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7: Cassie Manning's Story · The Infertile Diaries

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: In your opinion, how many IUIs are too many?
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_03: Three, five, ten?
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_03: And who decides when enough is enough?
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_03: Our guest today, Cassie, was diagnosed with PCOS at the beginning of her journey, but then got pregnant quickly with her first child through IUI.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_03: So when she started trying for another baby, she thought she knew exactly what to expect.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_03: Do another IUI, get pregnant, have another baby.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_03: Except this time it didn't work.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_03: So they tried again and again.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_03: In our conversation, Cassie comes across as incredibly logical and level-headed.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_03: So she wasn't spiraling.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_03: She wasn't making decisions out of fear.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_03: She trusted her doctor and kept following the plan until she realized there really wasn't a plan.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_03: Or at least not one specifically designed for her.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_03: Like cattle being herded through the office.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_03: Same protocol, same medications, IUI after IUI.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_03: And Cassie finally had to ask herself the question how many times are we going to do this before we admit it isn't working?
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_03: Did you know that after five failed IUIs, your chances of success actually start to decline?
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_03: There's a razor-thin line between trusting your doctor and trusting your own instincts when they're screaming run.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_03: This is a story about PCOS, infertility, knowing when to pivot, and finding the courage to say enough when no one else will.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_03: We discuss all this and more.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to the Infertile Diaries.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't just a podcast.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is your place, and these are your stories.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: A place of heartbreak to hope.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_03: This is the Infertile Diaries Podcast.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, where are you in New York now?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm in upstate New York, about four to five hours north of Manhattan.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: So very close to the Canadian border, actually.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: In the very northeast corner of New York.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: So about 30 minutes from Vermont and 30 minutes from Canada.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, you totally made the move.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, this is where I'm from.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: So I grew up here.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: Born and raised here, and then moved to Florida after college.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: And was only gonna be there for a year, and then met my now husband and got married and bought a house and had two babies, and then said, okay, 15 years later, let's move back to New York.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, you needed it after kids.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: You need to be by family.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: My whole family is here.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't really have any family in Florida.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so that got really tricky with baby number two.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: And just like we just felt like we were missing out.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, my cousins all have kids basically our kids' age, and so yeah, it's just it's been great already to just have family without having it.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: It we came up a lot, or my my parents would come down a lot, but it's not the same as just being able to like pop in or spend a random Saturday together.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: So it's been great.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's true.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to have family around.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, let me start by kind of introducing you and how we met.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: You're near and dear to my heart.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is Cassie Manning, who is one of the first grant recipients from Everyone Deserves a Family, and who was so amazing to do um a video testimony for our organization.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: She's helped raise a ton of money for our organization.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: But on top of that, she got pregnant and had the first baby born who is the cutest little thing.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: His name is Wade, he's now one year old, right?
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Almost two.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, almost two.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, two in October.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and he's the cutest thing, and then he has an older sibling um who's eight years old, and she's adorable too.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: She was in the little video.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Let me see, what is it?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: When your husband um gave you the grant check.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what I love most about you guys.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: You're you are awesome.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Your husband is amazing.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: He was a police officer during the time you guys were going through IVF.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it was kind of what I had envisioned all along is like helping the people that serve us like be able to alleviate some of the financial stress on the next steps.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um which you didn't even think you you had to get to IVF at that point.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, Cassie, why don't you share some of your story with us and um we can ask you questions if we want, or we can just listen to what you have to say about your infertile struggles.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you so much for having me.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: It was such an honor to be one of your very first recipients and certainly to have your first baby.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um an honor.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I you know, I guess it really started.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: I'll throw it back to before we conceived our daughter, Hadley.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: So we got married, my husband and I in 2015.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I really have to think about that a lot more than I should.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but we got married in 2015, and you know, we bought a house in 2016, and we just very much thought when we're ready to have a baby or a family, we'll just do that.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like that this would just it just be a thing and great.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so then we started trying at the towards the end of maybe 2016 and didn't get pregnant, didn't get pregnant.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I always feel silly talking about this now because like I didn't have regular periods or cycles or anything like that.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: But at the time, I I just don't think we are educated enough about our bodies, and then when you come up against infertility, you're like, Oh, I don't really know anything.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I don't really know anything that's going on here.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so we tried for a really long time.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: Well, what I would call a really long time, and then I went to my doctor at the time and was like, hey, like this isn't working.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, high school sex ed said that this would work, right?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: Like you would just like want to have a baby and you'd have a baby, and it's just like an egg and sperm thing, but it's not working.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so she did some blood work, like just preliminary blood work, and my AMH level was super high, and that was like a bit of a red flag.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: So she sent me to the fertility clinic or a fertility clinic, referred me there.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and after like one meeting with him and one scan, they were like, you have PCOS all day, every day, and you'll have a very, very, very hard um slim chance of conceiving without some intervention.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so that was just super shocking.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: I mean we just didn't know enough.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: So it was just really shocking, kind of sideswiped us, didn't really even understand what PCOS was at that point, didn't even really understand.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they started talking about all the acronyms, right?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: IUI, IVS, like all the things, and we're both like glazed over.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what are you talking about?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like that go off.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: It is so you're right.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: You get into the journey and you forget how overwhelming all of it is.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: So for our listeners, PCOS is polystystical variance.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah, which means that you don't ovulate regularly like another woman would.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: So it's very hard to get pregnant because you can't track.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what you didn't know you were dealing with when you were trying.