Tag: infertility

Hi, thanks so much for coming on the show Can you introduce yourself and tell us where you’re from? Yeah, so

Molly 1:32  

I’m Molly Hicks. And I am from Lincoln, Nebraska.

Paulette  1:35  

Oh, wow. What is it just completely winter there right now? 

Molly  1:42  

No, it’s like this weird mix between spring and winter where like it can’t really decide which season it wants to be. So we keep going to freezing and then it’s like being freezing.

Paulette  1:54  

Well, I’m both happy and sorry to hear that. Yes, exactly. So before we jumped on this interview, you mentioned that you are a podcaster.

Molly  2:05  

Yes. I co host a podcast with my friend Angela. It’s called Drudgery, Dreams and In Between and it’s for neurodivergent weirdos and

Paulette  2:15  

struggling to human. I like it and here’s an interview or what’s the

Molly  2:20  

sometimes we have a format where Angela and I come on and talk about subjects that need to be talked about, especially for later diagnosed or divergent events or late late realization fears. You know, either way that like just talking about that the struggle it is to come to terms with some of these things, and we occasionally have guests on I usually talk a lot from the parent component. And so we had an expert in teaching and we just interviewed a guest who is the founder of a neuro divergent focused company. So

Paulette  2:53  

wow, that’s very cool. Okay, so we’re going to talk about kids and families and sometimes the family you create is in some ways, either a reflectiojn, or a projection of the family you come from. So I’m wondering, did you grow up with siblings? And did you think I want kids how does that unfold for you?

Molly  3:13  

So I was obsessed with pregnancy as a kid. And I was raised Catholic. My dad’s convert, but my mom’s from the Catholic family. And my mom had five siblings. My dad had seven siblings. And growing up, there was three of us and now there we have an additional sibling. That was born when I was 20. And growing up, no offense to my siblings, but I did not want them.

Paulette  3:45  

Where are you? Where are you in the lineup?

Molly  3:47  

I’m the oldest. And so it was just like, my memories. of sibling interactions aren’t always positive. And I mean, it is what it is, right? You’re kids, you have opinions and they get stuck in your head. But like I remember when the next sibling was two, and I was eight, seven or eight and my mom’s like, well go play. Since you’re bored. Go play the two year old or you know, and it’s like, what? I’m What am I supposed to do with the two year old like, I don’t know what to do with a two year old. They just want to sit in a corner and scream. I don’t want to do that. You know, and it was just those types of things. And so growing up I always had this concept of like if I if I have a kiddo, I want that kiddo to not feel pressures from other siblings or feel held back because now there’s too many kids. No offense to people who have lots of kids like this fine. Just having been the oldest and as more kids came, I got to do less your I got less attention or I got less things. And I didn’t want that for mine. So if they were ever happened, and I remember a time where I was like, I’ll have four and then I went to I do not want any because I worked at a daycare and then that that taught me I don’t want to make this I don’t have patience. Like so. So for things like that. And I did grow up into a bigger family where we had lots of cousins and they were all around all the time. I don’t like people that much, so

Paulette  5:22  

It usually cuts one way or the other either. You think I want exactly this or I want you right. So, so you do have a child. So how do we bridge that gap? And and you were talking before we got onto record about other struggles. So maybe take us there.

Molly  5:40  

Yes. So my uterus and I never agreed, even as a young teenager, it wanted to do its thing. make myself feel like I was being you know, ruined from the inside out. I didn’t want it to do that. Differences of opinion. And so I remember I joined the military. I went to my annual pap exam and in the waiting room was a Reader’s Digest. And I had just we’ve been married for gotten married for maybe like six or seven months. And it said that if you haven’t gotten pregnant in the first six months of marriage, that you probably have something else going on. Even with all the odds, at that point. Usually something happened that you are aware of. So I went into my appointment and I said, Excuse me, the Reader’s Digest has told me this mind blowing thing, and she’s like, oh, yeah, yeah, you probably just Yeah, it’ll be a problem. And I was 18 and I took that as a challenge. Like, to my heart, I was like, Well, if you’re gonna tell me I can’t, I’m going to show you I can. This just underlines the neurodivergent brain thinking pattern. But

Paulette  6:46  

did she do anything specific did she say you have endometriosis or something? 

