A Giant Needle in the Bum

0:00Welcome to the Open Adoption Project. We're the Nelsons. I'm Sean. And I'm Lynette. Thanks for joining us. In this episode we're going to be talking about our experience with in vitro fertilization. And that was just the best time of life ever. Yes, we highly recommend doing in vitro fertilization treatments all the time, year-round. Nothing more fun than having to give your partner shots in their stomach every morning when they wake up. And the grand finale, the giant needle in the bum. In the bum, yeah. At least you got a huge ice pack and you

0:34didn't really feel it. I'm the one who had to watch. Yeah, but I was... put it in you. I was literally being injected with hormones every day. I was psycho. I felt like a maniac. I remember that. Yeah, good times. So yeah, we're gonna talk about in vitro and how we ended up getting to the point where we felt like we should do in vitro because that really wasn't part of our original plan. And we'll be talking about what that process looked like and how it went. And ultimately how we found peace in our

1:08infertility and how we felt okay shutting the door on that forever. Thanks for joining us for this episode. This is an episode that I think we've been a little bit less excited to share just because it's kind of opening these doors to memories that we don't really love. I would say that we're pretty over

1:41our infertility and we feel fine about it. And I know that's not how everybody feels after fertility treatments. But I mean it's been quite a while. It's been about eight years and I think we're in a spot where we feel good and confident. But it's still not fun to reminisce about a time in life where things kind of we're just really sensitive and rough. Yeah, not a great time. Every once in a while I'll still have a dream that you get pregnant when you're like 45. Which

2:13yes we will tell you what medical professionals have said about those chances. Yeah. But they're not good. At all. So after we adopted our first two kids we were pretty sure we were done adopting. Yeah we thought our family was totally complete. We had a girl, we had a boy, and the agency that we had been working with was actually closing. They were no longer willing to provide adoption services. They provided a lot of different services and still do but they

2:43stopped doing adoptions. Yeah and that was just a couple of months after our son was born and so we were like all right this is great we have two kids. We're really lucky, really blessed to have these kids. And life was really good. Yeah we felt good about it. We had two tiny kids. We were crazy about them. We were sleep deprived but we were really happy. Really sleep deprived but it was really really good. Yeah things were great and so those first few months were

3:14really great and we were hanging out with some of our good adoption friends shortly after our son was born. Let me put in a plug right now maybe that if you're jumping into the adoption world it's so good to have friends or acquaintances at least that you can connect with and talk about adoption with and kind of I don't know just go through a process together even. It's really great to have friends who get it and I mean we have lots of great friends who haven't adopted and they're wonderful and there's some really

3:47empathetic wonderful people out there who don't have to live your same experience to be a great friend and support but having friends who have had those similar experiences is so helpful. Sometimes things are just hard and your family doesn't get it and it's hard to talk about things with your parents or your siblings and it's nice to have some friends and sounding boards who do get it who have been there who might be able to give you advice or share their experiences to help you get through things that might come up that are hard.

4:17Yeah a lot of I mean you can find a lot of places either online or in your local community where you can connect with hopefully adoptive parents or adoptive parents that are going through the same thing that you are and we'd recommend just trying to do whatever you can to connect and and create those relationships now so that when you have questions when you have the struggles and the hard times you can turn to one another and maybe vent a little bit to each other cry with each other but you know just go through this experience

4:47with people that are in your same situation. And really I think this blog it's not a substitute for a good friend but we want to be a support and like help people feel connected. You're looking at me weird. This blog? Oh no this podcast. We've talked about the blog apparently I still feel like I'm blogging and just vocalizing all of my blog posts apparently. That's good. That's great yeah obviously I'm still sleep deprived all these years later.