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: So it can present very different for everyone.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: So when you know he said you have PCOS, and I go like Google that in the car on the way home, I'm like, no, I don't.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like none of these symptoms match.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't have the blood sugar component.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: I don't have a lot of the very typical signs of PCOS.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: All I really had was that I don't really ovulate, I don't really get a consistent period.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: And on an ultrasound, my ovaries were full of tiny little follicles that never grew to be mature enough to get fertilized and never really ovulated.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_02: They just chilled there, lots of them.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: So realistically, on paper, I don't meet all of the criteria for PCOS, but a couple of different blood levels that they found.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, visually on ultrasound, that's what it comes down to.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that's the other tricky part is that like even if you know generally about PCOS or kind of any of these conditions that could keep you from having a child, there is a lot of variation to what that looks like from person to person, which you don't know any of these things, and maybe nor should you unless you're in the trenches of it or it affects you.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: But like again, all my friends were having babies and they were just getting pregnant and just having babies, and it was just really confusing and really overwhelming.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: A big, big, big learning curve right away because you you're just trying to figure out what's going on.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's really hard to digest all of that like in an office visit, right?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_03: Like A, the diagnosis, B the implications of the diagnosis, and then C like what you're going to have to do intervention-wise, right?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_03: You're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you're just like, let's start at A.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_03: I have to process A and then you know, and they're trying to rush you out the door.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's so hard.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_02: I always think of it, and I was, you know, much better our second go-around, right?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_02: You just you come in with so much more knowledge, but like you're walking into a doctor's office, and this is what they do every day, and all of the nurses, so their knowledge base is like a bajillion times higher than yours, which is great.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: They should know all those things, right?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: But they're talking to you and they were wonderful and they were very kind and they had no problem stopping and explaining when we asked, but still it's just coming at you.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so we decided in that moment or after a few consultations around that time to try IUI, a medicated cycle of IUI.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: So we did the I did oral medications, very, very, very closely tracked trigger shots, so like the whole medicated spectrum of an IUI.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and we got very, very, very lucky.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: And on our second IUI round, we conceived our daughter Hadley.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think that was the other thing, you know, fast forward six years, five and a half, six years, and we're trying to get pregnant with our now son or our second child.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: I sort of assumed it would go like that.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: Like that.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Why would you not?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: We tackled IUI second round, which you know, I thought was great, but kind of turns out that that's not really necessarily the norm.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_02: Usually it is more cycles than that for most people.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: But I was like, okay, we're fine.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, when we want to do this again, we'll just show over the fertility clinic.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: I know the drill, you know, we'll do some meds.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: It'll be maybe a couple thousand dollars, no big deal, right?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so you know, we had her, she was wonderfully healthy.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: We had decided we wanted our kids a little bit farther apart anyway.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: So we waited probably like five-ish years, and then decided like, let's do this again.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: So I made the appointment at the fertility clinic, same clinic.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I knew we were gonna have to do my period hadn't gotten any more regular.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I knew we were gonna have to sign back up for some version of fertility treatment.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: So even after you had your baby, your periods went right back to being irregular again.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's interesting, right?
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like a whole body could like go through a pregnancy and then it like can revert right back.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's to me, it's interesting, almost like it should hit reset.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I think for some people it does change it for them.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I still I sort of feel like you hear all the time people who like accidentally get pregnant a second time after using any type of fertility treatment the first, because their bodies do sort of reset or they have all these different hormone shifts after having a baby.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: But no, I mean, pretty much I went right back to irregular periods and and all that kind of stuff.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: So we really weren't phased by it.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: We were like, okay, we know this landscape now, we get IUI, we understand what the deal is, we understand the the cost of that totally fine.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: It it was just 5,000% different than we thought it was gonna be the second time.
• 12:28
  unknown: Oh my goodness.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_02: So we started uh really started trying to conceive of our second was just showing up at the fertility clinic for an initial appointment.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_02: And you go through all the, you know, initial blood work and scans and tests and kind of get your baseline again because especially it had been like you know five plus years since the last time, so things can change.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: So we did all that, and everything was basically status quo.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: You know, PCOS was gonna need some support, medical medication support for that, and then we were like, yeah, let's do some IUI and it'll be great.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, well, between we went to the same clinic, and I won't name names, but we went to the same clinic, and between when we'd gone to them the first time to conceive our daughter and when we went back, you know, about five years later, they had gotten sold, apparently, to a bigger corporate conglomerate.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: Of whatever.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, I think this is very popular in fertility clinic world, and the experience was awful.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, quite frankly, like cattle.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I never met my doctor.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: I got one phone call with him early on, only could ever talk to the care coordinator, who I'm not even confident was actually even a nurse or like I'm a true medical person.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: Did two IUI cycles, both failed, failed before we even got to insemination.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't grow any follicles or I grew far too many, and we would have could have ended up with many multiples.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_02: So we bailed out of both cycles.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, Well, I want to talk to the doctor and I want to have a protocol conversation.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_02: I want to talk about how he's gonna change this medication so that we strike some balance in the middle.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: And they were like, Oh, you can't talk to him.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to talk to him, you have to schedule an appointment.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: You're gonna delay your cycles, you can't talk to him.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, I can't talk to him.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, no.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, you know, maybe y'all know this, maybe your listeners know this, but every IUI cycle is a full month because it's basically like your normal you know, your kind of normal cycle or mimicking that cycle.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: It's medication, it's a couple of thousand dollars every time you even attempt.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: Even if you don't get to the actual insemination part, you're still shelling out lots of money for each of these things.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: Very few people in this country have it covered by insurance.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: Some do, many don't.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: We did not, so we're just out of pocket paying.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: And like, you know, if you're doing that and you're getting to the point where you have a chance of getting pregnant, that's sort of one thing.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: But that wasn't our case.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: So I said basically no, hard no, and started looking for a new clinic and found a new clinic.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um that I loved.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, how much when you went back, how many months did that cost you with trying to have a baby?
