Life Uncut - IVF, COMING OUT & BODY POSITIVITY - Uncut with Fiona Falkiner & Hayley Willis.

Episode Date: January 25, 2021

Happy Tuesday Lifers! We’ve done some big episodes of late regarding egg freezing, fertility and IVF, so we decided it was the perfect time to get someone in that can talk about it first hand. So this week we are chatting to Fiona Falkiner and her fiancé Hayley Willis!Australia first fell in love with Fiona when she graced our screens many moons ago as a contestant on the biggest loser. She then went in to host the show and to forge a very successful career as a model both locally and internationally.Fiona is now in her third trimester after undergoing IVF (but not before they had a few attempts at home on their own ;) ) Hayley is a very well respected sports journalist working in a male dominated industry. We chat all things life before they met, career highlights and lowlights, how body image has changed in the industry, the moment Fiona realised she in fact was more interested in women than men, navigating coming out to their friends, family and Australia, dating in the public eye and of course their fertility journey.You can find the girls @fionafalkiner @hayley__willisIf you loved the episode please hit subscribe, 5 stars, leave a review and share the love, because, well, be love love xSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura and I'm Brittany. Hi Brittany. Hi Laura. We're going with the trusty intro. Okay, we've just done three of these we tried to do something different it didn't work so we're just gonna stick to the safe old reliable i know what happens is every few weeks i try to do a different little intro and laura doesn't like change it really throws off she feels uncomfortable and she doesn't know what to say next so we're going back to the old every single time brit does it it ends in me being like what do i do with my hands you just like work your word vomit and you don't know what's going on but guys welcome back to another week if you haven't listened to last week's episode actually

it was Thursday's episode, wasn't it? It was on Ask Uncut. We had some really great questions come in about weddings. Laura put a poll up about the wedding and it was about wedding gifts because we didn't really know what the rules were in terms of how much you give in a card, how much you buy for a present. There was some interesting feedback. Can I just say, I was not expecting that conversation to be as controversial as what it was. I now feel like maybe I have been overzealous with wedding guess. Like maybe $150 was too much. Also the spectrum between what was acceptable in gift giving at a weddings has truly blown my freaking mind. And I still don't have the answer. I'm just going to put that out there. I don't know what the right thing is or the wrong thing. So it appears

that it isn't really, you guys were saying that you can give gifts. I mean, okay. So for a wishing well, you guys came in hot that the lowest amount you can give was $18. I did have one person write in and said that she received an envelope $10 worth of $2 scratchies in it shut up and I was like this is fucking wild no card just an envelope just her name written on it just hoping she won the million dollar prize so she could be like favorite guest she won two dollars oh so she well okay fair so she got a $12 gift what's she complaining about no but then there were some of you and this is what really threw me some of you and I want to know who you are so I can invite to my wedding you said that you can give up to a thousand dollars yeah that's insane mind blown i

would never give a thousand dollars at a wedding and that's not because i'm tired i just i don't know anyone in my life that would give a thousand dollars at a wedding so what we're saying is you know guys i'm getting married in november this year um britney space is up for grabs if you're gonna give me a thousand dollars you're invited and i'll just shuffle the name plates around and you can sit where britney hockley's meant to sit the general consensus was that for a wedding gift particularly the wishing well you should be giving the bride and groom same amount or pretty close to what they are spending for you to go to their wedding so whatever they're paying per person per head you should be giving that back to them essentially so that I guess they come out the

other side even this is when Brittany says should like this was like the general consensus this was like the most popular answer that came back however I had originally said $150 was like what I thought was like pretty stock standard but I would say from the polls that we had that everyone wrote in $100 seemed to be the most popular answer. And I just want to say one thing, which we didn't say on the last episode. I mean, obviously we did say that, you know, if you can't give anything, then the one thing you should do is at least do a really sentimental card or some sort of gesture to show how much you love and appreciate the bride and groom and the fact that you appreciate that you're invited to a day that's so special to them. I just want to say

a hundred percent, there are always going to be circumstances where somebody is not financially in a position where they're able to give a gift and nobody would ever expect and my god my god if your friends expected you to still fork out money knowing that you're in having some financial difficulties they ain't your friend then you're not your fucking friends exactly right toxic friendship you don't need them cut them out don't go to their wedding but what i think we need to like keep perspective on is like if you would spend x amount of money on a night out and you would prioritize that but you won't spend that much money on a wedding gift for someone then that makes you the asshole very different if you're going through a hard time and that's why

you're not able to but if you're going through a hard time you're also not spending that money on yourself on a night out so i think like it's where your priorities lie well we did have a listener right in from america and i found this really interesting so she said in the usa we don't bring gifts to weddings ever or ever do wishing wells you have everything sent and selected from their gift registry and you also have up until their one year anniversary to give the gift so you just turn up and be handed to the wedding and you've got enough you've got a whole year to go and get a gift and send it to the house that's it but that also seems wild to me because they're keeping tabs for a year and being like oh sally finally came through with that gift in december or the good

thing is is like maybe you just wait as long as possible because there's a very good chance someone's gonna get divorced oh i mean that's that's also fair maybe that's why they do it They're like, if you don't make the one year mark, you don't get your wedding gift. Anyway, speaking about breakups, I have some other news that I want to share with you guys. This is not the episode. We do have a really great episode coming up with you. We've got an interview. It's going to be awesome.

But you know, in the interim, here we are. No, this is beautiful. It's a beautiful segue into breakups. But I read today that a long time ago, we mentioned this in one of our episodes. I can't remember. But the US bachelorette, Claire Crawley, she's the oldest ever bachelorette. It was last year. she was 39 when she was a bachelorette everyone was really rooting for her because she was

she seemed really down to earth she really wanted love she was a little bit older if anybody actually watched any of the u.s series when britney said she was down to earth she was actually as mad as a bag of cats and it was great great tv but it didn't come out at the start when she was cast it came out after but look i'm going to condense this story what happened was something that has never happened before on any bachelor or bachelorette series ever two weeks into filming Claire said she loved one of the contestants Dale Dale said he loved Claire back and they Dale proposed two weeks in and they left they quit the series they're supposed to film for three and a half months everyone was up in arms production were like

what the hell do we do we do now it came out that apparently you know he'd been sliding into her dms before filming so they had this little connection whatever they replaced her with a woman called taisha she found love as well claire and dale went on to have their happy ending everyone was like you know what this is how it's meant to be this is real like real love story after two weeks when you know you know until you don't until you don't know anything so today it's very sad but dale released it's very sad it is that she says it with the oh like her smile is about to crack her face open in half because i was reading it and i was just i had to pick my drop off the ground because i just imagined like i thought what happened to me was bad

being left you know at the altar basically but this was worse dale released a statement that you know this is a mutual statement from claire and myself we have decided to part ways we want to let you know we are so we're so sorry it didn't work out we gave everything we had but we're going different ways and like it's over we are over and mutually we respect that kind of thing and he did it in like a guanapatro like this is a conscious uncoupling that we've both made this decision together we're fully across it the whole thing was that it was like a mutual statement then claire makes her statement a couple of hours later mad as a bag of cats now claire's statement was literally saying i'm also sorry guys that we apparently broke up because i'm learning of

this breakup in this mutual statement that I have never heard of so poor Claire is sitting having a Coco Pops at breakfast she doesn't even know they're broken up she goes on to Instagram sees that Dale released a mutual statement saying they broke up and she's like oh am I broken up that was it they weren't even broken up he just announced it to the world that they're imagine finding out after the rest of the world found out that you have just been broken up with or I have another a theory okay we've all we've all had a friend or we've all maybe we've done it in our teens Laura you've done it I've done it in my early 20s we've all had that person or heard of that person who their partner has gone to them and been like hey we need to talk I'm not in this anymore I want

