Episode 76: Transcript

You are listening to episode 76 of the Path to Motherhood podcast.

Welcome to the Path to Motherhood podcast.

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

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 back to the Path to Motherhood podcast.

I'm your host, Sarah Brandell, and I'm super excited to have you here with me.

I am, um, you know, excited to have this conversation today about loss just because I think it's one that's so important to have.

Now I totally get that it's a hard one to have and we'll talk about that, but it is one that cannot be under discussed because anyone on the fertility journey that's dealt with infertility, pregnancy loss has dealt with loss and we'll talk more about that and really my thoughts about it here soon.

But I just think this is an important topic.

And before we dive into it, I am closing out, getting caught up on episodes to have a couple weeks really done and completed and posted and ready for you guys.

So I can take a little bit of a break when this IVF baby miracle shows up.

That being said, I'm pretty far along.

I'm 37 and a half weeks right now.

So every time I go to edit an episode nowadays, I'm like, oh my god, my voice, I sound out of breath.

I sound short of breath.

So if I sound funny, I'm okay.

I feel fine.

I'm sitting here.

I'm resting.

Nothing's going on.

I'm just real pregnant.

So just in case you notice something.

But like I said, today I want to talk about loss and really just bring awareness to all the different ways that loss really does show up because it is not just the standard pregnancy loss.

There's way more to it than that and sometimes I think it's easy to kind of forget that.

What I always think about is life gives us opportunities to deal with loss.

Life shows us opportunities to grieve, to deal with pain.

That is something that is innate in being a human, right.

We all we'll have to navigate that at some point in our life.

Definitely some more than others.

There's no rulebook on like once you hit this much loss you're done, unfortunately, but it shows up throughout our life and we unfortunately get to practice it a ton going through the fertility journey.

And I find that it shows up in a lot of different ways, right.

Like it is the pregnancy loss, the miscarriage, the chemical pregnancy, the blighted ovum, the stillbirth, the termination of pregnancy for medical reasons, like all of those things, there's, I'm not even saying them all, all of those ending pregnancy diagnoses are loss, but those aren't the only ones.

There's infant loss.

There's embryo loss and embryo loss shows up in a few different ways, like just the The natural progression of what is the funnel of creating embryos, what do I mean by that if you haven't gone through IVF.

They go in, they retrieve eggs, they take those eggs in an attempt to fertilize them.

You don't anticipate every egg that was retrieved to fertilize, and then you don't anticipate every egg that was fertilized to make it far enough to day five, six, seven to be considered a blast or an embryo, and so you have this funnel of that number dwindling through the process and everybody's number dwindles differently.

And then perhaps you end up doing testing, and then that could dwindle the number even more and you've lost even more embryos, or perhaps one failed to come out of a thaw and you lose an embryo that way.

Or from my experience, I lost three embryos through failed transfers.

So there's a lot of different ways to lose embryos.

Loss I think comes from negative cycle after negative cycle.

In our minds we build up what it would be like for this cycle to work out.

When would that baby be here.

What date would that be.

What would life look like with this baby.

And so when it doesn't work out that is a loss.

These are all different forms of loss and some of them are going to feel heavier at certain times and less heavy at certain times depending on where you are on the journey.

But they are all types of loss.

Other losses I've talked about before is, you know, loss of relationships, experiences on this journey being that people don't really understand exactly what you're going through.

Loss of intimacy or connection used to have with your partner now that things have changed.

of financial security as you really do spend so much money on this process, loss of that naivety, loss of that blissfulness of what could have been in pregnancy or trying to conceive that funness that we thought we might be able to have in this process now that we're deep into infertility and lost.

So these are just some examples.

I know I'm missing some, but this is just to show you that there are so many kinds of loss out there.

There's not one set type.

And I just want to be the one to say that all of them are valid.

There really is no benefit to you to compare them because it doesn't make the pain any less painful or better or worse or anything.

And I find that like what maybe feels like less of a painful loss now could potentially be something that causes more of a loss of pain later.

So what do I mean by that or the opposite.

I can tell you that I experience different amounts of pain and grief with my different miscarriages.

Depending on where I was in my journey, depending what was going on, etc.

I had different amounts of pain with that.

