A Couple's Journey From Infertility to Parenthood

Transcript

• 00:06- The greatest challenge
• 00:08is the silence that surrounds infertility in America.
• 00:13- Do people talk about this?
• 00:14Is this something I'm just supposed to journal about?
• 00:17Am I just supposed to talk to my husband?
• 00:19- You kinda felt awkward
• 00:20sharing the story with them because you would say,
• 00:22oh you know, "Congratulations, on your child."
• 00:24Then they'd say, "Well, what about you,
• 00:25"when are you gonna have a child?"
• 00:26and the response is, "Well, we've been trying
• 00:27"for five years and we had a miscarriage."
• 00:29- This is just a fundamental biological process
• 00:33that I should be able to do.
• 00:35What could I have done differently throughout my life
• 00:37to have changed the outcome of this?
• 00:40- This is not something that they should feel
• 00:42they brought on to themselves.
• 00:43This should not be something that they feel makes them
• 00:44less of a man, less of a woman
• 00:46but really something that's a health issue.
• 00:52- We always talked about having a family.
• 00:55After about six months of trying
• 00:58we started to wonder.
• 00:59- We kind of knew or suspected
• 01:01that there may be some issues.
• 01:03We started to think, okay, maybe it's time
• 01:05to start looking into what the options are
• 01:06and where we can go from here.
• 01:08- It was very taboo.
• 01:10I didn't really know who to talk to.
• 01:12- Isolation happens when conversations are not happening,
• 01:17when you feel it's your problem and not others' problem.
• 01:21So there are misconceptions about patients coming in
• 01:24and they're completely emotionally and psychologically
• 01:27derailed by the conversation.
• 01:29I want them to know the breadth
• 01:30of possible interventions available.
• 01:36- [Bernard] There was a lot of different thoughts
• 01:37going through our head.
• 01:39It was overwhelming at first.
• 01:40We didn't know what IVF was.
• 01:41We didn't know what it meant.
• 01:43- [Dr. Collins] What IVF is, in the most fundamental sense,
• 01:46is being able to have fertilization, egg and sperm meeting,
• 01:49happening outside the body.
• 01:51What happens is instead of taking one egg
• 01:52that a woman naturally produces in a given month
• 01:55we coax many eggs to grow in that same month.
• 01:58And that's a way to have multiple embryos
• 02:00from a single IVF cycle.
• 02:02- We made it all the way through to the egg retrieval.
• 02:05Few days later, I was experiencing excruciating pain.
• 02:09They conducted a laparoscopic surgery
• 02:11and found that I had ovarian torsion.
• 02:14My ovary had rolled during the egg retrieval
• 02:18which is a very, very rare thing to happen.
• 02:21- Not only did she have torsion,
• 02:22which was completely corrected,
• 02:24but one of things which I had not expected
• 02:26because she had no symptoms whatsoever, was endometriosis.
• 02:29- [Dr. Collins] Endometriosis causes scarring in the fallopian tubes.
• 02:33The fallopian tubes are really the road that connects
• 02:35egg to sperm.
• 02:36From some patients, they'll have endometriosis
• 02:38and really seem relatively asymptomatic
• 02:41with the exception
• 02:42of the fertility difficulty that they're facing.
• 02:44- For me, finding out that endometriosis was a part
• 02:48of what was preventing us from having a successful pregnancy
• 02:51was a little bit of a relief.
• 02:53We might have an answer and there's treatments for it.
• 02:56Then we had another round of IVF
• 03:00and we found out we were pregnant.
• 03:03We were happy, we were confident.
• 03:04We told our family, we started to tell some friends
• 03:07and that was at week 12.
• 03:11At week 13, I went back for another followup appointment
• 03:15with my OB and that's when we found out
• 03:19there was a serious problem
• 03:21and I don't really remember a lot of it,
• 03:23as it was a huge blur at that point.
• 03:25Umm...
• 03:27That was...
• 03:29[Softly] Sorry.
• 03:32- They ended up losing the pregnancy.
• 03:36- And I wasn't sure
• 03:42if I was gonna be ready to do it again.
• 03:45- [Dr. Collins] People who're already perhaps facing
• 03:47the emotional toil of facing the infertility battle
• 03:50when they feel like they have a minor victory
• 03:52by getting pregnant and then it ends in a miscarriage
• 03:56it can be exceptionally heartbreaking.
• 04:00- [Diana] Getting those results from that pregnancy
• 04:03told us that we needed to do genetic screening
• 04:06of future embryos.
• 04:08That gave me hope again.
• 04:10- [Dr. Pal] Keeping in perspective these findings,
• 04:12gave me an opportunity to think beyond textbook.
• 04:15Really individualize the management as data appeared.
• 04:21- And we had another successful pregnancy right away
• 04:26and that's what brought us to today
• 04:28where we have Audrey.
• 04:34- [Bernard] It's unbelievable
• 04:36with being a parent and having a little girl now.
• 04:39Coming home from work every day,
• 04:40no matter how difficult of a day,
• 04:41seeing her just it changes everything.
• 04:43- It kinda brought me to this point of
• 04:46okay, the baby's here.
• 04:48Well wait, now what?
• 04:49Totally shifting gears in the way of thinking about family
• 04:53'cause it was all about how do I create the family.
• 04:56But now with the family here.
• 05:03I think my message to other couples out there
• 05:05who are going through infertility is
• 05:08you're not alone.
• 05:09- You can't predict what life has in store for you.
• 05:12There is hope, there's always hope.
• 05:14- Don't give up, don't ever give up.
• 05:17Stay positive.
• 05:18- So many people walk through this
• 05:19and they walk through it alone.
• 05:21For all of those challenging reasons
• 05:23of stigma, of shame, or guilt.
• 05:26And to know they're not alone and to have that dialogue
• 05:29may be the thing that allows them to come into care
• 05:32and receive just that one extra bit of effort
• 05:35that helps them toward that goal
• 05:37and maybe we at Yale Fertility Center can be a part of that.