to break up with you and the other person has turned around and said no you can't break up with me we've all been there no it's not happening I reckon Dale has probably gone to Claire and said Claire this isn't working out I'm not happy and she's been like no we're absolutely not breaking up and he's like cool I'm gonna put out this mutual statement and she's like no that's not happening and then he's put out the mutual statement and there we go not so mutual after all I mean the sad thing is we're not gonna know are we look there's always two sides to a story and then there's also the truth there's three sides to a story but ultimately if we're to believe what we are to believe she's been dumped without knowing she's been dumped and I just think

that's really awful I'm gonna tell you something about my one of my relationships actually this just I just remember this now it gives me like PTSD when I was with the sociopath I just felt something was wrong one day and I turned up to his house I turned to his house now mind you this isn't stalkerish I've been with the guy for two years so bear with me I but I wasn't supposed to be there that night but I was like fuck it I'm going over there you're like yeah there's something in my spidey senses that tells me you're wrong which you're allowed to do when it's your partner it's not like i'd been dating him for two weeks and i remember turning up and i walked and i knocked on the door i didn't walk in because it's still not my house but knocked on the door and he

opened it and i remember his face just like dropping and then he recovered he was like what are you doing here and i was like because we'd had a bit of an argument springing you piece of shit i was like i don't want to i didn't i didn't like the argument so i want to come talk to you he's like i don't really want to talk now like he he started to put it off he was like i don't want to talk um like i'm not ready and i was like it wasn't that big of an argument like i'm coming in he's like no you're not and i was like yes i am and i like i like pushed the door open and stormed in and i then i was like someone's here like they have to be because he was so anxious anyway no one was there but it's because they were coming so his other partner was on her way over no she was

coming in the morning sorry because she's coming from melbourne so i was like where am i gonna go i'm here now sucked in like i'm coming coming in wait for anybody who doesn't know this story you need to go and listen back we re-released this episode not so long ago it's called so i dated at sociopath it was episode three from first season but basically if you're new to life uncut welcome brit dated a guy who had a double life and i feel like this story is going way down a rabbit hole that without knowing that little backstory you're probably like what fucking roller coaster am i on i won't go too deep it just reminded me of it but he was like he took this fight up 10 notches because in his mind he's obviously like i need to get this girl the fuck

out of my house so my other girlfriend can come over he literally was like get out he's like i'm I am done I am I'm having a meltdown he's like I need my space and I was like no I just I was like no and I was so calm and he was like Brittany get out I need to be alone what don't you understand like he was putting it on like he does not need to be alone nothing even happened and I just sat there I'm really patiently I was like no long story short he had to end up cancelling her he had to say that he had to go call into work in an emergency and she couldn't come because I was like I am not leaving this house because I knew something was going to come up but that's what of reminded me of it got to the point where he was big he was angry and he was abusive and he

was telling me and then he took it down and he's like please please Brittany like please can you leave like begging me and I just went no I just really feel like there's a lot of things we need to unpack in that story and uh part of it is is that if you're dating someone that inflames your crazy to this point that is that's your red flag guys that's when you leave like you don't need to be right that bad. If anyone is making you behave like that, that's where your relationship should end. Anyway, my point is we've all been in the point where we've said no. Oh yeah, 100%. I had a guy who wanted to break up with me and I said no. I said no for a couple of months until he persisted and eventually we broke up. Now I'm getting married to someone else. It's a shame

how that worked out. For sure. If you're at a point where you're begging them not to, it's probably not going to work out. Yeah, that's some hard advice from life uncut. So glad you came to this relationship podcast to learn that if someone's trying to break up with you and you won't let them it's probably not in a good spot anyway guys okay so for today's today's episode so that you know what we're actually talking about it's none of that we are interviewing fiona faulkner and hayley willis who some of you might know who fiona is some of you might know who hayley is but for anyone who doesn't fiona faulkner was on the very first series of the Biggest Loser. She was a beautiful little blonde young girl in Australia, absolutely fell in love

with her. And after being on the first series of The Biggest Loser, she went on to have a really successful modeling career. And then she also became the presenter for The Biggest Loser. I feel like this is going to be ringing a few bells for some of you guys. She was the host. Yeah, presenter, host. Anyway, she ended up, she ended up hosting The Biggest Loser. And then since then, at the time when she was on The Biggest Loser and at the time when she had this really profound media career everybody just assumed that fiona was heterosexual hell i actually think after the interview fiona probably assumed that she was heterosexual at the time and too well because she was dating she was dating publicly and she was dating men um and she really did get thrust

into the public eye so we're going to talk to fiona all about that from the very beginning from what it was like to be the biggest loser to becoming like an internationally renowned model to finding out that she was interested in women and not men like she thought we're also going to be delving into hayley's past which is hayley's been in a very male dominated industry for the best part of 10 years so she is a sports journalist and a sports presenter and we talked to her about what that is like being in an industry surrounded by men where there's so much pressure on you to perform to a higher level than the men do because you feel like you have to prove yourself constantly one of the big things that we talked about as well is how they made their relationship public

and when they came out as a same-sex couple but not only did they have to come out to their family and to their friends but they also had to come out in a very public scale and they had to come out to the media as well and how they navigated that part of their life and now Fiona is pregnant and they have gone through an IVF and fertility journey and we thought after we did such a big episode all around fertility last year we thought that this was a really nice follow-up to that to actually have a conversation with two women who have gone through the journey themselves what that looks like how they navigated their fertility their IVF journey and Fiona at the moment is in her third trimester so it's all very very relevant for them still but before we get

into that any further it's time for accidentally unfiltered okay I have a very short one which I am going to go first with but I thought it was very funny it's actually it's so it's so sweet and innocent and um i really feel for this poor girl oh god hit me okay this is it's actually really sweet and makes me oh it makes me want to give this girl a cuddle guys i'm dying this is the best accidentally unfiltered fuck me so my cousin is going into year six and she got her period for the first time and how old is you six you six is like 12 12 okay it's young that's like that's a baby she's a baby okay so okay so my cousin is is going into year six and got a period for the first time her sister told her when putting in the tampon the hole is a little bit further up

than you might think turns out she shoved it in her butthole because she didn't know where to put it i shouldn't laugh it's not funny and when she went to go to the bathroom she had to poop it out oh no I'm okay I have okay I had some issues to raise with her parents I think look I when I first read this I was like no how could you that doesn't make any sense but then I remembered that there's a lot of men walking around out there who think that women only have two holes so okay for a girl who's 12 who's never explored who's never tried like stuck a mirror down there and figured out where everything is but shouldn't there be sex education in year five and six don't you remember happy healthy harold i don't know if happy healthy harold is telling you where to put a tampon most

kids who were like you know in year six or year five when i was at school were using pads like i don't think there were many kids that were using tampons as their first option for i went straight to the tampon yeah so did i because i was a swimmer i know the like the very first day i put a pad in because like my mom had said i remember mom having the conversation and she was like i'm putting pads in the bottom drawer of the bathroom this is like the girl's drawer if anything ever happens and no one's here or whatever she's like that's what you do this is how you use it she showed me and she goes when the time comes I will talk you through the tampon so I remember I went and put the pad in I went to my mom and I was like mom come on period like told her she was in bed

like I was so excited and then she came out and told me how to use tampon and that was it I just wasn't I hated pads how old were you I had just gone into year seven I was old like I think in the scheme of things I was like in year nine really everybody had already gotten their period and everyone had already spoken about it but i was like a really competitive swimmer at that point in my life and really competitive like i was training twice a day like i was doing nationals and i remember coming home to my mom probably one of the reasons why i didn't get my periods was so late because i was so athletic yeah and i remember coming home to my mom and i was like mom i've got my period i can't go to swimming lessons and she was like lobbed me a tampon into the

