My Journey with Infertility.

I’ve been pretty elusive about my ‘health’ the last two years, and although I know those that are close to me know what’s been going on… I think it’s time for me to share this.

Me, like MANY women out there, have been struggling with fertility for the last two years.

 At the end of a ten-month tour in 2017, after traveling across the country and feeling like I had finally created a business that was sustaining me, and after building a decent podcast following; I felt like I was ready to start ‘trying’ to have a family.

 Torry and I had been together at that point for 14 years and thought that now was as good a time as any. Both his sibs had already created their little minions and we’d been discussing the idea of creating a family - something that I had been wanting since our first date. I knew Torry would be the man I was going to marry the moment I met him back in 2003, when I was 20. It took over a decade for us to even have ‘THAT’ conversation, so I figured, with the kid thing, it was due time for us to talk about it.

In all honesty, I was so focused on my career and planning that when we decided we should try, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t planning any events, retreats, or workshops leading up to it. I knew t I wouldn’t want to be traveling to Bali or Iceland when I was in my third trimester. It actually didn’t take us very long and  by May 2018, we were pregnant. I was excited AF, sending pictures to my bestie, and driving up to Santa Barbara for a little getaway to celebrate. I knew this was a bit premature, but I am the ever-fan of manifestation and “acting as if’’ and I felt I needed to automatically begin buying maternity clothes.

I figured, by January 2019 that I would be celebrating my baby and that everyone would rejoice, and that I would be in a really great place to plan my next work events. I went to the doctor for my six week appointment and she informed me that I was no longer pregnant.

 This was my first encounter with this type of loss. I was sad but hopeful. I remember we shrugged it off  and just said, “well, we can try again in a few months.” It’s the craziest thing to try and plan trying to conceive when I travel for work. Buying ovulation kits, and pregnancy tests can be such a huge expense. We made it work in the following months as much as we could and by November 2018, I was pregnant again. This time I was a little less excited as I still felt the trauma from before.  Four weeks in though, I started to get excited. Once again I began downloading all the pregnancy apps and baby names and planning for what type of star wars room we were going to create. Then, right before Christmas, I got my period.

Again, I was struck with sadness, but I didn’t want anyone to know how upset I actually was. I decided it was time to see a doctor who could tell me why this kept happening. I wanted to wait until the beginning of the year so that again, I could start planning what would be the next nine months of my life. January 2019 came with no baby and no pregnancy. I was met by an intuitive sense that pregnancy was going to be a problem for me. For Chinese New Year, at the behest of my older sister who is a practicing Buddhist, I went to the Buddhist Temple in Portland to get a blessing from the monk. It apparently was “my year,” the year of the Pig and she suggested I ask for a special prayer.  I was like, “what can it hurt?”

 I’d never felt hopeless at this point, as I figured we still had so much to discover. I made an appointment with my OBGYN who ran some tests. I explained what was going on and right away she began to lecture me about how women shouldn’t wait this long to have kids because of these types of problems. I sent her a mental middle finger, got dressed and eagerly awaited my results.

 By the next day, she called to tell me that I had a diminished egg reserve and that I would have a difficult time conceiving. I don’t ever take well to people telling me anything is going to be “difficult.”  In fact I almost take it on as a personal challenge to prove them wrong. Perhaps it was the way I was raised but I never liked hearing people tell me I “couldn’t” do something.

 I had zero clue what any of the other tests meant, but she basically told me to go see a fertility doctor who would be better suited to help me. The following week, I began my search by asking close friends and to my surprise, I had several options. I began to get a little anxiety listening to different experience. Someone always had a friend who had gone through something similar and boom! They were pregnant. Or I would get the “we tried a long time too! it was a whole three months before we got pregnant”. I was starting to feel a little less enthusiastic about the whole thing and giving serious thought to  what I was willing and not willing to put my body through.

