Can hope and resilience play a pivotal role in one's journey to parenthood? Meet the brave couple, Jordan and Shelly, who'll guide us through their personal struggle with infertility. We'll uncover their strength, courage, and unyielding determination, which led them to navigate the challenging world of fertility treatments.
They'll reveal the key moments of their journey, such as the decision to switch clinics, discover a new doctor, and consult a marriage counselor. We'll chat about their unique journey, such as participating in an IVF study and launching a fundraiser to ease the financial strain of fertility treatment. We'll also explore how they learned to set boundaries, found a support system, and even used humor as a tool to cope, bringing them closer together as a couple and as individuals.
Jordan and Shelly will also shed light on what it's like to navigate pregnancy after infertility and loss, revealing the rollercoaster of emotions they endured. They'll discuss the measures they took to ensure a healthy pregnancy and the significance of a support network during this critical period. Their story is a testament to the power of hope, resilience, and the human spirit. So join us, be inspired, learn, and perhaps find comfort in the experiences shared by Jordan and Shelly.
Can hope and resilience play a pivotal role in one's journey to parenthood? Meet the brave couple, Jordan and Shelly, who'll guide us through their personal struggle with infertility. We'll uncover their strength, courage, and unyielding determination, which led them to navigate the challenging world of fertility treatments.
They'll reveal the key moments of their journey, such as the decision to switch clinics, discover a new doctor, and consult a marriage counselor. We'll chat about their unique journey, such as participating in an IVF study and launching a fundraiser to ease the financial strain of fertility treatment. We'll also explore how they learned to set boundaries, found a support system, and even used humor as a tool to cope, bringing them closer together as a couple and as individuals.
Jordan and Shelly will also shed light on what it's like to navigate pregnancy after infertility and loss, revealing the rollercoaster of emotions they endured. They'll discuss the measures they took to ensure a healthy pregnancy and the significance of a support network during this critical period. Their story is a testament to the power of hope, resilience, and the human spirit. So join us, be inspired, learn, and perhaps find comfort in the experiences shared by Jordan and Shelly.
Okay, okay, cool. So, yeah, you're gonna hear yourself and it's really bad. I'm like wearing, so we don't have another pair, so wearing like my kids like you all here at school? No, there's a school at both of them.
Speaker 2:Is that all with them? They're like I'm gonna have to wait years after it's gonna be so cute.
Speaker 1:I know it's gonna be so horrible. This is it feels weird.
Speaker 3:It feels weird. Yeah, my head is not that big.
Speaker 1:How do I make you smaller? Push them down, yeah, or they're just. They're big head bones. I can't push them down. Maybe they're just big.
Speaker 3:I know cause. You have a lot to cut that wide.
Speaker 1:Not that you have a big head.
Speaker 3:But Okay, hopefully I can just like keep them in one spot. Yeah, Do I need to put like my pony?
Speaker 1:tail.
Speaker 3:Does that feel better? It's fine If you see me messing with them we all know. I'll be like oh, they're gonna fall, okay, I'm just gonna put my pony tail up and that will keep them. Thank heavens for hair. Yep, there you go. Look at you, you feeling good today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, If I think about it too much, I start to get like, oh my gosh really go away, but it's fine. Yeah, it's fine. Did you do frozen or? I mean, we'll get into that, but did you do frozen or fresh transfers?
Speaker 3:We did frozen Okay.
Speaker 2:You were too strong to do a fresh transfer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was too stimulated. I was good until like right up to it.
Speaker 2:Then I wasn't good, I'm glad you have questions, cause I was talking to Shila. I was like I can't remember everything off the story to like tell, tell me.
Speaker 1:You'll surprise yourself. No, I'll ask you all the questions. It's gonna be good. It's gonna be great.
Speaker 3:Cute why didn't I wear my ball gown today.
Speaker 1:I know where's your tiara I know I should have Okay. So we'll start. I'll just kind of like, say your guys' names, say thank you for joining, and then we'll just kind of jump in and then we'll start with like your story and lessons you guys learned and all that cute stuff, awesome. And if anything like at the end that you feel like you need to add in, we can totally just like like any, like advice or we'll get there.
Speaker 1:Okay cool. Do we need to take down the wind chimes? I can hear them like very specifically.
Speaker 3:He's like oh, wait. And just like this one, oh really.
Speaker 1:Oh, whoa, it's weird, huh yeah.
Speaker 2:This isn't powerful microphones, yeah.
Speaker 1:You do a really good job and we also have to turn the air off because you can also hear that and if there's just we have to pause. It's like a whole thing. And my sister-in-law and my nephew are napping downstairs and when they get up they're going to text me and then they're gonna dip. So it's a, we're making that happen, guys, it happens, yeah, that's good. Okay. So I'm gonna have to like keep checking my phone to see what she texts me, but it's fine, okay, golden, golden, I'm literally just gonna what? It's just a shut off.
Speaker 3:Oh, the air the whole.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you think it's fine? Yeah, we're still trying to figure all this out. I recorded so many non-I'm just like I'm still not doing it's all good. Any questions from me before we start? No, I don't. Do you have a question? I don't have a question. How awkward are we feeling One to ten?
Speaker 3:Yeah, like right now, it's kind of awkward.
Speaker 2:And I don't feel awkward at all.
Speaker 1:It's like I'm in my element.
Speaker 3:Well, it's more just like the waiting like instead of talking Okay.
Speaker 1:Perfect, you're amazing.
Speaker 3:I love your guys' family pictures. Those are gorgeous. Thank you, and there's ice in there, so there we go, enjoy that.
Speaker 1:We should probably grab a coaster or something. Oh, you're fine, don't even worry about it, you're fine. That table is like. It has been well-loved, it has been through life, it has fully lived. Hi guys, and welcome back to another episode. Oh, my hail, at least you were like five minutes in. What it's? A solar guy? We already have solar. Go away. Tell them, the kids are running around outside.
Speaker 3:That's fun, though, that you live in a neighborhood where kids like there's more than one or many kids here. And there's not as many in our neighborhood anywhere, because it's like all the people.
Speaker 1:We all grew up in a town, because we grew up with there's something to live down at the end of the street.
Speaker 2:They used to, right there, go kite around up by our house.
Speaker 3:It's all good, we've still made friends regardless. Yeah, we used to. It's fun, so okay, take two, amen.
Speaker 1:I'm going to go get a fish Once we get going. It's not bad, it's just like the like, everything I feel like happens right before.
Speaker 3:It's like sending a kite for the first time.
Speaker 1:It's somebody.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's what makes me think of like sending a voice mail, like business voice mail?
Speaker 1:Yeah, for the first time. I don't know, anyways, oh my hell, no, I don't know how to stop. I'm just going to keep swearing at you guys. It's fine. Okay, I don't get an explicit label. It's funny. Okay, jordan and Shelley, welcome to the podcast. Hey, thanks for having us. Yeah, I'm so excited that you guys are here Now. We're going to hear about your journey and where you guys have been. So tell me how you guys met, how we met, yeah.
Speaker 3:Throwing it way back. Um, we met when I was 15, jordan was 17, right, mm-hmm, and we actually worked at a Boy Scout camp together, yeah, so it's just kind of funny, because I wanted to be there, like I wanted to work at Boy Scout camp. I have my family. It's a big history of scouting and my dad ran the camp.
Speaker 2:I was forced to be there, yeah.
Speaker 3:So my default, he was there, but he got a cute girlfriend out of it. Yeah, and eventually cute wife. So oh it was worth it yeah. Yeah. So it was pretty much from there. We just became best friends and dated. Till Jordan left on his mission, mm-hmm, and he was like will you wait for me? And I'm like, no, at least she, I'm not going to be one of those girls, so because I had just accepted a scholarship out of state and so I wasn't going to.
