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After a diagnosis of PCOS, Suzanne and Bevan knew building their family might be a challenge. Learn how this couple succeeded in the face of repeated treatment failures, 5 miscarriages, and egg quality and uterine lining issues—within months of learning to think, believe, and take action like a fertility success story. It is inspiring AF.
Transcript:
Hey gorgeous, if you want success on your fertility journey, you’ve got to have the mindset for it. It’s time to kick fear, negativity, doubt, shame, jealousy, and the whole clown car of low vibe fertility journey BS to the curb. I’m your host, Roseanne Austin, fertility mindset master, former prosecutor and recovering type A control freak perfectionist.
I use the power of mindset to get pregnant naturally and have my baby boy at 43. Despite years of fertility treatment failure. I help women across the globe beat the odds on their fertility journey just like I did. Get ready for a quick hit of confidence, joy, feminine badassery, and loads of hell yes for your fertility journey.
It’s time to get fearless, baby. Fearlessly fertile. Let’s do this. Welcome to the Fearlessly Fertile podcast, episode 86. They beat recurrent treatment failure and loss together. Hey loves, I can barely stand how excited I am to share this week’s episode with you. And whether you are brand new to the Fearlessly Fertile podcast, or you are a gangster OG who has listened to all 85 episodes prior to this four times over, Bye.
You know that my work is about helping women who are committed to success get that success on this journey. And what you’re going to be hearing today is a true story of triumph. You’re going to meet one of my miracle mamas, Suzanne, and her husband, Bevan, who so generously are sharing their experience here.
You are going to hear how this fantastic couple who traveled the world and found themselves a long way from the UK in Singapore and how they truly decided to commit to the vision that they had for their family in the face of a diagnosis of PCOS, repeated treatment failures. Recurrent loss, issues with egg quality, having to travel from their home in Singapore to Malaysia.
It’s almost like, you name it, this couple faced it. But they made a decision after a terrible year. They had to make a decision to choose their vision over the negativity naysaying. That seemed to be coming from all directions. You will hear that just after March of 2019, Suzanne and Bevan had to make a choice.
They had to start doing things differently on this journey. They had to change what they were doing because if they kept doing the same thing over and over again, they would just get the same result. They asked the most intelligent question a couple can ask on this journey. Do we have our bases covered?
What more can we do? And, When Suzanne realized that her mindset was off base, she immediately hopped to it and decided to take the bull by the horns so that she could think, believe, and take action like a woman who succeeds on this journey. And you will hear, that is exactly what she did. Loves, I hope that after hearing Suzanne and Bevan’s story, you will be inspired to keep saying your hell yes.
Alright guys, well I am so excited to have you on the podcast. It’s, it’s such a delight and What is so exciting is I get a husband and wife. It’s usually the women that are on here, but it’s such a delight to hear a male perspective. So thank you for joining us, Suzanne and Bevan. Thanks very much. Yeah.
Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So why don’t you guys start us off by, you know, telling us how you even found yourself on this journey? Yeah. I mean, should I, I think, uh, our journey began really in 2015. When we decided, you know, we were going to try for a family but we were, you know, at that point where you don’t really want to admit it to yourself.
So you’re like, oh, we’ll just see what happens. And we knew I had PCOS and I stopped taking the contraceptive pill and we, we got pregnant straight away, which was not what we were expecting. And then very sadly, at seven weeks, the baby didn’t have a heartbeat. And I think that was our first taster of, you know, what was to come in terms of our fertility journey.
And I think, you know, when that happened, we both, it really focused us on the fact that we definitely did want to start a family and we meant business. And then we had sort of six months of, of Time wasting really going up and down with different doctors and doing different tests and we didn’t, you know, we didn’t, we didn’t really make that much progress.
And in fact, we had one doctor I remember saying to us, Oh, well, you know, some people just never, I had one, but he was like, Oh, I’ve got a patient that just decided, you know, not to bother. Cause, cause her uterine lining never got very thick either. And it was, it was all quite defeatist. And then we had dinner one night with sort of a friend of yours through work and his daughter.
And she’d been on a very long fertility journey and she recommended a doctor in Singapore. And she said, you know, he’s fantastic. My journey was 10 years. And, you know, he’s helped me have my baby. And so we went to see him. And he was great, he was very positive, and actually, we were able to then, well, what now appears to be quite quickly compared to the rest of our journey, conceive our daughter using a combination of femera and injectables.
So, I mean, when we look back at the time, we thought, oh my goodness, this has been So difficult, but when we look, when, but knowing what was to come when we tried for our second, we look back on it as sort of being not, not that bad actually to get to our daughter. I don’t think I looked at it as being that bad at all.
No, not, I mean, I think it felt like a long time, the six months between the miscarriage there and getting pregnant. Well, I just don’t think at that point I, uh, I really appreciated, uh, I suppose the kind of magnitude of any of it, if I’m honest, like I, obviously it was, it was a difficult time, but, um, I kind of felt like, you know, at the time I felt like, well, this stuff happens and, um, and you know, in the grand scheme of things, we hadn’t been trying that long.
