What if a string of “failures” had absolutely NOTHING to do with your ultimate success…on your terms? On paper, things looked terrible for Megan. She did “all the things,” including attempts at donor transfers and surrogacy, but nothing worked. Learn how this amazing woman, having almost died twice in the process, called in her baby girl NATURALLY after all of that craziness–AND a surprising thing the experts never checked! If you need a boost to your belief, turn this one up!
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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 239. She failed with IVF, donor eggs, surrogacy, and PRP, then got and stayed pregnant, naturally. Megan’s story. Hey, my loves, this week, we have one humdinger of a testimony to share with you.
And I’m so excited because Megan and I have been, like, I think we both, when we Met at some point knew we would have this conversation, but neither one of us could have predicted how we get here But what you’re gonna be hearing today from this glorious amazing big hearted kind generous Absolutely lovable, and most importantly, gangster and full of faith, Miracle Mama Megan!
You are going to be hearing how she faced some straight up crazy shit on this journey. And, I wasn’t kidding in that introduction. She quote unquote failed with IVF, donor egg, surrogacy, and PRP. She almost died twice in this process. Like, Megan’s testimony and her life experience are all about overcoming the odds.
And you’re even gonna hear that there was something that the experts did not look for. That unquestionably at some level had an impact on her success and she you got to stay to the end to hear that this is is kind of a it’s a really interesting twist that I bet is going to have quite a few of us running to the dentist quickly and you know what her story also stands for the proposition that look you can be trying all these things all of this shit may not work but your story is not over.
Your story does not end with your failure. Your story only ends when you quit. So, I hope that you take all of the beautiful nuggets of wisdom, the heartfelt sharing that Megan does here, and you apply it to your own journey, and I hope you never forget a hundred percent that this desire in your heart to be a mom, it’s there because it was meant for you.
If there is a desire, a way will be shown, and Megan is living proof. So here is my conversation with my most beloved Megan. So why don’t we just do this? Just start off with sharing with the women listening, how you found yourself on this journey. All right. This is such a special day because. You know, so many years ago I met you for the first time and I saw a lot of women saying, when I’m on your podcast, when I’m on your podcast, and I was like, wow, is that going to be a time?
Is, am I going to be on the podcast? You know, I can’t predict the future. I don’t have this crystal ball. And, um, and I’m here today. So like just today is this really magical moment. And I am going to tear up a lot. So I’ve got the tissues handy and also Just to preface this, it’s been a 10 year journey.
It’s been a decade of my life. So there’s a lot to say. And whenever I would listen to your podcast guest, I just really wanted a deep dive. Like I wanted to know what their feelings were. I wanted to know what their doctors were saying. Like that was what I was hungry for. So I prepared to share that today.
And if that’s too much, you chop it away. That’s the beauty of like a podcast producer, right? Like they will bring. You know, you want it shorter, you make it shorter, or if you want to do two episodes because you think this should all stay, you make that choice. But I just want to share from my heart, like what my story is, and I’m just really excited.
I’m so excited. I’m super stoked. I mean, look, I wasn’t kidding when I said you earned it. And I think that the most powerful way that we as women learn on this journey is through story. And so you talk about whatever you want to talk about. So yeah, just start us off with with basically how you found yourself in this place where you would even be talking about being on a podcast and doing all this other stuff.
So how did that start? Yeah, well today I’m 43 but my journey started when I was 33 so a decade ago. And, um, my husband and I decided we were going to try to get pregnant and I never thought I was going to have fertility issues and I’m very type A. So the second we started off, it was, you know, ovulation predictor kits and timing to get it right each month and nothing was happening.
And, um, and that was really frustrating, like four or five months in, you know, six months, still nothing. So I had a friend who said, you should see my fertility doctor. You know, they’ll just give you a quick checkup and, and tell you, um, how things are looking. So we go there and, um, you know, I just really wish that the doctors are so skilled in so many things, but they’re also, they just plant that fear, like you step into their office and they just roll out that plan and they give you those statistics and they, and that’s when it just grabs your heart.
Cause then you’re like, wow, is this going to happen for me? You know, So I had that full experience where I thought it could be a simple solution, but instead I went in with, you know, a top RE here in Los Angeles where I live, and she told me, you know, she saw an ultrasound seven follicles, she thought I had an AMH of 0.
28. And, um, she said, Oh, you know, you’re not even a good candidate for, I guess you, you know, you’re, you’ve got so little follicles you’re in diminished ovarian reserve at 33. I went to IBF on you just let’s try some eyes that’s your best hope at this point. So that was like my first experience with the fertility doctor, you know, and, and that was just.
crushing to hear that because then you go in this spiral. And at that point, just being the type of person I was, I had already been doing a little bit of research and, um, I had been working with a naturopath doctor and she had found that I had Hashimoto’s, which is not a super uncommon, you know, thyroid disorder.
A lot of women have it. It doesn’t necessarily prevent pregnancy, but I asked this already. I said, um, you know, I’ve been researching, I’ve got the thyroid disorder. Is there anything that maybe my immune system could be linked to me stopping me from getting pregnant? And she dismissed me so quickly and she was like, Oh no, that’s not research.
And I was like, well, there’s some doctors that are putting some studies out and some books about, you know, steroids and things to bring down your immune response, and she’s like, no, no, no, that’s unsafe. I would never do that. So she really kiboshed the ideas that I had and it diminished me and that feeling I just remember that as my first experience.
So I’m always very vocal when I speak to other women about getting other opinions because I know how devastating these diagnoses can be. And how diminished you can feel, even though you’re an intelligent woman who has been doing research. So the good news is I was seeing a really good acupuncturist at the time.
And I, I believe in acupuncturists, like they are healers. They are a gift to women, you know, find your tribe, just like you always say, Roseanne, who’s on your bum squad and you know, lean on those people. So she was like, no, no, no, I think IVF is a fine plan for you. Go get a different opinion, go, you know, and she pushed me and I’m so thankful that she did.
I did find another doctor and he did of course confirm diminished ovarian reserve, but he said, let’s go straight to IVF. You know, not pass go and collect 200. Like, let’s just get the show on the road. So at that point I was like, yes, yes, yes. Whatever you’ll tell me, I’ll be the perfect patient. And he went, he did what was called, um, a kitchen sink immune protocol where he basically threw all these drugs at me because we didn’t really know what my problem was at that point.
But he was like, you know what, maybe one of these things will work. So I’m just going to throw them at you. So steroids, blood thinners, baby aspirin, um, interlipids, things like that. And I was like, all in, let’s do it. So we did a fresh IVF. We got two embryos. We put one in, it took. And I had no idea how lucky I was at the time.
I was pregnant and I had a fabulous pregnancy and I delivered my son and he’s eight years old now. So that was our first. go around with the fertility world and IVF. But I thought, great, we’ve, you know, figured it out. This will not be my problem anymore. I moved past the diagnosis and I’m now a fertile woman who has babies, made a great delivery and a great birth experience and So we moved on to round two because, you know, my son was one or two years old and we had one embryo left in the freezer.
It was a boy. It was his brother. And this is where, well, this is the thing about me that, and I think that women all have it, if they can tap into it, it’s this intuition about little unexplainable glimpses to, into your journey. That don’t make sense. Otherwise, and I don’t know if you have a husband like mine, but he was not a believer about women’s intuition, but now he’s a believer because he’s seen 10 years of it.
Yeah, so I’ve got seven instances in this story where there was intuitive moments that are unexplained by anything. Just unexplained. And, and they’re cool. So first instance, which I actually forgot about was before we did IVF the first time, um, we were working on getting our health better with this natural path, but we had kind of unexplained issues with our health.
And I had a dream one night that there was mold growing in the walls of our apartment where we lived. And I woke up in the morning. I said to my husband, Brent, we need to have a mold guy come out and check our place. There could be mold in here. And he’s like, who is this cuckoo woman that I’m married to?
Cause we lived near the water in Santa Monica. Yeah. Yeah. Like I feel the mold in the wall. Um, and we, I’ve got those mold remediation people out and they checked and it was black mold statue bought trees, which is the really dangerous type. So they did in fact find it in our walls and it was a big deal and we had to evacuate immediately and we had to get rid of clothing and furniture.