5:22Our last baby is turning one tomorrow from the time we're recording this so we still have you know some sleep deprivation but it hasn't been that bad. He's a good sleeper yeah so I really don't have an excuse I'm just losing brain cells. So anyway we were hanging out with some of our friends who had adopted their son their first child about the same time we adopted our daughter and we were in kind of an adoptive parent support group type of thing together that's kind of how we met. These guys are great we're still close

5:53friends with them we love them and they were like our go-to adoption buddies and we feel really blessed that they are and were in our lives. They were a great sounding board and helped us. So we were hanging out with our little kids and they told us that they were expecting twins and we were super excited for them. Obviously we wanted to talk about like how this happened because we all had talked about our infertility problems. They told us that they had actually gotten

6:25this grant. There was this hospital that gave them a grant to do in vitro fertilization there were some requirements and they met those requirements and got to do in vitro for a much lower price than what is normally charged for in vitro and it was this cool opportunity that we had never heard about and honestly they told us this and we were like so happy for them thrilled for them and I think I tucked it away as like one of those ideas to share with other people when they told us about their fertility struggles because even

6:57at that point we were talking to a lot of people about infertility and adoption so I was like oh this is a great thing to tell people about and see if it might help other people but I wasn't thinking about us doing in vitro when they told us about this at all. Were you? I mean maybe in the back of my mind we shared in some of the first episodes that we had gone down the fertility treatment road and worked with fertility doctors and did artificial insemination over and

7:27over and over and over and that was really taxing on us, Lynette's body, our relationship and obviously it didn't work and so when this came up it was like okay cool maybe we would qualify for the same grant we're kind of in the same point of life just had finished school or finishing school not making very much money at that point so maybe yeah so maybe it was in the back of my mind a little bit but definitely not like that an absolute the door was shut on fertility treatments and I was totally okay with that. Yeah so we heard

7:59about this grant we were super excited for our friends but we really I wasn't thinking about us looking into the grant at all like honestly I had zero interest I was so content not at all interested. We had a three month old baby boy at this point. Yeah our baby was young we yeah we really didn't I mean we wanted our first two kids to be close in age and they were two and a half years apart which wasn't quite what we had pictured but we weren't planning on having lots and lots of kids super close together we really weren't thinking about this much but obviously

8:32this is all building up because you know it it didn't turn out the way we were thinking it would right. Ever does. Yes life is very much like that and so we thought that that door was locked but a couple months later things changed. So we were at your parents house for Christmas right? Yeah and we went to see my parents at Christmas time they lived in Oregon at that time we were there visiting and I just couldn't sleep which wasn't normal because she's a good sleeper I am

9:08a good sleeper and especially if we're somewhere else where there's grandparents that might help with babies and stuff and grandma loves helping with babies right yes yes and so there was just this part of my brain that was like oh I can sleep and baby's gonna be fine and so the fact that I couldn't sleep there was a big deal and I just kept thinking about this grant and I was like why am I thinking about this I was getting mad at myself honestly I knew that this was not what I wanted to do I know that might sound bad but I didn't

9:40want to do this but I kept thinking about it and I kept thinking maybe we should be thinking about this and so we felt like this was God telling us that this was something we should do I remember I can't remember at what point this timeline but you had had a dream that we had two more boys yeah I had a dream that we had two more boys and I was like Sean I think that we're supposed to do in vitro and if we do I'm pretty sure that means we're gonna have

10:10twin boys right like felt like this was basically God saying you should do in vitro and it's gonna be great because you're gonna get two more kids right right right so that was Christmas time we decided that we were gonna wait at least until we finalized the adoption of ours of our son so when he was six months old we started looking into it yes but I was really really dead set on

10:40that that's true I said I don't want to start paperwork or even think about doing this process before we finalized his adoption I just wanted to soak in those first months I wanted to soak in the finalization experience and everything that came with that for us without being crazy yeah I didn't want any extra hormones and weird crap going on I just wanted to feel like myself and to be able to enjoy it and relish all of the great things that come with that

11:11time in your baby's life so I can remember reaching out to the grant coordinator and asking what the criteria was that there wasn't like a lot published online about it it was kind of like a word of mouth type of thing anyway I reached out to the coordinator asked what the criteria was and we met it we had to fill out an application and I think we even had to go do like an in-person interview mm-hmm and that initial email said you know this process usually takes about four months from the time you start filling out paperwork to the time that you actually start doing in vitro yeah and I thought that