So I don’t think for me that the first, the first part of it. Was, was anywhere comparable to the second cycle? No, no, and I agree with that. And I think that then when we started trying for our second in September 2017, we were hopeful that it would be a similar situation, that we’d go and see this doctor again, and we’d do, you know, Vimera.
And, uh, and some injections, and, and we would get pregnant, and, uh, and that just, unfortunately, wasn’t gonna be the case. And, uh, and then we began, in earnest, what was to become a two year journey, during which we did three IUIs. Two egg retrievals across two different continents, Singapore and Malaysia, and five embryo transfers in the end.
And, you know, it was incredibly, uh, stressful, and, and I think for us, probably the worst year was 2018. Because we just We packed too much into it in terms of the treatment. I think we did two IUIs that year, and we did four embryo transfers, or was it three, three embryo transfers. And we did, I did an operation, a hysteroscopy, and we also had four miscarriages in that one year.
Holy shit. Yeah. Wow. You’re not kidding. Yeah, I think, I think we were so broken by the end of 2018. I remember it was Christmas and we just, we, we just felt worn out and we were basically being told that the reason for the miscarriages was likely egg quality. And as some background where, where Britts, where UK um, citizens living in Singapore and Singapore do not permit PGS testing of embryos.
So we were told basically if you want to do that, you have to travel to even Malaysia or or Thailand to do the pg you have to do a whole new egg retrieval and you, and that’s where you do the PGS testing. We sort of said, didn’t we? We made a plan. We said, right, January, we’ll start the year, we’ll get the egg retrieval out of the way, and we’ll have those PGS tested embryos.
And, and that’s what, and that’s what we did at the start of 20, that was 2019, wasn’t it? And then what was really great was I decided to change jobs and move into, because I’m, I’m, I’m a lawyer and I decided to move from working in a law firm. to working in house because it meant that I had greater control over my timetable.
And I had a break before I started that job of about a month. So after the egg retrieval, I went back to the UK with my daughter to my parents. And I felt quite good there. And I think we discussed before Roseanne that my parents house is kind of like my safe place. I feel most relaxed there. Um, and I started doing quite a lot of meditation and, and I was in, I think I was in a better place then.
And then, so we planned, we did another embryo transfer. So this was our fourth embryo transfer, but this time we use the PDS tested embryos and we did that in, we traveled to Malaysia to do that. And basically, nothing, we didn’t, nothing happened. The embryo didn’t stick. There was no pregnancy. And that was when, for me, the wheels really came off.
And I just felt so desperate because I just felt, what more can we do? We’ve You know, we’ve, we’ve done another egg retrieval, we’ve done the PGS testing, we’ve gone to another country to do it, and I just felt absolutely exhausted. And that’s when I found you, Roseanne, um, and started to listen to your podcast.
And, and I just felt, wow, you know, this lady, you know, it wasn’t the usual kind of wishy washy, like, oh, you know, if you just stay positive, everything will turn out in the end. And it just felt to me, it felt like you had, you, um, were able to offer more direction. You were not pussyfooting around the situation.
And I just thought I really need to, I just really, really believed I really need to speak to this woman. I think she is going to make the difference on my journey. It was a really strong feeling that I have to, I have to contact Roseanne. Like I think she’s the person that can help me because I really need, uh, I recognized that I needed something more to get to my end goal, and I was just feeling incredibly lost and at a very low ebb.
And I think even the first time we spoke, I think I was quite teary, and I just felt very fragile. Sort of, if the wind blew at me, I would sort of fall over. That, that was sort of how I felt, I think, when I When I first started talking to you. Yeah. Well, I mean, think about what you had been through. Like all of those things.
And I mean, while you might’ve thought you were going to fall over, I remember from that first conversation, I’m like, this woman is a bad ass bitch. Like all of the things that, you know, you were doing. And I mean, it, The grit, I mean, and for, I think for us and through our work, it was a matter of really reconnecting you to what comes naturally to you, like everything about you is, you know, yes, you know, you have a very, that very British kind of like, it’s so not American, you know, but it was so, you know, you were I, I think the word lost is right.
I think that was definitely true. It was, we were disconnected from, you know, this, this fire that you had in you and this, and this will. And so, yeah, no, I remember our first conversation, you know, and I have to ask Bevan, what was it like for you to watch your wife? You know, you know, you guys are doing all this crazy stuff.
Like what was going on for you? I mean, I think it changes right at the time. I think, you know, honestly speaking, I don’t think you get it at first really, you know, honestly, um, I actually think it took quite a long time to get it in terms of, um, I don’t know, I, I, I, there’s like a series you do also have a tendency to be quite negative on things, so at first I was kind of like, well, is this just.
Yeah. Sue’s being a little bit negative on the situation. Like, you know, she, she wouldn’t generally look on the positive side of things, you know, like glass half empty kind of thing. And, um, uh, so I mean, I guess, you know, I kind of thought, you know, when, when it first happened, yeah, it was, it was pretty shit obviously, but, um, I didn’t think, well, this means.