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then how much would you say you were out of pocket for not even getting right to try an IUI cycle?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because they both got canceled, correct?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_02: They were both canceled, yeah.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, it was a solid, I'd say five months of delay because you know, you have the consult with them, then you have to like get on your cycle, like you have to wait till kind of you're like ready or get your cycle, and then every attempt is basically a full month.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: And then it took me when we decided to go find a new clinic, it took about a month and a half, two months to get into the new clinic, just as a as a new patient.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, it cost us a lot of time, and I mean, easily cost us about five thousand dollars because I'd done, you know, a lot of testing with them.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: I'd done a lot of medication and trigger shots and bajillion ultrasounds, which is part of the process, but it basically got us to nothing.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it didn't even get us to a chance.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, we were already out several thousand dollars in about five months of time before we even showed up at the new clinic.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: But I will say the new clinic was light years better and immediately like a okay, we found our people, we're in the right place.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_02: The doctor, which I wasn't even expecting, sat down with us for an hour and a half.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: My first agreement.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: That's amazing.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: And just sat with us, and he did have, I had transferred all my test results.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: So he, you know, had something to go off of and we talked through the whole thing.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: We made a full plan.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm a planner, so I said to him, Look, I want to know what a step is, but I also want to know what happens if that doesn't work and that doesn't work and that doesn't work.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: And we talked through the full thing and we made an agreement that day that we would try three more IUIs and then we would consider moving on to IVF if that didn't work.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I was gosh, borderline geriatric.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: I was coming up on my 35th.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: 34.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: I know I was a whole 34.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so you know, there was some like consideration there.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: And also, you know, there is this tipping point, right?
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: You're gonna spend several thousand dollars on each IUI cycle, and your kind of odds of conceiving, even on a perfectly timed cycle, are something like, I don't know, between five and ten percent.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like, really, it just gets you, it's really low.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: It just gets you to kind of like what everybody on the street gets every time, you know.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: Every like it does.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't streak.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like people who just like ovulate normal, those weird people who just like have babies, like their chance any given month is really only five to ten percent.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_02: So it basically just gets you on par with kind of the rest of the world.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not actually this huge like up, I think, and and I felt this way.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: This was the real blow because I felt like when we got pregnant with our daughter after the second cycle, like no problem.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: You get this false sense that it is really going to work, and there's like some high odds of it working, and there really isn't.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's still worth it.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, obviously it gave us our daughter, and and it was worth trying again a few rounds, but it's statistically like not actually that big of a bump in probability versus an IVF, which is like a versus an IVF 70 to 80 percent.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: This was you, yeah, exactly.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: You remind me of their stories with the with the percentages, and this is something though that I think the listeners actually need to hear is like you're right, and you're right, like there's a bigger difference in going right to IVF and on some.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I feel like, I mean, obviously, you got your daughter and it worked for you, and that's incredible.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's that it's hard to tell an individual I wouldn't try IUI, but I feel like a lot of the girls I talk with, I'm like, don't do it, just do IVF.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_03: It just it just, I don't know, in my opinion and in my story, it wasted so much time.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_02: I think you have to go in with a realistic cap.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: And that is what our second and final fertility clinic doctor did for us is he helped us really come to a conclusion of what was our realistic cap on how many times we were gonna try IUI, how much time we were willing to give up, how much money we were willing to give up before we made that switch.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: And and we felt comfortable with that.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, look, hindsight, yeah, I should have just could have just switched to IVF right away, saved some money, saved some time.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: But it did it felt right then.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: But I think where people really get into a slippery slope is that they just do IUI after IUI after IUI.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_02: And realistically, I think there is some statistics about what happens after the fifth round is that your chances of getting pregnant actually go down.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because there's probably just something there that's not the right, you know, protocol for you, or it's probably just not the right plan, right?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: And there's also, you know, PCOS was my number one factor and my biggest factor, but I do feel like no one just fits in a box.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, there can be other factors, there can be slow sperm.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, all these things get tested, right?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: But there can be more than one issue at play, and you kind of have to like whack-a-mole and play the odds of what's going to work versus your budget versus your time.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I mean, IVF is intense and and it is a lot more money, time, physical, everything, you know, mental anguish.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's just a lot more.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: It really turns the dial up and makes IUI look like a walk in the park, I think.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so that's a great point.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be like ready for IVF, I think.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's a great point.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: You're going into war.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_03: Like your loins.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: No, but you really do.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you're mentally preparing.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to have your armor on, you've got to have your ammunition, like you gotta be ready to go.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: You are 100% right because it affects everything.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's physical, emotional, mental, financial, everything.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: The amount of time.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we just just it it's all consuming.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_02: You got a job, too bad.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: Now your schedule is IBF blood work, right?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like, honestly, like you have another child, too bad.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: Now your schedule is IBF blood work and scans and trigger shots, and you know, like my like trigger shot would be on ice with me because I had to be somewhere at a certain time, but I had to take that shot at a certain time.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's it's very all consuming for I guess sort of a short period of time, but like you better just plan on this being your whole thing for that couple of months because there's really no other chance.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: And look, you're you want the chance, right?
