Lay buy your future fertility

Let me start off with a (true) story about my first taste of ‘fertility shock’. It wasn’t pretty….

My definition of fertility shock is – the official moment it dawns on you that you may have left it too late to have a baby!

My fertility shock came about when I was working in radio and a colleague invited me to a free seminar hosted by her client, an IVF clinic – a talk aimed at single, career focused women, about fertility - I was asked to come along to make up the numbers. I took a seat in one of the front rows, in a room solely filled with women in their 30’s and up.   

Two key things struck me that morning. An (IVF) doctor advised the audience that being ‘stressed’, was not a valid reason as to why a woman cannot fall pregnant. His reasoning? Women in worn torn Syria were still have babies mid bombing attacks...so what was our excuse?

In just one moment he diminished every woman in the room, we each looked around ashamed for experiencing first world problems.  If women can fall pregnant during a war, then what was stopping us? It struck me as a tenuous link at the time and now all these years later with experience under my belt, I know it is also bullshit.

Stress may not be the only reason you are not falling pregnant, but it certainly CAN affect your chances at falling pregnant. Bodily stress is very different to outside stresses, so to compare yourself to someone in Syria was close to ludicrous, you shouldn’t have to compare the stress of staring down a barrel of a childless future, to an awful war.

The second thing that struck me (and a lot of the women in the room that day) is that the IVF cut off age for freezing your eggs is 36, as after this time the quality of your eggs goes a bit south. The problem is that eggs after this time fail to ‘bounce back’ when they are defrosted, their quality diminishes ** (note this was a couple of years ago now and the technology with freezing is constantly improving)**.

In that small white seminar room, there was literally gasps, little shock noises escaping from the mouths of women who thought they had more time. For one poor woman in the very back row, tears. Loud sobs that I couldn’t help but feel myself, tears welled in my eyes.  Why were these women all so upset? Because we were 37 years and older and we had just been told we had missed the boat. We were experiencing fertility shock.

It hurt on so many levels, but one reason was a couple of years earlier, I told my GP that I was thinking of freezing my eggs. She pulled a sideways mouth face to me and said, I don’t think it’s a great idea. It’s expensive & the chances of it working are very very low…and back then only a few companies were doing it. They likened it to freezing an old squishy strawberry, then when you unfreeze it – it is still a poor quality old squishy strawberry but with even lessor quality thanks to the freezing/unfreezing process. Note this is for eggs only. Freezing embryo’s is a different story (which is for another blog post).

Instead, my GP’s advice at the time was to see if I could make a go of it with the guy I was seeing for the last month. I couldn’t and didn’t. I also never called any companies about freezing my eggs as a medical professional told me it was a total waste of time and money. I would have been 35 at the time.

So here I was a few years later only to find out I was past the cut off age and my time here was done. I was also very single at the time. I kicked my 35 year old self for not acting on safe guarding my future fertility. The breakfast seminar fell a bit flat after that, no such thing as a free breakfast!

That was 10 years ago, and a lot of things have changed since then. The technology has improved vastly for freezing and thawing eggs, age limits with companies have risen and costs have come down and now there are companies and health funds etc that can help with costs.

As with always, timing has never been my friend, I always feel like I was born 10 years ahead of where I should’ve been…..Had this moment happened now, they would have taken my money, sold me the hope and who knows, maybe some of that sickening pressure I had from the age of 35 to 42 wouldn’t have been felt.

In 2020 one Melbourne IVF clinic noticed a 119% increase in egg freezing (the first year of Covid) with numbers increasing even more so in 2021. There is also a trend for women in their lower 30’s to start freezing their eggs. Source: The Age 6/7/21. During Covid we were meeting less people out, dating was as uncertain as the situation around us, so it makes complete sense to put that baby stuff on hold whilst you are stuck at home alone in your tracksuit pants.

Added to this, if you are like me, you might only really be hitting your career straps in your mid 30’s and that is taking up most of your life right now. The advantage you have over me, if you are in this age demo now – is the quality of technology…and if you have spent most of the last year at home watching Netflix, you might have some savings to afford it.

I should stress here that by no means does having frozen eggs in the IVF freezer guarantee a baby down the track. Frozen eggs are not as viable as a frozen embryo but it’s a start. And my advice is, if you can afford it and you’re prepared to go through the IVF process (which can be gruelling) then it’s better for your mental health to know you have done all you can to ‘future proof’ yourself.

So now we have agreed on that, my next point is this: if you are going to freeze your eggs, one thing they may not tell you is, you can improve your egg quality before you freeze them. Consider it maximising your investment. If you are going to spend $5- $10k to freeze your eggs, you would want to make sure you have put your best eggs forward, wouldn’t you?

Research shows it takes 120 days for an egg to reach maturity and in that time, did you know you can increase your egg health? Refer here: https://www.cathminter.com/egg_quality.html

This means that if you are considering an egg collection round for freezing, you could work on your egg quality in the 3 months leading up to the process, to ensure you are giving it your best shot (pardon the IVF pun) on what you put in the freezer.

Let’s talk diet:

If you are anything like me in my 30’s, your week may look like this, caffeine for breakfast downed with a muffin or Vegemite on toast as you run through the office door. Lunch could be a salad, sushi or a stir fry. Swallow that down with a Diet Coke or a juice and you think you’ve had a healthy day. Some chocolate or someone’s left over birthday cake and that is your sugar rush to get you home. Maybe hit the gym and then a late dinner and a gulp or two of wine before you pass out on the couch. You wake up early in the morning to go for a run or F45 – you say to yourself, I am healthy, I am fit, and I am balanced and you probably look and feel great!

But then on the weekend you have a smallish night, just a couple of wines and pizza with some girlfriends and then Saturday night, is the night to party – a boozy night. All good because Sunday will be the day you lay on the couch watching trashy TV. Can I just say – NO JUDGEMENT HERE. This was me – and to be honest, it sounds like a bloody good life too!!. It was, and I have great memories (well truthfully my memory from this time can get hazy) but it was great.

But here comes the BUT. One reason why it’s easier to fall pregnant when you are in your 20’s is because you haven’t done as much damage to your eggs yet. You have only been drinking (legally) for a couple of years and that hasn’t taken such toll on you yet. But once you add a stressful job, 10 more years of drinking, late nights studying or working late, some stressful situations or trauma (breakups, loss of friends, jobs, people) all the sudden at 35 you may be feeling like you did at 20 but how are your insides looking compared to the 20-year version of yourself? Older, more tired, and maybe a shitload of toxins & stress has been sucked in over that time.

Toxins:

Now that you are in your 30’s you can afford the nice stuff: perfume, makeup and hair products – and you wear these every day as you want to look your best.  Have you ever looked at the back ingredients on these products? Can you pronounce any of them? Do any look like actual words? There’s a high chance that besides the ingredient aqua, a big percentage of the rest will be man-made chemicals that you are putting on your face to make those wrinkles seem a bit smaller. Same goes for Botox – you are putting a foreign body into yours and assuming it won’t affect you in some way?

I am not a medical person by any means but there is plenty of literature out there to support me on this. It’s not to say you can’t fall pregnant this way, there’s examples of this everywhere - we all hear stories where someone feel pregnant after a big night out. Oh, how we cringey laugh but it sure is NOT funny when this doesn’t happen to you.