That, you know, four years or whatever it was, however many years is, is, is how it’s going to end up being. And I didn’t get the way at first that, you know, really sort of took over Suze’s life in a lot of respects. I, and we did have, obviously you have, you know, it’s tense and, uh, I think, um, we did have conversations where I, you know, where I was like, well.
you know, it is enough for me. Uh, you know, it’s not, it’s not, it’s not that it’s not enough for me, you know, to have one child when we, when we were really difficult and difficult situation, which was when we were trying for our second. And I, I just think it took me a long time to really get it. And I think it does everyone like, and I think, you know, Sue saw that with friends, uh, with family, but obviously being, living together, you, you probably have more of an opportunity to get it than anybody else.
So, you know, cause you’re with each other the whole time. And I, over time, I think, you know, I did just realize quite, you know, how all consuming it was. And, and, you know, you feel a bit helpless because the really. There’s, there’s kind of a, so much information out there that you don’t know where to start almost.
And, um, I felt like what we were doing is, um, when I, when I look at, uh, back on our situation, you kind of, you think you’re doing everything, but in reality, you’re not really taking control of the situation. And I think that was ultimately what, what happened and what worked for us. And that was Suze that, you know, really took the bull by the horns.
So, yeah, I mean, I think, uh, you know, I tried to obviously be supportive and you don’t know what the right thing to say is and ultimately you can’t solve the situation and, um, I found that difficult. So you feel sort of helpless, but yeah, I do think that you have to, I had to really. try and understand it.
Um, because I, I just, I didn’t at first. And, um, it’s not that I didn’t want, obviously it’s hard to explain. Uh, it’s not that I didn’t want more kids obviously, but, uh, I, I really do or did, but, uh, you know, I, I just didn’t, I didn’t feel the same. Way, I think at the start in terms of the same kind of like pessimism almost, you know, towards it and, uh, but yeah, I mean, yeah, I got incredibly frustrating at points because you turn your life upside down and you, you know, everything becomes focused on, on that.
And when, when you’re not achieving it, it’s difficult, right? You know, it affects your relationship. It affects, you know, probably, you know, our daughter was aware of us. You know, going through this, she, she will remember it for sure when she’s an adult. And it affects, you know, work, it affects your financial situation, you know, it just affects everything.
And so, yeah, it was tough. But, um, yeah, I don’t know. I don’t, yeah. You really do know. I mean, that’s extremely well said, and I think it, we sometimes forget that as much as this is a shared experience as a couple, it’s also a deeply personal one that we all kind of take it in differently. I mean, my husband would probably have shared quite a similar perspective, Bevan, and, you know, because he just saw me starting to, Go into this crazy spiral, you know, and he kind of stood there helpless to trying to figure out.
Okay. Well, what do I do? So what was your perspective on hearing that your wife was going to be talking to some? Pink and blue haired American. Like, What did you think about all this? You think it was a little bit of voodoo? Yeah, I’ll be honest, I thought it was a load of bollocks when I first, when I first, sorry.
Yeah, I, I didn’t look, I mean, I’ll caveat this because uh, I think it made a massive difference, but, and I, I will explain why, but. At first, yeah, I was like, I remember the conversation, we were in our room, she was lying on the bed, and I don’t know what, I think I was getting ready for work or something and uh, and I just remember thinking, don’t say anything, this sounds like a lot of rubbish, but if this is gonna help, or she, you know, like, if she’s gonna feel better about doing it, then yeah, fine, um, don’t try and say no or anything.
So that’s what I felt initially, to be honest. Um, and then I deliberately, when you started doing sessions, didn’t, didn’t ask about it. Not because I didn’t think it was going to work, but just because I felt like it wasn’t my place. But, uh, yeah, I mean, honestly, I think it, I’m just saying that, yeah, I’m really not just saying this to, you know, we’re not on the payroll or anything, but, uh, I do think it made a massive difference because look for me, uh, I.
You know, Suze was doing some stuff. She was seeing a counselor and, and I, you know, she encouraged me to, so I went to see a counselor for a short period of time and, you know, I guess I kind of felt that, uh, and I know that what you do is different, so that’s kind of where I’m going is that. For me, and I could be wrong, I only, you know, as I said, went for a short period of time, but a counsellor kind of listens to what you say.
I mean, as much as you might need that, just to listen, not to necessarily give you, sort of, direction or, or advice and, I don’t know, I feel like you need to get, what seemed to happen after Sue started talking to you was, She just took control of it, built a team, and she had different people for different purposes.
So like, the doctor, obviously we changed doctors, and the doctor would then recommend the supplements or nutrition, but Suze kind of didn’t take the doctor’s word for that because that’s not her specialism. So she went to see a naturopath. And she then looked at, you know, foot reflexology, but specific to fertility and acupuncture specific to fertility, uh, still kept going to see the counselor, but then also spoke to you.
And I kind of got the impression that you may be told some home truths sometimes or kind of, you know, like metaphorically slapped her across the face and say, get it, get a hold of it. Which like, I know my wife, like as in definitely kind of, you know, everybody needs that sometimes. And, um, Yeah, it’s very difficult to do that if you’re in it.
