you are a resilient woman, that you will be able to make it through, no matter what the heck this journey deals your way.

It feels scary to think that, but I promise you, you can do it.

It doesn't necessarily mean that it's gonna be easy.

Doesn't mean it's gonna be fun, but you can take care of yourself and you can get through it.

What I promised you in that episode is that I would share with you a couple tools that I use with my clients to help build that confidence.

Things that I use to help go from, I'm super negative about this, it's never gonna work to, hey, I believe in myself and I know this is gonna happen, type of energy.

None of us have a fortune teller, None of us have a magic ball that can tell the future, but being confident and approaching something with confidence is always going to be a more successful way to go about it.

I have talked about in podcasts way back in the beginning about possibility.

People who believe in the possibility show up more and show up better than those who have no belief in the possibility.

And I use examples in that episode like, if I believe it's possible for me to go to college, I'm gonna go follow through on that.

If I don't even think it's possible, then I'm never gonna go.

I'm never gonna start the business if I don't think it's possible.

We put ourselves out there because of the belief in the possibility.

And that is the same thing here with this.

And so as we're working on improving our belief, improving our belief in that possibility that this is gonna work out for us, I like to come back to a tool that I call the baby belief plan.

And the baby belief plan is a triangle with three sides.

And what I do is when I'm working with clients is we talk through these three sides and why all three of them are as equally as important.

And how can we go about creating belief in all three of these sides to support them.

You can't just be missing one of the sides of your triangle and have belief in the possibility.

You may be working towards it, but you're not fully there because you're missing a part of this triangle.

So to get started, what is the baby belief plan.

It has, like I said, three sides.

The first is belief in yourself.

The second is belief in your team.

And the third is belief in the process.

So what we're gonna do is we're gonna kind of talk through these three sides and what I kind of think about with them.

And as I do this, this is what I have clients do and this is what I want you to do, is I want you to start thinking through, maybe even like pause this episode and get out a piece of paper and write down what are the beliefs I have about these three areas.

So let's start with belief in your team.

When it comes to belief in your team, this varies, right.

Depends on what you're doing and what process you're using.

So your team could literally just be you and your partner.

Your team could be you, your partner, your nutritionist, your you, your partner, your chiropractor, you, your partner, your acupuncturist, you, your partner, your OB, you, your partner, and your fertility clinic.

It could be you and a donor.

It could be you and whoever is on that team.

It could be that you feel that you have some support people that you trust that know your story and they're there to support you emotionally that are on your team, your friend, your parent, whoever.

Those are the people who are on your team and belief in your team comes a couple different ways.

One is belief that this team is going to be able to figure this out.

And sometimes when we get to belief in your team, you heard me, I said you every single time.

So you're part of it.

But as you know, that's part of the triangle elsewhere.

So we'll focus on you in a minute.

But when we're thinking about our spouse, when we're thinking about the specialist we're working with when we're thinking about our support people, how much do we believe them being there is going to be beneficial to our journey.

How much do we believe that having them on our team is a good thing for our journey.

How much do we believe that they're there to take care of us, to support us, to get us through this process.

Those are the types of questions I want you to be asking yourself.

So first is to ask yourself who is your team.

Everyone's team is a little bit different And then once you identify who is your personal team, what are your thoughts about your team.

So if you have friends, family on your team that you think are totally clueless and rude with what they say, maybe they shouldn't be on your team.

Or if you have your fertility specialist on your team and you disagree with every decision that they're making and you think they're just out to get your money, maybe that's not who you want on your team.

And I hear so much, so much chatter in the virtual world about the fertility space being such an expensive space and it not needing to be so expensive and it's unfair.

They're trying to take so much money from us.

I have been there.

I have been in the fighting phone call with the financial department at my own fertility clinic.

But at the end of the day, if I have my brain space filled up with a bunch of thoughts about why my fertility clinic is just out for my money, not gonna be a really great way to be believing in the possibility of that baby, right.

You want this to be a positive experience.