So if you are investing up to $10k cash to freeze your eggs, wouldn’t you go the extra mile and make sure your investment was worth the cost. You need to ensure the quality of those eggs are the best quality you can provide, as this is your baby insurance you are putting into the future bank. Consider it short term pain (if you call being healthy painful) for long term gain (believe me you don’t get many things more long-term than a child).

So here’s my top 7 tips to increase egg quality in the lead up to an IVF egg collection

1.     Drink lots of filtered water: your body loves hydration!

2.     Take supplements: (amino acids, pre-natal are a good start but check out the book ‘It starts with the Egg’ by Rebecca Fett, for lots of details on supplements for building egg quality).

3.     No alcohol: hmmm yes, I know this bit sounds shit but it’s just for 3 months…. plan a time that avoids party season?

4.     Organic fruit, Vegetables & meat if you can stretch it: (I know it costs more but think of all the money you will save from not drinking for 3 months)

5.     No Sugar – same as the alcohol, run out the door every time someone calls out ‘cake’ in the office

6    No preservatives (as little pre-packed food as possible)

7.   Avoid takeaway unless it is wholefoods style food, such as Barewholefoods.com.au or organic cafes etc

Now is not the time for fad diets, juice fasts, crash dieting, over exercise or big nights out.

Obviously, this is just an overview and by no means meant to substitute for medical advice but get reading and Googling, the decision is then yours to make.

Let your ‘Fertility Shock moment’ be turned into an opportunity to turn a future that currently looks scary and upsetting into a positive, by doing the best you can to future proof your fertility.

The good news is that this is 2021 and you have more options available to you than I did almost a decade ago. You have choices and with choices there is hope and with hope there is happiness and with happiness there is self fulfilment. It’s a decision only you can make but make the decision knowing, you gave it your all!

Best of luck x

Infertility in the times of Covid -19 (7 tips to get you through)

Depending where you live, currently a lot of us are experiencing some kind of mandatory ‘lockdown’. You would be forgiven for not loving your current situation, it’s not a natural state of being and the longer it goes on the more we may want to rebel against the loss of freedom and lack of control over our lives. Loss of control is hard at the best of times, yet when you are trying to overcome infertility, then life gets really hard. Like pushing a bike up a very steep mountain in the wrong gear, hard.

Back before the times of Covid-19, I had my own private lockdown. I look at it as a trial run for this almost global lockdown. I was sick with Adrenal Fatigue and a prisoner to my own body. To recover I went on a strict diet, no alcohol, no sugar, no fun stuff. This meant I couldn’t go out to eat, dance, drink and I had no energy to do anything anyway.

When we first received the news that our country was going into ‘Stage 3’ lockdown, I felt a familiar feeling rise up, my own lockdown still fresh in my memory. I had an idea of what to expect, I was already resourced with skills and experience to help make this monumental period bearable, I knew that I can stay focused despite all this outside noise and panic.  Over the last decade I have developed resilience, through sheer perseverance and continuity, I survived.

I know these times are not easy on anyone right now – no matter which angle you come from. Whether you’ve lost your job (this is my current situation), a loved one, you’ve been sick, your pay has been cut, your freedom lost, your wings clipped – there are few winners right now.

And the way people react, really shows you what they are made of and how they cope with the many curveballs life may throw them.

I realise a lot of countries have halted or limited their IVF programs in reaction to the Covid – 19 situation and this has left people reeling, all their hopes and dreams that were placed on their next round, have been dashed. It’s causing grief, heartache and raising a lot of ‘why me?’ questions.

I totally get it. Covid-19 is throwing most of us a challenge right now, it has a hell of a recourse and we can choose to either swim with it or against it.

No matter what your belief is regarding Covid-19 or how your government is handling the scenario – these elements are mostly out of our hands…what matters now is what you do with your hands! Remember the song by Jewell before she married her cowboy? ‘My hands are small, I know, but they're not yours they are my own’. A great song from 1995, but my point is – if you can’t control what goes around you, you can still control yourself, your hands and what you do with them. In times of adversity (Covid – 19 or Infertility) we can remain consistent and actually come out the other side better for it.

A lot of this uncomfortableness we are currently feeling comes from not having any certainty on how long this will go for, how long will we feel like a small version of ourselves, how long will this outside force rule us and force us into a state of flux?

As hard as it sounds, the idea is to become comfortable with this icky feeling of the ‘unknown’, just as you learn to do when facing infertility.

The definition of infertility changes slightly depending where you read it, in a nutshell it means: the failure to achieve a clinical pregnancy after 12 months or more of regular unprotected sexual intercourse.”… .Infertility is the inability of a sexually active, non-contracepting couple to achieve pregnancy in one year.

To me, the word ‘infertility’ sounds like it’s an ‘infinite’ problem, almost like a doomsday prophecy. But despite the negativity of the name – it is not always the final outcome. To be infertile is to coin a phrase for a certain period of time in your life but it is a course that can change at any time…. you can work towards being fertile ‘enough’ to have a child, I am proof of this. For a long time my outcome was bleak, chances low, against the odds and there was no certainties for me – none at all.

With Covid -19 and infertility – both scenarios are painful, uncomfortable, set big boundaries and make us feel small. But if there is one thing I have learnt when in a period of ‘infertility’ is resilience. To move to another song from the 90’s – this time from 1997 – my gift to you is a line from the classic  Chumbawamba ‘I get knocked down, but I get up again, you are never gonna keep me down’ yes a bit of Tubthumping is what you need in your life in these moments. Below I will give you my list of how I kept ‘getting back up again’ in those darkest moments. And it’s not drinking a Whiskey drink or a Larger drink – that’s for sure!

The idea is to become comfortable with being uncomfortable. To be a true survivor and learn resilience, you need to be able to push ahead despite the constant walls pushing against you saying otherwise.

Resilience is something you build up over time. You aren’t born with it and it’s not something you can learn from a friend. You do this completely on your own…your own hands – no matter what sized hands you have!

So how do you build resilience?

Firstly I would lose the tag #infertitle - don’t give yourself a title you don’t want, don’t put yourself in that negative corner. I am sure you don’t want people to refer to you as ‘the infertile person’, so why give yourself a label you don’t want? Especially when you are doing all you can to be a mum.

Turn your language around to match your goal (ie mother to be, mum in waiting) whatever you want to call it. That way you are always heading towards a positive direction, moving to motherhood, not towards infertility, as that’s not how you want to be defined.

Resilience isn’t about avoiding setbacks, it’s about being able to push through despite them. It is about every time you get knocked down, you brush your knees, wipe the sweat off your forehead and move forward once again. It doesn’t mean you can’t grieve, be sad or have bad days. This is all part of the course of moving ahead. You need to get real with yourself and your feelings. Checking to see how you feel, looking at the feelings you currently have and then either accepting and moving on or assessing and working on that blocked emotion before you move forward again. Pushing ahead before you are emotionally or physically ready won’t get you the end result any quicker or possibly at all!