bathroom and she was like better figure out how to that how that goes in because you've got swimming lessons in half an hour and i was like all right so she didn't tell you no she wasn't the most supportive about the whole period thing I've got to I've got to admit but I did not stick it in my arsehole and because what a lot of you youngins that are listening now might not realize is that like we didn't have access to the internet like we did now there's no googling how to do a tampon I had dial up where you had to wait for 20 minutes it goes and then you didn't even know what google was I don't even reckon I had the internet you know I think like I started using internet in year 11 year 12 okay and maybe that's making me sound like a total geriatric dinosaur but

like we definitely didn't have laptops if you wanted to use a computer you had to go to the computer room to the computer room it was like a computer room at school we're so old i hate my life anyway britney tell me you're accidentally unfiltered okay this is pretty funny my ex-boyfriend and i had been dating for a few months before we thought it would be a good idea to make a little sex tape of us doing it in his car little did i know he would plug his phone into his family computer to upload his photo library every single night yes i know has he heard of icloud what on earth anyway fast forward to when i went over to his house a few days later i was sitting with his extremely orthodox family for movie night his laptop was sitting on the

table with the screen showing a screensaver set to be a shuffle of pictures from the photo library oh yeah a still from the video of us having sex pops up on the screen and his entire family freezes it his dad is like what the actual fuck is that i have never been more mortified in my life but a lesson to anyone who shares a photo library with their family just don't who is so organized that they do a shared mutual photo library of all of their photos who uploads their photos to their computer every single night i have 60 000 photos on my phone the lesson is just be careful if you're gonna do a sex tape and don't upload it to the family computer also i'm just not really that keen on sex tapes in a car I feel like there's much more comfortable ways of doing this all right

guys that is enough from us let's get into this interview with Fiona and Hayley I just want to say I know that we have been doing a lot of interviews the last couple of weeks it's actually nice to have people who have different experiences and can bring some really informed discussions to this podcast as well but next week oh I just want to talk to someone other than you well next week is just back to Brit and I so strap in for that one but anyway before that happens here is Hayley and Fiona. Fiona Faulkner and Hayley Willis, welcome to Life Uncut. This has been a bloody long time coming. Thanks for finally getting us in. Thank you for having us. We're glad that you're still pregnant. We've been trying to organise this interview for like the last,

let's say three months now, and it's like, it's been us rearranging. But like, look, we're there. We're at 30. About 30 weeks. 30 weeks. Yeah. I said that to Laura. I said, we really need to get them back in because soon the baby's going to be out. No one's going to want to know about the pregnancy well no the reason we did have to cancel on you guys a few times was Laura's just been so sick with her pregnancy for six months of the pregnancy forever I've been pregnant for a hundred years you literally I walked in I'm like oh well I'm way past you I must be due much earlier than you but your bum is tiny you're like due in two days two days no two weeks two weeks guys I have a pastor and I look more pregnant than her it's not true I'm like good god I've

got like nine weeks to go and I literally don't fit through the door look it's not about how you look it's how you feel and I feel like a haggard old bag right now and this child's feet are like so far up into my lungs that I can't breathe I have like pregnancy asthma I have like pelvic girdle pain explosive diarrhea thank you see this is the thing no one tells you everyone's like like they tell you about some of the stuff that's gonna happen you get like all the good stuff really oh your hair's gonna get really thick your skin's gonna be glowing bullshit like I have so much hair on my stomach right now i was like yeah your hair grows not where you want it to grow you look at instagram you look at social media everyone's beautiful and glowing and cradling

their babies at the beach and like the wind's in their hair and that's not it you're vomiting you've got skin tags there's a lot of pelvic pain you feel like your insides are gonna fall out that's the stuff i think it's important to talk about you don't sleep i don't know how much you've listened to life uncut before we do start our interviews with a segment we call accidentally unfiltered which essentially is just your most embarrassing story because us and australia froth we think it's a nice way to get to know you and break the ice a little bit so do you guys have one uh yeah I guess when I fell pregnant in the beginning I was eating so much to kind of like combat the sickness I was gaining weight really quickly and obviously the baby bump was

coming and all of a sudden none of my underwear fit and for ages I was like really determined not to go up a size you're preaching to every woman but then I was like got to the point where it was like really uncomfortable and like cutting into me and we went out one night and I went to the bathroom and I literally had my underwear was cutting in so tight around my legs you know if you get new swimwear or something and you like crack it to kind of like loosen a bit stretch it out I don't know like like crack the elastic yeah so I was on the toilet and I'm like oh I'm just gonna try and crack these undies so I'm like and I gave her a really hard yank and they like ripped down the front and we were out it was a fancy restaurant and I was like oh this is not good

this is this is not good but I was like but it's a lot looser so I'm just gonna I'm just gonna go with it and free ball it you're like i'm not wearing any panties you should just pull them off throw them in the bin and just embraced it i just i like to wear something down there i want to i don't know everyone's like different i like to i'm free balling freaks me out a little bit i was mortified we've been in a fancy restaurant they'd split and they were basically just hugging her inner thigh that was it so you left them on like those crotchless underpants it was literally what they were and i was like what is that she's like i tried to like crack them i'm like crack what are you talking yeah she didn't understand the crackage I'm like you've never had to crack

anything on the bachelor we never wore I don't know about you but you don't really wear undies for like I didn't wear undies for like three months nearly because everyone I mean in the day and night time but every dress and everything is so tight I can't even explain you have to have like a team of people put the dress on you and sew you into it well me anyway it was a bit tight on me but you just don't wear undies and now I quite like it each of their own I haven't had that experience silence but now that I'm pregnant I like rarely wear undies I'm wearing them today guys don't worry I put them on for special occasions but Hayley what's your embarrassing story so I was basically I did a triathlon right and I was training for a triathlon there's like

this big ride near the northern beaches called West Head and I decided this one day to take pre-workout and on the ride it's like 30k's between the toilet stop and the start of it so i just started riding i'm like sweating and i'm like this pre-workout is just hectic i was like no no i'm fine i'm going faster and faster and i was like i need a toilet and i'm like shit you know that feeling where you really need to go and you start getting wet i was sweating everywhere and i'm like fuck it i'm gonna have to just stop and go in the bush so i literally ditched my bike ran in stripped it off and had to just go in the bush and i i stood out like highlight doing a poo and i was just like thank god it's just like get this demon out of me

all these bikers like looking at me like going past like you're right i'm like yeah no way please don't look at me obviously i'm shitting in the box i'm like in the middle of the ride so i'm like okay well i've just got to sit back on my saddle and keep going and it was like a good 20 k's before this is truly one of those moments where you're like just go back on that horse and really just really just took it home i think i think i came home and told you and you were just like i was like go have a shower just go have a shower i can't even look at you at the moment you were so disappointed i'm like there was nothing i could do there are so many people that will resonate with that right now let's go back to you fiona we first met you in 2006 i think

on the biggest loser you were a contestant on the biggest loser that's where australia first saw you yes let's just quickly talk about that because i used to love that show and i've just got some questions sure go for gold was it really as grueling as they made it sound like did you really work out like 15 hours a day and couldn't eat anything so I was like first series which had Bob and Jillian the American trainers they were like pretty like hardcore and and we were put both trainers had different styles of training I was with Bob and he put us all on like a 1200 calorie diet and then we were training two hours on camera a day at lunchtime and then to get in your you had to do another at least two hours of homework training a day because you obviously had

