Trish Peng on Molar Pregnancy, a Cancer Scare and Finding Hope After Loss

She designs the dress women wear on one of the most important days of their lives. And getting to that day herself was anything but straightforward.

In this episode, Jess sits down with Trish Peng, Auckland-based wedding dress designer and founder of her eponymous bridal brand, now stocked globally after 12 years in the industry, for a conversation that wanders beautifully between fertility, loss, molar pregnancy, Chinese confinement, and the logistics of changing a tampon in a cathedral-length gown.

Trish opens up about a journey to motherhood that started with something most people have never heard of. After falling pregnant on what she thinks was a trip to Paris, she didn't test until week seven, she finally went in for a dating scan at week nine. There was no baby.

What followed was a diagnosis of a complete molar pregnancy, a rare condition affecting just 1 in 1,200 women, where an empty egg is fertilised and the body produces all the pregnancy hormones without forming an embryo. Trish's body thought it was pregnant. But there was nothing there.

She explains what that actually means: the D&C, the monitoring of HCG levels over months to watch for cancer cells, the terrifying spike in December that sent her into pre-Christmas conversations about chemotherapy, and the Christmas miracle bleed that cleared everything before chemo became necessary. Then the six-month wait before they could try again. Then falling pregnant almost immediately and miscarrying on Tim's birthday. Then another six-month wait because of the molar pregnancy history. A full year between their first loss and being able to try again.

Jess and Trish talk honestly about grief, about the strange experience of sitting with brides in beautiful gowns while going through something so quietly devastating, and about the psychic in the UK who told Trish in January that something was happening in November to do with her fertility, and who turned out to be right.

Now 36 and a half weeks pregnant with a baby boy, Trish shares how this pregnancy has felt: smooth sailing physically, right up until a scan that morning revealed a double nuchal cord (the umbilical cord wrapped around baby twice) and a conversation about elective C-sections. She talks about her plans for the first month postpartum, her mum's version of Chinese confinement, and what it's actually like to run a global bridal brand while preparing to become a first-time mum.

There's also genuinely practical advice in here, including a sperm-friendly lubricant called Pre-Seed that Trish credits with both of her successful conceptions, a discussion about the emotional experience of finding out the gender of a miscarried baby, and tips on getting stains out of a wedding dress with micellar water and Wonder Soap.

This one is warm, funny, raw, and deeply real.

Find Trish at trishpeng.com and on Instagram @trish.peng

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Hit play. And congratulations Trish.