Michelle Obama Extract from Becoming

Kay asks, ‘ is everyone jumping on the bandwagon of fertility?’ listen in to this episode and then get in touch with Kay to share your views. To open up the discussion Kay shares extracts from Michelle Obama’s honest and open account of fertility treatments and getting pregnant in this thought-provoking episode. KEY TAKEAWAYS Michelle Obama’s book ‘Becoming’ includes a very honest and open account of her challenges with fertility and getting pregnant. Fertility is not something you conquer there is no straight line between effort and reward. No matter how hard we tried we couldn’t come up with a pregnancy. At first, we thought it was down to timing across the month and enthusiastically sought to rectify this with late night journeys to return home after a vote, so that activities coincided with patterns of ovulation We were excited to discover we were finally pregnant, but this was quickly followed by a miscarriage and a miscarriage is lonely, painful and demoralising on a cellular level. What nobody tells you is that miscarriages happen all the time to more women than you would ever guess. Given the relative silence around miscarriage, I only found out about friends experiences when I talked about mine. Having undergone tests, the mystery of why we couldn’t get pregnant remained. We went on to try several different approaches recommended by our fertility doctor All the work around treatments made me anxious but I had been waiting to have a family for a very long time. I felt the acute responsibility of being a female and over the next few weeks, the reality of the treatments made me very aware that it would be me who put my career on hold and would have to alter my life substantially for a family. Then when we found out we were pregnant for real suddenly the relative sacrifice meant something completely different. We had our outward lives but now there was something inward happening. I walked around with a secret inside me this was my gift for being female. After our tiny girl arrived in our world motherhood became my motivator, it dictated my decisions and the rhythm of the day. When there is a baby in the house time stretches and I could lose an hour just watching her breathe, this tiny girl entrusted to us. BEST MOMENTS ‘I treated it like a mission’ ‘Seeing women and children walking along the street brought pain and a feeling of inadequacy’ ‘A relative biological hiccup, an egg that for some perfectly good reason had to bail out’ ‘It felt like having high stakes lottery tickets’ ‘He was on the outside while I got to live the process, I was the process’ ‘I was never alone or lonely she was always there’ ‘We tracked her every gurgle’ VALUABLE RESOURCES https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ivf-before-and-after-podcast/id1413710507?mt=2 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B079Z661B7/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 ABOUT THE HOST IVF Before and After was founded by Kay Dempsey. She created IVF Before and After, after many years spent researching and practising every possible way to conceive with IVF. Kay has created a global community with the use of podcasts she will share the stepping stones to empower your mindset, fuel your body organically and support you along your fertility journey. CONTACT METHOD https://www.instagram.com/ivfbeforeandafter/ https://twitter.com/IVFBEFOREAFTER https://www.facebook.com/IVF-Before-and-After