 I still felt that I had options, that I would maybe have to go the IVF route as so many of my girlfriends AND guyfriends suggested. I found an incredible doctor at USC that got right back to me, I explained what was happening and I made an appointment to come in and get some bloodwork done. I didn’t necessarily want to start my year getting poked and prodded, but I knew that I would feel better once I knew what was going on. We also began testing for Torr, to make sure it wasn’t anything on his end. A dear friend going through the same process suggested I go to acupuncture, something I loved doing in general.I found an incredible Chinese Medicine doctor who specialized in women and fertility and began my weekly sessions.

 We did all the standard blood screening, genetic testing, and carrier screening and everything came back normal. I went to Portland to begin writing my book proposal and figured I would stay until I got my period, then come back to LA. I still hadn’t gotten my period by the first week of February, which was odd, but not too odd considering that the previous year, my system felt thrown off. I was experiencing severe hot flashes, which I thought were so strange, and I started to google as one typically does to self-diagnose (I’m gonna tell you to not do that, but I’m sure you still will. Just remember that it’s not always accurate).

As my test results came  in, my fertility doctor began telling me my options. I had a diminished ovarian reserve, and low ovarian function. Getting pregnant wasn’t the problem - staying pregnant was.

I started to go over the options with Torr and the more we talked about it, the sicker I felt. I felt like  my body was somehow broken, or that I had done something wrong along the way. I did my best to stay positive, and in fact, I began keeping a journal to workout any feelings I was having. I knew for a fact that I wanted to carry my own child, that I wanted it to be from my body. I also come from an industry that’s all about manifesting and being positive and hopeful, and that’s still the frequency I was vibrating on.  I figured I would just take my time and weigh my options.

 By March, I still hadn’t had my period and I was desperate to just clear my body. I had planned a Panchakarma with my three amazing girlfriends (Sahara, Alyson and Tara) and I was really looking forward to it. My busy time was approaching with teaching, retreats, festivals etc. and I really wanted to just get my body and hormones back on track. I was also starting to feel less hopeful by this time, but for me, if I know anything about getting over grief or sadness, the key is to stay busy, which I was really good at.

 At the end of our Bali detox, I had to fly back to LA and Torr was driving me straight to San Diego to teach at the Wanderlust 108. It was a quick turnaround, and part of me was starting to feel like I needed to give my body a break, but I couldn’t… because that wasn’t the plan. Meanwhile, I was reading and learning about other cases like mine, that talked about women getting donor eggs, using a surrogate, and some, miraculously, conceiving after years of trying.

Soon after, I lead a retreat in Scotland. I packed my ovulation kits and knew that this was “the time.” It was going to happen here, I had done all the right things, eaten all the right foods, stuck to a good workout regimen and was praying, meditating, journaling, and manifesting like a MOFO. Two weeks after our trip, I was pregnant. AGAIN. It was just in time for Mother’s Day, This time, I kept my news from Torry as I started to feel like most of our conversations were revolving around ‘getting pregnant,’ having kids,’ planning and so on. I started to feel like it was weighing on him. I led a weekend retreat at 1440 that weekend. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law came and she was almost five months pregnant. I wanted to share the news so bad but, I learned from before that I should just wait.

I had some big travel  coming up the following week, I was Keynoting at the Poweful-U Conference in Los Angeles, and heading to Seattle the same day to teach at Wanderlust 108. I was mentally preparing and feeling pretty good about everything at this point. I planned on sharing with Torry when I got back so long as everything was feeling normal. Again, just staying as busy as I could. When I came back home, so did my period. Torry picked me up at the airport, and I just burst into tears. This was the first moment that I felt completely and utterly lost and hopeless. I apologized to him, I apologized to everyone. I didn’t know what I was doing wrong, I wanted to know why my body was rebelling against me. Had I done something? Had I NOT done something? Why was this happening? Why was I being punished? (That last one is def some Catholic guilt).

We got home and Torr consoled me as much as he could, but I realized in that moment, that nothing he was saying to me was bringing me any respite or comfort. He said all the right things, “it’s ok, we can figure this out, we can find another doctor, you need to give your body a break” and so on. They were all things I knew I needed to do but somehow, I didn’t feel like there was light at the end of the tunnel..