So you can see that your mindset plays a very big part in this whole ‘trying to conceive’ game. It’s a game of Patience and keeping your focus in check when the shit is hitting the fan, I have compiled a list of some of the things I did to keep my mind in check when I was in my own private lockdown;

1)     The Mind Game:

This whole Covid -19 thing and (this infertility thing) is a mind game. It’s about not losing your end goal amongst the chaos, potential fears and losses. It’s about being a phoenix rising above the ashes. And how do you obtain this?
The answer: Meditation. Sorry to give you such a boring and obvious answer but it really is the truth. You need coping mechanisms for your mind, you’re in a state of flux and mediation is THE way to deal with stress, grief, loss, anger, disappointments, and change.

I did soooo much work to get my body, health and positive outlook on point and it all helped but it was meditation that really did it for me. Meditation was literally the Vegan cream to my gluten free cake!

I practice Vedic Meditation but I didn’t just start meditating one day and ‘find my tribe’. It took years of knowing I needed ‘something’ in my life. At first I dabbled in various courses and You Tube videos…..it was a great starting point for me. If you are hesitant or new to meditation it’s a great place to begin. This one is from a friend of mine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB8_bACSiVE&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3YbigPGdJfJDEWIbnBL4aVfBO-N9jfWJzT-5fN9Bg0Dc-ytFB06vSuKzk

It took time to find the kind of meditation that worked for me. (see My Meditation story here)

Meditation is increasingly becoming more mainstream, there’s Podcasts, apps such as Calm or Headspace, You Tube guided meditations such as the popular Dr Wayne Dyer, mediative music, Yin Yoga and self-help books that can help open up the world of meditation to you. If you haven’t found your own meditation tribe as yet, there’s so many options for you to dabble and explore and find what works for you. Take your time finding what works for you.

2)     Daily Affirmations:

Ok so if Meditation is too much right now, daily affirmations may be your launchpad to a positive mindset. Daily affirmations are simple, positive statements declaring specific goal/s in their completed states. ... that you repeat to yourself often.

This is the bit where you have permission to talk to yourself, ideally out loud. The hardest part in the world of infertility, is to not beat yourself up about all the IVF cycles that didn’t work, seeing other people fall pregnant quicker than you, the late periods that could have been a pregnancy, miscarriages and navigating a complicated health system, to find a solution to your fertility issues. It’s easy to start blaming your body for what didn’t happen, for letting the team down.

Frequent daily affirmations can turn your mental body bashing to healing and forgiveness.

One of my favourite affirmations is: ‘a thought is a thought and a thought can be changed’ which often snapped me out of my overindulgent thinking that took me into deep rabbit holes, that I couldn’t find my way back out of again. Affirmations were my circuit breakers.

You can find affirmation examples online, You Tube, Pinterest, Instagram and my favourite – the late Louise Hay - she was the master of affirmations and you can buy her cards (either via the Louise Hay app or you can buy physical cards) through her website. https://www.louisehay.com/

Start your morning with carefully selected affirmations, set intentions and new thinking, write them up and stick them around the house (after all this is where we are spending so much time right now). You will be surprised at how many times a day you are not thinking positively and the affirmations will jerk your thoughts back on direction.

3)     Mindful distractions:  

It’s so cringey for me to suggest you ‘find a hobby, I mean if you had a passion for something you would know by now…right? If you have one – great! Especially essential during isolation. However rather than a hobby, I am thinking more of a ‘time waster’ with the sole purpose that it takes up a lot of your thinking space, so there isn’t as much room for all the nasty thoughts that can overtake you when feeling low. Something almost mediative. I did a LOT of colouring pictures back in my own private lockout years ago.

A friend of mine has a great website you can download colouring and puzzles: www.bellemitchell.com.au

It doesn’t have to be colouring in (although it is cheap and easy) creating photo albums, baking naked treats for your neighbours, cards or puzzles ….ideally something offline. The idea is it is something you can pick up at any point and that it is an activity that can last beyond Covid – 19, whenever you have down time and need a focus away from being overwhelmed or lost and keeps you off social media.

4)     Music:

It’s the answer to everything! Really! There’s numerous ways you can use music to push you through. During isolation I’ve been forcing myself to listen to different music genres beyond my usual choice…it breaks me from one dimensional being and shifts my thinking. I started with classical music the other morning and it was such a calm, peaceful morning and really changed my outlook on the whole day.

Or you could plug the words ’30 day music (or song) challenge’ into Pinterest and you will find a way to spice up your music appreciation. https://www.pinterest.com.au/search/pins/?rs=ac&len=2&q=30%20day%20music%20challenge&eq=30%20day%20music&etslf=16684&term_meta[]=30%7Cautocomplete%7C0&term_meta[]=day%7Cautocomplete%7C0&term_meta[]=music%7Cautocomplete%7C0&term_meta[]=challenge%7Cautocomplete%7C0

If you usually listen to Pop, try another category such as dance or jazz for a week and see what happens. Maybe you decide at the end that you only like Pop but maybe you widened your music appreciation taste and as a result, broadened your tastes and you may just start to see or feel things differently once you have broadened your mindset.

5)     Movement:

Depending where in the world you live right now may determine how much access you have to the outside world. If you’re not allowed outside, I am so sorry!

Getting back to nature is so important in these isolated moments. Allowing your feet to touch the ground – the grass or sand or to feel a part of nature in your hand is an important part of healing.

It is not nice to have these cages around us, for our mental and physical health we need to move in some way. Even if it is simply listening to a song each morning and dancing, releasing some endorphins. I’ll be honest, I am not much of a yoga person but it’s a great way to move in a confined space, afterwards light a candle and make a herbal tea. It’s all about taking a moment, being gentle and aware of where you are right now, accept where you are but know that this could change at any time.

For more on the health benefits of nature read up and see for yourself. Here’s a an article from Time that sums it up well: https://time.com/4405827/the-healing-power-of-nature/

6)     Fertility Diet:

Stick to your fertility diet as much as possible. Maybe the foods you usually choose are not available but you need to be trying your best with the things you can control, so that you continue to strive to be fertile fit for your goal to become a mum.

Adopt the mindset that you are consistent despite any restrictions right now, you will overcome these obstacles as you do every other limitation that life throws you. Eat your way to health, if you are not on a fertility diet, now is a good time to find out what a ‘fertility diet’ is and why it is so important to women trying to conceive. Giving up alcohol and sugar and all your favourite comfort foods is hard, but not as hard as the concept of never having children. Now is the time to research and discover what it means to feed your body the vitamins and nourishment it needs for optimum fertility.

My fertility diet consists of gluten free, sugar free, dairy free, alcohol free, preservative free foods and additives. Staying on this diet doesn’t change when things get hard. This is because I know that staying consistent is the key during the tough times.

If you want to know more about fertility diets and increasing your overall fertility, my naturopath has written a great book called ‘Fertility Breakthrough overcoming infertility and recurrent miscarriage when other treatments have failed by Gabriela Rosa.’ you can find the book here. Use this downtime to be informed

https://www.amazon.com/Fertility-Breakthrough-Overcoming-infertility-miscarriage/dp/1781333637?fbclid=IwAR0Mkb_1qO2EEcso5tdk5cxBjgsN5Y8Ah88DW06gyefIBD2HDs9y18JKnAc

7)     Journal:

This was my personal way of coping with grief and loss when I felt I couldn’t or didn’t want to talk to people. Writing is my creative outlet. For you it may be drawing or cooking or patchworking. Whatever you’re creative outlet is a good start but there is something extra therapeutic about writing, when you start the page you may think you know what you are going to say but then all this other stuff pours out and boom – you may have unsurfaced thoughts and anxieties or concerns you didn’t even know you were holding. The beauty is once written you can throw it away, burn or hide it afterwards, you don’t need to look back on it ever again (unless you want to see how far you have come over time). It really is a safe space to rant, yell, grieve and cry and no one ever needs to know or judge you. Buy a cheap exercise book or a nice journal and simply start writing and see what it is you want to say.