It’s one of those things that you can’t really wash out of your clothing. And I think it was linked to our health problems. I think it was linked to my immune response, um, back in the day. So that was, uh, strange intuition, number one. So we had a boy and now we’re going to go work on number two and we had the boy in the freezer, but I felt like a daughter was supposed to come through.
And that was the second thing that was very intuitive. was coming, her soul was earth. And um, I felt ver decide we’re going to mak because we’ve only got on
So I do another egg retrieval and lo and behold, sure enough, we get one more embryo and it’s a girl. So I’m thinking to myself, Oh my gosh, this is amazing. We’re on our way to number two. Things are growing great at this point. So we decide to wait a little bit and then we do the exact same protocol as we did with my son.
And we put the girl in and. No positive, nothing, no pregnancy and it was, it was really, you know, a lot of women I know go through this, but at the time for me, it felt like I lost my daughter. I was so confused. Um, and also, you know, why did, when we, we did it for my son, why didn’t it work for my girl? I just lost my girl and my body.
And so I, I felt that felt that sense of failure and, um, those deep seated, you know, fear, you know, fear that grips your heart. So the other thing that was happening at that same time that, um, we had a really difficult time in my life. And this was fall of 2017 is I was working at a large private university and, you know, when you do an embryo transfer, you need to have your doctor put you on bed rest.
And then also there are some certain things they ask for after bed rest, you know, while waiting for the two week wait. And, um, you know, I was at this university supposed to be out in the hot sun, standing, helping with graduation for long hours of time. And so I actually asked for it off. They wouldn’t give me it off.
So I had to leave early because I was having some bleeding. And I stood up for myself as a woman who was treating my body as if I was pregnant. And what happened was within. Same week that I found out I didn’t lose, I lost the girl embryo. I also was put on a performance improvement plan because I was breaking university policy.
I was a bad employee, I guess, but really what it was was a pregnancy discrimination because they weren’t accommodating me. So I was basically losing my job because I saw the writing on the wall and lost my girl that same week. It was a devastating time in my life. And I actually, you know, Roseanne, you would know, I hired an attorney to be like, what are my rights here?
And they have the bigger, more powerful attorneys. And they said, well, because you didn’t end up pregnant. You’re not actually, you know, it’s not pregnancy discrimination because it never, pregnancy never took. So therefore there was no pregnancy. So there’s nothing we discriminated against you on, which was mind boggling.
And someday in the near future, I’m going to be so vocal about women’s rights in the United States. As far as pregnancy, maternity leave and all the things, but that’s a whole separate story for a different day, but just to give background on what’s going on in my life. Yeah, go ahead. Fertility journey going on.
You’re also like finding yourself the subject of discrimination. Yes. You know, it’s, it’s crazy to me. I mean, it sounds insane to say, but you probably would have been better off pretending to be like, a man who thinks he’s a woman and thinks he’s pregnant, they probably would have never touched you if that was the case, right?
Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s mind blowing. I mean, I think your point is really an important one and important and one that is well taken because actual women. Are suffering actual discrimination and actual circumstances like what you’re talking about. Yes. Insane. Yes. So not only did I feel that the blow of losing my child that my dream is that I, you know, also lost my career because I had soiled my name.
At this company and I had a master’s degree in business and I was working there recruiting people to get their business degrees. So at the time I was like, this is a hot mess. Like I’m really, you know, I’m devastated right now. Like I don’t have the baby. I don’t have the job. What do I even have? You know, those kinds of thoughts.
Um, and so. We, you know, that was when I was like really on the roller coaster because women like they start out like putting their toe in the water and then they just jump in at some point they’re like, I’m off the deep end. I’m in crazy land. It’s all about the next IVF retrieval. It’s just get me this baby.
Cause then they get into the state of desperation and I was already there. So I was like, okay, what do I do? Another egg retrieval. That sounds exactly what I need right now. Jump back in. Why not? So I’m in again, you know, doctors are always happy to do. You do as many egg retrievals as you want. It’s just more money in their pocket.
So we’re back in, so we’re doing another one. Um, and my husband is sick. He has pneumonia at the time of the egg retrieval. He also has hepatitis a, which is super random. It’s not hepatitis C or B. It’s actually one that you can get from like foodborne illness. So it’s very random to get it, but he’s got, he tested positive for hepatitis C, and he was diagnosed with pneumonia when we were doing this egg retrieval.
And the doctor did not tell us, Hey, stop, you guys are not both healthy. You’re not in your best frame of mind. Your stress levels are, you know, not where we want them to be. He was like, yeah, that’ll be fine. We don’t see a difference, you know, like we can do the retrieval. So I want to tell every woman listening now.
If you or your husband or your partner are not in the most perfect, you know, healthy place, just put it on hold. I know it feels like the tiny, like the, the days feel so long. Everything feels like it’s taking forever. So you just want to get it over with, but cancel the cycle and wait because it really will affect your results.
And it’s all so expensive and it’s also emotionally expensive. So if you can have the wherewithal, I get it. I was on the crazy train and I was not, I did not have the wherewithal, but if you do, and you hear this today, um, just stop, let yourself off the hook, relax, breathe, take a step back and try again.
Um, they also said that COVID was really affecting partner sperm. And there was studies that it was not as strong. It was not as healthy, not making good embryos. So if you’ve tested positive, your partner put that cycle on hold, retry. That’s my advice to you today. So I did not retry. We went through with the IVF retrieval.
We didn’t even make it to blastocyst stage with our embryos. The poor things, they were probably like sick as a dog. Those sperm could not grow, but we got these morelas, which is like the stage before blastocyst and So I was like, no, no, freeze the morellas, don’t throw those out. Those are my babies. You know, I’m, I’m attached to these embryos.
So the doctor’s like, okay, okay. Whatever Megan wants, because Megan’s on the crazy train. So we freeze these morellas, we prep my body and we do a frozen transfer with my two morellas. And I’m thinking, these are my twins. This is it. You know, the pain is over, but no, the morellas do not turn into my babies.
So this is, you know, three embryos lost in my body at this point. So I’m sitting there crying and I’m just, you know, down in the pits and, um, and thinking, why is this so hard? You know, what are the answers? Like what is not going right here? And, um, and this is another intuitive moment that was really special.
And I remember it is that there had been a random woman that I met online who was kind of my guardian angel. And she was just. Friended me and she never met me in person, but she was just giving me wisdom because she had been on a journey before me and she had had immune issues blocking pregnancy. And she was speaking to me about what doctor she saw, which was the late Dr.
Braverman in New York. Um, and Dr. Vidali is now take taking over the practice. And so she said, consult with them, they’re gonna give you answers. And I was on a quest for answers. So, of course, you know, all these great doctors, there’s a long wait list for them and of course I was feeling defeated because it was like five or six months out, you know, to see this doctor and, you know, days feel like months and months feel like years when you’re in the fertility treatment cycle.
So, I’m crying my eyes off over these lost morellas when the phone rings. And, you know, it’s Dr. Braverman’s office saying, we’ve got, he’ll get on the phone with you right now. And that was just, you know, one of those miracle moments where I felt like, okay, God’s with me in this, like, he’s giving me like a little piece of bread, like, hang in there.
Like, we’re going to figure this puzzle out. You know, it’s a journey and and and take the lessons that are coming in this journey. So, you know, Dr Raymond got on the call with me and he was like, Oh, yes, you’ve got diminished ovarian reserve, but you’re young, you’ve got Hashimoto’s. I think you’ve got silent endometriosis.
I see them hand in hand all the time. You should come out. I think I need to do a laparoscopy, you know, surgery. And I think this is going to be your ticket to figuring out your problem. So of course, anyone who tells you, they figure out your problem. You’re like, how much money can I give you? Like, yes, solve my problem.
So I was on a plane quickly out to New York and signed up for his surgery. And I had no symptoms of endometriosis. So For any women listening, you know, don’t let your, you know, end up, you know, your OB or someone tell you, Oh no, no, unless you have painful periods, you don’t have endo because that is not true.