So having somebody who’s outside it and doing it just from a kind of, look, I’m observing this. I don’t, you know, I’m not emotionally attached in the same way. I do think made a difference. And you know that that team for any certainly English people, I imagine it works for Americans as well. But I put it like a football team.
England won the World Cup in 1966, and there’s this famous conversation with one of the defenders, Jack Charlton, and he wasn’t the best player. And the manager says, I didn’t pick you because you’re the best player. I picked you because you’re going to do what I want you to do. And I kind of feel like that’s Where Suze got to when she started talking to you was, she just picked the best bits of what people can do and made it work for her.
Yeah. But yeah, at first, it’s called a bump squad, bump squads, but yeah, at first I was dubious. So yeah, um, I’m, I’m converted. I love it. Well, so, okay. So at this point. You guys have been through, you know, an Annis Horribilis, right? The 2018, like, this crazy, non stop, this journey has taken over your life.
Bevin, your wife starts talking to this, you know, this woman in the States, and, you know, how do you take us through this next step? I mean, because You guys are really at a crossroads, you know, we’ve been through so much. So, so tell us a little bit about like, what was it that kept you moving forward? And, and then just take us through this next chapter because you guys didn’t stop at 2018.
No. So, I mean, as he, as I mentioned, it’s 2019, we decided to do this egg retrieval in, in Malaysia so that we could do the, the PGS testing. And I very much wanted to do it at the start of 2019 just to get it out the way Because I remembered my previous egg retrieval was not great Um, and it took quite a big toll on my body And I was also about to start a new job and I knew that I would get some time off in between So we did the egg retrieval in malaysia, you know, we flew out there with our daughter with us We stayed over in a hotel for two nights So it was a kind of a bit of a logistical nightmare, but we did it.
And then, and then my daughter and I went back to the UK for a few weeks and that was, that was great. And, and as I say, you know, we were initially sort of feeling in a better place. I started to do some meditation, so I’d started to explore. I think I was starting to open myself up to what else was out there to help me on this journey.
But I wasn’t quite connecting the dots. And, uh, and we did another, our fourth embryo transfer in the March, um, in Malaysia. We had to do it in Malaysia. And we put one embryo back and we didn’t get anything. There was no, no pregnancy at all. And, and to us, actually that felt like a big failure because although the other transfers had all ended sadly in miscarriage, we at least sort of had a pregnancy.
So we kind of felt I’m really frustrated that we’ve done, we’ve done this PGS testing or we were being told by the doctors, you know, there’s a 75 percent chance of success here and, and why, why was it still not happening? And, and, um, and all around us, people were sort of falling pregnant in what seemed to be very, what seemed to be very easily, and it was just a really, really difficult time.
And as I say, I just, I think at that point, that’s when I just really felt incredibly low. And, and then fortunately, that’s when I, I found you. And, and I think, you know, for me, the desire to have a second child was still very, very strong. If, if anything, it got stronger and stronger. But I just felt My head, I was banging my head against a brick wall that we were just doing the same thing over and over, hoping for a different outcome.
And it was just incredibly frustrating. And I think, Roseanne, when I think one of our first conversations is me basically, Saying that to you and and you were very good You didn’t you know, you didn’t say you should definitely change doctors. I said to you I’m just wondering whether I should change doctors because we keep doing the same thing Over and over and I think I kind of expressed to you that with this particular doctor Although he, I really admired him and I thought he was great and he, he helped us have our first child.
I, at the same time, felt that I couldn’t really challenge him on what he was saying and that he’d sometimes sort of gloss over things a little bit and, and I actually just think that the relationship had kind of broken down a little bit and I, and we hated, do you remember Bevan? We hated going to his clinic.
Because for us, his clinic was just like the place where we got bad news. And it was just miserable for us every time we, I think every time I stepped foot in that clinic, my heart sang after, after 2018. I think, I mean, it was that, and then I don’t know anybody who runs a fertility clinic, my advice would be make everything easy.
around the doctor’s appointment. If it’s a pain to pay your bill or, you know, find, get the right medicine or just, you know, you’re waiting around for 45 minutes at the end, just purely to pay or whatever it is. It’s just like. It’s already a difficult, you know, appointment for probably over 50 percent of the people that go there.
Yeah. Um, so just make it easy. Don’t make it a painful process around the sites, you know, like And the nurses, the nurses were quite, uh Blunt about because, because, uh, because although we did the transfer in Malaysia for that fourth embryo transfer, we did all the medication and stuff in Singapore. So literally what we would do, what we did was we just flew out to Malaysia for the transfer and stayed overnight and then flew back.
So we were still very, very much in the Singapore clinic a lot of the time. With the medication for the cycle and then obviously afterwards, you know to to find out whether it had worked And I think and the other thing they did was he the doctor would what’s at me the results of things Oh, it’s another miscarriage your hgg level hasn’t gone up Or, oh no, it, you know, and that, on that fourth transfer, it’s a negative pregnancy test.