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: And at any point, you don't want to drop the ball and be the reason that you have to bail out of a cycle or the reason that something doesn't work.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_02: Because, you know, I always felt like the odds are a little bit against me anyway, and I don't want to be the reason that this doesn't go well.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: If if I did the best I could, if I controlled the controllables and it still doesn't.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Work okay, but you know, I want to make sure that we're doing everything the way that the best way we could.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um, speaking to specifically your PCOS, do you do anything to mitigate that as far as like supplements or like I know you have maybe some like insulin resistance?
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_03: Do you have any like hormone like um levels that are off or anything like that?
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: No, actually.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: And that I mean, I think that is different for everyone.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: I think that um, you know, certainly folks with PCOS who have all of the insulin resistance, you know, they have to treat things at very facial hair, yeah.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, all those things, right?
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: I'm very, very, very lucky.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: I think they call it like type A PCOS, meaning that it really is just a straight infertility battle and not really, it doesn't affect me in the rest of my life.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, my periods have always been irregular, but honestly, that's not really like it's more of a nuisance than it is like life altering.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm incredibly lucky and also not the average, you know, PCOS bird.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm I'm very lucky.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't really treat anything.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I think this is also why like I just thought I had irregular periods.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know or never really thought to ask or look into like what was this gonna mean for fertility, right?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I was 25, 26 when we started trying to conceive our daughter, and so I was just like, whatever, it all got like you're just kind of naive, and like it hadn't been a problem in my life, right?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: So I just didn't it never even occurred to me that like oh that this might be a problem when you wanna have a baby.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, I had endometriosis and I never knew.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_03: And to your point about education, I mean I've talked about it before, but like in college, I would pass out my pain was so bad for my periods, and they'd take me to the ER, you know, and like no male doctors, like, hey, how are your periods, you know?
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_03: So I didn't find out until we were at the reproductive endocrinologist.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, it's a huge gap in education and healthcare for women.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's a huge gap.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_02: Just sure.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_02: Not not even just in the fertility years or infertility years, but just in in general, in the lifespan of a woman, there is a real, real, real gap in education and just research and just knowledge on the female body and certainly the female reproductive system.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a real shame.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: Especially the research, like and you put it into perspective, like initially, like just the medication.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what was super interesting is like they just take the same person generally, and it's been a while since I've been into the reproductive clinic, but and they give them the same protocol.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, like when I had my surrogate who had three healthy children, and we go in there with her, and there's they said, sorry, we've got to do the same protocol when her body's used to getting pregnant naturally.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, yeah, you know, too much medication sometimes her body rejects.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and actually, I I believe that's what cost us our first transfer with our surrogate, was they over-medicated her and it didn't work.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: We finally, after that that protocol didn't work, which is the same protocol given to uh IDF 12304, then we switched it up to a more natural medication, just like I think a little bit of estrogen and progesterone, just like a very little bit of support.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: And she got pregnant.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I I think if just like you said, you were you were paying attention.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: You were looking at like you gave if you're giving me this medication, I'm overstimulating, you're giving me this one.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what at least let me talk to a doctor so I can tell you what my body is doing, right?
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: In response to the medication you're giving.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I wasn't even confident that he knew that we bailed out of cycles or that he knew that um bailed out wasn't really a choice.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: We were like forced out of a cycle.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: I don't even really think that he knew what medication I was on because I I genuinely don't think at the clinic that anyone was really in charge.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: I think to your point, and it was very obvious it was cattle, it was like everybody gets the same pro protocol, and it's such a disservice because everybody is so different, and there are lots of different medications that all do similar things, but might work better for one than the other, and that's what I really loved about our second clinic.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I think just generally my advice when picking a clinic is you know, you kind of have to go in and consult, and you kind of just have to jump into one and see.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you can do the online reviews, you can talk to friends who've maybe been through it, but like you'll know pretty quick if they're not listening, if they're giving you the very like kind of generic advice.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: But at our second clinic, everything was about what I needed, and it was very much about looking at.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, he honestly looked through my fail cycles and looked at the medication I used there.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_02: He went all the way back and looked at medication and what I what my protocol was to conceive my daughter.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I I think you'll know when you're in the right spot because you'll have somebody who's looking at your body and your story and your situation and thinking through medication for you, not for the masses.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's pretty obvious actually when they're just kind of hurting you through.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so you're at the doctor's office, you switch the new one who you whom you love, and then you've already done two failed IUI cycles.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so then how many IUI cycles do you do with the new doctor?
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: So we had always agreed on trying three more, and um, giving the three cycles to basically like, well, either get pregnant would be the goal, right?
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_02: Or at least having time to like mess with the medication and see what we could accomplish.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: So had a really great first cycle in the sense of like I grew a follicle well, like the the protocol worked on paper at least.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like the sizing was good, whatever.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't miss the window, like timed really well, didn't get pregnant.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, fine.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: Went right into a second cycle, did get pregnant, lost that that pregnancy probably like a week or two in after a positive test.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe a chemical pregnancy, maybe just a very like not a good egg, not a good sperm, whatever.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_02: So we were sort of feeling very like, okay, you know, we're we just got pregnant and like everything looks good on the screen.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_02: We're doing the right thing.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_02: And so we kept that protocol for the third.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: And again, like everything on paper looked really good.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like, timing was great, egg quality or egg size was great, you know, what we could know about it, everything matched.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, did not get pregnant.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, at this point, this is gosh, we had to be like eight months into since we'd gone to the first clinic and since we'd really been trying, and you're just like going, going, going, and you're just turning out money.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so, like, when the third cycle didn't work at the new clinic, we basically were like, Well, we kind of always said we'd give it three more, and now we're at that tipping point.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so I, you know, had another conversation with the doctor and said, What do you think?