Speaker 3:You know, you don't want to mess anything up, like I was ready to go have an adventure and I didn't want him either to not have an adventure. So we went ahead and did our own thing for a couple of years and then when he came back, we were still just very best friends. So we decided I guess this is what you do you get married. So we got married and we have been married for 12 years now 12, almost 13. Yeah it will be 13 in August. I cannot handle that yeah.
Speaker 1:Isn't that crazy? Oh my God, that's how it feels for us.
Speaker 3:All the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Jordan and Shelly and I, we all know each other, and I've known Shelly for like years Ever, and now hearing that it's been a little little.
Speaker 2:What yeah, we were. Did, we don't feel old enough to be married that long.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like you and I have probably known each other like what? Not 40 years, 20 years? 10 years in a period of time. Yes, Probably like around 20 years years. Yeah, a long time. That's crazy Because you live just down the street and around the corner, you and Emily.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, that's crazy. We would just hear wow, ok, anyways throwback to the days.
Speaker 3:But yeah, that's how we met. Oh, I love it.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so you guys dated for a while, I mean kind of just because of the nature of the mission and everything we met.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So when did you guys start to have like the let's start a family conversation?
Speaker 2:So when I first got married, we decided we wanted to wait, pay off debt, get ready to. You know, do take our time to get to know each other and build a relationship.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well, we just wanted to go on adventures, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so it was like five years into being married, we decided we wanted to try and have kids.
Speaker 3:Hey, let's do this thing.
Speaker 2:And we thought, you know, it'll just happen.
Speaker 3:And it did. It did initially Our first pregnancy. We got pregnant the very first month. We tried, and we're like, ok, well, that's, this is just what happens, dude, when you turn it on. You turn it on, I don't know. But then we lost that baby at eight and a half weeks and that was like a shock to our system. Like this happens, like we had you know. Of course we had heard of people having miscarriages and going through those kind of things, but when, like I never thought it would be us. Yeah, because I don't know.
Speaker 1:Well, because why would it be you? Why would it be you? Because we were doing everything right.
Speaker 3:Yeah Right, like everyone and like I didn't. There wasn't really a history. Like my sister's not had miscarriages. My mom didn't have miscarriages.
Speaker 3:Like my mom is the fertilist myrtle you know, I come from a family of nine kids and so, I don't know, to me I was like, well, that's just, that wouldn't ever be part of our story. And so when we lost that baby, that was really a shock to our system. And so they just said well, you know, keep trying. And so once I held up, we started trying again, and two years passed by and still nothing happened. And then we got pregnant again. That was, yeah, sometime in it was about just almost about two years later, we got pregnant again and we ended up actually not realizing we were pregnant until we lost the baby. So it wasn't until we found like I found out I was pregnant and miscarrying. In the same sentence, and I remember the nurse calling me and I was at work that morning and she was like she wouldn't say the word miscarriage for some reason, I don't. Like I was like trying to get her to say it, like so I'm miscarrying, so I'm you know, but she wouldn't say it. She was just like so your pregnancy wasn't viable. And I was like I was ready for them to call me and tell me like I had like a tumor or something, like I was not expecting for them to tell me that I was pregnant or miscarrying. And so when she was like she said that I was pregnant but that my levels were dropping, I was like what? Like? So I'm miscarrying, and that just brought a lot of confusion.
Speaker 3:When that happened the second time Cause after two years we were kind of like okay, well, like why isn't this working? But then to have it work, but like things have, the complications with that second one really threw us off because I had had a period and then the next week I was bleeding again. And so then when they said I was pregnant, I was like what, like, how does this happen? And that's why I was so not even ready for that to be the deal. So I guess after that we decided to just dig into things more.
Speaker 3:So we went to our OB and we had him. He was amazing and just ran every test under the sun for us that we asked for, and he was awesome until he ran. He came to a point and he's like I've got to be honest, like I can't run anything else for you, like there's not really anything else I can give you that's really going to be pertinent to help you guys out. And so it was around that time that we decided to go to fertility doctor and start that whole journey. And this whole time we kind of did this secretly, like we had family members that like they knew about our miscarriages, or her friends, they knew these things.
Speaker 2:But like we were pretty hush hush about at the time like what was kind of going on, because we just we weren't ready to open up at that point and it was a painful topic to talk about Cause every time you talk about it it brings back the feelings of when you lose when we lost the kids and then, whenever you go to talk to the people, they start asking all these questions, and then you have to relive all of the experiences you had while you're trying to explain to them what happened, when they have no contacts for it and most of the time, the advice they're going to try and give isn't helpful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, or you get the other end, where people are like ooh, like they don't know what to say to you. And so, and you're not like prepared enough emotionally to like be okay that they're not okay you know, what I mean. Yeah, so we were very much in that that realm that whole time, because most of the time, they're just gonna say, oh, it'll all work out.
Speaker 2:Which is not a helpful thing to say Just somebody going through that. No, it's a good way to get punched.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, yeah, so, yeah. So we started going through treatments and, of course, at first they started they were like you guys are textbook, like any. All the tests they ran on us, it was, oh, you guys are textbook. If there was somebody that was gonna get pregnant, it would be you guys. And it was like okay, well then why isn't it happening? It's not helpful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is not helpful at all, and so of course we started out. They started doing time cycles with Femara and then they moved us on to doing IUIs and we probably did about four or five IUIs with our first clinic and we were just so frustrated after those IUIs because you know how it is, like it's already enough to be invested, like every month, to be invested with just Femara, but then you're adding on all these drugs and then like the tracking and everything is just so and it's like perfectly timed.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:Yeah and everything it's like it's a miracle people haven't gotten pregnant Like once you go through all of that. You're like no people, just how. This doesn't happen Like this can't.
Speaker 2:They lied in high school and they told you not to have sex. Sure you get pregnant. You're a liar. It does not happen that way.
Speaker 1:Right and so like we.
Speaker 3:Just it gets overwhelming really quick when you're going through that and we realized we didn't feel like we had a doctor or a clinic that was in our corner, like we very much at that clinic we felt like a number, we felt like move on through.
Speaker 3:We always were the ones that like had to call them when we wanted to start a cycle or we were felt like the. We were the ones that like we had to ask a quote, like they would say do this next, but they wouldn't give us any context. And I think that was kind of the beginning of our journey of realizing like we had to decide that, like we had to be our own best advocates. And around then we started doing a lot of research and looking at holistic stuff and looking at like different clinics, that and changing our clinic and to get somebody in our corner and get it like interviewing doctors and deciding who we wanted to work with instead of just seeing who we would be given. Yeah, and kind of owning our journey up to that point and I feel like that I don't know you can speak to that, but I feel like that was a shift in our journey when we chose to do that yeah.
Speaker 2:Earlier doctor. He would ask us what do you guys want to do next? We're not the doctor. I don't know what the next, I don't know what we can do next. So, like Shelley said, we started doing a lot of research and figured out that there were a lot of options out there and we started asking questions. Yeah, and that's when we started seeking out like URIC. What is it? Is that?
Speaker 2:right yeah, URIC and other resources and talking to people about what they had gone through and figuring out that the community was a lot bigger than we thought it was. Yeah, that like not only like being part of a couple that had miscarriages was like the secret club that a lot of people had done and gone or not done had happened to them and gone through it in silence.
Speaker 3:It's like the club you don't want to be a part of, but when you're part of it, you're like there are a lot of people in this club, so many Right yeah.
Speaker 2:And then not realizing that one in seven or one in eight couples go through fertility treatments. One in six now. Really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that just changed in February. One in six, really, and realizing.