filming schedules to get around so you'd get up at like four o'clock in the morning and go to the gym and do like an hour and then shower make your breakfast pack your lunch and then be ready to like be out the door to go on like some excursion with the producers where they were gonna like torture you or something but I was suffering really bad insomnia in there you'd get up and be like well I'm awake so at 2am you're just like I'm just gonna go to the gym and just walk on the treadmill and you go down there and there'd be other people just walking on the treadmill at 2am just like what you do because what was it was it prize money yeah my series the winner was 250 000 and then there was four finalists and I came fourth don't know how I didn't get any money

no I got 10 grand oh but it was more psychologically difficult I feel like just getting used to being in that environment wondering what are the producers gonna make me do today like that was the scariest thing just the unknown of like how are they gonna torture us the stuff they do is meant to like push your buttons and be great tv so it was like you know one day you're moving a ton of bricks in 40 degree heat or another day it's like pulling a plane but it's all stuff that's pushing you out of your comfort zone and it's like that in itself for me I really it was it was pretty difficult but you get used to the training and the the food side of things what made you want to do it like what I mean obviously there's motivators to lose weight

and everything but what made you want to do that in such a public platform I sounds really silly and people were like how can this be correct because back in the day when the show came out it was one of the first it was obviously the first series so reality tv was very new social media didn't really exist instagram i mean i think facebook was quite new back then i sound like i'm very old it sounds so stupid but i never really went on the show with the thought process of i'm going on a reality show to be on tv it was like i was obsessed with the american series I'd struggled with my weight my whole life and I tried everything and I felt like I was in this point when I was at uni living in a house full of girls they were all like hot friends and

they were having these amazing incredible lives and I felt like my weight was really impacting every aspect of my life and I was just like how do I lose weight nothing's working and I said to my friends that would be the one opportunity to even if you got voted out first you'd be training with the best trainers and so I was like I'm going to apply when applications open and my friends like don't be stupid I was like no I'm gonna do it I kind of make snap decisions like that in my life like I don't really think we went on The Bachelor so don't worry we get it everything you're saying I'm like feels yeah I'm just gonna do it yeah and you kind of do it you never actually expect to get up I kind of I downloaded the application form and it was 12

pages long and I was like that's a bit much I'm gonna go have a drink some wine and go out and party with my friends and then one night my housemate was like oh did you ever apply and I said oh there's you know all these questions 12 pages of them and she's like go get it so we filled it in and sent it off over a bottle of wine and it's one of those things you never I never imagined I'd get on and then obviously I got through to casting day and stuff but it it sounds stupid I never my thought process in the whole time was never like I'm going on tv it wasn't until I was actually on the show and one of my friends I don't know probably don't know if I talk about it but he snuck me out of the house he was working on the show like we're still really

got mates now and I'd injured myself and he's like I'm gonna take her to get like a scan on her foot and he's like all right we could I was like give me your phone so I like got his phone like started calling friends and stuff which is like in reality tv that's a bit dirty and he went he's like got to get petrol I'm like let me I'm gonna go into the petrol station he's like don't do it just stay here I'm like no I'm going in and I went in and you know you've been in the bubble I was like couple of months in and it was already being broadcast the show was top rating show was huge and I didn't know and I looked at the magazines and that was on the front cover of like TV week and I wigged out what and he's like oh fuck I shouldn't have bought you and shouldn't have

shown you that no one knows to this day no one knows they do now he's not really in the industry anymore so it's fine it's fine yeah it was it was at that point it dawned on me oh my gosh this is more than just my experience losing weight like my own journey this is like wow people are watching and that just kind of shook me a little bit when you said you were so uncomfortable with yourself and all your friends looked like they were having this amazing life and you felt like you were missing out I think it's amazing that you went and took something into your own hands to do something about it because I think there's a lot of people out there that have those feelings in a lot of aspects of their life but they don't change anything and they don't go and chase it if one

lesson I learned from being on the biggest loser it's if I want something bad enough if I'm if I'm unhappy in any aspect of my life I know now that I'm the only one that can change it and so if it's work related or relationship or my weight whatever it may be no one else is going to do anything about it you actually have to actively change it you can't just sit and complain and complain about it you have to go out there and be like no this is what I want we say that to our listeners all the time people that are like what am I doing wrong I can't meet anyone and I'm like well are you on the dating sites oh no I don't like them are you going out I hate going out well Mr Wright's not going to walk in and literally jump on your lap in your house you've got to go and find it

and chase it and make actively make changes yeah this idea of you need to be an active participant in your own life to actually make things happen things aren't just going to passively fall into your lap well I actually went because I was obviously single before I met Hayley for probably like 10 years no I like I dated a few people but I hadn't had a like a proper relationship in a very long time and I was like what's wrong with me what what's happening so I went and saw a relationship counselor I think she might have been a psychologist or something to go and talk to someone to be like you know what what are the patterns that I'm doing what's going wrong she didn't not nut it out and be like you're actually gay I don't know what's wrong I like vaginas but I keep dating dicks

what I'm doing wrong so I was seeing her and then and then I went overseas and and that was where I kind of discovered what what works for me but then you actually went on to become a host of the biggest loser yeah how the hell did that happen did you chase that or did they were they just like Australia loves you get your ass yeah I I'll be honest I was so shocked I literally fell off my chair when that offer came through I was living in Bondi I was modeling and I was loving life having great time and I'm like I just want more I want something else and had mates living over modeling overseas so I moved to London I was there for about a year and then I moved to New York everyone's like New York's the place to be so I moved there and I was there for about a year

and a bit and then yeah I got a message from my agent being like do you want to do a trial to be the host of The Biggest Loser and I was like what actually so shocked I got goosebumps I'm such a nerd I like love hearing people get their dreams it's just but I was my my initial response to it was no no way like I couldn't possibly do that like I'm not the host of a show I have no experience whatsoever and then okay I'm gonna just give it a red hot gob when I did the screen test it was in a room kind of similar to this like no air guys I have air in my apartment I like I literally am like this caverns sweating like sex dungeon top lip sweat I walked in there and I was so nervous and I had just practiced so hard to try and because they sent me like four scripts to learn

of the different scenarios on the show did it and just literally left a puddle of sweat on the floor and I thought to myself there's no way I'm gonna have gotten that that was I just I was so nervous and I was reading I couldn't learn the script either I was so nervous I was like reading off the script but did something right and I got the job and it was the most amazing moment of my life I still remember the day I drove to day one and filming and I was crossing the harbour bridge at like 4am but I was driving and I was just like oh my god this is insane how did this happen to me just one of those moments and then do you feel like that then did you always want to be a model you were you were sort of modeling before weren't you no oh you didn't model at all before no I

never ever imagined I'd be a model ever well I had a question more around that because after doing The Biggest Loser then taking on this very successful modeling career what is it like going from a situation where you're on the biggest loser there's all this focus around your body there's all this focus around weight loss and weight gain and then going and being the face of a company the body of a company and really putting yourself out there publicly but in a very different way it was never on the cards for me to be a model once again still surprises me sometimes but it's something when I went moved to London I was really interested to see if I could model overseas because part of me believed when I was modelling in Australia that it had

something to do with people recognising me from the show but because I did model overseas I was like wow I'm actually good at this and that made me feel really empowered and really good and I can do this but talking about body image and things it was a real battle after the show like I came off the show and I regained all the weight really quickly and plunged into depression I was yeah like really battling. And it took a couple of years for me to finally realise like, once again, I'm not happy. I went through this whole process of just focusing on everything that made me happy in life, which was surrounding myself with family, not going out as much. I went through a stage where I was going to everything here and it was just really toxic and not healthy and really