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, You get to make that decision, but we talked about the odds of IUI working, we talked about the statistical odds of IVF working.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_02: We talked about how I knew I could grow eggs, I knew we could, you know, we had a lot of the pieces that were working, and he felt like IVF would be very successful.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_02: But to his credit, he presented it all out to us and let us make the decision.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_02: And frankly, we just were sick of it.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like we were sick of going to clinic and doing all the things and cycle after cycle.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_02: And we, I think I just wanted better odds.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_02: I just wanted a more sharbet, which I hate to say because obviously there's people who do IVF and they don't get, you know, they don't get a baby out of that, right?
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_02: But um we just kind of wanted to get to the end game a little bit faster and felt like it was time to just move on.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so that's when we decided to go to IVF and jumped basically right into that.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: I think there was maybe a month lag while we just got protocol and medications in order and maybe a few more tests, and then you know, we jumped in with two feet, and that was the fall of 23 at that point.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that was when I think do you know our mutual friend Becky?
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Is that who told you?
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: So then right there.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: After Becky's my hairdresser, yeah.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: So Becky was my hairdresser, yes, and so you must have been telling Becky.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you tell your hairdresser everything, right?
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right, everything 100%.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: They know your deepest, darkest secrets.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: I am every opinion on anything in life.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: I don't remember, you'll have to even remind me about the timing of that, but I'm pretty sure we had uh when I talked to Becky, Becky had sort of known because you know, you go get your hair done every couple months, so she would get like these uh mass updates.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: But um, I we decided on IVF in like the late summer of that year.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_02: We started in September, October, and that like I think I saw her right around the time and was like, Yeah, we just decided to go to IVF, and that's when she brought you up and kind of was talking about your organization.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, that's so cool.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_02: And then I feel like it was after my appointment that she either may have texted you or texted me and was like, Yeah, I knew she had this scholarship that you know, this grant that she was starting, and she's she sent me a link to the work you were doing, as I'm pretty sure how it was really cool.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: So now just to hear it from like where we were.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, so she caught you.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: You were like at the last day of when we were accepting applications.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: Becky, Becky was like, You must have came in to get your hair done.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, Is it too late?
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: I have a friend that's going through IVF right now.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so you got it in, and then um that was right before your transfer because that was you you transferred it what January February 20th.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: February 2024.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_03: So, how many embryos did you get?
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_03: Wild numbers.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh oh, I'm excited.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, wild, well, yeah, wild numbers.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_02: So they retrieved about 45 eggs.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_03: 45 eggs.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_02: See, wild.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: So I mean, this is the PCOS thing.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_02: So then when you I have tons of follicles, and then when you really ramp up the meds, which of course you do with the injectable meds and all the things, um, they all grew.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_02: And so there was like 45 like mature follicles.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: I want to say that in the first day, you know, they start to drop off, of course.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_02: Whatever you get, and versus what you actually, you know, maybe freeze, are usually less than half.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_02: So there was 45, and then by the second day, or when the embryologist called me, there was about 38 that were mature enough to be fertilized.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_02: Holy cow! Yeah, and then by the next day, there were like 24 that made it to like day ones.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then we ended up freezing 12.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, which is that is amazing.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_02: You've still got some work to do.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: Don't brag.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_02: I know I joke, like we got a dozen, and I kind of always joke in my husband, you know, we got 11 on ice.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: So we could always have a football team, or you could always have like at least a baseball team.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_02: And he's like, No, I don't think so.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: Incredible numbers now.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_02: And those, I mean, those are crazy numbers, those are not realistic numbers.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_02: So if someone's listening and they're like, I got 10 or I got five, you know, like that is, I think, much more realistic.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we we are incredibly lucky to get that many.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_02: I was very sick.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so we'll put that out there.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, that's a lot.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's a that's a lot for your ovaries, that's a lot for your body to manage.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so yeah, that's that's not the norm.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but we were very lucky because it gives you a lot of chances.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_02: So we did at least, once we had, you know, 12 on ice and 12 that were made it to like day four, day fives, and and were um looking good, you know, we did at least have that exhale of like, okay, we've bought ourselves options.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_02: We bought ourselves, you know, some cushion, right?
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_02: We don't have just one or two on ice and we feel the pressure like this has to work, or you know, or else, right?
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, some people unfortunately have to go back and do you know, stimulation and egg retrieval all over again because they just don't get enough.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_02: So we felt very lucky um that we got so many and to be able to just kind of cap and never, never have to do uh, you know, an egg retrieval again.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: Did you t get those embryos uh genetically tested?
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_02: So we did not, which is of course a choice.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_02: We were offered that choice.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: It is a you know quite a big added expense.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but we had also done my husband and I had done quite intensive genetic testing prior to gosh, even IUI.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so they test you for something like four or five hundred different diseases and symptoms and whatever, and neither one of us were carriers for basically anything.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_02: So we felt pretty good about I mean that doesn't 100%, you know, blanket proof you from anything awful happening, but we felt pretty good.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, at that point it was really just our choice or our preference, and to be honest, it was just a a big chunk of money that we didn't want to put out.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_02: I think it was something like six or eight thousand dollars more because also we had a lot of embryos, so you do pay per embryo.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah, yeah.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_02: So we had you know quite a few.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so we just you know rolled the dice a little bit and made the decision not to, but they do get graded.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the embryologist looks at each one and grades them, and she graded all of them very highly.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: So we felt we just took whatever comfort we could from kind of those two things, and there's no real history in our families of anything you know, horrific, thankfully.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_02: So we made the decision not to test them.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so then you take the highest, you know, quality embryo, or at least the first one, right?