There’s a lot of fertility sufferers that have silent endo, no symptoms. So get that check. And sure enough, that was me. I did have silent endo and he did clear it out. And I thought, yes, this is it. My ticket, it’s done. I can move on. I, you know, I don’t know what was I, four or five years in. So I was only halfway through my journey at this point.
I was already like thinking we had fixed it, but no. Um, so what happened next is I let my body heal. By the way, it’s a very painful surgery. I will be honest with all women. It was extremely, extremely painful to heal from. And, um, am I glad I did it? Yes, I am. But I would not do it again. Um, and my story doesn’t end with me having to do it again.
So if anyone wants to know how I feel about that, I mean, dude, like think about where you’re at at this point, right? You’re really having to maneuver around so many things that are coming your way, you know, and what’s really cool about all of this that you’ve shared thus far. Is that your intuition was kicking.
Right, like there were aspects of you that were very aware like, hey, my husband has Hepatitis A, some foodborne illness, he’s not right, and pneumonia and you know, all of these things. And you are also seizing opportunities, right? Like. with braver men and all o things. But in the end, l had to have something ins you going.
What was that? that I just so strongly b was a fertile woman. It’s Because I felt like there was a missing puzzle piece with my body that had not been discovered yet, but I was actually a fertile woman who is, there was something blocking my fertility. So I never actually wore the garment of you’re infertile.
This, you know, I always was like, no, I know I’m fertile. So what’s blocking this? Like what, why can’t we figure it out? I just so strongly believed there was a puzzle piece and And it turns out there was a puzzle piece, but that’s at the end of the story. So, so that was driving me and I’m just an extremely driven person too.
And also the other blessing in disguise was at the same time where I had lost my job, um, and I was getting surgeries with Braverman is I, my heart was just hurting for all the other women and couples that were suffering with infertility. And out of that really painful place. Was this idea that was birthed like I couldn’t birth an actual human, but I was, I birthed a business because I started this company called Your Fertility Advocate, where I was helping to, you know, guide people through their fertility journey is just kind of like consulting them.
And, um, That was cooking in my mind at the time. And had I not had a clear space in my life of the old job behind me with this, you know, all the ties cut like it’s never, I’m not going back to the same career. I wouldn’t have been able to freely imagine something new, what could, what could exist. And so I had that downtime to really think, and that’s where that business was burned.
So I heal from my surgery and, um, we decide to do, we were like, okay, we’re going to do exactly what we did with my son because he was a fresh IVF transfer. And I thought fresh with the ticket, we’ve got to just repeat this fresh transfer. So, um, we go in and we do an egg retrieval to see if we can get more embryos.
Cause again, we’ve still got the one frozen from my son’s go. And, um, we go in for egg retrieval. This is egg retrieval, I don’t know, three or four. I did a total of seven all in, um, by the time I was done with the whole thing, but I was doing the egg retrieval. And what happened is I came out from anesthesia.
And I felt off and because I have diminished ovarian reserve, I don’t have a lot of follicles that grow. And it’s always been pretty easy, breezy, these egg retrievals, not a big deal. And big back to work the next day, I feel pretty normal. This one I felt off and here was my intuition again, is that something did not feel right inside my body, but I didn’t know what it was.
So I went home and rested and of course the nurses. Like, oh, well, you know, I told them, yeah, I kind of just feel off. I don’t feel great. And they of course dismissed me and they were like, yeah, you came out of an egg retrieval. You’re not going to feel great. It’s like, I don’t know. I just, something feels wrong this time.
And they told me, no, this is, this is normal. So as the day progressed, I felt worse and worse. And I was in bed and I was starting to feel lightheaded. I remember I started, I got up to go to the bathroom and I had to put both hands on the sides of the walls. Next to the toilet to study myself because I felt like I was going to pass out and I called the nurses again and they’re like, well, you know, drink a lot of fluids.
Maybe you’ve got OHSS and I’m like, I have like three follicles. I’m not an OHSS woman. Like this is not who, like, that’s not going to be my issue, you know, but they’re like, you know, sleep on it. Come back to, you know, call us in the morning, really, really not listening. And at the time I’m not as, I wasn’t as pushy as I am today.
Cause now I’m like the pushiest person you’ll ever meet with medical staff. But at the time I was still like, Oh, you know, their medical staff, medical staff knows best. Right. Um, no, they didn’t. So what happened was, you know, and then of course my husband chimes in as any great husband would do. And he looks at my paperwork and he tells me, Oh, your problem is you didn’t have enough Gatorade.
If you would have actually followed instructions, Megan, and drank enough Gatorade, you’d probably feel better. So that’s how he solved problems. Right? So I’m telling them it’s not the Gatorade, but no one’s going to listen to me around here. I’m going to try to get a good night’s sleep and, and hopefully miraculously I’ll feel better in the morning.
Right. Thanks. But I’m in pain. My stomach is really swollen. I look like a pregnant person. It’s like 8 p. m. at night, 9 p. m. at night, and I’m, you know, going through my cupboards in my bathroom looking for a painkiller because I can’t sleep. Like, this is painful, and I’m thinking, don’t I have something left over from my, like, endometriosis surgery?
Like, don’t I have a single Percocet in this house that I can take? Because I need something strong if I’m going to get through the night. I can’t find a single pain pill and had I found a pain pill that was strong enough to put me out, I would be dead right now because I was actually bleeding out internally the whole time, all day long.
They had nicked an artery next to my ovaries, and I was one of the less than 1 percent odds that this can happen. The only time it happened to my doctor is when it happened to me from all his years. He was a very experienced doctor that he nicked a blood vessel and I was full of blood. And so I couldn’t sleep, woke up my husband, he took me to the ER and they gave me an MRI and they told you, you are full of blood.
Like this pregnant belly is from blood and it was disgusting and it was traumatizing. And my, my OB doctor had to come in and I have a cesarean section scar in my abdomen now because they had to open me up, drain out the blood. It was two liters. She said, she was like, Yeah. She said that, what did she say?
She said the ER, like the ER room looked like a war zone after she finished like draining me because it was like, it was terrible. But yes, that was my near death experience. Number one. And I say number one because I actually almost died twice on my fertility journey, but they cleaned me up. They sewed me up and I healed up and, and I thought, you know what?
That was terrible. But I survived. And the good news is from my egg retrieval that we had done that went awry, we’ve got one more embryo and it’s a girl again. Near death experience, no biggie. I got a girl on ice. I can keep going. Nobody could accuse you, Megan, of not being a gangster on this journey. I mean, the only thing you were missing was a gunshot wound on the way over there.
And you’re like, ah, it’s just a flesh wound, right? I mean, seriously, seriously, it was not. And, and true story. My husband has taken out larger life insurance policies on me. And he signed up for like the extra level of health insurance because he’s like, my wife is going to keep ending up in the hospital.
Cause she was crazy. So I need like better insurance over here. Um, that’s, that’s the truth, but yeah, I thought, you know what? This was awful, but hey, I survived and I’ve got a C section scar without the baby, but that’s okay because I’m alive and kicking and I’ve got that girl embryo and it must have been meant to be because there she is again.
She exists in the freezer and there’s my daughter. This is the one who’s been calling to us. So I heal up and Uh, maybe four or five months and I’m feeling good and we do the exact protocol and we put her in and it fails. So again, no positive pregnancy. And this is just like, life does not make sense.
Like what is all this meant for? Like this is just, this is devastating. I have no answers. This is beyond frustrating, just confusion, because my intuition said, yes, she’s coming. There’s a puzzle piece to figure out. And yet I was hitting slam door after slam door and I tell myself at any other time in life, like I would be dating a guy or, you know, there, and there’d be some sort of intuitive feeling like, okay, he’s not meant to be, you know, I’d shut the door and walk away.
You know, I actually do follow that generally in life. Like if there’s too many slam doors, like there’s your song, it’s not for you. You need to move on. But for this fertility journey, it was like, my intuition was directly in conflict with what my path was saying. My path was saying. Give up. These are slam doors.