Molly  6:51  

no, they there was like no details. Oh, and I was in tech school, so I couldn’t really investigate too much. all of my symptoms were extremely heavy periods, severe cramping to the point of not being able to function, super long cycles that were asynchronous. they did not line up. So classic symptoms of endometriosis or PCOS that,

Paulette  7:13  

yeah. So, unfortunately volley. too many women fell into the abyss that is women’s reproductive health as it relates to endometriosis, and PCOS or PCOS. Endometriosis occurs when the tissue that normally lines the uterus, the endometrium grows outside. And PCOS involves a hormone imbalance that interferes with the ways the ovaries function. Both conditions are difficult to diagnose, and can contribute to infertility. Endometriosis can come with heavy or irregular periods or meaningful periods, and or spotting or bleeding between periods. It’s diagnosed with a pelvic exam ultrasound and maybe a laparoscopy. It can take on average between six and 10 years to diagnose PCOS or PCOS can come with irregular periods, eccess facial and body hair and infertility. According to the Mayo Clinic, there’s no single test or diagnosis of ethos that may fall from a discussion of your cycles with your doctor and ultrasound and or a blood test looking for hormone imbalance, what conditions they have a partially genetic basis. If women in your family have these conditions, that is sometimes a clue. But it looks like there’s no definitive explanation for why these conditions develop.

Molly  8:30  

My mom was just like, that’s normal. Now looking back on my normal I should have gone to the doctor. But so we ended up at our first duty station and I scheduled a consult with gynecology. And they said, Yeah, we think you have endometriosis. We’re gonna test this and they put me on Lupron

Paulette  8:52  

That’s like an estrogen blocker, estrogen blocker.

Molly  8:55  

And so for six months, I had chemical menopause, which is wonderful.

Paulette  8:59  

And does that mean you had like hot flashes and no sleep,

Molly  9:03  

couldn’t sleep,  hot Flashes the whole thing it was other than, you know, I would read my estrogen levels would recover and I would be a better term functioning uterus with ovaries. It was the legit menopause situation. And after that, they said yes, the symptoms went away. You do have endometriosis, but honestly nothing got better. I never got pregnant, we ended up doing several cycles of Clomid I think we did a year and a half of Clomid.

Paulette  9:35  

Okay, so what does Clomid do and how does it work? Clomid binds to receptors in your brain to block estrogen. This makes your body think that your estrogen is low and that makes it release normal FSH to increase estrogen and in this process, FSH helps oocytes grow into mature eggs.

Molly  9:53  

Lots of ultrasound, lots of everything. We did IUI which is inner uterine area insemination that had no lot.

Paulette  10:02  

I did that too. And before my first one, I assumed that the doctor would be in her clinic with a turkey baster.

Molly  10:08  

I know I had no sense of what it would look like. I know it was so odd. I was like wait, are we sticking a needle somewhere because then they get the tubes out that are like when they’re going to draw blood with the butterfly. And I was like, Wait, what are we doing? And it was all fine. But yeah, and after that, I ended up having a exploratory laparoscopy which showed that I didn’t have endometriosis I did have some type of weird webbing going on everywhere. And then I had parents who will assess so they took an app that out and they were like, everything should be fine now. It was not it didn’t change. But they did say at that point. They started looking at my tests for my hormones and realize actually has PCOS. And so then I started getting into Metformin, my weight started becoming a bigger issue because I was getting older. So then I was not a teenager anymore. You know, I’m actually an adult, actual adult now. And so all of my hormones were starting to level out and I was just getting a whole bunch of funk. And so by the time we get to this point, it’s been 10 years and never ever that we know obviously we could have gotten pregnant and miscarried and  never know. And I think that’s the point that people really don’t understand is that you don’t always know if it’s early. Like you couldn’t present it and I I hate when people ask me that question for all I know, I’ve been pregnant 100 times. I only know what’s you know, and so we moved. We finally both were out of the military both are medically retired for various things. And it had been 10 years and I was super heavy at that point. I’m five foot one. And I was up to 200 pounds. I was really unhealthy. I was not in a great mental state. Because again, bipolar disorder has issues. I didn’t know I was bipolar at the time. They told me I had something else and so I was on medicine that I should have been on

Paulette  11:56  

So I don’t really know how bipolar works, but it can’t have helped your mental state to have your hormones slingshotting all over the place. Right?