Speaker 2:people just really don't talk about it a whole lot, and for good reason, because you don't know who you can be comfortable talking to about it yeah. Because if people haven't gone through it then they're not helpful most of the time. But they run of resources that were out there. We were surprised how many resources we were able to find. But finding a new doctor changed everything. Everything Well, and going through marriage counseling together.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we found an infertility marriage counselor through UIRC and that was like we had a good marriage, but we knew we needed more support than what we had within our marriage and individually, and that was a game changer too, to have that in our life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think somebody we could talk to and he could help us process some of the negative emotions or just emotions we were going through, rather than just holding them on, because especially guys don't really talk about their emotions, especially not if it's negative. But you have to be strong for your wife and be there to support her and then struggle through things yourself quietly.
Speaker 3:And I think at that time, like Jordan was pretty involved the entire time of our journey, like our entire story, like Jordan was always pretty involved. But too, I think at that turning point Jordan really stepped it up a notch, like he was like fully invested. He started to take. Well, he up to that point he did come to every single appointment with me and but at that point we switched doctors and our doctor. We went from having a doctor that was five minutes away from our house to 50 minutes away from our house if there wasn't traffic, because we would have to go clear down to Utah County and he would drive me to every single appointment, even if I just have blood work, he would take work off, he'd come and pick me up, we would drive there, do whatever we need to do. He would take me to get my cupcake at my favorite cupcake place.
Speaker 1:We had the routine.
Speaker 3:Yes, absolutely, you had to, I had to have we had to have the reward, you know, yeah, and then he would bring me back drop me off and we'd go on with our day or whatever it was, and but I think it was at that time that he just realized, like where's my support? And so, as we were, you know we were finding so much community for me as a woman and people that could relate with me, but I know he was really struggling to find support for himself. Yeah, and community for men going through infertility, as you know, with their spouse or individually or whatever it was, and so I don't know.
Speaker 3:I felt like that's something that you should share your thoughts on. Is I don't know because you speak, because that was a big part of too like we ended up having a like a fundraiser when we found out we needed to do IVF and we decided very methodically, we decided that fundraiser was gonna be geared like toward something that men like to do.
Speaker 1:So at this point you guys were talking more about your journey then because you had a fundraiser, so people like knew that you guys were going through it. Right. So what was that like? Finally telling people what you were going?
Speaker 2:through. We wrote a letter to our family because it's not something we could share vocally without getting like emotional and then having to worry about people's answers and all the questions they brought, whereas if we could explain it all in a written out, then there's one. We could say things that we wouldn't know how to like. We had time to think it out as opposed to have to explain it on the fly.
Speaker 1:You could take care of it a little bit better, yeah.
Speaker 2:And being more blunt with people and have still come across nicely.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Explaining that, like we're going through this, this is why we're not coming, because we hadn't been like for years we didn't go to church on Mother's Day or Father's Day and we would go on vacation and go somewhere else. Because it was just it sucked to go. Or on holidays, or yeah, or like holidays, we wouldn't go to family, get to others, because it was just people would ask how's it going?
Speaker 1:What are you?
Speaker 2:just trying to help. I understand.
Speaker 1:They're all excited for you guys too, yeah.
Speaker 2:And we didn't want to like.
Speaker 3:We love our niece and nephews we love them, but we didn't want to go to their birthday parties. No, and things like that.
Speaker 1:And that's okay to not do, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Like your own. Mental health is more important than a birthday party for an niece or nephew that isn't going to remember or care Whether or not you're there. Like, as long as you send them a present, they're good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're fine, right, they could care less if you're there they just want to hang out with their friends.
Speaker 2:And every family get together, so it had no consequence on our marriage whether or not we were there, but if we went we were down for days after. Yeah. But in telling people our story and telling everybody what we were doing, we decided to write it out because of the fact that it was going to be easier that way, and then we shared it with everybody.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Close friends and family, distance distant family.
Speaker 3:We mailed it. I remember we mailed it to all of our close friends and family.
Speaker 2:And that way it was something like it's sit down and read and not a text that was impersonal and just like sent. I mean, I don't think-.
Speaker 3:And we put at the end, like if you have questions, like please come to us. You know, like it was, like it wasn't, like we're not coming, don't ever invite.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:It wasn't, you know, it was just clear like, hey, like we just need to have permission to say like, essentially, we needed to know that you guys know, like we are giving ourselves permission to say no to these things because we just don't have the bandwidth right now not to say we never will again, but we just didn't have the bandwidth right then to, you know, be a part of maybe some of those things going on within the family or with friend groups or and sometimes there were times it was like, yes, we, like we can go, like we're that's totally fine.
Speaker 3:You know, but it was very much like a day to day kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, things got a lot better, you do reach that point. Things got a lot better after that. People stopped asking questions certain questions because we gave some examples of things that they stopped asking the when question. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I forgot we even wrote the letter. I'm glad you brought that up. I think that is such a smart idea.
Speaker 2:I totally forgot about the letter but we did, we wrote the letter. I was actually looking for it.
Speaker 1:I would love to read it. I'm just if you're.
Speaker 3:I'm sure we have it somewhere.
Speaker 2:I have it on my other Google.
Speaker 1:My Google drive. Is it like long?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was like a full page. It was like a page and a half.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome yeah.
Speaker 2:Because it was an opportunity to share things that there's no way we could have shared it in person.
Speaker 1:It's too hard sometimes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then you're worried about being judged for sharing it. And then some people aren't in the right state of mind, like when would you share that? That a family get together? Okay, everybody be quiet. I just want to share something. I just want an announcement and maybe we could all like I'm just going to bring this event down.
Speaker 2:As hard as I can, yeah, and because that's what it felt like, Like because we talked about sharing it and one. Then people would come up to us oh I'm so sorry, I didn't know you guys were going through that. Like, how long have you guys been struggling on the question? Start and they're not bad, but then if you're at a family, get together. If you're at my family, you're talking about at least 18 people that potentially like we're going to have questions and stuff, and so I think it was our marriage counselor, the infertility counselor, who encouraged us to do it. She had said like she encouraged us to write it for us and for them.
Speaker 3:Yeah for us.
Speaker 3:And she's like and then, after we wrote it and read it to where, she's like, would you guys want to send that out to people? And we're like, with some tweaks, yeah, and like, so, with her help, we kind of we made it exactly what we wanted to say to people and, yeah, sent it out. And as our family members and friends got the letter, you know, they reached out to us and they're like hey, we got your letter. Like either we didn't know or we didn't realize how, like you know that it was that that you guys were hearing that big of a load, or you know, they were very supportive, like there was so much positivity and love that came from that letter.
Speaker 3:There was zero judgment and it kind of it gave us the ability to free up, like free up ourselves, to be vulnerable to where we were at. And that's when Jordan's brothers actually came to us and they were like hey, we want to do a fundraiser for you guys. And we were like, oh, okay, like that's not really, that's not why we sent out the letter, like it's not cause we need money, like it was just cause. Like we needed you guys to know, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:For our mental health, and so it was like a couple of months where they kept bringing up like, let us do something for you, let us do something for you, and we were just like not now, like we don't really need something right now.
Speaker 2:The next family get together and two of my brothers took me outside and told me they wanted to do the fundraiser.
Speaker 1:So sweet.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that was kind of overwhelming. I remember Jordan like I was like what did your brothers want?
Speaker 2:And I'm gonna hear now the secret very intense conversation, right.
Speaker 3:Cause I didn't notice when he came in it was like all solemn and stuff. But even then it like it was a couple months before. It was a few months before we were finding like, okay, I guess we have a reason that, like you guys want to, because at that point you know, we were still doing some more testing to see if we did need to move on to IVF and Like I went and got tested.
Speaker 2:That's weird.
Speaker 3:Yeah, not at all.
Speaker 2:I say that I have to clarify because the crowd is gonna guess Not weird compared to the Tesla girls go through right Way. Less weird than that, but I was the youngest guy in that office by like 40 years. Gotta love your religious, yeah those guys must get paid a lot to look at old man junk all day.