Same thing when you think about the amount of pain I had with embryo loss with failed transfers.

And so comparing to other people, definitely not helpful.

Who cares what they're going through.

And I don't mean that in a mean way, but like their experience, their losses, their lack of losses, their journey being harder or not as as hard as yours has zero impact on the experience of your journey.

And I just want to reiterate that so much because it's so easy for us to feel like this need to constantly be comparing and either using that to make us feel better or using that to make us feel worse, right.

Like beating ourselves up feeling guilty that we feel as bad as we do or feeling Vindicated for feeling as bad as we do and I really don't find that that comparison is beneficial to us at all So if you find yourself doing that I really encourage you to question what you're getting out of it and if that's a good idea to keep doing and Really just consider Let me just honor and show up for myself For whatever I'm feeling and there's no right or wrong way to be experiencing it And most of the time there are a handful of phases of loss and there's not phases that I mean like order of operations or definitions or anything, but there is kind of like that acute phase where you kind of come to terms with something that happened.

And ideally you do process your emotions that come up in that acute phase because I think that allows you to come out of it enough to move on to continue living life.

Now that doesn't leave the loss behind.

The loss comes with you.

I believe we carry it with us for the rest of our life honestly and it's gonna feel different at different times in your life.

But a lot of times I think people are prone to just trying to avoid it, to distract themselves from it, to go on vacation, to read a book, to move on to the next cycle, to do whatever they can to not think about the loss and not process it.

And I actually think that's where we run into more trouble.

And so what I really encourage you guys to think about is when you're going through any experience that we touched on, any experience that feels like a loss to you is number one, give yourself the grace and the space to grief.

Allow yourself to feel however you feel.

However strong that grief is, however strong that pain is, let it be there.

Don't argue with it, don't question it, don't think it should be stronger or less strong, don't question how it's showing up, let it be there.

It is absolutely valid for it to be there, and there is nothing more loving and more compassionate that you can do for yourself than to let it be there, than to take the time to sit with it and grieve.

However, that shows up for you, whether that's crying, whether that's isolating on your own, whether that's seeking someone to talk through it with, whether that's, you know, going out, walking or going to church, like whatever that process, whatever you feel called to do, do it.

Care for yourself through that process.

Use the resources that you need and let that pain of that grief be there.

This is how we process our grief.

We have talked about it before of processing emotions.

Grief is just a really big ball of a lot of painful emotions.

It feels very scary to open up to.

I totally understand that, but I'm encouraging you to try.

And if you feel incapable of doing that, it's time to get support.

Reach out.

I am absolutely happy to and willing to and here to support you through that process, that is really, you know, what I'm here to do is to help you learn that skill of being with your emotions.

And so if this is something that you're struggling with doing, I'm very happy to help you with that.

And then no, like I said, there is that acute phase, but it doesn't go away.

Waves of this emotion will show up again, Whether that's intermittently over the next weeks, months, years, whether that's at anniversaries of things, if it's at times where you have big reminders of things.

And there's no set timeline.

There's no set, it's gonna take this long and you're gonna feel better.

There's no set way to respond.

For some people, it feels normal and right to move on after a pregnancy loss to another cycle.

And for other people, they feel like they need to take a year and a half off of trying and both are totally fine responses.

Neither of those are wrong, neither of those are an issue.

One of the common places that I work with clients and see clients is honestly, when they're coming to terms with, I think I'm ready to start again, but I just wanna make sure, I'm not quite sure, I wanna make sure emotionally I'm ready and they're looking for support through that and that's support that I'm happy to give.

So I don't plan for this to be a crazy long episode.

I actually have quite a few episodes about loss that I will link in the show notes.

But this was really just a reminder that if you're going through loss, if you're going through a grieving experience, let yourself do it.

Let it be there.

Give yourself a big hug, find the support to get yourself through it and open up to the grief.

It's the only way.

It really truly is.

And if that feels impossible for you to do, reach out.

I can help you.

I can help you do that.

I hope this inspires some of you as you're going through some of the harder times of this journey.

I know I have been through so many of them.

I'm sending you all so much love and hugs as you have to go through this.

And I will be back next week to talk about topics around infertility and pregnancy loss.

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.

[MUSIC].