Molly  12:05  

No, I’ve always struggled with extreme depression and then go into these, these other cycles where I’m super productive, always on never sleeping kind of going and I have bipolar two specifically not bipolar one. And so I tried to explain it as you’re happy was my sort of sad because my range of well I’m assuming that you’re happy but my emotions were so far apart from each other. I just had this extended range. Yeah. And so when I went from one to the other, it was significant. And so now I medication they’ve they’ve lowered the peaks on both end. And so now I have a somewhat normal range but for a good two months when it first started I had to relearn my emotions because I had no actual gauge of what I was feeling anymore. And so yes, having hormonal changes does not help with that at all. So I ended up losing about 50 pounds because they stopped the medication abruptly and didn’t wean the off of it and I got extremely sick and I went through withdrawal. And so I lost 50 pounds in less than three months.

Paulette  13:16  

Wow.

Molly  13:18  

It was hard. People kept looking at me like are you okay? I’m like why is everybody looking at me like this? And then I eventually tried on my clothes I had I don’t know if I just wasn’t paying attention or something. But I was doing this with my clothes. Are you holding? I was holding out it was like one of those limbs fast commercials from the 90s Were they like in a pair of pants? It was like that.

Paulette  13:41  

So for people who haven’t seen it. Pants and the pair of pants was meant for someone else because the waist is so big.

Molly  13:46  

Yeah, right, correct. Yes. And as I was getting healthy I had signed up to go to a consult with a leading IVF doctor in the Syracuse, New York area. People traveled from around the world see this guy and I was like, this is the guy. This is the guy. But I’d also kind of come to terms with this may just not happen for us. If this guy talks to us and it’s the same thing that we’ve been hearing. I just keep I’m done. Crying while peeing on sticks is only something you can do for like so long, you know? So we went and they did an ultrasound and they found a polyp. And but they couldn’t get any blood out of me to do bloodwork because I always dehydrated and so it just couldn’t get it. And so they said okay, well we have a lot of success when our patients go on a keto diet. So we want you to go on this keto diet because for some reason, butter in your coffee gets people pregnant. Sure, okay. Fine, whatever. At this point. I haven’t tried this. This is the thing I haven’t tried so short. Yeah. And so that day I started keto. And we have a family picnic a couple of days later and I was eating a keto friendly meal and I was just like, I’m just not feeling it. And my aunt was like, Oh, you might have keto flu. I was like, Oh, okay.

Paulette  15:16  

Okay, so lots of people have heard about the ketogenic diet. The point of the ketogenic diet is to put your body into ketosis, which is a metabolic state in which your body burns fat instead of glucose. In general, ketogenic diets follow some form of a high fat, some protein and low carb performance. And it looks like scientists don’t really understand what causes the so called keto flu, but they think it may be a human reaction or a change in the gut microbiome or some kind of carb withdrawal.

Molly  15:46  

And so I went two weeks, and I was just sick all the time. And I was like, if I have to eat ricotta cheese one more time, like no, and everybody kept going, are you pregnant? And I’m like, No, I’m not fucking pregnant. Because I have never been and I’m just sick because the goddamn keto flu, and I just have to eat so much fat and dairy and it’s just not what I like, because I just want my goddamn vegetables. You know, so I kept saying this and I was throwing up I couldn’t keep anything down. I looked green. It was awful. And eventually, it was fine. Wait, wait,

Paulette  16:21  

I’m gonna stop you right here. Yeah. So I’ve dabbled in the whole keto world. My sense of the Keto flu is it’s like three days or something. Yes, but you’re still thinking is the Keto flu because you’re assuming there’s no way to be pregnant and residual makes sense?

Molly  16:37  

This the only thing that makes sense is that I have because obviously, after 10 years, I would need something more than a random fluke.

Paulette  16:45  

Yeah, you’re correct. And you haven’t done other than the IUI we haven’t done anything else, yet.

Molly  16:48  

Yeah, well, I’ll be like Clomid and like ultrasounds time we had did We did HCG snapshots and injections and things like that. But but we didn’t do IVF. That was and so I was like, fine. I went home and I was like, I need to go get a pregnancy test because we didn’t have any home because I had stopped carrying them in the house because why would you carry something in the house that always tells you you’re a bad person? At least that’s how I felt doesn’t really tell me. And my partner was like, I’m not buying another test. I said, but everybody thinks we’re pregnant. We got to prove to them that we’re not pregnant. So everybody will stop suggesting the test was positive.