Speaker 1:That's not on this podcast episode. He's just kind of like sitting off listening. He's over there like laughing because he can.
Speaker 3:Yeah, any guy I know, I tried to re-upload with a guy.
Speaker 1:It's all a day yeah.
Speaker 2:Because I was like this is super awkward. It's all they did is say hold on your pants, yeah, no lead up or anything, and I was like you're gonna take me on a date first. Or he didn't laugh, he just looked at me all serious.
Speaker 1:Made it even more awkward.
Speaker 2:I know, it's really awkward.
Speaker 1:I just am not here.
Speaker 2:He just sat down there quietly work doing his work. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:I thought you were just cool beans, but it's nothing compared to what girls do Every appointment.
Speaker 1:Are we good? I don't even know.
Speaker 2:That was Shelley's phone. Oh. But every appointment for girls is invasive.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It was my only invasive well, one of only two invasive appointments I went to, so I have no room to complain. I'm not complaining, I'm just saying that it made me that really actually opened my eyes to how much the Shelley was going through at every appointment, because that was the first time that, like other than them drawing blood work for testosterone levels and all that stuff. But I remember sitting there being like this is what it's like for Shelley Every appointment and I was like, wow, it's a lot to go through.
Speaker 3:Emotionally and physically.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So we did end up needing to do IVF and we were really, really blessed Because at the time I had found an organization that they had a at the time.
Speaker 3:I think they have a local one now, but they had a virtual infertility group that I could meet up with and it was girls all over the country amazing podcast, sarah's Laughter, and it really did strengthen me and help me. That podcast was like every morning. I turned it on with her. I had already listed that episode or not. You need to have those things. You need to know what fuels you, especially when you get depleted so quickly. Going through infertility, you get so overwhelmed in a matter of seconds. And so I remember being on one of those calls with that group of girls, and one of the girls brought up that she had been accepted into a study and that they were going to pay for her to do her IVF.
Speaker 4:I'm like well, give up the name. Like what study are you?
Speaker 3:a part of friend and it actually ended up that there was myself and then three other girls that were able to make it into that study as well, because she had brought that up and every clinic was a little bit different. That did it. But luckily it happened to be that my clinic the clinic that we had moved to only a few months prior that they were doing that study it was the only clinic in the state of Utah doing that study, and the slot that I took was actually the last slot available for that study and it was a study that had been done around the world already. It was actually I was one of the very last people in the study and it was for FSH, the hormone that you take to stimulate your follicles, follicle stimulation hormone and it's that it was derived from human genome instead of pig genome, which is what they typically use, and so I was like well, I'm OK with that.
Speaker 3:And so they didn't pay. Every clinic did a little bit different, like how they had it worked out with the study. So my clinic didn't pay for all of our IVF, but it paid a big chunk of it, but there was still. We still needed about $4,000, which is a drop in a bucket. For what I know, a lot of people have to fork out for their IVF, but it's still a good amount of money, yeah.
Speaker 3:But, it's still not like. Oh yeah, I just got that in my back pocket one second, especially because just we weren't newlyweds.
Speaker 2:But we had been paying for fertility treatments for a while and when every ultrasound cost $300, $4,000 is a lot of money, because you're already paying for all this other stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, oh yeah. So we were accepted into that study, but then they did the fundraiser for us to help us earn the rest. And I want you to share about how you and your brothers came to the consensus of what you were going to do, because I honestly don't know if I've ever asked you.
Speaker 2:So how we came to the idea of what we were going to do for fundraisers, because one it wanted to be something that we felt like would be fun for a lot of people to do, that a lot of people would enjoy doing, but also wanted it to be something where my family could feel comfortable being involved and helping with it.
Speaker 2:And other men yeah and other guys, because there really is no support, hardly any support for men out there, and we talked about different things and some people that they had talked to had talked about doing a bake sale and I was like, no, I'm not doing. If not, there's anything wrong with doing a bake sale.
Speaker 2:They talked about doing like getting donations for different companies and doing like an auction, which a lot of people do and they have success with.
Speaker 2:But we wanted to have something that was more physically involved, one because I knew that from my own experience, doing things was going to make things a lot easier for people to open up and talk about, especially guys. Guys do better when they're doing things to talk about Especially tough topics. So we settled on doing a skeet shoot or a clay pigeon shoot, and so we had found a club locally that skeet shooting club that had done fundraisers for other people, not for fertility treatments but other organizations. So we reached out and asked them what their thoughts were on it and we scheduled it with them. But one of the reasons we settled on that is because it's something that most guys like to shoot and it's something that it's a controlled enough environment that people could come. We set up an area where the kids could play that was sectioned off from the rest of everything else, so there was no danger of them getting into the area where we were shooting, and we also did a little bit of an auction with it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we had a silent auction with it, we had a big raffle with it, we had concessions Anything we could think of that could bring in revenue. I feel like we had it, which is awesome, and we had a lot of support. We had a lot of local businesses that donated baskets or they donated tickets to things, or we had a lot of people that lived local that made certain goods and things like that, and that was really cool to see people jump in that. Really, some of these people had never even heard our story, they just saw when we announced on social media. They jumped on board and they were like hey, can I get you this basket or can I do this for your silent auction? I love your guys' story.
Speaker 2:And we found out that the reason we ended up actually accepting to do the fundraiser actually came from the fact that we had the realization that we need to do this for us, but also for other people. We were supposed to do the fundraiser in the future to help other people raise money for fertility treatments as well.
Speaker 1:What we last were talking about.
Speaker 3:So everybody was really supportive and came out. I felt like we had a pretty good turnout. We, of course we were hoping for more. Any fundraiser you were like I hope more.
Speaker 2:And it was more like we just wanted people.
Speaker 3:We had entered a point where we were like we want people to be a part of our journey with us, if you would have put us, because from the time that we started going to a clinic to that point it had been about two and a half years, and so we had grown a lot in those two and a half years in accepting other people and being much more open about. We could talk about our journey like it was an open book, whereas even a year prior to that it would be triggering. We still had those days where it's like I'm not up for this.
Speaker 2:But Guys yeah. No.
Speaker 1:Wait for it, wait for it.
Speaker 3:OK, I think they're good.
Speaker 1:Sorry, no, you're fine.
Speaker 2:I was wondering how you made that face all of a sudden.
Speaker 1:I was like oh, mom was getting mad. I will yell at them later. We told you.
Speaker 3:It did seem like a long time because we had to pause, but I forgot. We were just at a much more open part of our journey by then and we wanted people into our story. We wanted to share it because we want. At that point we started finding people too that were looking for that community. They were looking for somebody else that could relate with them, and we were ready to be that person for them. We get it.
Speaker 3:We know we're OK with talking to you about this. We're OK with being vulnerable with you, even if you're not ready to share your story with us. And we very much started it. Almost it became healing to like answer people's questions. It became healing to share our story even when people were not ready for it, like we'd be out in public and people would be like oh do you have any kids?
Speaker 3:And we'd be like, well, actually, and we would just, you know, start rattling off our story and that became healing and some people responded great to that and they're like oh like, and it gave them permission to share their stories a lot of time. Or people were like good for you, and then you know that was the end of that, but it was. It became just such like an accepted part of us.
Speaker 2:And I think a big part of that's because of one the counseling helped a lot with that.
Speaker 2:Having somebody express that like it's OK to, you need to talk about it. Yeah, you need to find a safe place to talk about it. And then we became more comfortable talking about it and we've got a lot better at finding funny. We dealt with it with humor a lot when we would talk to people. That was triggering or we could, we were worried about it being triggering. Or we would have funny things that we would say to people, like when they were people at Ascos In the beginning of our journey, like when people would ask us like when are you guys going to have kids, we'd say things like, well, we've been trying for a while. I mean, we've been trying in the living room, we've been trying in the kitchen, we've been trying. I mean, do you know what position you and your wife use when she goes to the bathroom? Like, share with us. And people would get really awkward because when they'd say something was triggering, it was that was helpful to us.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because it relieved it with humor.