This is not meant for you. But my intuition could not have been stronger. So it was a very confusing place to live. And at that point, um, I just was in a lost state. And that’s actually when I met you, Rosanne. Um, so I hear that a lot, the last state. Yeah. Um, so let me just one second and get to where I was in the story.
Because there was a lot I had to make a few notes. I love your type a thoroughness here too. I mean, I just, cause I didn’t want to forget some of these important parts, you know, that matter to me and that hopefully it’ll be, it’ll help someone else. Um, that’s why I’m sharing this. So, um, it’s 2019. I met you early 2020 at the end of 2019, I went to a women’s conference and it was a packed auditorium and we were supposed to do an exercise.
Which probably is an exercise that mirrored something that was in your book now that I think about it, but it was something about, um, speaking what your greatest fear is, you know, putting that out there, finding a stranger in the room, um, and then just speaking what your greatest fear is. And, um, and sharing that with the stranger.
So I remember this so distinctly because they like dim the lights and you had to get out of your seat. You couldn’t like, talk to someone that you came with to the conference. You had to go find a stranger. So I don’t know how this woman appeared in my path with dark hair and And she looked to me, she looked really young.
So I thought, Oh, great. Like, I’m going to talk about my infertility struggles. And I feel like I’m never going to be this mother of this daughter that’s supposed to come. And she’s going to laugh at me and she’s never going to relate. So I asked her to start first. I was like, well, you wouldn’t mind. Will you share yours first?
And I’ll share mine next. So she shared first and it blew my mind because her journey was literally that she had given birth to a baby boy and she struggled with PCOS. And she had surgery after surgery to try to fix her, her fertility problems. And she said it would took years. And it was so disheartening.
Um, because I felt like I was supposed to have a baby girl. I mean, it’s just like blows my mind. So she then reaches out, takes my hand, puts it on her belly and says, I’m four months pregnant with a baby girl right now. Yes. So I of course lost my, you know, eyeballs, like they’re just draining water. And I’m thinking, wow, of all the women in this auditorium.
You were, you crossed my path with this story to tell me. And, um, so of course I tell her what I’ve been through. And she said, you are going to have that baby girl. You know, she just really has said that to me. Um, and she says, have faith. She’s coming. And, um, I shared that with my friends, you know, that were at the conference with me and they were like, wow, where was my person to give me a vision because no one else in my group like had such a profound experience of this sharing.
And so I held that story in my heart. I actually added that woman as a friend on Facebook, and, um, and she’s still a Facebook friend today. So, so that happened, and then you happened, Rosanna, because I had made a choice that I didn’t want to live in this dark place of, Is this ever going to happen for me?
Maybe I don’t deserve this. Um, because you really punish yourself with your thoughts. And I even had the thought. Maybe there’s something about me that I’m not supposed to be a girl mom, like, I’m not, I’m not the right woman to raise another woman, like those were the thoughts I was punishing myself with.
And it’s funny, like, what’s the term you use for those? It’s a good term. Absolutely. Where you just like punish yourself with these thoughts and, and why was I thinking that? What a terrible thing to, you know, flog myself with. So I remember getting served one of your ads and at the time I didn’t know much about how everything online works, but I was like, it’s a sign from heaven.
You know, it’s not a Facebook algorithm, but it’s a sign from heaven. Rosanna’s in my life. She is going to coach me out of this dark hole and I am going to live my life in a more freer way. I’m not going to, you know, like flog myself with these saboteurs. So I write you this email, and this is my email, and I wrote it February 20th, 2020, and I applied for the Fearless and Fertile Method program.
It’s an eight week program you were doing at the time. And I said, letter to Roseanne. I have one frozen embryo left. I need help to decide what to do as I’ve lost faith in my body, my body after all the losses and a near death experience after fertility surgery. I wonder if it’s time to move on to the help of a surrogate but something deep inside tells me my story is not over, and I can conceive naturally, even though it’s never happened before.
The hardest thing is trusting my intuition. I really need to speak to Rosanne. I was literally praying for God to show you the next piece of the puzzle because he has led me this far. I feel Rosanne and the, and a mindset change is strongly what I need. Wow. So that’s what I wrote you. And that’s how our paths first crossed.
And I liked, I just, when I found this email in my inbox, I was like, that’s powerful because of how my story ends up. So we start working together, it’s an eight week program, and of course I’m the best student in the world, and I did all the meditations and everything you told me to do because, you know, type A.
And, lo and behold, I get a natural, positive pregnancy test. For the first time in my life. During your coaching program, like what is, what is that and because of your coaching program, what happened? Well, let, let me see. I don’t wanna get too ahead of myself. So I got a positive, it was my 40th birthday. I was actually secretly pregnant on my 40th.
It was a big year. You know that whole, everyone’s always stressed out about turning 40 when they’re on the fertility, you know, rollercoaster. I turned 40 and I found out I was pregnant. I was coaching with you ’cause it was in March. And it was a chemical pregnancy, so it was short lived, but it existed.
And because I was working with you, instead of letting it spiral me into despair, I reframed it. And I, it was your help to think, okay, what, what did this actually answer for me? Like, what did this tell me? This told me that I actually can get pregnant naturally because I never knew that before. It also told me his sperm can get up there because we’ve never known that, known that before because we’ve done IVF.
And it also gave me some clues because I broke out in this strange rash all over my body. And that was the only time I had become pregnant, not on all those immune medications like steroids and things to help suppress the immune response. So I gathered these like a detective that it was like clues and I said, okay, this we’re getting closer instead of me thinking like, oh, it’ll never happen.
I’m farther away. Look at this failure. Instead, I thought, look at these wonderful clues I gleaned from this chemical pregnancy. And that mindset shift was super powerful because that was what shifted on my journey that helped propel me through the next, you know, really difficult time that I still had ahead of me.
So, you know, we, we coached together, then I started doing some private coaching with you. And, um, I made the decision that I’m going to keep trying to get pregnant naturally, but I’m going to get a surrogate and we’re going to put that last embryo in a surrogate and I feel good about this choice and I actually believe in my body and maybe I’m going to get pregnant naturally and the surrogate’s going to get pregnant.
I’m going to have those twins. We actually call them twiblings when there’s like two coming around the same time, but a different woman’s carrying them. So I’m pumped, like let’s do this, you know, like this is, this is that like I’m ready. The mindset’s there. Let’s make this happen. Like we’re going to have this grand finale, like nobody’s business.
And this is what all the pain was worth. So we move forward. And, um, and I switched doctors at the time because I was like, okay, I’m just going to start fresh. And then I just make sure everyone is on my team. And, um, a new doctor, I went and saw, this was another one of those intuitive moments. And it was summer of 2020.
And my husband and I were sitting across from his desk. And he was looking through, you know, my laundry list of issues I was diagnosed with at the time and, you know, my history of failures and everything. And he said, Hey, statistically, I got to tell you, there’s less than 1 percent chance that you and your husband would ever get pregnant with IVF at this point.
And he, you know, he gave it to me with a straight face and he was serious. And I remember that I was like, ah, the mindset is working because. I thought to myself, I looked him in the face and I didn’t say it, but I thought it, I thought you just wait because I’m going to be back in this office and you’re going to have to eat your words.
And then I had this thought and like we left the office. And I told my husband that I was like, he’s going to be wrong. And, and that was just intuition and that was just like putting that, those like thoughts in the universe that I don’t have to be a statistic. It doesn’t have to apply to me. There’s always outliers.
Why can’t I be an outlier? So I had that moment. It was like kind of a deja vu experience where I felt like I’m going to be back. And he’s gonna have to eat it for it, which I just love. So, we move forward with the surrogate, and we get a proven surrogate. She has carried for another family before us and had a baby that she delivered.
She’s lovely. She’s like, lives two hours from us. Just the nicest woman. I adore her. And I feel really good about the choice that she’s gonna carry this. Little boy that’s supposed to be my son’s brother and we do all the things in the mock cycle and we get everything right, we put the embryo in, and it’s a chemical pregnancy.