Paulette  17:29  

But at that point, I oh my god, wait, let’s not run past this part.

Molly  17:34  

So you get the test is your program reading outside the bathroom? I sit outside the bathroom. My husband was in the bathroom. And he is the one that looked at the text and was like it’s positive and he’s an asshole sometimes. So I thought he was playing with me. And I was like, this is not fun. I agree. And like then the shock like then I realized, oh, no, he’s in shock. And I was like, Oh my God, and I just kept saying, Oh my God 400 times. And Steven goes, Do you want to call your mom and I was like, We got to look up how you could possibly have a false positive because this cannot be true. We were convinced this was still wrong.

Paulette  18:14  

I agree. Why are we at CVS right now getting more tests.

Molly  18:18  

So I had another test and I was like, I’ll take it in the morning. Maybe it’s a thing because it’s 12 o’clock at night because we stayed up to do this thing. And I should note that our dog had randomly started sleeping on top of my belly a week or two prior and I was like, you weird dog. So evidently, my husband stayed up that night, researching false positives and found out that common false positive for pregnancy tests is, is cervical cancer. 

Paulette  18:44  

Okay, so just a note here about false positive pregnancy tests. There are a host of reasons you can get a false positive, most of which are relatively benign. These tests are looking for hCG. If you’re taking medication that increases HCG that could throw the test off, in general, according to the Mayo Clinic are false positives are uncommon.

Molly  19:08  

And so we were convinced that I had cancer. Now, this is not to make anybody who has had cervical cancer feel like something. This is just how convinced we were that we could not possibly be pregnant or cancer was a more realistic alternative to us. So I took the second test in the morning it was positive again. So I immediately call the clinic that we weren’t going to the IVF doctor, and I was like, I’ve had two pregnancy tests. And I I think I’m dying, because of course, overreacting. And she goes come in now, because they did not expect me to say that I had a positive pregnancy. So we came in and it’s been two weeks. I had lost like four pounds in these two weeks. And so they are doing the ultrasound and my husband goes so what are you looking for? How do you know your baby and the lady goes? We got to see the baby on the screen. And that’s when they told us that the polyp that they found when we came in was the yolk sac. 

Paulette  20:24  

Wow, oh my God, plot twist but

Molly  20:30  

I mean, because I was supposed to to get a DNC to take the polyp out.

Paulette  20:35  

Oh my god. So so so I’m worried for you when you call the clinic worried for you on your way and you’re like they’re gonna confirm my cervical cancer this the worst day in the world. At what point do we break free from that and just there’s joy or something else.

Molly  20:51  

There wasn’t joy till the baby was born honestly. Well, that’s even mix. There are to this day, there are still days of like, Wait, we have a baby. We had one. We’re good. We’re good because that that 10 years of being infertile like it. It’s a very specific concept that you have about yourself. It’s really hard to shake. And you’re not like other people who get pregnant by breathing. And so they can’t relate with you and you really can’t relate with them because not everybody has. I mean, there are some people who have been exposed to miscarriage their friends or family or have experienced themselves and so they have a rational fear of that first trimester. But not everybody does and some people get pregnant in their life. And they just Yeah. And they’re happy and excited. And I was constantly just pregnant. 

Paulette

I imagine its a huge mindshift to go from not being able to get pregnant to being pregnant.

the first time I had sex with intention, I’d be pregnant and I was like oh, is this seems to work. Just keep going. Seemed

like we weren’t trying to get pregnant. No, it just told me that and actually I have a interview. A while ago, my daughter’s friends told her no one no one ever be told this. Alicia like missing the machine. Right? Because she said, you know, pregnancy often happens, right? Whether you want it to or not. And it’s great. I control it and I wish that no one had ever said that. Right there’s a lot of times

Molly  23:28  

and it made it so that was the only focus for a long time. Like it. It took all the fun away of being a newlywed. It took a lot of that those early years we were already under stressful conditions because I was in the military. We were on a team away from home. You were living in Monterey, and you know, family was several if not 10 states away. We were all of these things that like looking back and like oh, we needed to be alone and you know, let us learn how to be ourselves and figure out who we are as a couple and you know, our boundaries. Didn’t even know about boundaries that back then. But all of those things kind of add us to a lot of us. Yeah. All of those things that taken away. The doctor didn’t mean to do that. And it wasn’t like I was purposely doing that to myself. My brain just latched on to it. And it was like, this is the only thing we’ve

Paulette  24:27  

got to fix this. This is not okay. Yeah, yeah, of course I am assuming doctors have the best of intentions and they’re trying to prepare you for something. But I guess I think that’s a little bit of an unknowable thing. You know, more humility or more uncertainty about the prediction would be great.