Speaker 1:We would just like joke with people.
Speaker 3:Yes, some people would laugh about it.
Speaker 2:Some people would get awkward. Most of the time people laughed, and then they realized they'd overstepped their bounds, and then we were fine with it. In the beginning, though, we would just get quite and awkward and offended.
Speaker 3:Which I felt like weighed us down even more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but not that we were in a position to. Just you can't just choose, necessarily not to be offended.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you can't just like turn it off.
Speaker 2:I mean you can choose, but it's hard. It takes a lot of emotional intelligence to decide that and it did.
Speaker 3:It took a lot of counseling and, like talking to our counselor about the fact that, like I feel this way when I'm asked this or I'm put in these kind of positions or situations. And it did take some strategizing of like, ok, well, if somebody asked me this, what can I say? And it took thinking through those things instead of just being like every time somebody does this, I'm going to be triggered and I'm just going to, you know, like because we didn't want to live our life that way.
Speaker 3:We didn't want to live in a way that like our journey, like it was our life, like it is our life, like we knew there was no escaping it. Like it's not like somebody could tell us tomorrow that we were pregnant, and even if we were pregnant, we had all that fear that was going to continue to follow us Because of you know what if we lose that baby. Even then, it's like there wasn't a time that we felt like we could relax into it.
Speaker 2:The treatments were less scary than finding out we were pregnant.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not crazy yeah.
Speaker 2:Because it was easier to know that there's no loss than to deal with the potential of loss that comes with. I mean it's crazy. That sounds like that's what we prayed for for years. I mean we were trying for five years before we had our first care yeah. And those five years were full of a lot of heartache and tears and wanting to move, to get away from memories of losing kids and the house we lived in.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, or just being like let's leave. There were a lot of days where we would just be like let's leave, like let's just let's run away. We would ask each other it was probably at least once a month, obviously you know, could you go? Through that monthly like roller coaster, but you're just like let's run away.
Speaker 2:Where should we run away to?
Speaker 3:And you know, sometimes maybe we would joke about it, sometimes we would actually actually do it, ok, like. Sometimes we would actually like be like, ok, like we're going to go do X, y, z, or we're going to go to this place for the weekend, or like we had to find things that we're going to rejuvenate us. And so you just, we did, we did joke a lot. Yeah, we found, we, we chose and got to a place where we chose to find humor in our journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we chose not.
Speaker 3:we refused to be a victim as we went through it because Because, we knew it would be so much sweeter as a victor if we hadn't played victim the entire time. That's a really good point.
Speaker 2:Like because I think that it was really easy, speaking from our thinking back, from where we were to choose to be a victim, but then Not choosing to be a victim, choosing not choosing to be positive about it and to try and find a positive way to deal with it. Yeah, I mean because we would give ourselves permission, when we felt bad, to spend a little bit of time and feel bad because you have to process what we had to process Everybody's different but we were going through it Then being all right, we've had our time. It's time to move on, because we didn't want to look back and have our story that we told our kids of how we got them to be, that we were sad for the whole time, and there was a lot of yes, there was a lot of heartache I'm not not sugarcoating it like we were sad a lot and there was a lot of times where we're a lot of too shit.
Speaker 3:A lot of. Is it worth it? Yeah, tears in the bathroom.
Speaker 2:I know some people who go through fertility treatments choose to stop and to just adopt or not have kids at all. But choosing to be, to live and choosing to be happy and moving on with our life, because we had a lot of life to live and we wanted to be able to share a lot of positive, fun things that we went through. That's why we would, every Mother's Day and Father's Day, we would go to go somewhere fun and do something fun To help cope with those triggering events and giving ourselves permission not to go to events that we're triggering. But as we went through all this and we did the fundraiser, I think one of the most interesting things was Seeing how many guys came out and that have had been going through fertility treatments or their wives have had had miscarriages, and Hearing guys talk about how they wish there was more like support, because in the fertility treatment process it's very sterile. They like to remove the emotion from things like when the nurse, the connection the connection.
Speaker 2:It can make it easier.
Speaker 3:Between a couple yeah.
Speaker 2:But, like as a guy, you're put in the corner. We need you once a month to give you a donation and other than that you sit in the corner and that's the only involvement you have for the most part. And your wife goes through all of this pricking yourself with needles, taking shots, going through the hormone roller coaster of up and down, filling all the physical things that come with the treatments, and being powerless and that's hard as a husband to watch your wife go through, because you would rather experience it yourself than watch somebody else go through it. And so sitting there, feeling hopeless was hard to do. And so talking to other people about how that, making it, normalizing the struggle, that like they're not crazy but like it's normal to feel that way, and really all these are things that you can do. We're asking other guys who've been through it what did you do to help your wife? Or to help you cope with the feelings of inadequacy and not being good enough? Because if, maybe, if you were better, you wouldn't be going through it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yikes Going through that struggle.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's just it. We were talking about it earlier today. We're like it just seems so long ago, but it felt like the ever, like the never ending night when you're going through it. Yeah and yeah, talk about this kind of the emotions are still there.
Speaker 1:They're not going away.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, they're not going to go away, but it's such, I like I feel like over and over again, we, we just took it day by day or hour by hour, like I didn't, we didn't have to take our whole journey one day at a time. Right, like a whole, like all at once, not one, like we could take it a day at a time, we could take it an hour at a time, and we gave ourselves to permission to do that. And I think you know especially when Jordan sharing the fact that we, you know, we'd give ourselves time to process something and then choose to pick ourselves back up and keep going that those were the times that we were like, ok, well, we just need to make it through today, you know, we just need to make it through the next hour. And for me, like I handle drugs just fine, like if anything that sounded really bad, what kind of drugs? Yeah, what kind of drugs?
Speaker 3:right, but like for me, like I felt more normal I know some people that's not the case, but but like for me, I, I, I felt good, I felt normal and I didn't have huge swings or any of those things, and so it was more just like yeah, you did.
Speaker 2:Oh, I did.
Speaker 3:You always told me I didn't, so let's let's talk about this.
Speaker 2:Tell somebody that's going through that. They're having huge mood swings.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know what's the benefit.
Speaker 2:Is that going to do?
Speaker 1:anybody that's true.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Well, I'm glad this has now come out and you have told the truth. It's a few years later. It's OK. Yeah, we're good now. I've always told people oh, I was so good on drugs, but evidently now I know that I was not.
Speaker 1:The important thing is that you felt like you were going on drugs and that you didn't feel like you were going crazy.
Speaker 3:Yes, I get, we can look at it that way. Yes, but we did, we did. Just we had to give ourselves permission and we tried to also focus on different things that would help us out, like we would pre plan things in our schedule that we knew aligned with what was going on in our cycle. You know, we knew that, that two week wait, you know, you know, the day that your two week wait is up and you're going to find out, is my period going to start or am I going to? You know, am I going to want to lay on the bathroom floor and cry? And so we would have things planned around that already, where it would be things that we look forward to doing, or or it would be even be like during our two week wait or leading up to. We plan things like week by week, sometimes day by day, just to keep us moving for a while, or because we didn't want to waste those years of our life just like waiting for things to happen. Yeah, and it just it seemed like that's the most fair thing we could do for ourselves and for our kids. Yeah, because, like Jordan said, we didn't want to, we didn't want to explain to him like hey, like we lost out on so much life because we were so busy being sad and not that we didn't give ourselves permission to be sad or angry or whatever emotion came up, but we just didn't want to waste it.