And really for me, I don’t want to read that stuff over WhatsApp. I want somebody to get on the phone to me and deliver the bad news. Right. Right. Wow. I mean, what an, what an interesting experience and what a, I mean, I can only imagine what that, I mean, how excruciatingly tired you must have been. At that point, and so, you know, what was it that, you know, when you guys look at that, the next steps that you took, like, because I remember so many of the conversations.
I mean, I just remember you being so devastated and also, you know, telling me so much about the bedside manner and, and the blunt way and, you know, that this was being communicated. What was it within you that we had to ignite for you to be like, Okay, I have been through some crazy shit, but I’m not giving up on this.
Like, I feel this in my soul, because you said something really powerful, that it, it really, that desire for your second child, like, it got even stronger. So what did you, what did you guys as a couple have to do to, to keep going? I mean, I think the, I don’t know whether this is what we did to keep going, but.
And I, I really noticed it in this, this was more Suze than, than me, so I don’t want to try and take credit for it. But it was just like owning it, not, I don’t know, like as in not being the punch bag, but starting to just Not being a passenger anymore. Yeah, not, that’s a good way to put it. Yeah, not being a passenger and just like really just owning it.
Like, I mean You know, even, like, like Sue said, I mean, like, the frustrations and stuff with the clinic, at the first clinic, you know, maybe being a bit sort of pedantic or whatever, but, well, I am maybe, but the point is more that, like, it didn’t, wasn’t working for us. Yeah. So, like, your, it was you that was, like, We’ll change it, basically.
We need to, even if the doctor’s brilliant, that doesn’t matter. Like, as in, I’ve just been through enough. This isn’t mentally helping me, so we’re going to go to this other doctor. Or, you know, friends, like, you know, you just kind of worked out who was a good person to be around and who was not, you know, like, as in, I just, you own But I think, I think that really goes back to our discussions, Rosanne, because you really So I think what you did for me is you really helped me to see, well, one, why, why, you were sort of questioning, you’d be like, why are you being a passenger on this journey?
Because, and I think you used an analogy with me that really resonated. You were saying, if this was Aira’s health, if there was something wrong with Aira, would you just sit there quietly and just nod your head and go along with whatever they were saying? Would you be, um, like researching? Would you be looking for, you know, every different angle of this?
And I think that analogy really helped me because it, it just, you know, it was a real light bulb moment. Hang on a minute. That is, I’ve just been on this fertility journey now for nearly a year, for a year and a half, and I am very much treating it like a passenger. Like I. Uh, an invalid almost, and these people are doing these things to me, and it’s not, it’s out of my control, and I think what you helped me see was that it was really in my control, and I think that, you know, there was a number of ways you did that, and I think one of, one of the ways that I found very powerful, uh, was also, was visualization.
And you, you know, you said, you, you forced me to kind of visualize what my future could look like. And, and I’d almost been scared to do that. I’ve been scared to visualize myself, although it was what I really wanted, I’ve been scared to visualize myself. With two children or you know with the bum and I think we talked about this image of me with a bum Walking Aira to school and I was in my like yoga pants and I remember this That really strong image in my head and I think we’d also talked about me working from home at the time and it’s so weird because That is exactly, that exactly came true.
Yeah. Um, that exact, you know, that exact image was played out in real life, exactly how I imagined it, because we had the pandemic, so we couldn’t go into work, so I was working from home, and I did have my yoga pants on when I’d walk around the corner to collect it from school, and, and I remember thinking it at the time when, you know, when it finally did happen, and I was.
enacting what we, with a visualization that we discussed. And I was just like, wow, like this, this is just so powerful. And I think that that was, you know, you really got me to focus on what I wanted. And, and I think you, you really, you stripped out all the stuff that I didn’t need to be focused on. And, and we just sort of got laser focused on what I actually wanted.
And also I think That opened me up to other ideas as well. I mean, we, we were having conversations with a surrogacy agency in the U. S. because we were then, we were open to that, because we basically got focused on the fact that the bottom line for us was we wanted to grow our family. And we didn’t really, in the end, mind how we did it.
you know, we just wanted that to happen. So we really opened our minds up to different, you know, different possibilities. Yeah, we explored adoption as well. We explored adoption. Um, and, and, you know, and I think that, that, that, that is also a very constructive, helpful way to approach fertility is it, it, when you’re ready for it.
I mean, I think we got to a point in our journey where, you know, that. Last year I’d said to Bevan, I’m going to go all in for this fifth transfer because I’m not sure I ever want to do it again. Because of the toll it had taken on me mentally and physically, I just felt that, you know, there are these other options and I’m okay with those other options.
So this for me is the final, the final roll of the dice. And I think speaking to you helped us formulate that idea as well, just a bit of closure. Really, to one part of the journey, the closure to the continuous embryo transfers. And I think that really helped me for that fifth embryo transfer, because I went into it just saying, right, just throw the kitchen sink at this.
If it doesn’t work, you’re never going to do it again. So what, you know, just go, go crazy. What have you got to lose? Just, and I think. And we relaxed, we relaxed a bit, because we said, you know, this is it, and that’s okay if it’s it, we, we’ve got a plan B, our plan B was surrogacy, and we’re okay with that. Mm hmm.