Struggling to conceive is hard. It’s a frustrating and lonely situation that I wouldn’t want anyone to go through, however here we are and this is what we are dealing with. So let’s learn to deal with it the best way we can. Let’s build resilient selves that can overcome our current obstacles, be as mentally fit and fertile as we can be, so we feel confident to go through the next round, the next cycle or treatment with positivity that we’ve done enough.

Being resilient means that things like Covid -19 are detours not roadblocks. We are a special club and we know that we just need to keep ourselves on track and accept there will be speedbumps that slow us down but it’s not about the pace in which we get ‘there’ but the hope that we will get there, as long as we stay true to our overall goals, be gentle with ourselves and constantly move forward. If we do de-rail, it’s ok as we are constantly building our resilience for the next roadblock. We know there will be many more of these days in our lives but they will not beat us, we can control our inner selves from the outside chaos.

It’s all a mind game that we can constantly tweak. We will get there in the end!

After my own private lockdown I did get better over time, it took over two years of hard work, perseverance and consistency before I finally fell pregnant with my son who is now three. I still look at him every day and wonder how he got here? For so long it did not seem possible, the hill too steep, but he is sitting next to me as I write this, dreams do come true!

My love and thoughts are with you at this time xx

PS Please note that I am not a medical professional and these thoughts are my own, based on my own experiences and should not be taken as medical advice.

Don’t let your decisions (or lack of) steal your future:

I’ve told you ‘my story’ of how I came to be a mum in my 40’s in a nutshell but there’s something more specific I have to tell you:

You see I am a dreamer. I am also realistic. Well that’s just doesn’t make sense I hear you say. Yes they are polar opposites and hence how I end up conflicted, in almost every decision I ever make. I dream big but cut my chances off at the knees- often.

I knew from a very young age that the ‘…and they lived happily ever after…’ ending in Golden Books stories were actually fables. I remember as a kid in my parent’s car, about to cross the Sydney Harbour Bridge, calling out from the backseat as they collected their coins to pay the toll back in the 80’s.....’how can you meet the ‘one’ if they don’t live in your suburb? or your City or even in your Country’ – what then? What if your destined ‘one’ is in India/ Nepal/ Timbuktu? Then what? How do you know you need to get a one way flight and meet this ‘one’ person for your happily ever after?

Not a regular kids thinking but then no one has ever accused me of being ‘regular’. It’s always conflicted me though, as I did somehow buy into the ‘one’ dream with its confusing logistics on some level. I believed that it would all just come together one day in the future and I would just ‘know’. Isn’t that what people say ‘oh you just KNOW when you’ve met the right person’!

But do you just know? I’ve had two big relationships. One in my early 20’s and one till my mid 30’s. Love was definitely involved. So was pain, confusion, constant battles, hormones, pheromones and a lot of hurt. Buckets load of it. That’s how I knew I loved. By how much it hurt. Oh…that’s not really healthy is it?!

But it is called growth!- that I can look back over my past relationships, see all of its faults and the ugly pus filled blisters and acknowledge where I sat in all that. I didn’t learn that lesson the easy way though.

I became single at 35 and thought that was it. My life was over. I really and truly thought that it was the end of not just my relationship but those dreams. You see as much as my ex and I could never seem to get our shit together and we were always one beat off…one step away from the other, I never saw a future with anyone else. I had once again cut myself off at the knees.

Here comes the hard part…We had known each other since we were 18. From the moment we met, unbeknown to us, a pattern was formed and we would become like passing ships across the globe for the following 4 years. He lived abroad, I was home. I would move abroad, he would be home. Then there was a very brief time we were both in the same place – then it was back to more crossing jet paths for another 5 years, as we separately travelled different ends of the world.

By the time we seriously got together, it had been a decade of missed opportunities and short dalliances before a chess piece moved one of us in the other direction. Yet amongst all this, there seemed to be an imaginary piece of string holding us together, however tenuously.

Once finally together this chess game started to become less of a dalliance and more of an emotional pull with huge rushes together and apart that we’re no longer of our doing but that of an external force playing cruel games. After 10 years (yes a decade) of moving chess pieces, we finally got together.

I actually first became aware of him at 15. His best friend lived at the end of my street and I used to watch him ride his bike down my street. It was what David Attenborough would call ‘animal magnetism’ - an unknown attraction. He had my interest the first time he whirred past me on his bike. I knew his name and used to write it on my pencil case. That was enough for me to know I was infatuated with him at 15 years of age and that’s how it was until we officially met at 18.

I won’t go into the full story, it’s long, complicated and confusing for me and anyone else who would try to keep up. It also makes no sense for 90% of the time. But as much as I hated it, I think I thrived on the drama of it. I lost male friends over the long saga. They would see me go back to the same situation over and over (the definition of crazy yeah?) only to come home crying the next time he didn’t call, was with someone else or said a careless thing.

Once together properly there was some great moments, funny, happy, hilarious times where we just jelled together and only needed each other and $10 to be happy. But as with anything, things change and those moments couldn’t and didn’t last.

When I was 30 (about 3-4 years into the ‘real’ relationship) I got this unusual feeling hit me for the first time. It was more than a feeling, it was an internal yearning. An overpowering universal pull to have a child. It was like I had been drugged and for the first time in my life I understood what the definition of a ‘clicking biological clock’ calling loudly from your ovaries was. It was like I drank the cool aid and it came on like a wash over me. I woke up one morning and said ‘I want a child by the time I’m 32’ out of nowhere. This was as much as a shock to me as it was to him. He said ‘but what about your career?’ ‘It’s always been about your career, I’ve never heard you talk of anything else’. And maybe he hadn’t but that morning, I knew more than anything in my life I wanted a baby and soon.

Something had changed overnight. I couldn’t walk past a baby without the urge to take it with me. All of the sudden I oohhed and ahhhed over little bundles of joy and it was a knowing like none other. This feeling was here to stay, I couldn’t shake it. I wonder if this is what it is like for other women?

But the life map didn’t work out that way. Instead I went to radio school, then moved to Noosa for my first job in radio. A stunning paradise and a romantic place for two, couples walking hand in hand down the beach, sharing ice creams and stealing chips from each other’s plate. Yet not a place for a single 30 year old women who wants to start her radio career. We broke up whilst I was there. Well I should say, he broke up with me. I had spent my savings to fly down every time I could, to keep the relationship going, yet he broke it off.

After a year and a half I packed up and moved back to Sydney with a less ambitious dream. Instead of yearning to be a radio announcer, I yearned to come back to Sydney, get a job behind the scenes of radio and work on this plan to have a family.

The plan didn’t work.

After some serious hustling for a full time job, I landed my newly revised, dream role in radio in my dream company. I was older than everyone else in my team and in my eyes, I had a lot of ‘catching up’ to do in order to play with these young, hip, mid 20 year old’s I was working with.