focusing on being really good to myself and not training, like beating myself to a pulp every time I trained and the reason I was probably that overweight to go on the show I was like a binge eater and so that kind of spiraled out of control as well it was like really focusing on the way food made me feel and nourishing my body and not punishing my body and practicing positive affirmations every single day and going and I find water really relaxing so I'd go for a nice walk to the ocean and sit and ground myself like take shoes off sit and and just really practice positive affirmations I'm healthy and I'm happy and anything I want you know I can achieve and just I'm beautiful and I'm strong and you know just those kind of thoughts and really just focusing

on that every single day and looking in the mirror and giving yourself a compliment every single day but it's one of those things people you know people say how did you get the courage up doing an underwear shoot to walk into a room in my underwear in front of a crew of people and that as the from the girl that I was was terrifying but I guess you know you've been hired for a reason you've got this you've owned it so you just go out I mean that was quite terrifying the first time I did it I'm fine with it now I just get my kid off all the time but it's a different age now like I think the conversation around body inclusivity now has changed and shifted so much since 2006 and and hugely that has been instrumental because of Instagram you know we see that like

it's given people a platform to say well bodies are diverse this type of person is not the only type of person that's beautiful and we have this yeah we have so many more shapes and sizes and ethnicities and colors to choose from and to identify with but that really didn't exist at that time there was there was no one out there was there was just no one growing up especially for me there was no one I could look to and be like that's what I look like like I was always bigger and you know taller and curvier than than every one of my friends my family like everyone there was no one I could relate to and be like I'm I'm okay that was still in the phase of well that was probably prime time of when Kate Moss and heroin chic was like really in, which is like,

if you didn't look like you were dying and like starving, you weren't hot. Exactly. But did you ever have any problems when you started modeling with people saying, you need to lose a bit more weight. You need to look like this. Or did people just accept you how you were? Did you, because I feel like now they, they can't do that. Now no one can total these weights. Actually, I was not really big enough. They like you to be quite curvy. I had been asked to wear padding, like padding's a thing overseas like america and the uk where you actually take padding that you put it can put on your hips and your bum to make you fit the clothes better and you're wider but it's not interesting enough because it's like okay well we have this one body shape which is super skinny

but then anybody that's in the interim it's like well you're not you don't really fall into either of the classifications that we have so you need to be proper plus size yeah or you've got to be this whereas i don't feel like that exists anymore like the spectrum is so much more diverse like it's really great I've got friends now who are the kind of what they used to classify as the in-between models who live over in New York and they actually work they're like they're not like your size 16s they're probably like size 12 maybe 14 and they work all the time whereas back in the day it was like you either have to be like plus plus or like skinny skinny and I knew girls who had been what I call straight size modeling started growing up and putting on a bit more

weight not even anything remarkable but they got to like a size 10 12 and that's too big to be a straight size model so then they would actively gain weight to become a plus size model which baffled like I would be over in New York with them and they would all be you would go out for dinner and they'd just eat and eat and I mean if I don't exercise I gain weight so I would still be going the gym and try and like maintain my curves without gaining too much weight but these girls they're actively trying to gain weight but someone who's worked in the industry for so long how do you see it has changed over the past 10 years oh it's changed greatly I mean like I said back in the day it was you had to be really plus size or super skinny but now like my friends overseas

they're size you know 10 12 and they're working for H&M they're working for the mainstream brands which is incredible like these these big brands putting well I guess the in-between is the normal size oh I hate that phrase I hate the terminology but it's more just like a technical industry term but it's amazing how brands aren't now just you know not using a cookie cutter approach it is they're using all sizes all heights like back in the day if you weren't a certain height there is no way you would they'd be like you're not going to make it as a model and that has completely changed like some of the like top models are quite short which is amazing and it's just like body ethnicities it's fantastic and the thing about it that I think is really important is like this is

not brand driven this is consumer driven and that's what's changed massively like brands weren't the ones that woke up one day and thought oh you know what would be really good a really inclusive of campaign they've been bullied into it by consumers saying why don't you have these sizes why don't you cater for these body types like this isn't normal i don't identify with anyone on your campaign collateral and that's what's shifted the conversation hugely and i think you worked in a time that was very instrumental and the very beginning of that shift as well yeah yeah i mean it's really it's interesting now like a lot of the brands i work for in australia the smaller labels are realizing the importance of shooting on different sizes and so you know

they'll get me in or you know a plus size model in and shoot half the collection on me and then the same item you shoot on someone smaller and people love it they're like oh my gosh like why haven't we been doing this for years it makes sense like women want to see the clothes on what it might look like on there another topic that i want to talk about where we are seeing big change in the industry is you hayley and your life and what you do so you've been a sports journalist reporter yeah for like the last 10 years yeah about that yeah that's amazing that you have done so well in such a male-dominated industry and it's it sucks that I even have to say congratulations on doing well in a male-dominated industry but 10 years ago there just wasn't really the common

thing was it so how have you navigated being a minority in this industry I mean I was really lucky like when I got into the industry there were a few women in front of me like Yvonne Sampson and Erin Mullen who sort of they kind of paved the way for us women to do well in the industry they sort of helped myself and a few of the other girls I guess have that confidence to go out on the road and know that you're going to do okay you don't have to live up to the other male reporters you just do you and go ahead and just yeah I guess do your best work on the road and interview players and you know a lot of the sport is it's all males a lot like you know and it's getting better now you do a lot more female sport but interviewing male players it can be

tough you know they look at you and they're like I'm like are they looking at me like you know hey how you doing or they are because I don't go that way I feel like just putting like a rainbow flag on my forehead a lot of the time you kind of lean into that because you know you'll get their answers so you're like it's sort of like it's it's a weird one because it has been a tough industry but like i said i've had some pretty amazing role models to pave the way and now like you look at you know nine and fox sports it's there's so many women on the coverage and it's so amazing to see that this is where we are now well you just mentioned erin mollen and i know that she came out and was talking pretty publicly about a lot of the trolling that she'd experienced as a female commentator and

people being very quick to assume that either she wasn't educated in it didn't know anything about the sport that she was commentating on yeah have you experienced any of this through social media or have you experienced that backlash being a female working in the industry i mean i haven't experienced it as bad as it is like she's she's copped it big time and i think it's incredibly unfair what she has copped and i think that's what happens when you're the first wave as well when you're the one that's that's the pioneer yeah like you end up being the one that cops it all and paves the way for everyone else yeah and people tell you oh don't listen to it but i mean you know if you get like 100 comments always the one that you see is the one that's negative like

and you sit there at night you're like oh man like what did i do to deserve that you know is it true blah blah and yeah like as has copped that over the years for so long now and to be able to still be in the industry and do so well she's yeah she's amazing and i haven't been as big as as to cop that much criticism but definitely get looks sometimes where people question your education if you can actually do this role and because you are a female it's getting better though I have some friends like Erin Holland and Abigail me who are doing so well in the industry they're really big in the cricket and I feel like they're getting a lot of work and I'm seeing them everywhere so have you found a really big shift in female inclusivity in this industry yeah I think so I think people are

just realizing that it's not like we don't have any idea about sport we we take just as much interest in sport as men do so through us doing our work they've seen that we're educated we can do this job just as well as men if not better sometimes yeah probably probably better what do you think is probably like the biggest hurdle you have faced in you in the 10 years in that industry um to be honest it was probably a hurdle I made in my head it was you know I I really battled being gay in the industry I didn't ever say to anyone that I was out I never came out to people I did I actually just pretended to be heterosexual when I went to interviews and like because players flirt and things like that and you just lean into it to get the interview because you know you'll get a