So if we back it up, because there, I mean, there’s so much gold in, in what you were sharing there, because here you were, In this place where you had basically hit rock bottom and then we come in and we start essentially Reconstructing the vision that you had for this journey Yanking you out of the shit pit, like you hear me say, and like saying, look, okay Let’s be constructive about this, let’s figure out what is the image that you want to create, because this isn’t, you know, people sometimes blow this off as, you know, it’s, it’s hocus pocus, it’s witchcraft, whatever this is.
It’s not, it’s actually quite logical and linear. It’s your thoughts, beliefs, actions, results. What you hold in your mind is what you create. It doesn’t surprise me that you had that moment, you know, by creating this very clear vision of what you wanted, that you would in the end manifest that. Because when you get it really, really clear in your head, what you want, you do become laser focused.
But at the same time, there’s this thing that happens that when you know what you want. And you’re very clear about it, you start to see solutions all around you that may look a little different than you anticipated, but you become open to them because you aren’t confused about the end result that you want, which is essentially what you’re saying, right?
Like you had in essence surrendered exactly how this baby got here because you knew you were in it to win it. In the end, it didn’t matter. You were going to figure it out. And of course you would relax into that. Like you take, you end up taking the pressure off and then you go into this fifth transfer and boom.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I really, I think that’s exactly right. I think that that, it really just helped me to focus on what I ultimately wanted. And also, you know, as I say, to stop being a passenger and to. You know, how do you go about getting what you ultimately want? You need to be, well, as if you’re my kind of personality, I’ll caveat this, I needed to be in control and I needed to be on top of things.
And, and I remember after we’d had a call. And you’d said to me, right, well, you’ve done your, you know, you’ve done all of this research into recurrent loss and different, different drugs that you can take and, you know, different therapies, you know, why don’t you go in and, and, and this is, at this point we changed doctor, why don’t you go in and just talk to her and have an open conversation?
And I was like, wow, you know, I’ve, I’ve never, I’ve never done that before. And, um, I remember, like, booking the appointment and saying to them, I need a bit longer today because I need to, I need to talk to the, to the doctor. I want to run through and I went in with a list of, you know, all the things that I’d read online, like all the different names of different injections, different treatments.
And I just sat there with the doctor and we brainstormed them. We went through them one by one and I said, well, what about this one? And she was like, well, this, you know, gave me her medical opinion and, and, you know, and then, you know, we might agree at the end of it. Well, we can try that for the fifth transfer.
And it just felt the first time. Like, wow, I’m, I’m really involved in my own journey and all of this research because I was spending so much time, you know, obsessing over the recurrent loss and I have a thin uterine lining. You know, I was actually putting all of that time spent researching to good use, you know, it was actually going to help me on my journey.
I actually had a doctor in front of me who was who was listening to me. And, um, actually when I, when I gave birth to our, our son in, in May, the doctor, she said to me, you know, you did this, this baby is here because of you. You know, she said to the anesthetist, this lady’s a very special lady. She came up with her own treatment plan.
This baby wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for her. And it really, it really, I mean, it really touches me and it makes me, it makes me teary thinking about her saying that because it was just that. you know, that recognition from her. And, and I really felt that, you know, speaking to you is what led me to that.
And, you know, and, and, and I tried all the things I wanted to try. And frankly, I’ll never know if any of them were the thing. I don’t think there’s any silver bullet in fertility, but I think going in there with that kind of attitude, feeling, going into that fifth transfer, feeling like I’m in control.
I’ve, I’ve set what, you know, I’ve discussed this in detail with the doctor. I’m trying different things that I’ve always wanted to try, but have sort of, was sort of, you know, too shy, I guess, to say to a doctor, very British, too shy to say to a doctor before the doctor knows best. And I think that gave me a confidence with going into that transfer because I genuinely felt like, right, well, we’re giving all these different things a go and we weren’t just repeating ourselves.
hoping for a different outcome. She, she, I mean, I think she was very good as well, the doctor, because she let you have like a lot of input into it, obviously, and, um, really, as you say, come up with the treatment, come up with a treatment plan. But, uh, she also cut, like, She also told me about social media nonsense.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and, uh, like, she didn’t even let you entertain it, like, and she was quite, uh, I don’t know, the personality just works pretty well, like, even during the pregnancy, right, and, uh, where you’d be like, I’ve googled some obscure, you know, one in 700, 000 billion chance that this is the illness that I’ve got.
And she was just like, no, move on. Right. Next question. Right. And that works quite well, I think for you. For me. Yeah. Yeah. She was very good. Like she, as you say, it was like, during the planning, she was like, yeah, okay, we can try that. This is the stats around it. Yeah. Um, yeah. But then, yeah, other things should be just like, Yeah, deadpan.
No. Yeah, it’s hilarious. I love it. I love it. Well, you know what, though? I, I would challenge one thing that you said, Suzanne, and it’s this. You said there’s no silver bullet, but you actually proved that there was, and that was you. Yeah. Yeah. I hadn’t thought about it that way, but yeah. I mean, I do think, I do think that, well, I think speaking to you and you giving me the confidence and the focus, And, and, and just the strategy.