And I’m just like, this is un fucking believable. Sorry about my language, but it was Oh, that’s you came to the right place. I’m just like, are you kidding me right now? Like, here I moved into the surrogate, here I, you know, like, how is this still happening? And so now I have zero embryos. You know, I felt like that one frozen embryo for my son’s batch was my backup plan.
He was the safety net. He was the one I made when I was the youngest and he’s gone now. So the safety net’s gone. I don’t even know if I can make more embryos at this point. The last time I tried to make embryos, I almost died on the operating room table. What this, this can’t be the end of the road. This woman in the conference tells me my girl’s coming.
Like I feel deja vu with the doctor. Like, why, why is my journey so painful? So at that point, You know, I think, I think I had some check ins with you and I remember some things that you told me, um, you told me some things like where life was saved for a reason, you know, um, there’s, there’s more to your story that’s going to be told and, and you just kind of help, like, look, all we can do is move forward.
We don’t know the answers as to why these things happen. Your only choice is how you can, you know, you can only control your own response. And you can’t control the outcomes, like the terrible things that come your way, but you can control how you’re going to frame it, how you’re going to feel about it, and then the next steps you’re going to take.
And so I just had to live in that space and take one step in front of the other and move forward. And at that point I was like, you know what, I’m open to whatever the universe has for me. That’s supposed to be coming my way. If I’m like holding with a clenched fist, this idea that I need to naturally conceive this baby girl.
I’m not going to hold it with a clenched fist. I’m going to hold my hand open and say, what’s meant for me. I’m open for it to come my way. I’m not going to just make these rigid parameters that it has to look this way. Even though in my heart of hearts, I felt like I was going to conceive my girl naturally.
Maybe that’s my lesson in life. You know, at that time I had already been helping a lot of people. Find surrogates themselves, have successful journeys. My company has just really taken off. It’s such a blessing to be able to do this line of work. And yet it was almost personally because I was helping so many other people find their happy endings and I couldn’t figure out my own happy ending.
I felt a little bit like a fraud inside because, you know, my company was called your fertility advocate and I couldn’t be my own fertility advocate and figure out my own issues. Which was really painful for fertility advocate. Like just because you didn’t have the recipe doesn’t mean that you weren’t serving people at the highest level.
I mean, it’s, isn’t that funny what we do to ourselves, right? I mean, how many babies were born because you matched couples and families with surrogates. And I mean, it’s just incredible what you were doing and are doing, you know, it was bringing me a lot of, some people would ask, um, well, isn’t it painful You know, to be helping these people and not have success yourself.
And it was sometimes when I would let my saboteurs like sneak in, I was thinking like I’m a fraud and, you know, I don’t have this figured out, but there was also a piece of joy that was seeing all these other people have their success stories where I was like, mine could come too. Like, like, One thing that you talked about is just because it didn’t happen this month, you might actually be one month away from everything changing.
And that was a really helpful thought for me, because it could, it actually could be that close if you don’t even know it. So if you keep that mindset, that it’s true, it could just literally be next cycle or it could be six months from now. But even if it is six months from now, would you throw that away or would you be still just as happy, even if it’s six months from now?
And it was true. I would still take my blessing six months from now or a month from now whenever it wanted to come my way. And that was a helpful way to look at things. So when I was in this dark place of, you know, no answers and confusion, you had, you had a chemical pregnancy with a surrogate. And so where did you go from there?
Because And as you were saying, you know, once you let go of this death grip on the idea that you were going to have your daughter naturally, that had to have opened up some possibilities for you. Yeah. I was like, okay, you know what? It’s an egg donor. You know, I always, I barely make embryos. I almost died on the table.
Let’s get an egg donor that I don’t have to risk my body. So I started to look into finding egg donors and go through that whole process. And it’s an emotional process because you do have to kind of bury the thought of your own biology. And sometimes women are really tied to that. Um, which I think And I saw it in my clients that I helped.
I saw how much happiness would come into their lives when they became a mother. And that it was completely irrelevant after the point, if there was some sort of biological connection that they love that child just as much as my biological mothers did. And being able to see that with a gift, because I think a lot of people don’t realize that.
And they truly do think that they will. Feel different if there’s not that biology and I disagree, I think if you are meant to be a mother that you will love on that child that’s meant to be for you and it’ll feel like that was the child meant for you. So carrying them, you’re still carrying them and there’s still a thing called epigenetics, which we don’t even completely fully understand.
Yes. And, and the miraculous goodness that happens. Inside of your body spiritually and a soul level. I mean, there’s so much to be said on that there is. And, and it just opened my eyes to the ways that families can come together and really beautiful ways. And so I was really open minded at this point. I was like, if we need an egg donor and the surrogate carries, you know, the egg donor baby, we create, maybe there’s adoption.
Like I was looking at it all because I wanted to be open and not be closed because I. Felt she’s coming and I don’t want it to close off the way that she’s meant to come to me. So the funny thing was, is that I would find an egg donor and, you know, it’s a good egg donor for you when you literally get excited about her eggs more than your eggs.
She’s young. She’s a model. Like, are you kidding? I’ve been through like death’s door and back. I get model, like give me the model from Harvard and I want her eggs because I deserve it. You know, so I found three, well, yeah, two different ladies that I was legitimately more excited about their eggs and as fate would have it, Both of them.
Um, and I thought I was, you know, super smart because I put the deposits down on both of their eggs thinking I know how this goes. I’m going to beat the system. I’m putting deposits down in case one backs out. I got the backup. Oh, no, they both backed out. And yeah, they both had personal reasons they backed out.
And you know, you scour these databases for a long time. It’s not like an easy decision to find your egg donor. For me, I wanted one. I felt like semi resembled me and like, obviously I’m not a model, but you know, the same hair, hair color and all the things. So that was again, crazy. Cause I hear I’m like, I’m willing to do the donor.
I can’t even get these donors. Like what is going on? So, um, and then in the in between time, I recommended to see Dr. Kwok Kim, who is in Chicago. She’s a specialist in the immune system. I go see her and she runs like so many, so many blood tests and looks at my uterus and she confirms what, you know, I knew all along.
Intuitively was that my immune system was interfering with my ability to get pregnant. Just like that doctor, that very first REI I ever saw who told me, no, no, no, you’ll never, you know, this is not your issue. I wouldn’t give you steroids that don’t work. She said, yes, you need steroids. You need these things.
This is your issue. You have NK cells that are super elevated. You have cytokines that are super elevated. We don’t really understand why your body looks like this because you don’t fit a typical diagnosis. Like you don’t have, You know, lupus or these other autoimmune diseases. So it’s confusing, but your numbers tell us you need these things.
And so I thought, okay, let’s do it. I’m going to just start steroids and just do them and try naturally because she thinks I could actually get pregnant if we treat my immune system. So while I’m looking for egg donors on the side, I’m doing whatever Quokkim tells me to do. And we’re trying naturally.
And I will be honest, how many years have we been trying naturally at this point? Sex was so not fun by this point. I mean, we were so beyond trying to pretend that we were going to make trying sexy. Like it was just, and I feel like this needs to be said because I think a lot of women to say it. And I want to let you off the hook.
Like. We, you know, we’re done pretending that we were gonna have fun at that time of the month. We had been traumatized by what we had gone through and we’re like, okay, the sperm has to get to the egg at least twice in this window every month. I’m so tired of like trying to like, no lingerie is going to cut it at this point.
It’s not fun mentally, physically, let’s not pretend with each other. So we thought what’s called mosey, it’s like a little like syringe that basically same sex couples can use to get impregnated. And we use the mosey for that year because I was like, I don’t want to pretend. I just want to be authentic.
You want to be authentic. Neither of us think this is fun. This is traumatizing, but we still want to like try at the right time each month. So you go do your thing in the bathroom. We’ll put it in the syringe and I’ll shoot it up there and we’ll be done with it. So if you are at that place. Where you’re like, honestly, I just, it’s so uncomfortable even trying anymore, you know, physically, just let yourself off the hook.