good a good grab for the story and and that's your job you've got to get a good story so yeah I really leant into it but I had to overcome that and just be like you know what just be who you are and if if they don't if they don't like it then too bad and maybe this isn't the industry for you which was a process but I eventually you know obviously everyone knows that we're we're gay so that's the interesting thing because I remember and I felt that way too I remember there was so much interest when you two came out as dating as a couple because I was like didn't know Fiona was gay. There you go. Yeah. What was that life for you two? I don't think anyone did. That was the thing, right? Like, I mean, I think there was, well, I didn't even know. We're not supposed to

know. How did that happen? I guess how, okay. Before how you two met, how did you figure out, I know this is sound silly, but how did you figure out that you were gay? Cause you would always been dating men and heterosexual. Well, I guess I grew up in a small country town in Victoria. Growing up, it was like you found a partner, you got married, you started having kids you bought a house you got a job for the man all by 22 yeah like it was just like no one at my school was gay even when I went to uni there's guys now that I was at uni with living with at college who have come out as being gay and they weren't out when we were at college even though I kind of suspected it wasn't until after biggest loser that I moved to Sydney I started going out

a lot of my friends here were gay and I was going out to gay bars and stuff and I it was the first time I'd ever been around openly gay women and I always got butterflies around openly gay women and I was just never really thought about and then obviously after a few drinks occasionally I would make out with a girl but I would always wake up in the morning be like oh that's just something I do I'm crazy I'm experimenting and the thing is it was well documented I was dating men I was trying my hardest but I couldn't find a proper connection with any of the guys like after about four months we it was like a repeat like we'd just become really good mates and we'd just agree to kind of go our separate ways and it just kept happening do you mean that you couldn't find

that connection emotionally like were you still attracted to them were you still like having great physical connections or was there just nothing and you were just forcing something yeah I'm still attracted to men but I was always just got to the point where I'm like I just is this it is this like something's missing something's missing we get that question a lot which is like how do you know when you've met the one and there's like an indescribable thing that's there as well it's like feeling of being fully known and understood for who you are and I guess if you're dating you know you're trying to make a square fit into a circle and you're like but something isn't quite there like I don't feel fully understood or known or seen in this relationship I think as well when

I was dating men I was always trying to be what they wanted me to be and I felt like my own self wasn't enough for them and it wasn't until I went traveling for six weeks and one of the girls on the trip with us was an openly gay woman and we ended up hooking up on the trip and it was actually amazing like I kind of thought it was like just a one-off drunken night thing and then I actually had to spend time with her the next day and then the next day and then the next day and we were just hanging out it was just like this really incredible experience where I just like you said like I just felt really seen and I was unwashed and gross no hair no makeup nothing like just me in my raw self just being my silly self you say no hair but probably lots of hair like let's be

real there was a lot of hair going on lots of hair lots of sweaty lips not where it should have been but and I had to have this moment when I was over there like this feels really good but if I take this back to Australia it's going to be a thing and am I ready for it to be a thing like if I go back it sounds silly I get papped and that terrified me I'm like I can't just go home and like nut this out and and and then if it works announce it at my own leisure it's probably like I'm going to get caught and it's going to be announced publicly and it'll be out of my control so that really terrified me but I sat in there and I had this moment I was like you know what it feels this feels really really really good and that is what my life's focus is now about happiness

being happy does it make me happy and this feels good so I'm just gonna roll with it so when we got back to Australia I was like can you respect the fact that I just want to kind of keep this quite insular so we literally as lesbians do didn't leave my apartment for four months literally oh zero to 100 block your ears hayley and finally we did get pat we got papped um i think i was carrying a chicken walking out of the supermarket hand in hand with her and i love that the chicken was crucial to that story and then but by that point i had kind of told my family and stuff and I'm so so lucky my family have all been super supportive and I'm just so blessed because I've

never really had an issue and then it kind of came out and then it was like this big deal and I don't think it should be such a big deal I've fallen in love with a person and I just feel like it shouldn't be a big deal people have a perception of who you are especially when you're someone who has public profile people think they know you and then all of a sudden they're like well wait we don't know who you are now and I think for a lot of people acknowledging their sexuality having that conversation with their family and friends is scary enough people being accepting of you that in itself is scary enough to do that in such a public platform and not being able to necessarily control the narrative either even when you do sit down and do interviews or you sit down and talk to

a magazine or a journalist they are able to put their own spin on it and they take a quote and then they kind of change it a little bit and they jazzy it up and then you read the article back and you're like that's not what I fucking said yeah and it can be really heartbreaking it makes you feel like you don't have control over your own narrative yeah so what was it like not only being able to have those conversations with your family and feeling like very accepted there but then having to have those conversations with greater Australia well I made the decision at that point in time I had a friend who worked for Cosmo who was a journalist because my agent at the time had kind of been telling me to try and keep under wraps for as long as possible didn't outrightly

say don't come out as being gay they basically said it but in a roundabout way because they were like you know we've really marketed you as the girl next door but I decided because I just didn't want it to be a media circus it really I just I'm really sounds really silly but I'm my private life I'd like to try and keep it a little bit private that's not silly at all we do we do a podcast now we just talk about everything but so do we don't I'm always like I want my privacy but I'll tell you all on life on cart only in our private community you're in control of the narrative and that's what i always say when we do this podcast and like when you do your podcast and when you can have these conversations publicly nobody can mince your words and i can tell

outrageous ridiculous stories of things that have happened to me and then daily mail will go and write an article but at least i know that the true source of that was my mouth and people can always come back and find the true source of this is what actually happened and i've actually found this process personally like having a podcast really empowering because it's given us both the medium to have that conversation and and often people will listen and be like oh i didn't like you on the bachelor but i like you now or maybe some people don't like me now i don't know but at least it's real like i'm me now also instead of the media keep saying like britney's perpetually dumped on national television i can say it first so it has a better impact so take that but no i

think we're seeing it a lot at the moment with jack vision he's talking openly about i don't know if you guys have seen it but about how hard it was for him to come out once he was thrown into the spotlight and he feels like he would have come out sooner if he wasn't and he was really young as well he was really young Hugh Sheridan has talked about it a lot too he's talking about now that love is love and he will love who he wants and he battled for a long time because he was in the public eye and then we had Ian Thorpe say the same thing he's finally and like bless his soul Australia's so happy for him he's finally said I can be who I want to be but he couldn't come out for a long time either i think there's still a lot of people in sport a lot of people comment

that they know handfuls of men and women in sport and they just feel like my heart like i just think i haven't seen a nrl player come out while playing you know i know there's someone in there i'm not out them themselves but i know that there are people in there that would be and so i just think why can't they come out and still play it's not like they're gonna perv on their mates in the locker room i didn't perv on my oh you know i went to all girls school it's not like i perved on my friends when i was at school i feel like it's only going to take one of them and i and it will be hard for that first person in rugby you know in nrl in anything to come out but once it is i feel like it's a comfort and a platform for other people to be like oh look we can do it and we can

still play really fucking good sport yeah that's the stupid misconception isn't it like you know like i went to an all-girls school wouldn't matter if i went to an all-girls school or if i went to a co-ed school like i'm not trying to hit on every single guy i see i don't give a fuck i actually don't want to hit on any guys you know like that was one of my i was like oh my gosh so many of my friends are probably gonna think oh was fee ever checking me out but the thing is i'm attracted to it like a gay woman who is like a certain type of gay obviously you darling it's yeah one of those things that it's not like you don't walk down the street and go oh my god there's there's a guy or a girl and they're hot because that's their gender you're i do that but you can appreciate beauty

i mean i appreciate beauty and women as well it doesn't mean that like i want to jump it's very different for everyone i think that there's a lot of i mean that's that's where people's own personal issues and fear comes from is this idea of like oh well how can we just be friends then and i think more so with media like brit said we're seeing it change and we are seeing you know that people are able to be authentically themselves and everybody is being very accepting in that platform but i do think that like you said sport is one of these areas that's definitely lagging behind because it's got the real boys boys club mentality yeah lads are going to be lads and that doesn't really feed into the inclusivity at all this is an even bigger conversation around

like toxic masculinity you know and they're not being able to identify with their feelings and be emotional because that shows them to have lack of character and yeah men don't know that for women we love when they cry and they're emotional like i'm so attracted to a man that Can be vulnerable and cries. If he cries, I'm like, panties are off, let's just do it. It's actually a fetish. Well, no, it's a thing. I'm like, cry for me.