Imagine how different it feels to think, I'm so grateful I have this person on my team, I believe in their abilities, they are really good at what they do, I know we're gonna be able to figure this out, I don't know how long it's gonna take, I don't know what it's gonna take, but we're gonna be able to figure this out.

And I truly believe in their skills and I know they're here to support me and help me get there.

Doesn't that sound so nice to believe that, to feel that way.

So whatever it is for you, I want you to be honest.

I don't want you to write down fake thoughts because I'm telling you they sound nice.

I want you to write your honest thoughts about your team.

So I want you to put all of those out on a piece of paper.

What are your honest thoughts about the team that you are working with right now in this moment.

And then what we can do, we're gonna do this with all of the sides, is you can really say like, is that where I want to be.

Is that ideal for me to be thinking those thoughts about my team.

Or am I wanting to be somewhere else.

And if I want to be somewhere else, what would that look like.

What would those thoughts about my team be that would be more ideal to be having.

Another piece of this triangle is belief in the process.

Your process.

So what are you about to go after in your attempt to have a baby.

Are you trekking your cycles.

Are you using ovulation kits.

Are you doing some special chrysanthemum.

Are you doing IUIs.

Are you doing ovulation medications.

Are you using a donor like I talked about earlier.

Are you going through IVF.

Are you going through embryo donation.

Are you going through adoption.

Whatever is your process to work towards a baby, what is it right now.

Knowing that it can change, right.

We've talked about that before, but in this moment, what's the process.

And how much do you believe in the process.

This is one I find myself thinking about often.

Because I think it can get easy when we're in this infertility journey to think about those examples of people who just decided they wanted to get pregnant, tried for one single month, barely really even paying attention, just knowing the correct days of the month to do it, and got pregnant, and think that everybody's journey is like that.

And that's not true.

The process of getting pregnant, the process of having the successful embryo creation of a healthy fetus grow and grow to a baby is a miracle.

It really, really truly is a beautiful freaking miracle.

And I find solace in reminding myself of that because when I'm using science or I'm using medications or I'm using these things to support myself in creating this miracle, that's even more so of a miracle, right.

And I think it allows me to trust in the process even if it doesn't work right away, even if it doesn't work after a few tries.

It still allows me to remind myself, "Hey, this process still can work.

" There's data and science to support when we should call it quits in one style and try for something else.

Yes, absolutely.

But just because one time it didn't work doesn't mean the process is over.

Doesn't mean the process is broken.

And so here, again, I want you to ask yourself, "What are your thoughts about your process.

Do you believe in your process.

Are you happy with the process of you chosen.

Do you believe in the possibility of that process.

And then after you've been honest and you've written down your thoughts about the process, I want you to ask yourself, "Is that where I want to be or do I want to be somewhere else.

" So, for example, I did this with a client recently and for her, she was going through IVF.

For her, what was coming up was IVF is an inconvenience.

Sure it might work, but ugh, I don't want to have to do this.

And what she realized is while there is some truth to that, she didn't sign up for this, she didn't want to have to go through IVF, of course.

It doesn't feel good to be going through this journey just totally irritated.

It doesn't feel good to be going through this journey just frustrated that I have to do this.

She chose it.

She wants to go through with it.

She put the money forward to do it.

So what she got to was, "Yeah, I can have my pity party.

I can have my grief that I don't want to have to do this.

But if I'm going to commit to it, if I'm going to go down this road, I want to go down it confident and in belief of this process.

" And so she really started to build these thoughts of, wow, isn't it amazing that we've made it far enough in science that we're able to create embryos and help people who need help get pregnant.

Isn't that such a miracle that that's able to happen.

And these thoughts were thoughts that were able to help her believe in her process, but also feel good about her process.

happy, comfortable thoughts about her process, not annoying, frustrated ones.

And that just felt better for her going through the experience.

So what are your honest thoughts about your process, and then what do you want to believe about your process.

And then third, and what I would argue is very important, people want to skip this one, belief in yourself.

This is a lot of what we talked about last week.