The next day I woke up feeling different. I got up washed my face, and did my practice but everything just felt bland and colorless. I didn’t care about looking at my computer, I didn’t want to read, I didn’t want talk to anyone… I just wanted to lay in bed.

I wasn’t sad, I was angry. All that kept echoing in my head was “I have done EVERYTHING RIGHT. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?” I felt like no one on the planet knew/or felt what I was going through. I had no desire to share this with anyone either. I shared with my close girlfriends and there was heartfelt care, and some loving advice.. but to my insides, it moved nothing. I scoured the internet for blogs, or posts, anything that would create a sense of comfort. Every one I would find that had the same experience often ended with “then we finally got pregnant!” Which IS AMAZING! And truly great! But it still left me feeling hollow and broken. It was fortunate that I was due to see my teacher that week. What could make me feel better than to go see my teacher for a yoga training on sleep? The week came and went. The feeling didn’t change, I was going through the motions, and as I did before… I just kept busy.

My fertility doctor had emailed a few times, and I hadn’t responded. I didn’t want to respond. In fact I didn’t want to have anything to do with any of it. I wanted to just hit the STOP button. I understand now, that this was not only hormonal, but chemical as well. I was depresseThere were so many layers to the feelings I was having at this time, Can I be a yoga teacher and feel depressed? Can I coach my clients and be in agonizing emotional pain? Can I still teach people things that I love? The answer is, “yes.”

I felt more called to help others at that time, I made a vow to put “getting pregnant” efforts to rest for awhile. I made a “leave it to God” type of surrender, although it had the taint of an “FU to the universe”, rather than a calm and loving cease of attachment. It didn’t matter. I wanted to give myself a break. I didn’t want to think about this any more. So that’s what I did. I gave myself time to disengage my energy and mindspace to something that, at that point ,I had no control over.

I continued to stay busy, to put my energy into my work and finish up my travel season. I had realized at that point, aside from finishing my book proposal, I had completely neglected every other area of my life.

Torry and I moved into our new home in the Valley, we were distracted by the renovation, and a new puppy. September and October came and went. I occasionally fantasized about what it would be like to have a family and sporadically lamented about waiting so long. I didn’t want to talk about how I felt because I didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for me, or to send me their ‘advice.’ I just wanted time and space to process everything. I had cancelled and re-scheduled several events earlier in the year and I knew I needed to start evaluating how/why I was doing what I was doing.

I would journal and write about how I was feeling. I would meditate for long periods of time, and just continue to do what felt best at that time. My dear friend, Elyse Kopecky, encouraged me to start eating organic grass-fed meat again, after going back to being a Vegan. I began to incorporate her advice a bit more at the beginning of November. Hormonally I was still imbalanced, I still hadn’t had a regular cycle and didn’t feel energetic at all. I started to read more about hormonal imbalances and listening to podcasts and I started to feel better knowing that I wasn’t the only one out there going through this.

By the end of the month, my period came. I was SO HAPPY, feeling at least, this month I could function feeling like everything was normal. Knowing that the year was almost done, I started to feel like things were shifting in a positive way.

I started to feel excited about doing things, and feeling inspired to create a new podcast, one dedicated to strong women as my entire life has been shaped by looking up to them. I was determined to figure out how to move through keeping all of this in and as you can see, I’m still in the process. As I said earlier, the plan was always to share when I was on the ‘other side’ but I may not ever get there, and that’s ‘OK.’ I know that time will continue to change the way I feel. I haven’t given up on being a mother. In fact I believe that I will be a mom one day, it just might not come in the way I planned, and that’s ‘OK’ too.

Someone out there is going through the same struggle. About 10 percent of women (6.1 million) in the United States ages 25-44 have difficulty getting pregnant or staying pregnant, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Two thirds of millennial women worry about their ability to have kids, many of them keep those concerns to themselves.

I know that it’s a process, and it’s important to feel supported. If you're reading this and you’re going through the same thing, I support you. You are not broken, you are supported. I feel you, I’ve felt all the same feelings of loss, grief, hopelessness, and what I found is, just having the knowledge that you aren’t alone creates a deep sense of comfort and connection. Remember to breathe..and know that I’m am right here.