There’s things out there that help you. We utilize that for a while. And it was actually a breath of fresh air because we were just being authentic. Yeah. I mean, I remember, uh, an acupuncturist saying that to me. A long time ago. And I thought that that was bullshit at first. You know what I mean? Like you got to get it done.
You got to get it done. But she was like, she basically told me that if you’re having sex and you don’t really want to, that is not the energy within which to bring a baby. And when I heard that, I’m like, And so, I mean, I think your point is well taken. I agree a hundred percent. Yeah. I just feel like it’s, it’s important that you’re authentic with your partner and that you don’t have to pretend, you know, you can both have a really real conversation.
Like we’ve been through the ringer in this journey and having to do timed intercourse is the most unfun thing we can think of right now. Yeah. We’re still committed to trying to get this baby here. So what can we do to make this less you know, miserable for ourselves and that was our answer. And so for a lot of women, um, maybe it’s your answer too, because if you’re open, your hand is open.
However, that baby’s meant to come. I was not going to complain if that baby came from a mosey syringe. I was like, if that’s how she wants to come. Who wants this romantic story, but I think what they do, it’s just this incredible pressure. Yeah. that we end up putting on ourselves. So you did that for a year.
Yes. And then what? And then I was, I found out about mini IVF, which is like very low dose, basically trying to only get one lead follicle. And I was like, gosh, do I creep back into another try IVF? Like my last try almost died. Then I thought, you know, it’s like lightning striking. What’s the chance it’s going to strike twice, you know, and it’d been a couple of years now.
And I was like, I think, I’m thinking I’m going to try this mini IVF. I tried to get a donor. No one will have me. So I don’t know. Let’s do this mini IVF. Um, so I somehow convinced my husband, we’re going to try another IVF, but it’s, it’s many, this is why it’s different, all the things. So we do many IVF. And I get two follicles, which is, you know, just dismal result results in the world of IVF and I’m 41 and a half at this point.
And Two are growing, you know, and one doctor sees me and, and cause they kind of traded off doctors in the clinic that would check on you. And he was like, Oh, two follicles. Oh, cancel this, do an IUI. Like this is not worth it. But my, my main doctor was like, no, stay the course at this age of being an older woman.
We want the golden egg. It could be one of those two. Let’s just keep, you know, giving that low dose stimulation meds and we’ll go after, if there’s one egg, we go after one egg because it only takes one. You know, she was an amazing doctor. So we stayed the course and those two follicles became two blastocyst embryos.
So really good results. And I think it was something to do with the fact that I was on those immune medications that were keeping my inflammation in check and that I was treating my body. I was on something called LDN, which is like a natural medicine to help bring down your immune response. I was on some alternative things.
And I think that was my key because I was still making blastocyst embryos. You know, my old ovaries were still kicking after everything they’d been through. I was so proud of them. It was like, wow. So We get, you know, there’s two blastocysts. We put them both to genetic testing, lo and behold, what do you think our results were?
Normal, normal girl. There she is again. Every single time we would make a normal girl embryo. And every single time I thought, yes. This is it. She’s coming. I knew it. This is that it still wasn’t it because, um, what happened at the time? Well, actually when I, when I had those two follicles grow and two blastocysts in my girl again appeared in my life in the freezer, I thought I have won the lottery.
It’s now time to do other things that lottery winners do, and I’m going to go do this wild treatment I’ve been hearing about called PRP stem cell rejuvenation of your ovaries, but it’s not FDA approved in the United States. So you have to go to Mexico, which sound a little bit sounds worse than it was because there is other treatments done in Mexico and it’s a very clean clinic clinic and it was.
Other clients of mine had told me about it. They’re like, this is what you do. You get on an airplane, you go down, they put the stem cells in your ovaries, you fly back that same day, they put the stem cells in the morning, you fly back from Mexico, you’re good. And then you start making blastocysts every retrieval.
And I thought, Yes, sign me up because that’s what I always say, right? Show me the way this is the way this is the puzzle piece. Okay. I’ll do it. So I actually, um, went by myself because I thought I’m going to be in and out of Mexico. I’m just going to get this done. I’m going to come back. And, um, I was thinking about staying the night in Mexico, but I decided, no, I’m going to get on the same, same day flight.
So I do the stem cells in the morning. I get on a flight that I arrived back in Los Angeles at 6 p. m. at night. And I have dinner with my family and I kiss my son and my husband good night and I go to sleep and I go into a delirious fever state for two days straight in my bed, vomiting fever. I am so violently ill.
And my husband said, what is going on? I got to get you to the hospital. And I was. I was not really coherent. I wasn’t even able to be analytical. And I was like, no, no, no, you know, I’m fine. I didn’t want him to take me. He finally called an ambulance and we, he gets me into the ER and they tell me I’m in sepsis, which is yeah, really, I didn’t really know about it.
But it’s basically when your own immune system is so radically attacking your body, because it’s trying to fight an infection that it basically starts to backfire. Like It’s dangerous and it can kill you and it can kill you very quickly. So I was in a state of such a shock and also something called DIC, which is where your blood isn’t clotting correctly.
So they were very, very worried about me. And intuitively I felt. I was in the hospital. They were whispering about me. I knew that they were worried. And I, I felt like, am I going to die? Like, is this it? Have I finally done it? You know, I put myself in the grave on this journey and, um, I wasn’t getting better.
I was getting worse and I had been there for five days and I remember so distinctly. I called my mom and she’s just like a powerful woman of faith. And I said, you know, like, basically I joke with my friends, if you need like someone to put a prayer up for you, you need my mom to do it because she’s got like a direct channel to God, like she will put one in for you and she’ll call on a favor from God.
So I was like, mom, you have got to pray because I don’t think I’m getting out of this hospital. You know, I, I’ve really done it. Like I’m in bad shape and usually I bounce back and I’m strong and healthy and I don’t think it’s, I don’t think I’m coming back from this. And she says she was up all night on the fifth night praying over me and praying for my recovery.
And, you know, they came in in the morning and they took my blood and, um, and they were just like, what is going on? Because my liver enzymes and my red blood cells and my white blood cells, my red and white blood cells had completely normalized overnight. And they were just like, this is a miracle. And my liver enzymes, they were not where they needed to be, but they were trending in the right direction.
So I 100 percent had a turnaround overnight and I credit it 100 percent to her prayers and like healing me from death’s door again, where I checked out that day and went home that night and finished my recovery at home and sepsis did not take my life. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. You know, it’s crazy to me when you think about those things and You know, that could have been a, an opportunity.
I mean, like you probably had enough of these thoughts going through your head. Like I’d really done it. Like, I love how you, you know, that’s so human to say, okay, I had finally done it. I had really taken this journey to the nth degree, everything that you shared up to this point, and then you find yourself five days in the hospital with sepsis calling in your mama for a favor from the big guy.
Right. And it, you could have. Nobody would have looked twice at you walking away from this journey saying, I’m done. What I’m curious about is why you didn’t say that. Well, I knew I was done with fertility treatments in my body. Like, I, I felt like I was super lucky that was supposed to take me out. And I squeaked by through that one, but I knew that was it.
No more fertility treatments in my body. I probably shouldn’t have done them. I still pushed the limit and I had to be like, my hand had to be slapped again. No more because I guess I didn’t learn my lesson the first time or the second, third, fourth or fifth time
Um, and the other thing that gave me a sense of hope was, you know, I had made that other embryo, that girl, that last girl embryo, and we were gonna put it in a surrogate. And she had been waiting for me this whole year ’cause she had the chemical pregnancy the first time. And you know, I tried to get an egg donor, couldn’t get one.
Finally did the mini IVF with my body, got one again. I was like, we got the embryo again, you know? And then I was like, yeah, I’ll do the stem cells because I’m winning the lottery. So let’s, you know, get a backup because you know, you are always like, there’s, we need a backup chance. And I’m, you know, I’m back home recovering, but we’ve got that girl embryo, so I’m telling myself it’s going to all turn out okay because she’s, she’s still coming and this is going to work.
And this is how the story ends. I walk away with my life and baby girl comes. So we put her, we put baby girl in the surrogate for embryo transfer number two and zero beta fail. So this is like four transfers failed to me, two in the proven surrogate and you know, two former, you know, near death experiences at this point and a decade.