Speaker 3:You know, we, and one thing I told myself almost on a daily basis was I'm not infertile. I'm going through infertility, but I'm not infertile. Like nobody has told me. No, absolutely not you will, there's no chance. They did tell us we had a 2% chance, but they didn't say no chance. They said we had 2% and we were, we were hanging on to that 2%. That we had 2% chance without doing IVF is what they told us of keeping of, of getting pregnant and keeping the pregnancy. We had a 2% chance, but then again we were healthy and we were textbooks, so it all just didn't make sense, right? And so I just had to remind myself of that a lot, that I wasn't.
Speaker 3:I wasn't infertile, like infertility wasn't me. Um, that it was just something that we were walking through and it was a season and I didn't know when the season was going to end and I couldn't wait for it to end, but it wouldn't. It wouldn't always be there. And so we went through IVF in the end of end of summer that year and I was a bit overstimulated by the drugs. I did really, really good and then, like the last day, I suddenly just like went right over the top, you know, and so I got overstimmed and but we were able to retrieve. What was it? 21?.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 21.
Speaker 3:Yeah, 21. That's what they retrieved and 11 of those blasted, and so we ended up doing a freeze on them and it was in September that I had my retrieval and then it was in November that I had my first transfer, that I everything that lined up. You know how this. So everything lined up and I had my first transfer and that did not work out. That first transfer did not work out and we were not there, we were banking up. But you know, that first transfer you're like okay, we got this new lag.
Speaker 3:We got this yeah yeah, and that was not the case. Nothing, nothing came back good on that, and so we were really disappointed, for obvious reasons, right, yeah, we were really disappointed, and of course, it's gonna happen right before the holidays like the most triggering time of year to be going through infertility.
Speaker 3:I feel like is the holidays right? That's like a proven like thing, yes, very proven. And we were like screw it, screw it off. And because our next, if we could transfer again, our next transfer would have landed on that two-week time period where most clinics close at the end of the year to clean where they do like they're big, deep cleaning for those two years, and they close two years, two weeks, and close down. And so they're like, okay, well, do you want to go on birth control? And then we can hit you like the very first couple of days of the year and I was like you know, no, no, birth control just was not. It's not for me. It turns me into a raging lunatic like crazy. Like he says I did pretty good on drugs, like I probably was like way awesome on drugs compared to way the way I am on birth control but she was on birth control.
Speaker 2:I came in the living room on day at our we needed lived in our apartment years ago and she was the middle of the night, like two o'clock in the morning, crying on the living room for like. I asked her what's wrong.
Speaker 3:She's like I have no idea and it was that point that was like our first year of marriage is that point. On that, we're like we don't need birth control, we'll figure out something else, and none of that. Like, thinking about it now, it's like, oh, we just didn't get pregnant because we didn't want to, you know. But then like, anyway, yeah, so live and learn, reflect, you know. So anyway, we were like, screw it, we're we're big Harry Potter fans. I'm wearing my Harry Potter shirt today, but we're big Harry Potter fans, we love Harry Potter, and we're like, screw it, we're going to hair, we're gonna go to Hogwarts for Christmas and so magical. I know right.
Speaker 3:So we, because we knew if we stayed home, like we love our families, they were very supportive. But we knew like Christmas is a big deal in both of our families and we knew if we stayed home, there was no way we were gonna, we were gonna be able to get away with not having some kind of appearance at Christmas. And so we knew either somebody you would come to our house or like we couldn't just be like we're just gonna stay home, because we just knew that the only way to escape was to escape and everybody knew we were doing the transfers, so everybody wanted to know how it went.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I wanted to talk about how things are going mm-hmm, yeah, and we knew we wouldn't be able to see people at Christmas without them wanting to know and be caught up. And yeah, we just weren't there for that. So we booked a trip and I, we chose to go down to LA and we went to Universal and spent our time down down there, and it was the morning that we woke up for our trip. I took a test, a pregnancy. I hate taking pregnancy, pregnancy tests, for obviously obvious reasons, but this is only like probably the second pregnancy test I had ever taken, because I would I always run blood runs in the clinic yeah, right, because I always refused to take like a home p-test yeah, I just
Speaker 3:couldn't, yeah. But I woke up that morning because I was like Kate, I need to mentally prepare myself for the fact that I won't be able to get my drugs and we won't be able to do another cycle until February, like I'll miss, because I would have needed to go pick up my drugs and then head to the airport is what I would have needed to do, and my period wasn't starting, yeah. And so it was like, well, I'm just I need to take this test so I can mentally prepare myself for the fact that my period is gonna start on this trip. Like that's just what I need to do for myself. And so it was like four o'clock in the morning and I wake up and I take that test and and it came back positive and I was like what? But like we spent all this money, we did all these things, like what? Like how was this? It was an off month, like I did, I didn't have a transfer. And so I wake Jordan up and I'm like Jordan, it's positive.
Speaker 3:He's like what like, and I'm like it's positive. And he's like like I'm like the pregnancy test is positive and he's like oh, I want to clarify.
Speaker 2:She came over to the edge of the bed and put it on my face and I'm like how about you?
Speaker 3:get up, let's pack, like, and we literally did not talk about it the entire trip.
Speaker 3:We did not say a thing about it the entire trip. Because we're like this is in real. Like we called our clinic. That like, once we had flown in, we, once we landed, we called the clinic. We're like, hey, like we're gonna need to come and get a blood test. We have positive tests, but we're out of town, so like when we get back, we're gonna need to get a blood test. But we didn't talk about it.
Speaker 3:The rest of the trip we were in complete denial, like nope, I'm not pregnant. Like, and if I am pregnant, like okay, now let's worry about losing this baby. And we're like we're just not gonna talk about it, we're gonna act like it. Like right, nope, we're just gonna enjoy this trip. We're gonna enjoy our Christmas, we are going to enjoy hogsmeade, we're gonna drink it up with our butter beer and I'm gonna buy myself a wand. Like, yeah, we were and we did. We really enjoyed ourselves, we enjoyed our time together. We enjoyed, we enjoyed that trip so much.
Speaker 3:And we came back and I remember driving from the airport to the fertility clinic and just praying that if I was pregnant if I was indeed pregnant that like just let this baby stick, because it also brought in that fear of like okay, like I felt like with IVF at least I had some control. Right with IVF, you like time it out. It happens like you have, like you're being monitored like every second of every day. Yeah, for those first nine weeks and I felt like I was back into that like no control zone. Not that you have control, like that fake control zone you know yeah that you create for yourself with infertility.
Speaker 3:And I was just praying, praying that if it was that like because I didn't have control, didn't feel like I had the control because I it didn't happen because of a transfer that I would still have some comfort and I'd be able to take it day by day, and we went in and I it was positive. And we went in the next day and my numbers kept going up and kept going up, and kept going up and that little guy kept. We didn't know it was a guy at the time, but you know he kept growing and I remember hitting our nine week and we graduated and we're like, okay, like what do we know?
Speaker 3:like we had we have an awesome OB and he continued to see me weekly. He would run my blood for me because he knew I was just there was no way that I was gonna survive, and so he would run my blood for me weekly. I think I had him run it weekly until I was at like 16 weeks, just because I was so antsy. And to a week 10 I had a hemorrhage and so I was like here we go, like this is just how it goes, because I couldn't control it yeah you know I can't control this.
Speaker 3:I couldn't control it because it's not for my VF and like all of these things. So then I'm like, all right, here we go, baby number three. And that hemorrhage luckily it was it was below the baby, so we were okay and I was like, okay, we're good. And then a week and a half later I had another hemorrhage oh my gosh, and that one was closer to him and it was bigger, but it bled out and we were just fine and just but two again.