First of all, I know for every single one of us who have been dealt an infertility journey or a lost journey or a recurrent pregnancy lost journey that we begin to question the ability of our body, the functioning of our body.

So do Do you believe in the ability of your body to get pregnant, to carry a healthy pregnancy and succeed in that process.

Do you believe in that ability.

That's something to ask yourself.

And what are your thoughts about that.

And not only in the physical attributes of your body, but also in your mental ability to sustain through this process, sustain through the difficult moments, sustain through when it gets hard, when the negatives happen, when the loss happens, do you believe in your ability to get through that.

And asking yourself, what do I believe about myself.

What do I believe about my spirit, about my emotional health, about my ability to navigate this and be honest.

Write it down.

And as we've done with the last two, take time to think about, if I could choose great thoughts to be thinking about myself, what would they be.

If I could just pick them and make myself think them, what would those thoughts be.

And I think there can be so much awareness that is gathered literally just from completing this exercise.

Just from thinking through these three areas.

In seeing for sometimes the first time, truly, what are all those thoughts floating around your head thinking.

Sometimes they're there, but they're subconscious.

You don't even realize that they're there.

That's why it's so nice to get this out on paper.

and really ask yourself, if I were to rank these, where on these three sides am I closest to where I want to be.

And where am I the farthest away from where I want to be.

And that's the work, is going about how can I begin to believe what I want to believe, rather than what I currently believe.

So what I have done for you is I've actually taken the concepts from this week's episode and then I will add to it the concepts from next week's episode and turned it into a worksheet.

So if you head to the show notes, there will be a link for you to download this worksheet called the Baby Belief Plan and I want you to use it.

Take that worksheet and answer the questions that we talked about today, going through identifying who's your team, what's your process, and then asking yourself where are your thoughts about those three different areas, right.

Where are your thoughts about yourself, your team, your process, and remember where would you like them to be.

Be honest with where they truly are, no judgment, nothing's gone wrong with the thoughts that you're having right now, and then ask yourself where would you like them to be.

And something I wanna be really clear about, this is not like this toxic positivity, we just fake it till we make it, where I'm just gonna tell you next week, hey, those where you would like it to be thoughts, you just need to believe those now.

No ifs, ands, or buts.

No, that's not reasonable.

That doesn't make any sense.

That is why I don't like affirmations, right.

You can hang something on your mirror that says, "My body is going to carry a baby a term healthfully.

" But if you don't believe it, what good is it.

So what we're gonna talk about next week is authentic creation of thoughts.

authentic meaning once you actually believe.

And we're gonna apply that.

But the worksheet is available for you to download already.

Head to the link in the show notes.

You can download it and use the first few pages to start this process.

When it gets to stuff about thought creation, that is what we're gonna do next week.

And I really hope you guys find this helpful.

I want you guys to share this with me.

Message me, send me a picture of your worksheet.

Tell me where you're at, what you're thinking.

Tell me how it's going.

Tell me if there was something that surprised you when you wrote all these out.

Tell me if there's something that's like, "Oh my gosh, I'm so far off for where I'd like to be "to where I actually am right now.

"I wanna know those things, share them with me.

" Those are super helpful, and they give me ideas on how to create more to help you guys.

So this is something that I love doing with my clients, and we work on this for weeks.

This isn't just a one-time thing.

This is something that we kind of create our plan.

We start working towards it and we check in on it on a regular basis.

And that's what I would love for each of you to do as well.

So download the worksheet, start the process, let me know how it's going, and then come back next week to hear all about the thought creation portion of this process.

Okay.

Talk to you later and have a great week.

Hey there, Inspired Mama.

If you enjoyed this show, I want to invite you to leave a review in your podcast player.

This helps to share the message with so many more women just like you.

Also, if you know of another hopeful mama on her path to motherhood, please share this episode with her.

I would love to get this into the ears of anyone who needs to hear it.

If you are ready to step this work up and not only learn these tools but to apply them To your unique story, head to the link in the show notes to apply for a free consult call.

I would be honored to help you.

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