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah, we let the embryologist pick.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: So we said, you know, dealer's choice.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that level is like ever highest probability.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's go.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: Highest probability.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_02: That's literally what I said.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, pick the one that you feel like looks the best under a microscope and just defrost that one.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_02: Go with that.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_03: That's so fun.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so you had the embryologist pick and then you implanted that one, and then what happened from there?
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: So we, you know, you do a little bit of a protocol, a little bit nothing like the stimulation and egg retrieval, but you do like a small protocol.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_02: So we um we did our egg retrieval like the week before Thanksgiving.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_02: And then, of course, we were going into the holidays.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_02: I actually had quite a steep recovery after the egg retrieval.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_02: I was pretty ill for a couple of, you know, a solid week.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it was just a lot.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_02: And then we went right into the Christmas holiday, and so we basically that was our downtime, and then in January we re-regrouped at the beginning of January and got our protocol in order for uh to get ready for a transfer.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_02: And then we transferred on February 10th.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's just funny, you like remember these days.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like we'll forever remember that day, and that's that's it, it was so fascinating to us because the egg retrieval is like a big process, right?
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_02: You're like under anesthesia, there's a big recovery, it's like a lot.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_02: But the you know, the implementation part is kind of like we rolled in, you know.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_02: I was my husband was with me, we went and went into a room, I was awake, you kind of see them do it on monitor, and then you just go home.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and they're just like, Good luck.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I mean, it's very it's a walk in the park compared.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, 100%.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's like do you remember that?
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's a walk in the park.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, egg retrieval, whatever.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, So now I gotta go for I'm like, huh, that's nothing.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: You you did the worst part.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I know the doctor inseminated me and then was like, all right, you're pregnant.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_03: And I kind of got a little angry because it was like, no, don't don't tell me that.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_03: Like, yeah, they said like pregnant until proven otherwise.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah, yeah, it went like that.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't subscribe to that.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't either.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, I'm just gonna leave that and just No, I'm I want to see it on a stick or I want to see it on a blood work number.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, no, I mean, yeah, but it's it's just very it's very weird because you just like walk in not pregnant and you walk out maybe pregnant, uh-huh.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like a very, very, very simple process in comparison to everything you've done so far.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_02: And then they're just like, we'll see you in two weeks.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_02: And you're like, are you sure you don't want to do anything?
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I know.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I everything is so managed and so calculated and so like on a calendar and specific timing, and then they're just like, Yeah, you know, keep up with your keep up with your medication, but we'll see you in two weeks.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_02: And do you just sit there and wait?
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like you do.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_02: I know it's hard, right?
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_02: I know.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you don't need to report back.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_03: I think I'll stay.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_03: I'm I know.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um, when you talk about how you remember dates, like in particular, my egg retrieval was on Easter morning, and my doctor was Jewish, this female Jewish doctor, she was hilarious, and she was cracking jokes the whole time.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_03: She was like, We're gonna get some Easter baskets and go find some eggs.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_03: And oh my god.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_03: She made it funny.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_03: So funny.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_03: I know.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's funny.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: So funny.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and speaking of, they don't mind.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: They're coming in any day.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever day cycle you're on, or if you're ready to go, it's Christmas Day, it's Easter Day.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's someone's birthday.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter if you had that chip planned, you know?
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_02: Well, because it's also like, you know, your best-laid plans, right?
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_02: Like, and this happened.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_02: We like, okay, you're gonna do the medicine, you're gonna do all these things, you're gonna come in for a scan, and we think that your eggs will be at the size we want, your follicles will be at the size you want, and then you go in and they're not.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_02: So, like, okay, we're gonna do two more days of that medicine.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_02: So now you're so it's like you kind of have this idea of when you're gonna do an egg retrieval, but inevitably it never you can't predict that because it's day-to-day.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we I went back every day the five days before my egg retrieval because it was like he was like, No, I want them a little bit bigger, I want them a little bit bigger, I want them a little bit bigger.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_02: So you're just like going back every morning, like, is this it?
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_02: Is this it?
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_02: Is this it?
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I mean, it just could end up being on Easter, even if that wasn't the plan or end up being on Christmas.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_03: But I know I always get sad for the girls here in Florida in particular with the hurricanes, because a lot of times the hurricanes will shut down the offices, and it's like, oh, if you're like at the end, right?
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and you do all of that, and then your I know retrieval or whatever falls on, you know, a day that's gonna be.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_02: It's funny because no one thinks about that until you've done it or you're in it.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_02: And that was the other thing is like it was hurricane season that October, November, and I was like, and my my my dear husband who was just just holding on, just doing the best he could to keep me from like spiraling at any given moment during that process.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, it's okay, I'll just I'll just drive you out there, we'll get out there.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, I don't think that's how it works if there's a hurricane.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_02: But like, bless him, he was just the best partner.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_03: That's awesome.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_03: That's amazing to have someone who's so supportive.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, he's the best.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: So then you after you have your so then you go in for your for your transfer and you come back two weeks, and while you're not gonna be able to do that.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: I cheated.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: I cheated.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: I actually tell us what you did, stay honest.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_02: I think I know starting at one day.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_02: No, I didn't.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't because there was okay, so your trigger shot or like one of the medications you're on, I'm not gonna remember it right now, but one of the medications you're on can kind of give you like a false positive because it needs to cycle out of your body.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so you have to be very careful like testing too soon because it could it could be a false reading.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_02: So I waited, I think I made it eight days after the embryo transfer.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's pretty good.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_02: I woke up at two in the morning, like just woke up, just awake, and I was like if that was the day I was going to take a test, and I woke up.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_02: I had decided in my own brain, I hadn't said anything to my husband.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_02: I was, I just had decided I'm gonna pee on stick.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_02: And if it's negative, it's fine.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_02: I'll wait, like it might be too soon, and that's okay.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_02: I can live with it.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_02: But I just I needed to just do it.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know why.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_02: You just you you start to really get a little crazy, I think.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's really you play mind games.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_02: You go round and rounds, and you're on a lot of hormones, so it's not exactly fair.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_02: You can't really keep a super level head, you're like full of hormones.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I happened to get up at 2 a.m.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_02: and I said, Okay, well, this is my first pee of the day, so I have to.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so I pee on a stick by myself in our bathroom at 2 a.m.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_02: And it was positive.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I went and woke my husband up.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_02: I think he thought the house was on fire.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_02: No, I know.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_02: I think he thought the house was on fire because I was like, Ryan, you gotta get up, you gotta get up.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_02: And he's like totally disoriented, springs out of bed, and he's like, What?