Molly  24:47  

Absolutely. It would have it would have been better for her to reframe it for me as maybe you just have a uterus that needs more attention. You know, Oh, well. Do you have any of these other things, but you do. Let’s try and figure out that because that’s something we need to address before you get pregnant any way or anytime of reframe there. But, I mean, it turned out I’m not I’m not simply a person that things worked out the way they worked out. But in hindsight, I’m glad it took 10 years because I would not have been in the right state of mind or been as capable to handle all the things that I have to handle. Now. Especially with my, my specific, kiddo I mean, it would have been different specific it’ll probably then

Paulette  25:36  

I think I couldn’t boil an egg at 18. So like, there’s something to be said. So you’re pregnant now. And do you lose the sickness after you’ve crossed the threshold of the first trimester?

Molly  25:51  

No, it stayed the whole time. I could not eat any protein during the pregnancy. Wow. So I literally Well, I mean, I cheese but I can eat pizza and Brownie. Occasionally gonna have some pasta but even that was started when my partner and I got I got mushroom ravioli because they were supposed to be not one of the things that was an issue and I still got sick. And so I got but on site clean just which is a combination of two things you can get over the counter, but when it’s combined into this bill, it’s extra helpful or something. And so that at least made it so that I could keep things down and most of the time, I still had to keep to the rules of don’t eat certain things otherwise, nothing can save me. But I at least was keeping things down which is good. And I gained a lot of weight though because you know, and by the time I was five or six months pregnant, I was swollen. Just all over and I don’t know. At the time I didn’t feel that swollen and I felt fine and fabulous. But looking back at pictures I’m like, how did we not get concerned about the amount of water that is protruding from my feet?

Paulette  27:17  

Well, let me ask you a question because this was and this was the case for me that may not be for you but I my first pregnancy was a giant disaster. And that’s not entirely because of that. The second one I was panicked the entire time. I threw up every single day. I’m a vegetarian, the Olympia pull downs, hot dogs. Disgusting, but that’s what I could eat. So I totally relate. To your by state of my lane, which I’ve used to be things that have been all worked out. But I tend to think when, I look back on that pregnancy that part of that was emotional, or that was that I was freaking out internally. I don’t know that you could see it necessarily but I was really nervous. too. So do you think some of yours was also concerned that this pregnancy would go to the end? Or?

Molly  28:05  

Well, there was that and then there’s extra chaos? So I had been the breadwinner until I got pregnant. And then my partner and I had a conversation and we acknowledge that I was the only adult in the house that actually could handle children. And so I needed to stay home because that was I had the skills. And so he went and looked for a job and he got a job and it was in West Virginia, and we were living in New York. And so I found out I was pregnant. The first week of November by January 1, he was in West Virginia. I was three or four months pregnant. We didn’t even know anything. We didn’t do the anatomy scan or anything yet. And so that was an extra stress load on everything but there was also just the added fear of what if I slip What if I fall? What if this is going on? What is that going on? What about this? We have a genetic cocktail in my family that’s kind of not helpful for a lot of things. And so you know what, if any of those come to light and then because I research when I panic, it was what is my birth plan going to be I had seen my my younger sister had already had two kids. And so I had been there for one of them and things did not go according to any of the plans.

Paulette  29:27  

I’m gonna stop my conversation with Molly here. I totally appreciate her sharing her health conditions and neurodivergent viewpoint affected her life and her pursuit of pregnancy. Once you are pregnant, you know how much physical and emotional effort it takes to keep up with doctor’s appointments. Now add 10 years of doctor’s appointments to the front end of that failed pregnancy tests hope and disappointment. Molly’s is really an inspiring story about perseverance and grit among other things. Next Friday, I’ll share the rest of our conversation. Thanks for listening. If you liked this episode, please share it with friends and or write a review telling everyone your life was changed forever by the show.

We’ll be back next week with the rest of this inspiring story.