And I, I just am at my wit’s end. And I just, I don’t, I just throw up my hands and I’m like, okay. I give up. I can’t anymore. Like I cannot do this anymore. This is so damn painful and so damn confusing and so heartbreaking and I have no answers and I’ve been at it so diligently for so many years and I have gotten so close where I can taste it so many times and yet it’s getting to where I.
This is beyond frustrating. And it was in that moment that I wrote a journal entry. I said goodbye to baby girl and wrote to her and released her. And I just told her that she had a wonderful brother here on earth and a great dad that she would have loved. And mom wanted her more than anything, but I have got to live.
And this mom is tired and she has tried everything she could to be there and to bring you to this earth, but it’s beyond her abilities. And, um, so I just said my goodbyes. And I just was like, I’m sorry, I’ve got to live. I’ve got a living child who needs me. I have a husband. Who’s like terrified of me putting myself in the hospital again, and I just can’t do it anymore.
So I wrote, I wrote her a goodbye letter and I just tried to come to peace in my heart that that was the end. And I’ve shut the door and no one can tell me I didn’t try because I honestly tried harder than anyone I know. And um, and let’s see what happened after that. Let me think. You know what’s interesting though about that, Megan, is that you didn’t do it from anger.
You, what you’re talking about is surrender. You didn’t do it from a place of anger, you did it from a place of knowing yourself and showing this girl. Who you are. You showed her your grit. You showed her your tenacity. You showed her your faith. You also showed her what it meant for her mom to let go of her Darth Vader grip on how and when and all of the things about her.
It was really mean because I know you. It’s like a goodbye letter, but Goodbye is not fully Megan. Your heart is too big for that. There, there’s something about that, that like, even as you, you know, as you share this, like I’m thinking to myself, you really embodied surrender in that because surrender is about love.
It’s not about anger. And I think that’s, what’s coming out with you. What do you think about that? Yes, it was a sense of release 100%. And And it also was that I never stopped believing that she could come through and join our family. I, that belief still existed, but I stopped believing that she actually would.
And I was like, you know what? I’m defeated. I guess she’s not coming. I would have sworn up and down. She was coming. And I don’t know why, but I guess she’s not, but I know it. She could. And I just don’t know why she’s not. That’s where I was at. Um, so it was never like I stopped believing it could happen. I just thought for whatever reason, I’ll never know the side of heaven.
Why She wasn’t coming even though nothing was so strong as the belief that she was so, um, you know, I really tried to just be at peace and, and, you know, of course I adored my son. I’ve got an amazing son. And when I talk about this whole journey to baby number two, and I know that some women just yarn for baby number one, and I do not take that for granted.
And I do actually feel like. The gift of baby number one and my son helped me have, you know, my cup full enough to be able to give it to these other people’s lives because you can’t get from an empty cup, but I just knew so tangibly the joy that having a child can bring into your life with my son and how he filled me up so much and you know, my husband and the love there and just how love and, and that was what gave me the energy.
To keep going and, um, and I just tried to be at peace with that. Like that was what our family looked like and that’s how it’s going to be. And, um, I sat in that as much as I could and tried to just embrace it. And my mother in law, my mother in law had two boys and her husband didn’t agree to ever try again.
And she, you know, knew how much we had tried for girl and wanted a girl. She told me. She’s like, I’ll just tell you right now, it’s never going to go away that pain in your heart for that girl. That was her best advice that she gave. Oh, thanks. She was like, I still miss that I never had a daughter, like this, like mother in law guilt trip.
And I was like, Oh my gosh. You know, so she was like, I don’t know, 80 or something. And she’s telling me the hole in her heart would never go away. And I was like, I’m going to have this hole in my heart. It’s never going to go away. You know, like I’m trying to put myself at peace, but maybe it’s not. And that was actually what was most scary about it is, am I always going to feel this sense of loss?
Am I never truly going to be at peace that our family is complete? And that thought really haunted me. And, um, so I spent a few months trying to be at peace and, you know, the mother in law conversation just kept ringing in my head. And believe it or not, and you probably would believe it at this point, knowing what I’ve told you, is that I went back to my husband and I said, guess what?
I’m not done. I still feel like she’s coming and I cannot shake it. So that, so that goodbye letter was actually see you later. It wasn’t actually goodbye. It was, it was just beautiful. But you know, I think this is important to point out to the women listening though, Megan, because I think women get confused.
They think surrender is goodbye, or that you have to like fully, and it’s like your heart, you know truth when you hear it. And that’s when you know, like if this thing nags at you, if this thing keeps interrupting your peace, you know, it’s purpose, you know, it is blessed, it is meant for you because it never lets you rest.
Yeah, it never, it didn’t let me rest. And I gave it my best shot at putting it to bed. I truly was like, let me, let me be. Just release me from this. Like, like, why is this, why do I just keep thinking about her? When I see a little girl run by, I’m like, that’s her, she’s coming. And I don’t know if anyone’s read that book, spirit babies, super helpful.
If you’ve had a lot of lost embryos or miscarriages. Yeah. So I just felt the spirit, the soul of that child is still speaking to me. And, um, so of course I go to my husband and he’s just like, God, at this point, you know, we’re in therapy. Don’t worry. We’ve been in therapy for years because this stuff is so hard, you know, on a relationship and I say, I just can’t shake it.
She, I just feel like there’s a meant to be another child here. And you know what the great news is, it’s not going to be in my body. So I’m not at risk for like, you know, any sort of surgeries or near death experiences, but Hey, I have a business that is thriving and I know how to get egg donors. I know how to get surrogates.
I know how to do all this things that can be really stressful for people. So let’s go get another egg donor and a new surrogate. Because I don’t want to be 70 years old, like your mother and think, why didn’t I keep trying? This is important to me. This is where I’d rather spend my money. Like this is what’s valuable.
I know you really want it to be a dad to a daughter and you believe she was coming to, he was way okay with like just being one and done at this point. Cause he wanted a wife that was alive, but you know, I’d go to him and I was like, You know, this is what I’m thinking. And he was like, okay, well, let’s do this.
Let’s have one more check at the doctor, you know, a day three check of your follicles, make sure really the ship has sailed. You’re basically pre menopausal because my cycle was a regular at this point. And, you know, I had stopped all of the crazy medication that Kwok Kim had put me on. And I had, you know, written goodbye to the daughter and we were just in a different place.
And I said, okay, I’ll go for a day three check just to appease my husband. Cause I know what the doctor’s going to say, but whatever, if he needs to hear it from the doctor’s mouth, that the door has shut, the ship has sailed. It’s not happening in my body. That’s fine. So I wait for my day three check to come wait for my cycle, wait for my cycle, wait for my cycle.
And I’m still waiting for my cycle. Because I am six and a half months pregnant right now.
I remember, Megan, when you told me that, I remember jumping right up from my desk. Like, in a total, like, it, you know, it, it just, this is the kind of stuff that we need to hear more often. And, you know, for somebody like you who leaned into the dream and leaned in hard and had the guts, even after everything you went through to, to love yourself, love this girl, love the family enough to go to your husband and say, I’m not done.
I don’t know how this thing is going to happen, but I’m not done. And I think the remarkable thing about that, especially when it comes to you, was that wasn’t about ego. That was about purpose. That was about calling your life. You know, and I’m so delighted that you shared that story about your mother in law.
You know, we roll our eyes about mother in law, but that was real wisdom. And I think, you know, amongst all of the bombs that you’ve dropped here, all the wisdom and all the goodness that you’ve shared, hearing from a woman who still feels a hole in her heart and is honest about it. a gift because there’s a lot of people out there that will make excuses for giving up on their dream.
They’ll, you know, Oh yeah, you know, it wasn’t meant for all this. You know what you Megan are living proof that when something is meant for you, we’ll find you. So six and a half months pregnant. What are you having? Dare I ask? Well, let me tell you, my son, I, I love him so much, but we would pray together at night before going to bed and leading up to this miraculous pregnancy at 43 years old, he told me, Naturally, without the mosey, by the way, we just got, we had fun the old fashioned way.
