The Fertility Therapist I Needed Didn't Exist, So I Became Her
Ashley’s son Wyatt with the bears that hold the urns of her stillborn babies.
It all started with an accounting degree. Not because I loved numbers, but because it seemed smart, stable. Chase the money, keep your head down, build a life. Truthfully, no career path would've seemed exciting to me. I never had a big career dream, no five-year plan, no vision board. The only title I wanted and craved? Mom. I only ever wanted to be a mom.
I vividly remember my kindergarten graduation, while everyone took turns saying what they wanted to be when they grew up; firefighters, superheroes, dancers, I said “a mom.” At our wedding, we had a guestbook that encouraged our guests to write down where they saw us in five years. Every single one mentioned our future kids. I knew in my heart I was destined to be a mom.
Joyful moments from Ashley's wedding day, the same day her guestbook filled with everyone's guesses about the family she'd build.
And Then Came Infertility
I married young, and we started trying for a baby before our wedding. Everything I learned in school about making babies was suddenly… not true? I spent endless nights googling 'how to get pregnant'. At the young age of 22 I found myself sitting in the fertility doctor’s office after experiencing 3 early miscarriages. Twenty-two. Looking back, I'm shocked. I was just a baby. What an awful realization so young that my body wasn't going to make this process easy. I didn't have a peer group for this, I had friends planning summer vacations, not endless blood draws.
Then it was 5 years post marriage. 5 years of comments about how many children we would have. 5 years of treatments, protocols, appointments squeezed between work. Hope built up and taken apart again, and many more miscarriages. Miscarriages that were never really talked about or acknowledged because they were early, as if that somehow makes it easier.
Then It Got Heavier
Ashley’s first pregnancy announcement.
We finally got pregnant, with TWINS. As each week trickled by we began to hold onto more and more hope. We decorated a nursery, we announced our pregnancy to the world. This was it, we had made it to the other side! We went on a Baby Moon and leaned into this dream that was about to come true. Until it didn't. While overseas we delivered our twins stillborn at 24 weeks. No warning signs, everything was fine until it wasn't.
After some time to heal we got pregnant again, on our own, no intervention (WHAT?!). Again, we made it to a point where we felt we could breathe, we exchanged all our boy items for girl items. Assumed we would delivery early, plans were made. Again. It happened again. I delivered our daughter at 22 weeks.
There's no neat language for what those losses did to me. No professional term to encompass it. I just know that after the second stillbirth something in me broke. I quit my job, I struggled with an eating disorder. I couldn't cope. Who was I without children?
The three teddy bears that hold the urns of of Ashley's stillborn babies.
Becoming an Intended Parent Through Surrogacy
Even though I was broken, my determination to become a mother didn’t waver, and we decided to register with a surrogacy agency as Intended Parents. We budgeted our savings, both committed to working second jobs to be able to afford this path. Again, I look back at Baby Ashley and I see this sad, lost girl, facing this grief and trauma essentially alone. I didn't know anyone in this space, I didn't even know anyone who had dipped their toes in the world of infertility.
A Different Pregnancy, A Different Kind of Fear
During our time as Intended Parents searching for a surrogate, by some grace, I found myself pregnant again. This time was a completely different experience. I did not connect with this pregnancy. I felt no hope or excitement, just fear. I remember my MFM (or perinatologist, an obstetrician-gynecologist with extra training to handle high-risk pregnancies) telling me that she couldn't promise we would make it, but that we would do absolutely everything possible. It's a memory that I hold close to my heart, it's a weird mix of grief and shame. I remember every tearful breakdown. I remember BEGGING the NICU team to deliver my son at 28 weeks as he would surely be safer on the outside than he would inside of me. Thankfully, Wyatt entered this world at 38 weeks, alive.
I remember begging the NICU team to deliver my son at 28 weeks as he would surely be safer on the outside than he would inside of me.
I navigated this entire pregnancy with only the support of my husband and my cousin Jen. Besides them, not a soul knew about this pregnancy until after Wyatt was born.
My second living birth, on paper, was uneventful. No bedrest, no crisis. Did I cry everyday out of fear? Sure did. Every single day of that pregnancy my body was braced for the other shoe to drop because my body had learned the hard way that it does. I was so fearful during his pregnancy, I took no pictures. I have no concrete memories of this time. I did not prepare a nursery for him, I bought no supplies, and again I told no one about this pregnancy. I didn’t believe I would possibly be lucky two times in a row.
But by some miracle, Garrett was born. He came rushing into this world on his own terms. My water broke at home, I didn’t make it to the hospital; he entered this world in the hospital parking lot.
Baby Wyatt, born October 15, 2016.
Baby Garrett, born May 16, 2018.
Despite finally being a mom, and bringing home the babies I wanted so much for so long, I really struggled through Garrett’s first year. All the trauma of the losses, stillbirths, my identity, it all came to a head. It was a year of fear, anxiety, sadness, and loneliness even though I was surrounded by the most loving people. Postpartum is robbery of time, and I still grieve that loss. To this day, I regret not being able to soak up every single moment.
Looking for a Therapist Who Understood, and Coming Up Empty
Somewhere in all of this, I went looking for a therapist. I needed help. I needed someone who understood recurrent loss, stillbirth, the psychological terrain of surrogacy and intended parenthood. I needed validation and reassurance navigating postpartum, the anxiety, and hyper vigilance that doesn't switch off just because a baby is born.
What I found more often than not, was well-meaning people telling me that my experience was ‘outside their scope’. Or worse, people that were willing to help me but needing me, mid-grief, to educate them on the basics of what I was going through.
I had no tools to cope postpartum. I didn’t have the ability to even begin to process what we had just endured. It was all a whirlwind and I could not comprehend what I had been through and how I ended up…here?
I want to be so direct about this because it matters. I was doing the emotional labour of grief AND the emotional labour of training my own therapist at the same time. This is not okay, nor should it be normal. And it ultimately led to me stopping therapy for years because there just weren’t any other options. I often think about what a different experience both of my last two pregnancies would have been had I had appropriate care. My children are now 8 and 9; I still feel sad when I see friends reflect on their pregnancies with their cute bump pictures or when people celebrate with baby showers. I lost any and all excitement throughout mine. No one gave me the permission I needed to breathe and allow multiple feelings to exist in the same space. I had no tools to cope postpartum. I didn’t have the ability to even begin to process what we had just endured. It was all a whirlwind and I could not comprehend what I had been through and how I ended up…here?
That’s what brings me to today. After living through years in the infertility space, questioning who I was meant to be as a person, and now having these two bodies rely on me for everything I found my footing again. I also found anger. Something in me that was horrified that there are SO many women and families navigating infertility, alternative family planning, loss and yet there was no one there to help them? Everyone is just left to figure it out somehow on their own? If you know me, you know I don’t take “no” very well for answer.
It has become my personal mission to make sure that other women do not feel alone in this world.
I went back to school to become the person I desperately needed on the long, difficult road to parenthood. It has become my personal mission to make sure that other women do not feel alone in this world.
I don't share my story because it's tidy, or a 'woo woo work with me' pitch. I share it because somewhere out there, another woman is sitting lonely in a fertility office waiting room, or is on hospital bedrest convinced her baby is safer on the outside, and I want them to know someone out here gets it. Not from reading about it in a textbook, but from having actually living it.
That's why I do this work.