11:46was great I was like okay baby will be one that's that's good yeah but like we've mentioned before like we get a little gung-ho about filling out paperwork and just even when we're not excited about doing something I know I'm just so type a that I had to check all the boxes anyway we filled out the paperwork we submitted it like two weeks later she's like okay come in for your interview and we're like okay and we did and she's like okay we're good to go here's the here's the information you're gonna go in for a preliminary

12:16appointment with the doctor and we'll get your in vitro you know calendar all set up and everything and it was just like it was like BAM like right after we finalized our son's adoption we were starting in vitro basically and I feel like I sound really ungrateful talking about how I didn't really want to do this getting this really generous grant I think it's important for us to be honest with ourselves like the feelings that we had and like you mentioned being like spiritually inclined we felt we felt like we should do it even though it

12:49wasn't something we necessarily wanted to do and I imagine part of why I didn't want to do it was because I was really scared like deep down I don't know I don't know what I was scared of I really thought it was going to work I think I was maybe scared that our older kids would feel like we didn't want them as much because we like we're still working toward fertility treatments and biological kids after adopting them and I didn't ever want them to feel like second-best because that's not how I see them and I was afraid I think that they

13:22might perceive that from us doing fertility treatments so we did the paperwork we got set up with the doctor we went in and it was really quick they sent us to the pharmacy in the hospital to get all the drugs all the medications and injections that we'd have to do and had this crazy color-coded calendar for when I had to or when we had to give I guess I should say this way when I gave Lynette shots because yes Sean did all the shots she was not doing it herself no way

13:56and so we went through this process and went in for I think a few ultrasounds along the way just to make sure that everything was happening right that there were enough eggs developing and everything looked really good and then we went in for the procedure they didn't give you like laughing gas no but they was I was like out but not like I was conscious you were supposed to be but I was I wasn't very lucid but I was awake and it was really awkward like I have

14:30these really fuzzy memories of the procedure and so when they were harvesting my eggs I vaguely remember all of these blurry faces around me and I couldn't have been as many people as are in my head but I just remember like 12 people up around me mostly dudes with glasses and I remember saying things and they'd all laugh and just being really delirious and confused about why they thought I was so funny well I remember afterward talking to the doctor and him

15:02saying she had hiccups the whole time and every time she would hiccup she would start laughing hysterically and when she would start laughing everybody in the room would start laughing so I don't know if you were having conversations with anybody or just hiccuping and laughing I don't really know but yeah he told us that I was like mortified yeah I don't know it's not a great feeling to vaguely remember people looming around you and laughing I don't know in the end I think

15:34I got eight or nine eggs I can't remember exactly the number yeah they were kind of disappointed with the number they said it's it's low it's on the low side of what we were expecting and hoping for but he still seemed really hopeful yeah we had an amazing doctor we haven't said that he was so good he was a really professional really caring yeah like super awesome bedside manner I feel like it's hard sometimes especially for fertility doctors to walk that line of being compassionate and professional and he did he did a great job he was both

16:10yeah and I don't think he ever instilled false hope but was really really good about being positive in the situation which can be a big part of fertility treatments right like psychological beliefs about whether or not this might work that can play a part and so we got the eggs harvested and they were trying to fertilize them and it did not go well we got our first phone call the day

16:40before the 4th of July is that right yeah so it was just a day after the procedure procedure yeah on July 3rd and he said well guys none of the eggs have fertilized we're gonna take some extra measures to try to help them and they had like a backup sample they were gonna try to use as well and he was pretty honest like it doesn't look great I'll call you back tomorrow with kind of the final word

17:11yeah so we were both frankly I was stunned what about you yeah I mean all the tests that they did made it seem like this shouldn't be a problem yeah they told us in the very beginning when we've got all screened and tested they said you guys are perfect candidates for this we feel really confident that this will work they gave us a percentage of odds based on everything they were pretty good they were really good odds and so we defy odds a lot apparently so