Speaker 3:It was just like a whole mother just having to call Jordan and be like I'm bleeding, you know, and just reliving, reliving those losses, like with every single time you go to the bathroom, like it's so hard, it's so hard and and knowing that, I think I think the hardest thing for me going through, you know, the loss of our babies, was the fact like, and even now, like, even sometimes, you know, now with our little babies, as I'm sitting there, I'm like I missed out on this, like I have a baby that I I didn't. I don't get a jump on the tramp with you, you know, like, even though I have the blessing of, you know, our babies that are here now, like you still have that gut feeling, like it doesn't leave you yeah and I know Jordan very much fills that too as a dad, like the what ifs of loss and that's totally normal, but it's, it's, it runs deep, it does run deep.
Speaker 3:And or when you see or know people that you knew when you were going through that that had like a kid around the same time, you're just like whoa, I would have an eight year old like you know, things like that, yeah. And so you know, remy stuck ended up having a little, a little guy and he's like the energy of everything.
Speaker 2:He is the busiest guy he is hilarious but, even after we found out that the pregnancy was viable, you still continue to go to. You switch from an infertility support group to a pale group.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I did, I did, I switched over from that, that group that I was with, with Sarah's laughter.
Speaker 3:They have a pregnancy after infertility and lost group that sounds and so yeah, and so through my pregnancy, you know, because I had graduated from, like, the infertility group. So through my pregnancy I had that group and that was such a huge help to have that community of women that they were in the same spot, they were pregnant, but you know they had had loss or they had been going through infertility, or you know a lot of them like they had had, you know, about half of them had had actually had their babies but still needed the support of just knowing that, like you know, it is hard being a mom after you've gone through infertility, because you and I I remember going to my counselor while I was pregnant and after we had him and just being like I shouldn't feel ungrateful, like I shouldn't, you know, fill XYZ or whatever it is, because I, I went through all of this, like I, I prayed for this. You know, in a way like, and so then coping, coping with all of those emotions can be a lot because you just you expect to just like well, I wanted this and I worked so hard for this. They're like why can't I just be the perfect little like, why can't things be picturesque or whatever it is? And I did, I said with both. Well, every single pregnancy I had my losses and all.
Speaker 3:I had postpartum depression and I remember my very first loss. I had postpartum depression and thank heavens for Jordan and Jordan had experienced some things with with his mom and had experience of depression with his mother, and he knew what to do. He knew what the signs were and he literally had to take me to. I was. I was like I don't have a, I don't have a baby to have depression, to have depression over with my first miscarriage. And he, literally he had to. He had to make my doctor's appointment for me. And then I remember, the morning up he was like so you're going to your doctor's appointment today, right, and he was. And I was like no, now, unless you come and pick me up. And so I made him. Okay, at the time he worked at the hospital I needed to go to. He had to leave the hospital, come and pick me up from work and drive me back to where it was, and then drive me back to work afterwards.
Speaker 3:And so I would, you know, because he just he knew I needed the help and he was there for me and and stood up for me. And the same thing with my second I ended up getting it. And with Remy I got I had postpartum depression and but also mixed with all of those emotions of you know, I prayed for this hard and why isn't it easier, or whatever it was that day for me and and to having like having postpartum anxiety. Didn't even know that was a thing, but like having the anxiety of like something you wanted so bad and being so like, so afraid that it was gonna be taken from you at the same time and you know it wasn't like Like we all have seasons, everything's a season in our life and some things tie into one another and some things don't. Yeah, some things are just there to teach you a singular thing and then some things just continue to snowball, and I guess that's just how we find ourselves, but it seems so daunting at times.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's interesting because it was during that time that I found the support group for men. That was virtual, but it was all the way on the East Coast, so it was over Zoom, yeah, and it was during. No, it wasn't.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, it was during COVID.
Speaker 2:It was during the pandemic.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Because, we hid that we were even pregnant because we found out we were pregnant. And then it was like a month later everybody like before I was even showing or anything everybody went into quarantine and so nobody knew. And we were like this is a gift from God. Like nobody can ask us questions, like we don't have to see people.
Speaker 2:We didn't get excited till 20 weeks.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:For the pregnancy, Because we were constantly. I can't say we. I was constantly nervous. We were constantly anxious, so it was going to not work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's very understandable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then once we got to know the gender and like we got past the 20 week, even though after 10 weeks statistically your chances of miscarriage went on dramatically every week after that Still worrying about that happening. And now looking back, it's interesting because a lot of animosity we've had toward people and feelings of hurt are gone when in the moment it seemed like they were going to last forever.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And life was always going to be like that, yeah, which I mean, even though we were very positive, happy, lucky people, uplifting people but we were, there was this thing that every time you met a young couple that was around your age, worrying about like if they're just going to be, like we're just got, we've been married and every time we've tried, we've got pregnant and it's stuck and our kids never do anything wrong.
Speaker 3:Which we know as parents.
Speaker 2:No, no one is Anyone who says that is a liar. They're wonderful and they're amazing. We do things wrong.
Speaker 3:Let's be honest, just as, like I would like to say, functioning humans. But yeah, we're not. No one's a functioning human, no one's a functioning human.
Speaker 2:But going through the fertility treatments was actually really as weird as it is to say, it was really good for our marriage, Because it forced us to talk about stuff and go through things that a lot of people don't go through and they avoid struggle.
Speaker 3:Or don't go through together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and even though infertility treatments in infertility treatments there's a huge the chances of divorce go up dramatically and that depends on whether or not the couple goes through it together and goes to. And it's not everybody's situation, everybody can go to treatments together. But we were determined not to let it drive a wedge between us. And so everything, we tried to do everything together and lean into each other with a struggle, which is hard sometimes as a guy, because sometimes you just want to fix stuff, yeah, and there's nothing you can fix, it'll make it worse if you try and fix it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we had a code going through everything. We still use it, but it's like take your tool belt off. I don't need to be fixed Like.
Speaker 3:I'm not broken. Take your tool belt off. Yeah, and like that was something Jordan and I had to learn that we needed to take, like, take our tool, our tool belts off and just be there for each other. And not try to fix the situation because we couldn't. It was unfixable Like we could do what we could do, but then at the end of the day, you can't do anything else and you just need to be there for each other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and for me being comfortable with confronting my own emotions, which is really hard as a guy to do, but listening to her sorry reading, both counseling and the reading the book by oh the Wild at Heart. No, also a good book Also a good book. But not very well, daring Greatly.
Speaker 3:Oh yes, Daring Greatly. Brayne Brown, Brayne Brown.
Speaker 2:She talks about vulnerability and, yeah, there's a quote in there where she talks about how only when you learn to embrace your own darkness can you become comfortable with other people in their darkness. Yeah, which, when you're dealing with your spouses and emotions, they're tied to you and so you have to become comfortable with that, which is really hard. Mm-hmm. Especially since I'm someone that I'm either happy or ugly cry. There's like One to a hundred.
Speaker 3:There's no, nothing, he is.
Speaker 2:There's no in between and it sucks. I don't like doing emotions. And being vulnerable is hard and it sucks and it's not fun.
Speaker 3:It's scary yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, plenty of vulnerability hangovers throughout this whole process. If you've read Brayne Brown's books like, yes, lots of vulnerability hangovers on both parts.
Speaker 2:But the whole journey looking back, even though it was really hard, the first thing is that we learned throughout it and it helped us in some ways.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I say all the time. I probably said this to you, mariah, but like I would not like, wish infertility on my worst enemy. But I wouldn't take it out of my story for anything.