Around that time my ex started to contact me again. He wanted a fresh start and it was like music to my sad, mourning ears. It was like Mozart had walked into the room playing an amazing concerto and danced in front of me on ecstasy. In hindsight it was more likely I was dancing with the devil but he drew pictures of how he could see our life together, he was drawing blueprints in my mind of how it would all work out and me being a goal setter and a lover a good list, my eyes lit up and bang, it was all back on again with a renewed passion, love and this time - shared goals!

Then six months later, after everyone started assuming there was a wedding around the corner, he told me he was moving interstate. To be fair, this wasn’t a move he had a lot of say on. Family was calling on his help and he obliged. But it didn’t make it any easier, I had just moved back to make it work, only for him to move to where I had just left (where he had never visited me once)!

Oh stop it- the irony hurts my head, even now!

So here we were – back to moving Chess pieces…this time the Rook was moving away, in a cruel turn of events and I just watched as someone, somewhere said ‘check mate’.What happened next was yet another chapter in our ‘long distance’ relationship saga.

I’ve actually lost count of time we spent together versus time apart in those 7 years but looking back it feels like it was more of the later.

This should have been a warning sign in. In fact the on-again, off-again should have been a warning sign. Along with the confusing explanations and twists and turns that I won’t go into now - it involves too much energy, too much draining on memories that I don’t care for and an emotional headache that doesn’t serve me any purpose now.

I even read the popular book ‘He’s Just Not That into You’ when things were getting dire and he ticked seven out of nine warning signs…annnnnnd I still thought, ‘well this book is a piece of shit’ and threw it to someone else who was questioning their relationship.

About six months after he left, I got offered a job promotion near to where he had relocated. This would be my third move in as many years and had been the third time we had been living long distance in those same years.

Yet he sounded less than thrilled when I told him the news, I mean after drafting a blue print, what should have there been for him to question? But question he did and he didn’t seem excited to start a new life together. Saying that, we moved in together and things felt a little exciting....but the dead horse had already been flogged - and this chess move was the final flogging, before it all fell over after a year of living together.

It turns out, our happy moments proved they weren’t the foundation of a lifelong relationship but at the time we couldn’t let go of the history, to move forward. We had always had each other in our lives and we weren’t sure how to untie all those knots we had sewn together.

It was messy and the unpicking was the most unpleasant moments of my life. After 20 years of chess moves plus the 3 years of having his initials on my pencil case, it was so very very over. But it was a tapestry that had grown some ugly threads and to look at, it was warped, messy and a tangled heap that was beyond description. It wasn’t pretty to be in and it wasn’t pretty to watch.

I don’t want to go into the list of things that were wrong, if you’ve been in a relationship like this, you can probably work it out for yourself. Or at least have fun trying. Everyone will tell their version of events to protect themselves.

Elizabeth Gilbert wrote in her book Committed: “every healthy marriage is composed of walls and windows. The windows are the aspects of your relationship that are open to the world—that is, the necessary gaps through which you interact with family and friends; the walls are the barriers of trust behind which you guard the most intimate secrets of your marriage.”…. “If you start to throw open a window where there really ought to be a solid, weight bearing wall and you find yourself spilling your secret heart with someone other than your partner…soon you start to build a wall where there should be a window”. Paraphrasing now but if you change the foundations of your relationship without sharing these secrets with your partner, your whole house that you spent all this time building, will collapse around you.. as you wonder how this once stable house crumbled.

Gilbert wrote this book as she was making her decision to marry for a second time (to her dreamboat Bali lover from Eat Pray Love). This was after swearing she wouldn’t marry again.  She did end up marrying him. I don’t think she’s written the book about divorcing him yet? I know I wasn’t married but it rings true for any long term relationship and is a great read if you are unsure about getting married and/or having kids in the future. Gilbert suggests that you shouldn’t marry or have kids under the age of 30 as you are not as equipped to make it work when younger. Kind of refreshing to hear.

Anyhow, I digress.

Now back to my story and let me do the maths on my messed up relationship for a second. After a 3 year school girl crush then meeting him at 18 then 4 years of once a year catch ups, followed by crossing paths when travelling occasionally then a seven year relationship, this totals to twenty years! Twenty years took me to thirty five years old. Which was my whole adult life when it was finally over.

The end was like someone taking me off life support, I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know how to function without this drama filled relationship in my life. This relationship had coursed through my veins on some level for eighteen years. What do you do with all the toxic waste and fall out? Where does it go? What do you do? There was no one to catch me, I free fell all the way down. I was lucky I was surrounded by some of the most amazing people at the time, who softened the blow to the bottom.

It was not an easy ‘over’. It wasn’t a black and white ending and it took a long time to recover.
A long Long time.

Damage was done.

The ashes are still simmering somewhere back there....but the smoke and fire has well and truly gone. Dust to dust. These relationships make you who you are today. Whether you’re a survivor from a broken heart or something much more sinister, they leave a scar and change you to become the person you are today.

For me, I was 35 and questioning where did all those youthful years go?

And how did I end up alone? With time comes choices and without time I felt I had none.

No choices.

I had always been young and carefree and all of the sudden I felt like I wasn’t either of these.

My one wish is if you’re reading this right now and one or more elements are resonating with you, then it’s time to face your fear in the eye. Tell whoever it is that is wasting your time (whether it is a person, it could be yourself, a job or some other relationship) that you’ve had enough of this shit and you’re going to declare this deadbeat relationship dead.

Look at the destruction and see it for what it is. It’s a time waster. You’re spending your most romantic, beautiful, fertile years, to someone who is wasting your time. It could be they’re unsure. It could be they’re hedging their bets on someone else, it could be that they just don’t value you high enough. Or maybe themselves that much....they know you’re too good for them? But from my experience, once you meet someone who does value you, who values both your heart and your mind and they see a future with you- nothing will stop them from wanting to spend time with you. Nothing.

It’s time to have a grown up relationship. With yourself and with someone who is not a time waster. You don’t want to be dating someone after 5 years of meeting and still not have any discussions of ‘where this is going?’ What if it is you holding yourself back, not taking a risk in a direction you know you need to go? Unless you don’t want kids and that’s fine if you don’t but as this is the main premises of my blog, let’s go with the idea that you do want that in the future. Time to face fears of being hurt or rejected and tell them how you feel. The only time you’re wasting, by being in a jerk relationship, is your own.

And my biggest regret in life, is that I didn’t have that life lesson until it was too late. Way too late. I was 35 and if I knew the upward battle ahead...I would’ve owned my fear and let go of that rip cord a lot earlier. Somewhere along the line, we were no longer on the same page and I should’ve faced those facts and been ballsy about it.

Of course I tried at times but I let the invisible umbilical cord we had, prevent me from going through with it. Next time you don’t want to cut that cord against your own warnings - just ‘do it’.

It will hurt. And a band aid won’t fix the cut. It needs a good element of grit (or Finnish ‘Sisu’ – look at my Instagram for more on this) to move on but I promise you this… you will get back your time.

Time is not an outsourced commodity. You can’t buy it back. It’s a finite resource. If you’re already stressing about your future with this person, then it’s time to wave him/ her goodbye. You can thank your future self later.