17:42but we weren't expecting to I really what I thought this was going to work too and I just remember I was shocked and I was crushed and suddenly I felt this crushing heavy guilt of I can't believe I haven't been wanting this I can't believe I've had such a crappy attitude about this because I suddenly realized I did want this and I wanted these two kids that I felt like were supposed to come to our family and I was so upset with myself for being picky and

18:14so concerned about all of these other things when like maybe that had messed things up and I had messed up what was supposed to happen to our family I felt horrible and so it went from me having this horrible attitude and not wanting this to really work and kind of being half-hearted about the whole thing to suddenly feeling like oh my gosh what is going on this was supposed to work like this was us following what we thought God wanted us to do I was just so

18:46confused this whiplash feeling I don't know it was yeah it's hard then the day went by obviously you can't think about anything but that yeah we were we were praying like crazy I was so stressed and so we got the call the next day on the 4th of July and he was super super sweet about it but yeah the doctor was the one that called us on a holiday and told us that it hadn't worked 4th of July that year was super crappy we tried to make it a nice holiday for our kids but we

19:21were having a hard day we ate a lot of chips and salsa and lots of maple donuts so we were feeling pretty bad that day yeah we had a horrible 4th of July if you're an Anna Green Gables fan I really did just feel like I was in the depths of despair I was so sad like I can't remember ever being so sad and I remember feeling maybe some confusion about why did I feel like God wanted me to do this when it didn't even work but I wasn't really mad at God I was just

19:55really really sad every single thing made me cry I was a mess for a couple weeks well and in that phone call he said you know we did everything right really we think the only way that in vitro is gonna work for you is if you have donor eggs and so in a sense it was like okay unless we go down that road fertility is like done for us right there's no way it's gonna work he did say you might get pregnant someday but if you do it is going to be a miracle

20:30and I believe miracles do happen but if you get pregnant it will be a miracle and it will be the kind of miracle that could fill medical journals with its report because it doesn't look like it's possible for you to ever get pregnant it was rough we were in a bad spot was it rough for you um yeah I mean I think it might have been rougher for me because I felt like it was all my fault with my attitude and with the eggs I think that's a common thing when you have fertility problems as a couple before that our infertility causes

21:03weren't really known and as soon as we knew that it was my eggs I think I did I mean I knew that I shouldn't but I think I did feel a lot of guilt about that and like I was really sad that it didn't work because I don't know I think all along I felt like there were more children and that this was like the only way it was going to work and then also seeing how sad and how it affected you that obviously affected me as well and so that was difficult yeah and Shawn was

21:36always really good at not making me feel like he was blaming me for any of that but I do think that's an important thing to be really sensitive to it could be really hard one not to blame yourself or two not to blame your partner just don't go down that road like it's not healthy you are one together right and so your fertility together is your fertility it's not a me versus you type of thing it's a it's a us type of thing so after you know a week maybe two of just like

22:07we were in the slums I think we were feeding our kids microwave hot dogs for every meal and that's not true I mean I don't know what we were doing but we were not living our best life so we decided that we just needed some good vibes so on a whim we packed up the kids packed up a car and drove to California and this was not like us I am a person who loves to plan I literally have every detail I probably have about 15 Google Docs of different trips planned

22:41out where it's like oh we want to go to Montana let me get my Google Doc it has all of the best hotels that I've researched a ton and all of the hikes we should do at Glacier National Park and everything that we should do and know is in this Google Doc right like I have been planning it for years oh we're going to Maine well this is the hotel we're staying at on a Tuesday night like seriously she's I love planning this kind of stuff and actually I have Google Docs galore for the podcast as well so you know she's a plan but so we jumped

23:13in the car and hadn't made any hotel reservations it was such a cool feeling it was very spontaneous and very unlike us which I think was exactly what we needed at that time so we took the kids and ended up in Southern California the first place we stayed ended up becoming one of our favorite vacation places as a family and went back there several years in a row we'd stay in a hotel right on the beach play on the beach all day pack up drive an hour north do it again drive an hour north do it again and we did that for like I don't know like a