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, come here.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I brought him into the bathroom and I was like, look, look.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_02: And he's literally, we have a video of it because I like recorded this in our bathroom at 2 a.m.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_02: At 2 a.m.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: And he's he's literally like squinting at it, like, what are you showing me?
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, there's a line, I'm pregnant, and yeah, then we just like both cried, but um, so I like kept it to my not kept it to myself, but like we kept it to ourselves, and then I had already had my like 14-day blood work scheduled.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_02: So I just like really didn't even say anything and just went in for the blood work, and then yeah, I mean my levels confirmed it.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know, they were like several hundred, and then you go in like every 24 48 hours and make sure that they're doubling and all that.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I mean, I we really I am very lucky that I have a really hard time conceiving, but I've had very good pregnancies and very healthy babies, and so for that I'm super thankful.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like it's um just you know, my mom.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: My mom will be like, Well, you went through hell to to get them, to conceive them.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_02: So, like the universe can throw you a bone that you have like healthy pregnancies.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, Yeah, it doesn't work like that for everybody, but we did get very lucky there.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: Count your blessings where you can get them, right?
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_03: So are you done now with the two?
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_03: Are you gonna go back for another one from your baseball team?
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_03: Let me just turn up the volume and ask that one more time, Steve.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, are you gonna implant one more?
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't know.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_02: We talk we think about it.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think about it a lot.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, right now, two feels very full, but you know, we have a toddler, so he's a year and a half old and he's into everything.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so right now I'm like, yeah, his boy.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_02: And all boy.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so you know, right now I I don't think I can wrap my head around a second, but I do think about it a lot.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's like I'm just I don't but I go back and forth of like, do you ever know that you're done?
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_02: I I don't know.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_02: Will you ever feel like yeah, I'm good?
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_02: I guess some people do, but part of me will always kind of feel like I don't know.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_02: Every time that I pay the bill for the cryo place, like the bill that has been a nice.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we're taking up a lot of storage space.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um every time I pay that bill, I think like maybe we should use them, but you know, it's all just paying for insurance.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and that's the thing, is like even if we not even if we don't ever have another, like I'm gonna hold on to them for a very long time.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's like your security blanket.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_03: I know.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_03: I just so I felt done at three.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_03: So I've got nine, um, seven, and four.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_03: And then actually just like two months ago, we destroyed our embryos because we felt like okay, we're done with our family.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_03: And that was a it was a weird, it was a weird chapter being like, okay, we're done.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, it it did feel like I did get to that point where I'm like, okay, yeah, I felt like this is our family.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I might.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, part of me, like all the rational reasons, this is our family.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like we just built a brand new house, there's not actually room for another child necessarily.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, you know, like you'd like financially, like, we're good.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_02: We're like really set, and we can give our kids everything we want to give them, and a third one might, you know, make things tighter.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like, all the rational reasons why two is actually a really good fit for us is one thing, and then the other part of you is like, dang, we worked so hard for those 11 frozen embryos, and maybe we should, I don't know, but we'll see.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna put a bet on it.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna bet, I'm gonna bet like one more year, and you're gonna be like, uh, Wade needs a little brother to so they never regret it.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: Out in the yard together.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: No, logistically, I have to figure out how to move them.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's so they're gonna like you could transfer them.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you transfer them for just a couple thousand.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: No, honestly, I think from what I heard it was like 800 from Tampa to Orlando, so I don't know how much it would be from New York, but yeah, you can transfer them.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but you know, you know, I think the answer is you don't know yet, and that's fine.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: No, I don't know.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: You just yeah, you're a no when you know, and it won't come.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: But they're nice for now.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, happy and cold.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_03: Um if you could look back and tell Cassie at the beginning of her journey, kind of like when you were, you know, maybe even before you were diagnosed with PCOS, or maybe at that moment, like what would you tell her now after you know, having gone through this journey and the highs and the lows and what you've learned?
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_03: What's like that one piece that you'd want to give her?
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think it's sort of two part.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_02: I think before we ever tried to conceive, you know, 25-year-old Kathy who had never had regular periods, I probably would have just asked somebody about that.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I would have like really, you know, I went to my doctor regularly.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_02: I would have been like, why are they irregular?
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't that weird?