I had no idea what time of the month it was, but it happened just how I would have loved it happen. The people, you know, the way the teenagers get pregnant and, um, yes, my son said, um, you know, mommy, cause I would say, you know, he saw me for years praying for like, you know, God, I pray that you would bring the baby along, you know, bring baby girl.
And he said, mom. You need to pray harder. He’s like, if you prayed harder, God would bring you the baby. And I was like, it was kind of convicting in my heart, but I wanted to like model to my son faith. And I changed my prayer when he told me that because I was like, you know, I don’t know what the outcome is, but I’m going to change my prayer and I’m going to start praying when the baby comes.
And I did before bed every night. I wanted him to see me actually like faithfully pray for the baby and pray for it in a way that it already happened. God, when the baby comes. We pray that she is healthy and that I have a great pregnancy and delivery. So I just like read it into existence. Like I just, I just put it out there that she was already coming.
So I’ll tell you what, when I was 10 weeks pregnant and we Got the genetic testing results from our NIPT back and I got in the car and my husband and somewhere in the car, we had just finished breakfast and we all sat in the car together and I checked my email because it would cut the inbox becomes your inbox of results.
And I said, it said your results are in. And I was like, what do I do? Do I look at it? And my husband and my son, they look at me like, yes. So I click it open and it says, congratulations. You’re having a girl. I just burst into tears because she, there she was, she was there. And I’m just crying hysterically.
And I, I guess I threw my phone on the ground and my sweet son, eight years old, he goes, mommy, why are you crying? This is what you told you wanted to happen. You know, he didn’t understand the concept of tears is like such intense happiness and, um, And yes, it’s a healthy baby girl miraculously. And let me tell you the doctor who did the NIP test and the doctor who did the heartbeat ultrasound and did the betas was the same doctor that three years ago said less than 1 percent chance.
This will ever happen for you. He did eat his words.
100%. Yeah, that intuition was true. It was a deja vu moment. And I walked in there and he found the heartbeat super strong, like 180. And he goes, Wow, this is a miracle from God. And I don’t even think he believes in God, but he just knew how unlikely it was. Megan, I mean, seriously, like, I don’t think there’s going to be a dry eye listening to this episode.
And I think that you are living proof of what is possible. When you just keep leaning into the dream, even when it seems stupid, because I think the only thing that’s stupid is leaving the dream behind. Like, you gotta listen to this. You know, so, so many women, That I’ve spoken to, you know, the, Oh, I failed so many times I’ve done this, I’ve done that.
I mean, I don’t, we’re on a roll with this less than 1 percent chance thing going on. We’re in a role in this podcast, all these women beating single digit odds to get pregnant. But faith is such an incredible aspect of this that I don’t think gets enough attention, right? Think about all of these varying opinions that you got, all of these interventions, they all have their own value, they have their own merit in their own right.
But in the end, This came down to you, you being willing to receive, you leaning into your faith, you trusting yourself, having the frickin guts and ovaries of titanium to even raise this again with your husband. You were the common denominator. Well done. Thank you. Yeah, and, and I’ll say yes, faith was huge.
God worked a miracle. Absolutely. But I want women to know also that there was a missing puzzle piece that was found medically with me. So I don’t want you to walk away from this story. And, and discount that because it was part of it. Um, and what happened is within four days of getting that positive pregnancy test, my side of my face just started radiating pain.
Just I couldn’t even sleep so much pain went into the dentist. Long story short, they did a, um, x ray and found that I had an abscess from a root canal that was done in 2012 that they had missed a root. So there was three roots in my tooth. not to and usually to teeth have two roots. So there was a third route that was infected for all of these years that could not drain.
And my body was constantly fighting an infection, which would be why my immune system was always elevated, why my numbers were always confusing. And of course The human body, you know, it’s smart. Why would it want to get pregnant when it’s dealing with an infection all the time? And the doctors were like, wow, you actually must have had a really strong body that fought this infection down that you didn’t feel pain for all these years, yet it had nowhere to go, nowhere to drain, nowhere to clear itself.
So, yes, they cleared that out. It was a whole thing. Antibiotics, two different surgeries. Um, but that was taken care of and I have been on the whole pregnancy, you know, the immune suppressing medications that Dr. Kim wanted me on to protect the pregnancy to help keep my immune system in check. We think it was linked to this underlying infection that was untreated, but that’s the puzzle piece that I feel was uncovered at the very end.
But I do think it was God that allowed that embryo to slip through because obviously I got pregnant with that infection still raging, right? Right. I mean, but it’s so many things. I mean, but think about the blessing that, of finding that. Yes. I mean, can you imagine having this, this miracle pregnancy?
natural and then losing this child that you’ve been waiting for for so long. You and I would be having this conversation from a mental hospital. I suspect that was the case. Yeah. You know, and you didn’t go into fear. You got it taken care of because you found out four days after you got your positive pregnancy test.
Is that right? Correct. That’s when the pain started. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe strong, this baby strong, she lived through all the, the antibiotics and surgeries and all that good stuff. I mean, in the end, I mean, I think it’s wonderful. And I think what you’re sharing here is going to serve so many women to like not give up on the dream, look for other things like underlying infections.
I mean, what an incredible thing to share as well. I mean, it’s just, it’s very moving to me. To see, to hear this story again, and also to, to really share this moment with you six and a half months into your pregnancy, your daughter is perfect. And, and really witnessed all the incredible things that you learned, what you’ve been through, what you overcame and what you’re going to be able to teach her.
It’s, it’s awesome, Megan. Absolutely. I do. I do believe I was meant to be a girl mom in the end, and I have a lot for her to learn. For me, and I hope she grows up to be a really strong and brave woman who does, you know, who, who changes things in the world, because there’s a lot of change that needs to happen.
And hopefully she’ll take after her mother and be a change maker. How could she not? Like, how could she not? Well, I’m so grateful that you shared this story. And I think it’s going to give women, everyone’s going to go get checked their teeth for, is there a third route that I don’t know anything about, but, but it’s that kind of out of the box thinking and also body awareness and, and connectedness with the self that can make all the difference.
So thank you, Megan. Thank you for sharing that story. And man, what an incredible pleasure it is to be able to finally have this episode with you. So thank you. Thank you, Roseanne. It’s, it’s an honor. And you’ve been such an important person in my journey that has been there to give me hope and strength and help me on the way.
And I so appreciate that. And I’m so grateful that this is how my story ended and I get to have this miracle. And, you know, any women listening to this, because I know you, you know, help a lot of women, you know, I just want to say thank you for doing what you do in the world and serving all these women and couples and helping them find their happy endings.
Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s part of what we do as women, right? You know, we show our gratitude by helping to show the way. So thank you so much, Megan. Oh, M G loves. I hope that you loved Megan as much as I do and took so much from that testimony about resilience, getting back up, believing, having the guts to ask questions, doing more, being willing to take risks.
And look, every woman’s story is different and every woman’s story has merit. But the one thing that you will hear in each and every one of the miracle mamas you hear on this podcast. No matter how they say it or what they call it is a deep and abiding conviction to the vision for their lives. They are resilient.
They make a decision to succeed. They trust themselves and they keep leaping. It’s just so good. So if you want to learn what I taught Megan, my fearlessly fertile method program is for women who intend to get pregnant in the next 12 months and say, hell yes, to covering their bases, mind and body. So you have to look back on this time in your life with regret.
I work with women who are committed to success and put more emphasis on baby making than excuse making. To apply for your interview for this program, go to my website, www.FromMaybeToBaby.com and apply for an interview there. My methodology is help women around the world make their mom dreams come true.
Their results, as you see with Megan, speak for themselves. If you don’t have a mindset for success in this journey, baby, you got a gaping hole in your strategy. Let’s fix that shit. And set you up for success till next time change your mindset change your results 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
The post EP239 She “Failed” With IVF, Donor Eggs, Surrogacy, and PRP, Then Got + Stayed Pregnant Naturally: Megan’s Story appeared first on Rosanne Austin.
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