23:45week we found some of our favorite beaches in California which was really fun it was super therapeutic right so it was good to distract ourselves when reality doesn't line up with our plans it's kind of rough and this was an opportunity for us to kind of reassess what reality would be and also kind of forget about it so yes throw fiscal responsibility to the wind and live our

24:15best lives for a couple days and then pay the piper later it was great it was great so yeah California Beach therapy highly recommend it worked great for us it was a great way for us to I don't think quite heal but to forget and reconnect with each other with our kids and refocus and remember what was most important and focus on what we already had it was a good thing for us to do I think I still had some of those bitter feelings and sad feelings of this didn't

24:50work out because I felt so strongly like we had two little boys that were supposed to join our family I had names picked out for them Sean was not sold on these names I can tell you that the names because we did not name any of our children these names and we never will I wanted to name them Ezra and Fitz I thought they were the cutest names ever and I still don't like them very much for our children I wanted to name them Ezra and Fitz I had like this image in my mind of what they would look like and it was hard to think there's no way

25:24we're ever going to be able to adopt two more kids right yeah we were so lucky to have two kids anyway and the agency that we had adopted our first two children with was very reasonable like financially it wasn't too hard to work things out so we could afford adoption with that agency but after they had closed and we're looking at other agencies as an option we didn't really know too much about private adoption at that point and so it was like man we're

25:54just not gonna be able to do this yeah we figured we were done and we were okay with that before in vitro but after in vitro I really did feel like we had two more little boys and I guess at least two more little boys I mean at that point I just felt like we had these little boys that were supposed to join our family and they couldn't I mean I think it's really interesting that this really hard thing that we went through resulted in me feeling like there were

26:26two more boys that were supposed to join our family because I wasn't feeling that before yeah it just felt like that was how it was supposed to be until we had these feelings and then it was like how are they gonna come how are they gonna get here I think that probably was a back-of-the-mind thought as a result of this because the first months quite a while year maybe more after we did in vitro I think I was just grieving too much to really think about what next

26:58well and hindsight is 2020 right yeah it's really interesting to look back now but because now we have two more boys and it's interesting to see what life has brought you mentioned earlier like why did we feel like we should do this if nothing else if we were supposed to have the feelings that we were supposed to have more children in our family if that was why we were supposed to go through this really difficult really difficult experience then in hindsight

27:28it's easy to say it was totally worth going through that absolutely in the moment it really did suck but in hindsight I'm so glad that we went through it because it opened our hearts it opened our minds to the fact that you know what there's probably more kids coming to our family yeah it is really interesting to look back now in retrospect I wouldn't take that experience away but it was so hard at that time that is the story of a giant

27:58needle in your bum that's the name of the episode you're like laughing as you say bum so that's our journey through IVF and extra fertility treatments and really I think one more thing that we did learn from that was just more empathy and more sympathy for people that do have to go through these fertility journeys and I mean it's rough it's not fun stuff and so for any of you

28:32who are in those trenches right now our hearts are with you we are thinking about you because we know that that can be really hard in the moment look for the lessons that you can learn from the situation that you're in don't let it just be negative don't let it just be this hard thing you're going through find the good find find the California Beach therapy that's right fine find the lessons that will help you and potentially help others because I

29:03think that's often why we go through experiences yeah I agree to find ways to help others yeah to have more empathy so that's our IVF story we hope you enjoyed it thank you so much for listening to this episode of the open adoption project we'll be back with another episode next week where we continue our story and we'll be sharing how we were led to adopting our third child yes I would

29:35maybe subtitle that one our crash course in adoption ethics as always please feel free to reach out to us with any questions you have or requests for future episodes we're recording more interviews with all members of the adoption triad so we'd love for you to reach out and ask us some questions that we can include in those episodes yes you can email us anything for questions or requests at open adoption project at gmail.com or you can message us on Instagram we are

30:05at open adoption project thanks so much for listening

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