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_02: You know, again, like not that it was, it really wasn't bothering me in my day-to-day life, but I think I would have gone into trying to conceive with just a completely different lens.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_02: Even if I didn't understand IUI and IVF and all the things, I would have just simply asked more questions about like why I didn't get regular periods.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_02: Because had I known that, you know, we would have just started at a fertility clinic, or we would have just like saved ourselves eight or nine months of trying to figure out why like we couldn't get pregnant or like trying to basically chase our tails within a regular period.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_02: So I think for anyone who's younger or even thinking about having family, if something's already off, you should just ask about that now because it's probably not gonna get any better as you try to conceive.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I think before going into trying to conceive our son, so really before diving into IUI and IVF, is like I knew more, but I would have just I would have never given that first clinic the time of day.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_02: I would have had one console and really just paid attention to the red flags and moved on faster.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that, you know, a lot of that's hindsight, right?
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_02: But um you need to ask questions and you need to feel really comfortable and you need to be, you need to feel taken care of and like one of one.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like, yes, they have hundreds of of couples and women and families they're seeing every day, but you need to feel like when you're with that doctor or you're when you're with their team that you are their focus, and you know, you can find that.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_02: It but if you're not getting it, you you need to bail out real quick.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_03: As those are great pieces of advice, and to your credit, I mean, this is going to reach our listeners, and hopefully, you know, your education of PCOS and periods will reach someone, you know, younger dealing with that.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_03: Because I was the same way with endometriosis.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_03: I had no clue, you know.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, listen to yourself, listen to yourself, pay attention to your health, listen to your inner voice, listen to how to use your voice when you don't agree with the doctor, and you know, find a good fit.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_00: And there's plenty of options from where it was 30 years ago to now.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I love I love your advice, and it's it's simple advice that like you really that matters that can cost you thousands of dollars and and even several years, yeah, lots of time.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_02: But honestly, also like get educated.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like when we started thinking about going to IVF, I really dove into like what is IVF?
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_02: What does a protocol look like?
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_02: Like really just getting this base level understanding so that when I went to the doctor and we started talking about IVF, the things he was saying, I already had a concept of.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_02: I wasn't net new learning what IVF was in real time sitting in the doctor's office.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_02: So I think if you're even vaguely going down an infertility road or even vaguely considering IUI or being like these things are starting to come up, go get some real research and go get some real understanding of those things so that when you're sitting there, to your point, I mean, I think you said this, Whitney, is like you're totally blindsided.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_02: So when someone comes at you for the first time and says, You have PCOS and you need IUI and blah, blah, blah, blah, like you're not registering that.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_02: But if you have a little bit of a base understanding, it's a lot easier to take in that information and have an educated conversation with your provider.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_03: And we can link some of those research studies like in the show notes so that if girls are interested and wanting to kind of dive deeper, we can put some of those studies in there.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think that's great.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, well, thank you so much for coming on with us.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_03: We've loved having you.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_03: What a great conversation!
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: You were amazing.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_00: I can't thank you enough.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: See, she continues to show up.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like everyone deserves a family call.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: Had your first big thing.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, you were super fun, and thank you.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because I had fun tonight.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_00: I had fun, and you had just very like practical yeah, practical advice.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I love that because that's what like we do practical advice.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, I think I'm I'm pretty practical in my day-to-day life.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I'm not, I mean, I'm emotional, but I'm not hugely emotional when it comes to like making decisions, and I think that's what really got me through was I was super practical and super like, okay, you tell me this is what you need me to do.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_02: Here's my calendar of meds, and that's exactly what I'm gonna do.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_02: And like, I just really never, I never thought that it wouldn't work, you know?
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I just never thought I was like, no, I'm just super hard-headed and in my day-to-day life.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_02: I'm super hard-headed and I don't accept no.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so I just you kind of have to take that force, force into fertility treatment because there's a million reasons why it won't work.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_02: There's gonna be a wall, there's gonna be a time when you have to bail out of a cycle, there's gonna be a time when something doesn't work like you thought it would.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the nature of the beast.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of it is trial and error, but you just have to not accept it and and just kind of keep pushing.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, or the doctor giving you wrong advice.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_03: I just had a girl, she's in my support group, and she sat down with the doctor, and he was the doctor that I used, who I love, and I think someone just gave him the wrong information.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_03: And so he was telling her her blood work and her numbers and her new protocol, and she said she came away with from the meeting.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_03: Like, that does not sound right.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_03: So she went and checked her blood work, and it was the wrong blood work.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_03: So, I mean, that's malpractice, you know.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_03: So she went back to the clinic and you have to be your own advocate.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_02: You have to be your own advocate.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone is human, so there's going to be just human errors in the process, and you're the only one who knows you, right?
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you you really can't expect a nurse or doctor or practice to keep everyone completely straight.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, yeah, there is, they should, right?
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_02: In theory, but also I'm the only blood work I'm looking at, so I should know my blood work before I go in, right?
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like, check your portal, check your uh, you know, I'm I only have to worry about me, so I can remember the numbers, right?
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_02: So when you're going in, and it's a huge burden, like all of a sudden you're a medical expert, or you have to be.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's not fair.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_00: Remember that, yes.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_02: It's not fair that you have to, but you are your best advocate, you are the best keeper of your own records, and so you have to kind of show up that way.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_02: But I'm just I was just a bull in a China shop, and like, no, I don't accept no.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_03: I need a little more of that in my life.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_03: I don't accept no.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love it.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_03: I don't accept it.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_03: Well, thanks so much for spending so much time with us.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much for joining us on today's podcast.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_03: If you have been impacted by this episode, there are two things you can do for us.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_03: First is leave a review on Spotify or Apple Music.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_03: And second, is to share this with a friend who is struggling.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_03: This helps us to spread our message of hope for others.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_03: If you would like to get in touch with Lindsay or myself, please message us on Instagram at Infertile Diaries Podcast.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_03: Or you can go to our websites at Whitneyheneman.com, and everyone deserves a family grants.com.