No, but it just shows this whole new side to them. And I think that they think women want this certain person, but that's not it at all. I don't necessarily think it's men thinking that women want it. I think it's them doing it for each other. I think it's the toxic masculinity is a lineage that's been taught by men. like this is how you have to behave to be a man i don't i think that women are not even considered in the equation but maybe if they know that that's what we do want they can all just sort

of like meet us at the party you know let's talk babies congratulations thank you you're having a boy yeah so how did that conversation come about in terms of obviously you both said really early on you were chatting about you wanted to have kids how does it come about who's going to carry the child uh age age i am a lot older than hayley so what is the age difference uh seven and a half years yeah some i think you're like seven years you say age so was this like a decision because if you then decide that you want to have more kids later down the track like hayley you will have yeah yeah so you can kind of share that experience yeah and before i met hayley i had actually made a decision that i was going to have a baby on my own so i was already when i met hayley i was like

I just need you to know this is the path I'm going down I don't want to miss out on the opportunity to have kids and so soon I'm gonna start the process and if you're coming on this ride it's kind of what the plan is and you it was I didn't want to sort of force it down your throat that when we started dating she knew what the plan was that I wanted but you actually made all the phone calls all the appointments booked everything I was like that proved to me at that early stage I was like she actually wants it as well it's not yeah me I did I want to instigating everything you're actually on board she even just swapped our private health over so early on I think after three weeks of dating she's like well we should both get the same private health I mean that makes

sense so because you need to be there for a year before you get covered and I'm like whoa okay like yeah I mean I know this stuff because I work in an industry where we do stories on this sort of stuff so I was like you're very proactive I was I was like well I'm just gonna swap us onto the same health cover don't stress about it it's fine but also i think there comes like this level of sensitivity when you're both females when you get to a certain age you have to be aware of your biological clock especially if you want to have children you know and we've done an episode all about fertility with a ivf specialist we can talk about all of the options you have in life these days and how like societal timelines don't matter but there is a timeline that you cannot escape and

that is your own biological clock and for how long you can have children for so i think that when your when your partner is female there's this real level of understanding in that which men or some men can grasp but I don't think there is the same level of appreciation in like what that means yeah so I think that that's amazing that you can share that together and be like okay well it's a big decision to make quickly but strap on in and we're going to do this I think like you said men don't really grasp the fact that the timeline is there and they're like oh it'll just happen and then they find out the hard way that it can't just happen and then they have to go through fertility treatment and whatever else so I'm freezing my eggs at the moment that's awesome

yeah and I'm 33 but I went in maybe a little bit naive I work in an industry where radiology so I see a lot of with ultrasounds a lot of people that have problems so I'm aware of it but I still went in naively thinking like I'll be fine and the results that I got were not great my fertility was really low and she's like the chance of you falling pregnant naturally is not fantastic these of things you need to think about and i was left really like i just didn't know that that was a thing and i've never i never thought about it i just thought the time would come and i'd be like i'm gonna have a baby now and it's not gonna be that way at all so that's something a conversation i'll have to have with people i'm dating someone now that's significantly younger than me

well done his swimmers are strong that's why i went down no yeah no but i've got that on my side but no i just think it's something that a lot of people don't realize until they come to that point of life so I guess that there is a reason that you guys moved so quickly as well and that obviously that's why you decided to carry first but you definitely want to carry one as well I can't wait to have kids like I mean we're having a kid already but I can't wait to carry it's yeah I've always wanted to have children and like you said we had this conversation pretty early and I was like yes wait I'm on board with this like I've always wanted to have children yeah it was just a simple matter of you know I was like you're 37 you know I mean this in the nicest way possible

but we probably should get you cracking soon you're over the hill fiona honey you oh what was the process like going through ivf together then so like once you've made the decision that this is because obviously i mean not like a heterosexual couple where you can be like cool let's start trying yeah there's a lot more planning that needs to go into it what was that journey like throughout ivf well we went into it quite naive we kind of i guess thought we'd just go in there'd be it you know some sperm in a book we'd just choose some and they just they just all like you choose it from a book and they just pop it in and away we'd go but we didn't that makes it sound so fairy tale like I'll have that sperm I'm pregnant we I guess weren't really equipped like after our

first meeting we came out with all these brochures and and they were like you've got to go through all this counseling and and at that point we were figuring out if we're going to have an unknown donor or a known donor and all that kind of jazz and there was just like if we weren't going with a known donor they had to have counseling and it was just not this simple process it's not simple that's why and i'm glad that's why we started soon because it is like i would say it's easily a year before you actually start physically trying like you've got and this is for um same sex couples because if you want to wait for sperm it's like a nine month wait list and so we had to but we had a known donor originally and they have to get this have their sperm quarantined for a

very long period of time like it takes all the testing and it's just a really long process yeah so regardless of known or unknown i know you've got to go through a process and we had a known donor and it was just really and he was perfect like amazing great guy and we're like you will make really good you know children for us like thank you so much you're gonna do the most amazing great biceps yeah we were like oh let's just bypass the whole medical side just yeah we did come on over on a friday night glass of wine or we'll just pop into the other room here's the magazine you tried it yeah yeah and it was probably the most awkward thing we've ever been through invited him around to hayley's apartment her housemates like cooking dinner he's

like cooking my housemate is like cooking stir fry and i was like we've gone to the pharmacy and i'm like okay what do we need for this so we bought all these paraphernalia like syringes and tubes and condoms and sterile cups i'm like do we get him porn like he's got a phone so he came and he bought his dog and his dog's just like sitting in the lounge sitting out in the lounge room just like she was there on the bed hands down like legs and he's like babe i've read that if you're like stimulated and i was like don't even think you need to have an orgasm you're like the dog's outside he's in the bathroom watching rent you get on the stove this is the most unsexy situation do not touch it like just don't let's just get this happening so

He comes in the car and then you get Hayley. He literally comes out of the bathroom, hands it to me. I'm in the hallway. I was like, thank you. And then I run down the hallway and then I've got the syringe on. And then he just kind of let himself out. He was like, see ya. I was like, thanks, bye.

Thanks for giving us the gift of life. And then it's like they're in this syringe and then Faye's got her legs up and she's like, I need to be stimulated. I'm like, um, okay. No, I did not. I did not. How many times did you give this a try? Or was this a one hit wonder and you were like, let's not do that again.

Would you believe we did it twice. We went back for more. Hang on, did you use the turkey thing? Yeah, yeah. But then, so I said, Faye, just wait one sec. I'll do it. And then I literally, she's so impatient. So I walked out of the room, I think, I can't remember.

And I came back in and she's like, I've done it. What do you mean? And I was like, it's everywhere. She's turkey-based in herself. She's turkey-based in herself. So it didn't even go in. It didn't. Some of it did go everywhere.