I felt we strategized and really felt like I came off those calls and had loads of notes in my pink notebook. And we, we just, I felt it was really constructive. And, yeah, I mean, so, you know, that did all, that obviously, that did all make a difference. So, yeah. So, I mean, I guess when I say no silver bullet, I mean in terms of treatment, because I just I think that you can, I think it’s a combination of things, and I think the different, one of the real challenges with recurrent loss is that it’s very difficult to pinpoint why it’s happening.
Um, and it certainly was in my case. So I felt, I almost felt before I spoke to you, it was a real scattergun approach. And then once I’d spoken to you and we’d sort of formulated a plan, it was a lot more, you know, uh, organized, because I went to the doctor, we changed doctor’s tick. That was a very important step.
We went to her with this, I went to her with this list of, of research that I’d done and went through it with a tick. I got a naturopath because I, I believe that diet had, was having an impact and I also was concerned that the supplements that the doctor had given me were not the best supplements. Tick, got an, got an acupuncturist, tick, you know, saw a counselor tick and saw a Chinese medicine doctor here as well who helped, who I believe helped with my lining, tick.
But I, I think I wouldn’t have done, I wouldn’t have seen all those different people. I wouldn’t have constructed that team had we not strategized. talked about taking control, talked about focus, and also talked about opening yourself up to other ideas and other ways of doing things. There isn’t just one way to do, to do this, these things.
There are many different ways, and there are You know, many different roads that you can walk for fertility, and you’ve got to walk the road that’s the right one for you, ultimately. Right, right. Well, and we can’t like, I mean, obviously, we kind of touched on it. I mean, in the end, it was all worth it, right?
Because I think you said May of this year. This little boy got here. So just really quickly, I mean, tell us what that was like. I mean, because of all of the things you’ve been through, all of the steps you had taken, you finally start thinking like a woman who succeeds on this journey. You get your mindset on board.
You unite that with the physical aspect of all of this, you know, you’re covering your bases. Like how satisfying was that for the two of you? I mean, I think we were, I mean, we were quite nervous during the actual pregnancy because, and I think we had a call Roseanne during the pregnancy where I’d sort of expressed to you that I was nervous because.
You know, this is off the back of five miscarriages, you know, I always say to people, you know, I’ve, I’ve been pregnant seven times, but I only have, you know, two living children. And, and I think pregnancy after loss is a whole other podcast, but is a very difficult journey. So while you’re incredibly happy to be pregnant, of course, you, you, you are.
Well, I was very anxious at the same time because I wanted things to work out and I think, you know, a lot of what we talked about in terms of on our calls when I was trying to get pregnant did help me once I was pregnant in terms of trying to put things into perspective and try in terms of focusing on the end goal of this that a healthy baby being born and Trying to visualize that I think that did help me And then I think when, when the, when he arrived, we were both just in disbelief that he was actually finally here in some sense.
Like, oh my God, we’re, we’re, you know, and I, and I’ve just had these moments where I’ve sat there and we’re as a family of four and I’ve just felt really whole and really complete. And. Just such gratitude and calm and just, just at peace finally that, that we’re all here and it just feels like it’s always been meant to be.
I mean I think, I don’t know if this sounds, I mean obviously I was super happy and everything but I think probably one of the biggest things that I felt at that point was relief. Because, uh, yeah, it’s just, I mean, I know I didn’t have to do the injections or the transfers or any of the, any of that stuff, and so I know it was a lot less on me, and so I don’t, I don’t mean it in that respect, but it just, yeah, I mean, the whole, whole thing just had such a, a massive, massive impact on me.
Our lives, people around, uh, you know, people around us and, you know, even where we lived, you know, I think, you know, I think had that not been, had that facility not been an issue, then I don’t know whether, you know, I think our lives would have just been different. And I’m not saying they would have been better.
Or anything like that, but yeah, I think I felt, I don’t know, like you’ve, I mean, obviously you achieved it more, more than me, but, um, yeah, I just, I definitely felt relieved, I felt like, I hope, you know, I just don’t want to do, it was hard, you know, like it was hard, uh, you know, I didn’t, as I say, I didn’t have to do the, all the physical stuff when I know that, so I know it was, it was harder for you, so I don’t, I really don’t mean to sort of make it about me at all, but I just think for all of us, it was just hard and, uh, yeah, um, was relieved.
You know, we finally got to where we wanted to be. And, you know, hopefully now we can, you know, I think talk about it and be open about it. I definitely think that’s super important. I think that one of the things that didn’t help us was the fact that people don’t seem to talk about it enough. So you don’t know more people are going through it than you think are going through it at the time.
It’s like embarrassing, uh, so people, people think it’s embarrassing. So they don’t. And even if they’ve then had a baby afterwards, they don’t mention that, you know, their journey necessarily. And I think that makes the outside world, it’s like social media, right? Do you see the best bits? And, uh, I don’t know.
So for me, I just, I really felt relieved. I felt like, okay, we’ve got where we want to be. We can, we can take the next steps now and, and, you know, really try and enjoy life. Yeah, like, imagine that. Imagine that, right? Yeah, because it just was so, like, all, yeah, like, I mean, you know, you were obviously doing all the physical side of things.