Speaker 1:I think I'm finally to the point now, just with, like, our story, that I'm like, okay, you know, like now that we're here where we are, I don't think even I and we're not even when we're recording this, we're not even to our transfer yet Like, we're a week away from our transfer and up to this point, I mean the last four years, like I wouldn't redo it and I wouldn't like wish that it wasn't. I mean, I know you're trying to stay, yeah. I can echo that, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:And I didn't feel like I would ever feel that way. Yeah, but even now, you know, we they they kind of giving some more context, like over the last couple of years, like we had Remy in 2020 and they told we asked like, okay, well, what do we need to do now? And they're like, well, we give you 18 months and you can see how things work out. And if you aren't pregnant by then, naturally then we'll start testing again. And it was we at a year. We're like, well, what do we have to lose? Like we've already. We're already five years into this. We have 10 babies in the freezer. That sounds awesome.
Speaker 1:I'm kind of loving it. Okay, we have a temp last okay.
Speaker 2:Not full on babies guys, everybody understands what we're saying on this podcast.
Speaker 3:Thankfully, thank heaven. But you know we're like, what do we have to lose? You know we've got what we need on the back end. But you know, let's just see. And we got pregnant with our little girl at 16 months and same thing we had hemorrhages with her and luckily she stuck and we kept her and she's 10 months now and she's super fun and smiley. But you know we don't know what the next step is. We don't know how anything else looks.
Speaker 3:And just remembering that, like your story is not defined by what you're going through. It's defined by how you choose to react to it. And we had to choose a lot and still, on a daily basis, just living life, we have to choose the way we want to react to have a certain outcome in our life, because you will speak what you want into your life. And I think we very directly learned a lot about ourselves. And learned that about ourselves as we were going through a journey, because I would not be who I am, our relationship would not be what it is. You know the kind of parents we are now, the kind of friends we are now.
Speaker 3:There's so many things about myself that I would not be without having experienced that five-year winter in winter, my life that's literally what it felt like, even though I talk about these sun shines and how I tried to be positive. It was a winter season for us and I'm still brought back to those days With my little girl. I had really severe depression and anxiety and had to really work through that, like counseling and medication and things like that, and it took me right back to that winter and I was like I'm done with this winter. Why are you taking me back to it? But same thing we learn lessons and we walk paths when we're supposed to in our life and we don't have control of that. Sometimes we do, most of the time we don't right, but you don't take them back. It's crazy that some of the things that we pray for end up being the hardest things that we do, but they're the most rewarding at the same time.
Speaker 2:And I hope that anybody who hears this doesn't. It's. One of the most painful things is to compare your story to somebody else's and when you're going through it, the only helpful thing anybody can say is I'm sorry, that sucks.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And because anything else is feels like you're being patronized.
Speaker 3:A downplay, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so like I hope that it brings some comfort to people as they go through their own stories Because, although we're in a different stage now, like we can relate to what people are going through and sorry for the struggles you may be going through.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and too, we had to learn on our journey. I feel like a lot like I had to learn. That comparison was my thief of joy Because I would meet people that are like, oh yeah, we went through infertility for two months.
Speaker 2:Like those people are like it's not infertility. No, it's infertility. You just didn't lie to them when you're having sex, so you're on your side of it.
Speaker 3:You know, or you have the comparison of somebody that is, you know, on their 15th year and their second surrogate, like like there's, that sucks.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, man.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like you just have to, you just can't allow comparison to be that thief of your joy. Really, it's not, it's not worth it. Yeah, and so, if anything just anybody who's listening I hope that you see and know that, like you are worthy, you are enough. And baby in hands or baby in womb or not, or you have answers and you know what your path looks like, or you don't have answers. You know we were.
Speaker 3:We had unexplained infertility. We didn't have answers. You're still enough. You're more than enough. Like there's no one thing in your life that could change how worthy you are to be the best and greatest person and the most impactful person on this planet. Like, no one thing will change all of that. And that includes whether or not you know there's another line on your test, or whether or not your score goes up or down, or how many eggs like. Just love yourself. I think if I had to pass that on, just love yourself for where you're at and it will give you a larger capacity to love everybody else for where they're at, because I really do believe everybody is doing the best that they can with what they have. So I just hopeif I could go back and tell myself that and truly believe it, like truly get myself to believe that sooner in my journey. That would make all the difference.
Speaker 1:So yeah, that was so perfectly. Said Shelley. Oh, it was so perfectly said Thanks. Do you guys have? Maybe we can take turns if you guys both have like one piece of advice that you would maybe give. I usually have people, whenever I ask this question, like it's very geared to like pieces of advice for somebody going through this. But since you guys are, here's a couple specifically for couples going through this, so he wants to go first.
Speaker 3:I'll let Jordan go, jordan's feeling it. I can see it it's on the tippeth's tongue.
Speaker 2:It would be to bite the bullet and go to counseling and stop trying to fix it and be there for each other.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because I know that, as guys, we want to fix it, to make it feel like we're making a difference, because we have no control over the situation. But it just makes the situation harder. When you try and have some sort of control control I can talk Then, yeah, just to go through it together. Stop trying to fix it and find somebody who is a specifically an infertility counselor, even if they're virtual and not in person, just insurances will pay for it. Find the right counselor.
Speaker 3:We went through a handful of counselors before we found who we worked with and it's all the difference.
Speaker 2:If they don't have experience in counseling people that are going through infertility treatments not infertility, but infertility treatments then their advice can be more hurtful than helpful. Yeah, so finding somebody who has experience and talking to people who are going through fertility treatments, and even if your insurance won't pay for it, it's worth Most of them will do a graduated pay charge scale dependent on your income.
Speaker 1:Yeah or something, they'll work it out.
Speaker 2:Even if it costs you $60 a visit, I think is what it cost us. Yeah, it was worth it to pay every week and go. What we know is on top of our fertility treatments.
Speaker 1:I feel like when you're paying thousands of dollars, though, like $65.
Speaker 2:Six plus eight bucks. Six plus eight bucks, I know right.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's just kind of money but it's like if you can get some help throughout the whole process and be able to be your best self and be able to function the most.
Speaker 3:so worth it and to just know you have that, you have somebody in your corner Like granted, yes, we had a lot of people in our corner, but one person in our corner that we felt could actually like point us in a direction and like see what we couldn't see in our blind spots emotionally, and actually address those with us. We had given them permission to address them with us. So yeah.
Speaker 3:My advice I guess my advice is just remember you're not broken. You're not broken, you are whole and that's what makes you capable of things you don't think you're capable of. You do have the capacity. You have more capacity than you think you do, and sometimes that capacity is pretty thin, but you do have it. You can do it Like you can make it to that you know the end of that next two week wait. Like you can make it to that next transfer date.
Speaker 3:Or you can make it to and make it through you know that next family dinner, if that's where you're at, you know and I also give you permission to say no. So it's okay to say no, so that you can say yes, and not in like a mopey way, but in an empowering way, Like you have to learn that that you are capable of having that capacity because you're not broken. You're more than you think you are and I think it will surprise you even when you wake up tomorrow. You have the capacity to make it till tomorrow. So just bank on the fact that you are not infertility. You're going through it, but it is not you.
Speaker 1:So, that would be my advice, I guess so do you guys have anything else that you feel like you need to add before I thank you for being here.
Speaker 3:I think it's been perfect. I'm like I can't think of anything else. Okay. Okay, I need to add Jordan and Shelley.
Speaker 1:you guys are amazing. Seriously, thank you so much for being with me today.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having us. This has been so much fun Good.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you guys are wonderful people and I love your story and I love how just open and willing you guys are to share. It's gonna be hard to do, it can. It can. Thank you, I'm so positive, like somebody's gonna be able to listen to this and be like, oh, that's a good thing, oh, that's good piece of advice. Oh, I love that too. Oh, I can take that in my life too. So, seriously, thank you so much, you guys. I really appreciate you. Thank you for having us, thank you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we hope that this helps somebody or at least give somebody someone to laugh at.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we love that too. Thanks so much for being here guys, we'll see you next week. Bye.