I say this with total love and compassion to you and your future self. Buy back your lost time by waving them good bye, lick your wounds and then do not ever look or go back.

Know when to call it…

The Baby Business

A short while after we had finished our second round of IVF, 4 Corners on the ABC advertised an upcoming episode called the ‘Baby Business’. People were talking about it, we even had a friend text us about it in case we wanted to watch it.

We didn’t. Why watch on TV - something you have felt first hand. No thank you. I mean thanks….but no thanks.

So no surprise when a couple of nights after it aired, we decided to watch it!

Let me warn you, if you’re currently in the process or considering IVF and you are approaching 40, I will give you a heads up, this can be hard to watch. Viewing this is a little like holding a mirror to your face, reflecting your current story and could possibly end with a very heart-breaking story. For us it was a significant moment.

If you’re not in the over 40 age group but thinking you can rely on IVF later on down the track – consider this your warning!

You can watch the ‘Baby Business’ here:

https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/the-baby-business-promo/7449646

 The patients featured in this documentary are just like me. They could be me. They’re in their 40’s eating healthy organic food, downing their supplements and re-mortgaging their homes to have a child. They had been through 5+ rounds and absolutely nothing to show for it….but a lot of zero’s in their bank balance and a whole lot of heartache that cannot be healed.

These families are chasing their tails – getting one more fix – it’s almost like gambling at the pokies, I just need to do one more round – this one will pay off for sure! I know the odds are bad but the payoff is unreal! If we do it enough times we will get it. Phew! Except you’re gambling with your body, spiking it with a hormonal cocktail month after month.

The truth is they don’t provide you with the success rates when you start. Leo asked many times but never got a straight answer!

In the documentary we got the answer – wait for it…..for over 40 year olds the success rate is less than 3 % a month. A 97% chance of it not working per month!

At 12 minutes into the 4 Corners program a Professor and an early IVF pioneer- Rob Norman, claims something that I found to be true for me and could be, for a number of women in their late 30’s and early 40’s he says “…you may not need IVF in the first place and the phenomenon of the IVF treadmill is you just keep running on it and you can’t get off’.

THIS – THIS is why I believe that IVF is not right for everyone. You may not need it. I spent money, time and a hell of a lot of heartache pouring into a treatment that was not right for me. And once I got off that treadmill….I fell pregnant….naturally!

But at the time, watching this program, it was a very deep sob and a lot of sorrow that out poured from me and when I turned to look at Leo sitting next to me on the couch, I could see it was hitting him hard too.  As I sat looking at him, I felt massive guilt that I was putting him through this, you see I am 5.5 years older than him. If he was with someone his own age or younger, there was a good chance (in my mind) that he wouldn’t be dealing with this right now.

It was a massive ‘come to Jesus’ moment. A subject that had been on hold for the last month, we had not talked about ‘what next?’… but now the facts were being laid out in front of us with some very sobering statistics and a bleak outcome – for both the women on the show and for people like me watching it.

I didn’t talk to him during the program, I couldn’t and it took some courage to turn and look at him once the credits were rolling and say something. We spoke, I cried. Leo felt his suspicions about success rates were confirmed and I was in despair. I honestly thought that this could be the end of us. If I couldn’t have a child with him, was I taking away his right to have a child with someone else? Now I know that this is something that can really fire some people up...I can hear them saying, ‘Oh but if he really loves you it shouldn’t matter (with many exclamation marks following and looks of aghast expressions)... But I will throw this at you – if you really love someone shouldn’t you ‘let them be free’. Do you burden someone you love with something you cannot provide them but someone else could? Could I live with the forever guilt of holding back his own future happiness?

It’s a conundrum and that’s what we were in. A spiral of confusing thoughts that were all up in the   air and we had no idea what would spit down back at us…and who knew if we could catch the falling debris when it did eventually fall back down. It had been almost a month since our non- successful IVF round.

As they say in the documentary, at some point you need to decide when do you quit IVF?

The next morning still down about the statistics, I joined a friend on our morning walk and told her about our experience of watching the ‘Baby Business’. She was quite pregnant at this stage, prior to falling pregnant, she had always thought she would need IVF because she had a low AMI (Anti – Mullerin hormone) test results years earlier and was convinced she would have difficulty falling pregnant. (In fact she fell pregnant easily both times and has two gorgeous little girls).

Back to our walk….my friend listened to my concerns and said she had been on the phone the previous day to two of her friend’s - both who had watched the 4 Corners episode and were inconsolable. One of her friends had been trying longer than me and for her this last glimmer of hope had been smashed. She hit a new low, dreams were snuffed that night and reality crept in. (fast forward to now and she has since had a successful IVF donor egg pregnancy).

The thing is I have read and I can tell you from my own experience, that women want to try with their own eggs first, moving onto the concept of donor eggs is not a decision that is easily met. This is a decision her friend had to make after years of trying and unsuccessful IVF attempts.

To be honest, I think a lot of hearts were shattered that night from watching the “Baby Business” but maybe long term financial heartache was preserved?  Maybe it was a sucker punch we all needed to hear? Turns out that IVF for over 40’s isn’t the Holy Grail. With a 3% success rate, it’s not something we should rely on for our future. I can tell you I was never told these odds and I had no idea they were so low. Would you sign on that dotted line if you knew these odds? I don’t think I would. There is no ‘money back guarantee’ with IVF and they will take your money if you offer it and focus on the treatment rather than the odds. And I’m sure everyone one of those women that’s going against these odds, hopes they are the lucky 3%

On the night of watching the doco, we were left between a rock and a hard place - who knows maybe one day they will bring something new to the technology that can help with this? But right now the IVF Companies are owned by shareholders and are designed to make a profit back to these shareholders. Many women under 40, use IVF clinics every day to fall pregnant and a lot have been successful. I have met many a beautiful child that has come from a successful IVF round.

DISCLOSURE: I personally have frozen embryos stored, so I am not suggesting you discard the IVF process entirely and I am not saying it is NOT for you. IVF is a future option if you have tried and failed with your own eggs and want a donor egg (or sperm) or if you have frozen embryos from earlier rounds when you were both younger. But for the option for women over 40, using your own eggs, doing fresh rounds - the low stats are the stats.

In addition to this, if you are thinking you will rely on science to get you over the line in your 40’s to have your own DNA, your first port of call doesn’t have to be an IVF doctor! They are not the most reliable source of information on infertility when they have your money in their hands. IVF is not the only option for women who want to have their own child.

If you have tried everything and you are willing to use a donor egg or sperm, different scenario…..but this was not my scenario.

Too many women walk through the doors of IVF clinics without doing the research, without trying other options, without seeing if their issue is actually something that can be overcome in a different way. Do you have MTHFR? Do you have blood clots? Do you have a bacterial infection? Is the problem with your partner – not you?  If you have POCS – then treat POCS, if you have Endometriosis, don’t try to bypass it with IVF as a first option. If you have blood clots there are ways to treat this without going straight to IVF. Have you really dug into the real problem before accepting a referral to the IVF Clinic?

I feel like IVF is the first suggestion to come to mind when you haven’t fallen pregnant in your desired time frame. It shouldn’t be. Although GP’s serve a very important role in our lives and our communities, most are not specialised in fertility and writing a script to see an IVF clinic is not always the best firat option. As Professor Rob Norman claims …you may not need IVF in the first place.