And then, I don’t know, maybe seven or eight, uh, ten of our conversations, they would maybe divert onto that. If we went out on a night out to try and, you know, just go on a date night or something, inevitably that would come up. But I do think once I started speaking to Roseanne, we did have some really happy moments where we weren’t, where we weren’t just talking about reality.
Because remember, we went to Italy and we just had such a good holiday in June 2019. And we just, and you know, and that’s the other thing, we did take a break. So we should have mentioned this, but, and I think it’s something that you advocated, Roseanne. We took a break. So the transfer, we did that transfer in March 2019, which was, you know, nothing, you know, disaster, nothing happened.
And then we didn’t do another transfer until September 2019, which was, a big change for us because in 2018, we’ve literally been doing something every month. And I think having that break was also really, really important, even though at the time, I absolutely didn’t really want to do it. Felt like it was counterintuitive.
I think when, when I made my peace with doing it, it was a really positive thing that to have that break and I remember that holiday in Italy that we had and we just I think that’s the happiest we were in that whole journey because we actually just relaxed and and we kind of forgot about the fertility stuff and we ate what we wanted and we drank what we wanted and You know, we made a really nice holiday for our daughter, which I think was really important And now given the pandemic and the fact we can’t travel i’m so glad that we did that especially Who knew, right?
Wow. So, so in, you know, in, in wrapping this and bring this to a conclusion, like what’s the wisdom, like from each of you, because you know, you, you guys demonstrate for sure, you know, the, all of the bumps and bruises that we can get on this journey, but you also really demonstrate a sincere love for each other for being willing to keep.
Going and to love each other and love the vision that you had for your lives enough to open yourselves up and to consider all of these different things and, and to give yourselves permission to like, Hey, we, we don’t know when, we don’t know how this baby’s going to get here, but you know, we’re committed, like, what would be a bit of wisdom just from your own experience?
You know, what would you want couples to know? I, I do, I, I mean, some of the stuff we’ve already talked about, that taking ownership of it, don’t be, don’t be afraid to question, you know, like Suzanne did, uh, and don’t be afraid to, you know, really own it and put your team together. I think that was really important in our journey.
And I think, like if, If I was going to look back on it and me, uh, me, I’d probably say, and I’ll probably say it to Suze as well, is like, you know, maybe just give each other a bit of slack. I think like it is tough on both of you and obviously the two closest people to each other. So you always, you know, it’s stressful, right?
And I think, uh, trying to understand, I mean, for me, as I said at the start, like it took me probably too long to understand really the magnitude of, of this. And, uh, Yeah, and I think, you know, but both people, yeah, just give each other some slack, you know, it’s tough, uh, it probably would, I’d say. I think, yeah, mine, I mean, I would say be kind to yourself and I mean, I know that sounds like a slightly cliché thing to say and people used to say that to me all the time, especially after I’d had a miscarriage and I always remember various people saying be kind to yourself and I’d be like, what does that actually mean?
And, and when I say it, what I mean is do whatever it takes to make yourself feel better. So if that, I mean, in my case, that was doing things like, you know, frankly, not, not seeing friends who had, had made insensitive comments to me, or, you know, you know, not going to the baby shower because you don’t need to go and, you know, good friends at the end of the day understand, and, you know, I had friends I just didn’t really see.
For that final year because I needed to focus on me and focus on my daughter and my husband and my job and trying for a baby and I couldn’t, I couldn’t do it all. And I was feeling stressed by trying to, to, you know, keep up with friendships that were actually at the end of the day, not serving me well during that period.
But, you know, now I’m through it, you know, I have reconnected with, with the people that matter anyway. So, I mean, yeah, I think, I think be kind to yourself. How, you know, do the little thing, you know, self care, do a little thing each day, that’s just for you. Um, I love doing meditation in the end, and that was just like five minutes of peace just for me, because I think on this journey you can really lose sight of yourself and you know what, what, what really matters in what you have.
I mean, I think that for me was a big thing, just continue, you know, trying to continue to be not trying, continuing to be grateful for what I did have my, my husband and my daughter. And, and I know that there’s many people out there who, who haven’t, haven’t had one baby yet. And equally, I know there’s many people out there who are struggling with secondary infertility who feel that feel a little isolated because you, you kind of feel almost guilty for having secondary infertility because, you know, People would look and say, well, you’ve got one child.
What are you so upset about? But having experienced it, I can honestly say that the desire to have another child didn’t lessen because it was a second child. So, so yeah, I think, I think, uh, be kind to yourself and be kind to each other. That’s awesome, you two. Well, thank you so much for being on. Thank you for so generously sharing your story.
I know it’s going to touch other people’s lives, and it’s, it’s just a delight. Thanks so much, Roseanne, and thank you for everything you’ve done for us. I really appreciate it. Really do. Of course. Love this episode of the Fearlessly Fertile podcast? Subscribe now and leave an awesome review. Remember, the desire in your heart to be a mom is there because it was meant for you.
When it comes to your dreams, keep saying, Hell Yes!