I saw one GP when I was trying to conceive who told me I could only possibly fall pregnant every second month, as I only had one fallopian tube! I had to correct HER. So please take it from me to always push for what you think you need, research, ask for recommendations, referrals, question everything but most importantly – arm yourself with a reputable fertility naturopath. One who will question every aspect for you.

The outcome from watching the doco was this: we decided to park the IVF conversation and go back to basics.

So the matter was back in my hands and I dedicated everything I could to it.

I had already done all the physical hard work so now it was trying something new, I knew I had my diet right, I had all the supplements to support my egg reserve and my body was healthy. I was also getting past the Adrenal Fatigue hangover.

We upped the anti on detoxifying the house – cleaning chemicals were banished, no swimming in chlorine pools, keeping wifi at a minimum, I opened my bathroom cabinet and got rid of my expensive moisturisers and cleaners that were full of ingredients I couldn’t pronounce or spell.

I slowed down, started basic yoga and my holy grail – weeks after the documentary, I started Vedic Mediation….the icing on my fertility cupcake!

IVF expert Dr Rob Norman suggested in the Baby Business documentary that women need to understand their fertility window. I can tell you that I fell pregnant on what I thought was outside my fertility window that month. According to a Clear Blue Ovulation indicator, that window was closed two days earlier – yet somehow that was the month I fell pregnant and consequently 9 months later had a baby.

Coming up in future blogs I will touch on what a Fertility Naturopath is and what they do and why you need one in your life. when trying to conceive.

A lot more to come on this!

The Baby Business

How a 4 Corners Episode changed everything…

Moving on...from another unsuccessful IVF treatment

A lot of people have asked what happened next?

I have taken an extract from my journal that was written the night I found out our second round of IVF was unsuccessful.

Looking back over these notes I can see how I mentally managed to get past the second failed IVF and move on.

It’s a little poetic at times, with a bit of bargaining made with the universe but it was also the start of my healing process and how I was able to move forward on that night- when I had felt so close yet so far away from having my dream come to fruition.

 Journal entry extracts from the evening of Monday 21st March:

The date came with a heavy expectation. I went in to get my IVF pregnancy test today. I was extremely nervous but not sure why, I felt that I was pregnant.

They called later than promised and in that time I had had a little bit of spotting – but still no period, so I was extra nervous by the time they called. I know the ‘feeling’ of being pregnant and this along with the headaches and some strange tastes in my mouth, it gave me a slight hope.

I told the nurse this information this morning and she thought it sounded positive. That along with a Kinesiology appointment earlier in the week, made me change my approach to my thinking. I hadn’t realised I had been so negative thinking throughout this process. I had come from such an unhealthy and unwell start - yet as I was slowly getting well, my old thoughts were still following me around!

(A quick side note):

I had been out with a friend for dinner weeks earlier and I was telling her how I had gotten lost on my way to meet her (on foot in high heels) trying to find the restaurant and after parking on time but going around in circles trying to find the address, I was full of cuts and blisters on my feet. I mentioned that I hated myself and get so frustrated with my stupidity at times, that even I find myself hard to live with. She was shocked. She said ‘I have never spoken about myself in that way before’. It was a light bulb moment. I am so mean to myself, the way I talk to myself so nasty….and this was not normal apparently.

So it wasn’t surprising that the Kinesiologist was trying to heal this old hurt and pain from relationships past. She said that I had to give myself the ‘path of least resistance’.  (See images on this blog post for the wording she supplied me, that I read over and over again when I found myself overthinking at this time).

She also told me that I need to slow down. That all I do is rush, rush, rush everywhere, always pushing time limits and boundaries to get everything done in one day. She said it’s exhausting and not very inviting for a baby to come into this environment.

I sometimes wonder if my Adrenal Fatigue was my body’s way of telling me to slow down?That my body wasn’t able to keep up with my ‘busy’ pace all the time. It was like ‘oh you are not learning to slow down – well I will teach you a lesson there my pretty!’ (I can imagine this being said by the voice of the wicked witch of the west for some reason).

Ok - back to the day of the IVF dreaded phone call, this was what I wrote on the evening of that call:

It was 1.24pm when a nurse called Tanya called me and straight away I knew from her voice that it was bad news. At that moment and even right now I am confused by the news. I did everything this time, I followed the diet, I did a series of acupuncture, I took the Bondi Protocol and did injections and lived a stressful period on steroids that were taken to make me feel calmer. I haven’t had any issues with reflux, awful cramps or twinges like last time. I meditated with positive affirmations, I really felt I had done enough.

In some way that I don’t know or understand I haven’t done enough. Something somewhere has not come together and I was told that the pregnancy test was negative. But I have very high progesterone which is why I don’t have my period yet. So I am sitting here with sore boobs, sore teeth, headaches and no period, but no baby. No baby. No future baby this time round. I feel like all that hope has to go somewhere? I put so much positive energy and thought and time into the process that I feel like I have lost time. 2 weeks of my life that I can never get back.

The only soften of the blow is that I have 2 frozen embryos. This means that they can do PGD (pre-implantation genetic) testing and see if they can find anything in my embryo that could explain what’s going on. If they are good – then I have another chance without going through the whole process next time.

The pro’s of doing this:

Money - it doesn’t cost as much as we are not going through the full cycle from scratch

Time – we don’t need to go through the full stim process, I can go into the transfer fresh and healthy minded. I don’t have to do it off the back of a transfer operation, recuperation and off the back off two stressful weeks of testing and drugs etc. It also means I don’t have to do it off the back of a body full of estrogen or nasty drugs they use to put me under in the process.

I am hoping that they are good healthy embryos and that I might be one of those people where my body prefers a frozen embryo.

I really want to use my own eggs! I want to be a mother and a parent to my own children, my own flesh and blood, my genes, my body and my personality and heritage with Leo’s. I want to have a family but I want it to be our family. I love genetics and the process of life and the small miracles in life. I want my own miracle, our miracle of life, with the genetic possibilities endless. The chances of it all happening are so slim though.

I know we can offer children a loving life, full of opportunities, full of nature, kisses, health, food, life and support. I would like the universe to give me that opportunity, to give us that opportunity. I believe we have gotten closer to our dream and I believe there is enough good stuff there for it to happen.

When I went to see the nurses for the blood test today, the nurse was super impressed by my having 12 eggs fertilised. Surely she would see enough people to not be surprised or feign surprise if that wasn’t the truth? I am looking at where I am now to last time and overall it is a better result. I have high progesterone, so clearly that isn’t an issue. I had a large amount of eggs both times, so I have a high egg reserve. I also had a lot of mature eggs get to fertilisation this time. I had 3 healthy eggs. Last time it was one. I also have 2 high quality frozen embryos. We also now have the option to have these tested.

I want to take a month or two off so that I can absorb this, see the Kinesologist to help me and my body, so I can let go of the hope of this baby and prepare for the next one... I believe there is a little more sadness to let go of and being able to look forward to a new pregnancy. I also think my Endometriosis should be looked at. And I should slow down. I know my body wants to rest.

I wasn’t even told how to ween off the Bondi Protocol or if any HCG was present. I feel like this door was just rudely shut and I was too gobsmacked to ask any questions and the door closed so quickly I didn’t get a chance.

So I am angry. I am pissed and sad. But it’s 9.17pm and I haven’t sat here and bawled as hard as last time. I thought I would be sad whilst I wrote this but instead I seem to be writing a new plan in my head. Originally I wanted to come home and eat the naughtiest thing I could find. Or have a drink or have done something which could say to the world – FUCK YOU. But I didn’t. I came home and ate a healthy simple dinner. I ate superfood chocolate, drank water and a herbal tea. So no real rebellion here!

I do want to call my naturopath and relax the supplements and the hard core food diary but to be honest it is a way of life now. I guess that’s what I have learnt, I am actually choosing to eat this way and I’m choosing to live a quieter life. I want to spend time on my own. I want to relax and sit and watch TV, Pinterest, do mindful colouring- in and read and write. Maybe this is a way to push me to write again? And read again?

It is also teaching me to slow down. It is also making me look at my interests and reassess what activities make me happy? How can I find joy in my life in new ways? Finding new ways of happiness and a new career before a baby comes. So I am content with my life and who I am as a person by the time baby comes. I want to learn how to deal with stress through meditation, healthy living, recuperation and enjoying the small things. All things I wanted to do 3 years ago but never did. Now the universe has pushed me against being ‘busy’.

So where to from here?

I am going to do yoga once a week, I think I can give it another go if I find the right class. I also want to cook thoughtful meals and explore my community and surroundings. I will continue with kinesiology – learning what my body wants and ways to heal it, to listen to it and do what it asks. I am going to tell myself I am young and to believe in and trust the process and work more on the ‘law of least effort’. Because I believe that’s what I need. To stop trying so hard and just let it happen. I know it can happen and will happen. I also believe in ‘flow’ and I am asking the universe to give me and support me to flow more in everyday life, pregnancy and parenthood.

I have realised I need to slow down and not just for health. But for balance. I also want to find more things that make me tick.

Last time I was locked in fear, this time I am keen to move forward to whatever ‘may be’.

I have confidence that this cycle was better than the last and that I can improve on that. I can get calmer, healthier and happier.

But now it is about finding joy (on my own). I know I have come a long way but I think I can do more in my internal dialogue. I have started to speak to myself nicer but I know that I am only a beginner in this space and there is room for me to grow.

Since the last 6 months I have more inner strength, I have the ability to pick myself up and be positive again. I have the ability to be clear about my intentions and not blame or look into the past. I am living in the right now. I am expressing how I feel and I know I will be able to move forward from here. I will be accepting and willing for the universe to support us in our next moves. I have faith and hope and know that I am still in the journey and I am learning throughout the process.

That is the end of the journal note that night.

So did I do any of those things?

I never went back to the Kinesiologist or the acupuncturist.

I didn’t ever hear back from the IVF clinic about the weaning off the Bondi Protocol or what to do next with our 2 frozen embryo’s….

My Endometriosis was never looked into

I did call my naturopath and she didn’t slow down my supplements – she increased them! She took my treatment to the next level and tweaked every element of my life.

I did find a yoga place that suited me better and I did do it for a short while.

I did slow down.

I started reading ‘Mastering Your Mean Girl’ by Melissa Ambrosini and became aware of my negative thoughts

And….. I was made redundant a couple of weeks after I wrote this journal entry!

I actually almost laughed when it happened. It was like – OK universe you’re closing the curtains on every element of my life here – what are you doing? And can you PLEASE just STOP!!

But as the affirmations on Pinterest say, the closing of one door is usually the opening of another and one with bigger possibilities…..but you need to be sure that the past door is fully closed….

There was one other thing that happened before I started the Vedic Meditation course, that stopped our IVF crusade in it tracks!

It was a 4 Corners program called “The Baby Business”….

It was the program that made sure that the IVF door was fully closed.

More of that in my next Blog Post!

Hello, let's get Hustling!

Welcome to my first blog for the 40 Year Hustle. I have big hopes for this site, right now it is a pretty simple outline of some things I did on my journey to fall pregnant despite the odds of my age and health at the time. 

In time, I want to create a community of women, for women, who want to share stories and experiences of trying and falling pregnant as an ‘older mum’. To have podcasts and articles with fertility experts and health practitioner’s, providing new and positive advice, I want to reduce the stigma around being an ‘older mum’ and for women in their late 30’s and 40’s to be comfortable with their age and their role as mum. But mostly I want you to see this site as your oasis amongst the hustle and harsh critics.

I think you may be asking - why the name 40 year hustle?

Well when you reach the age 40 there is a belief that we are met with ‘mid –life’. Maybe you even think this is the year you have finally ‘made it’ and buy a sports car? I mean hey for many they have the relationship, house and kids, you smashed it at life, well done and high fives all round.

But for it me the age came around so bloody fast I couldn’t fathom how I got there. Did I miss something? Did I miscalculate some birthdays along the way? And then perhaps that awful feeling, that you need to rush it all - to get to that ‘imaginary’ finish line to catch up. Not because you are ready or things felt right but purely because you chose a different life path…but that doesn’t mean you don’t want the dream or at least part of it.

My whole thirty-ninth year, I felt like someone had punched me in the windpipe. I felt robbed and started to look at my previous life choices and wonder where did I go wrong? How did I get to this age and not end up with what I wanted most? I became crippled with anxiety and frozen with the fear of choice! I could not make any decisions big or small (even if I had been held at gunshot for an answer). I was stuck. I thought if I got it so wrong in the past, could I trust myself to make choices anymore?

After a major life hustle I got there in the end (‘there’ - being whatever it is you want in your dreams of choice) and I realised that this thinking around being 40 was so outdated!

Yes age is just a number but when it comes to having a baby no one will let you believe that. I want to challenge your thinking on that. There is so much evidence forming and natural therapies that can be adopted to help you improve your fertility and overcome major health conditions to have a safer pregnancy (not just at 40 - but any age). The problem is these people (me) don’t have a voice yet. Traditional media and doctors would much rather scare you into having a baby at 25 with that dropkick you had been dating for four weeks, than dare you to have a child in your 30’s and 40’s.

Maybe right now you are single and in your 30’s and already telling people you think you’re chance to have children has gone…you have been made to believe that your chances at falling pregnant diminish on your 35th birthday?

Or you are in your 40’s and panicking as you have been told you are already too late – you missed that boat!

Or maybe you are a forward planner and you know that you have some health issues and when it does ‘come to that time’ that you will struggle.

Or maybe you have had a miscarriage and don’t know how you can keep forging ahead?

Whatever your current path is, whether you are already in the ‘hustle journey’ with your husband, partner, girlfriend, boyfriend or on your own – it doesn’t matter how you are hustling, this is your story and yours to tell.

The 40 Year Hustle is my story, my journey of how I got here and the knowledge I gained on the way…and I also want it to be your story. Everyone started somewhere on this journey, you may be in the beginning, the middle or the end right now. Luckily, I like to tell and share stories, so you can draw a little inspiration from this website, whether it is information, make new friends, gain hope or even if it is just a distraction from where you are currently at….whatever your goal is, whatever you do from here, my dream is that you use this site to move forward, knowing you gave your own hustle everything you could.

And to prove my point - check out this funny video below - this is what the ‘40 year hustle’ is all about!