The whole figuring out when you're ovulating was a bit tricky. I feel like we probably did it on the wrong day. Oh, we 100% did it on the wrong day. Because we realised we'd done these ovulation tests that you had to read the line. but there's ones with a smiley face so we were doing these line ones and I was like I just I don't understand this is so hard and then we swapped mid-cycle to the smiley face ones and then we got a smiley face I'm like we're on game on let's go and I think if we put on the stir fry

come around baby okay so that is so fucking funny thank you for telling us that but why then did if you had this great donor and you were trying that how come you didn't want to use him when you went down the actual IVF way so basically a friend of mine a friend of hers took a photo of us three having coffee outside an IVF clinic and sent it to her and my friend knew the donor and she rang me and she's like I know who you don't and when we were going out with friends at that point in time it was almost like a game for everyone to kind of be like yes good guess who it is because we did say but no donor and we didn't want to share who the donor was because that's what it is for him earn for us and it also takes and also for your child you know there's a whole other human that's

involved in this that people kind of forget about and it just took away from the fact that we are the parents like we were getting the most amazing gifts from this you know from a generous friend but at the end of the day we're the parents and you know whilst he was the biological father he was happy for us to write you know to be the parents of this child and then for that to just be completely taken out of our hands it just became this fun guessing game who is it do we know him like it's just it made it when we got that phone call from a friend going I know who it is literally my I think I went gray I just was like oh just this is just not the way this was supposed to happen and this is just this is awful and this is the way it's going to be

forever every barbecue we go to every it'll be like I wonder who it is like and then even in the media it's no one's business and that's the problem you face being a personality isn't it it's like you could try so hard to keep something private which you are completely entitled to but people think that just because you're in the public eye that they're entitled to know everything about every aspect of your life and i think as well because everyone's experience is different you know like some people are quite happy to to have the biological father be known and be a present part and other people approach that differently and so you know your friend who did this wouldn't have done it maliciously and would have thought that it was like you know like you

guys could have a laugh about it but doesn't understand because they don't have to do it themselves they're not in that situation so then after that experience you guys then made the decision to keep everything and go through the IVF clinic and make those decisions which gives you the full autonomy for privacy yeah yeah and it was just it just took that whole you know guessing game out of the equation and the original guy who was going to be the donor was completely understanding it was just such a shame because he was so perfect and it would have been amazing and but that was completely taken out of our hands did he want to be like an active dad or was it more like this is my gift and I don't expect you to include me and was happy to have a photo every

you know an update every now and then and then be completely removed from the situation which was amazing I was just like what you wanted yeah absolutely and something like I've always considered donating my eggs down the track and and it's something I definitely want to do and I'm happy to be removed from the situation and give someone else this gift of life so I just think it's it's such an amazing gift that someone can give and really someone to do that when I told my sister that I had a real moment when I found out that like I didn't have great fertility and when I told my sister I was a bit upset she's like don't worry bae she's like I've got an idea why don't you get your eggs extracted I'll get mine extracted too we'll mix them up so we don't

know and then one day when you want to use them you have more chance of getting pregnant and we'll never know whose baby is oh that's so sweet I know and I was like which would make sense because it would have obviously like the same DNA and things like that but I was like you would always wonder and I said also it'll probably need braces and have flat feet so I'll know it's yours she needs orthotics but you also talked a little bit about how it takes this long period of time and how there's so much testing that goes in and I guess like what people don't necessarily know if they haven't gone through the IVF journey is like a lot of that is genetic testing which naturally I guess it's kind of like all that's just left to the wind and the testing's done

afterwards at the eight week mark or the 12 week mark or the 24 week mark whereas when you go through the IVF process it really is this process of elimination to make sure that when you do get pregnant that baby is as healthy and as genetically healthy as possible I mean we didn't end up you know that you can get the embryos tested but for us or for me I only ever got I think it was four four eggs and out of those four eggs every round I only ever got one embryo viable embryo so it was like a process to go through with calling friends who are like oh my god I got like 36 eggs and I'm like oh my god what is wrong with my body why am I only producing like four or five eggs and then obviously getting like one embryo and other friends like we got six embryos I'm like far out

it's a hard process to go through just knowing that yeah other your body's not I guess in a way though I am thankful that sometimes like you know I look at the glass half full like we're same sex we know if we physically can't create together so we go straight to that step of going through IVF whereas you know heterosexual couples try for years and years and years like my sister tried for how many years was it like four or five years and then went through 10 rounds of IVF to get her two babies yeah and it's just and that's what I think sometimes I'm like you know glass half full we're we're lucky that we go straight to that step of trying you know through you know amazing science and and things like that whereas you know yeah like you said heterosexual couples like

you know they go through such a journey of trying together for so long they beat each other you know beat themselves up because they're like what's wrong with me something that like I think is not talked about that often but sex takes on a different meaning as well because sex becomes about reproducing I know from my experience with a lot of girlfriends who I've spoken with and it becomes clinical and then that can be damaging in a relationship as well where you don't have that connection anymore with the IVF experience for you how many rounds did you have to go through and I know that like a lot of women can find it very taxing from like a hormone perspective did you experience that yes yeah I mean we went through four rounds I think it was two IUIs

which is like the professional version of turkey basting the expensive version yeah so we did two at home turkey basting then two professional turkey basting and then and then two IVFs so I guess six rounds but ours barely counted and what does that look like on a time span then from the moment we went to our first appointment until i was pregnant it was about a year and a half i think the thing people don't realize too is when you were saying how you're sort of blessed to the point that you physically can't reproduce alone so they'll take you at a clinic straight away yeah a heterosexual couple a clinic won't even see you usually unless you've been trying for a year to 18 months they're like how long you've been

trying you're like non-stop eight months like come back in a year yeah so there's that as well we don't even have the option of being like please like I've tried for a year and I can't they want you to keep going and then you know all of a sudden two years have gone past by the time you actually start the process drugs they put you on made me go absolutely bonkers I feel bad about this but I actually went on to social media and this is how crazy I was like without even discussing with Hayley and kind of made an announcement on social media that we were going through IVF and I was really struggling and I literally was like oh we've decided to tell everyone yeah like she was at work and then she gets messages from people going oh my god you guys

are trying I was sort of got home I was like and I knew she was on you know a fair few drugs and hormones and things so I came I was like hey so today that was a big day um you decided to announce that we're trying on Instagram she was like I was just feeling really overwhelmed I just wanted someone to support me I'm like but okay in fairness it actually was really helpful because I don't know when you're going through it hearing you just want to hear about other people going through it that you're not alone and I was it's as much as you were in the journey with me it's a process where you can feel it's really lonely because it's you and your body so for me when I did that announcement I got hundreds of messages from women telling me about their journey and the

struggle and what they'd been through and it really put into perspective that we were only on like our first cycle and it really helped and that was kind of the catalyst for us to start our podcast what the IVF because I was like oh my god we should talk about what we're going through because it would be so helpful to other women going through it because it's not a fun process yeah it really isn't I mean I can completely understand that perspective because like for us and for my journey with pregnancy with Matt obviously we've had conversations we I've spoken really publicly about miscarriage and I told Matt like I'm gonna have this conversation but didn't really give him a choice in it like he wasn't he didn't have any agency over my decision to

publicly talk about it but part of that for what was very therapeutic to me because it was me feeling so alone in this and I was like yeah sure we're going through this together you understand that I'm sad I was like but you don't know what this feels like and you will never experience this and as much as you're supporting me and we're a team I was like I really just want to talk to other women who have done it you know yeah who probably feel exactly the same and so it wasn't similar in that he was blindsided by it he wasn't he knew it was coming and also like he had the then the opportunity to tell family or friends whoever first but yeah I think the the conversation became very public very quickly and it was the exact same thing like the amount of women like

the thousands of women who reached out who were like hey I'm part of that club too and then there was a very honest conversation that that happened because of that was so helpful for me in feeling less crazy less like there was something wrong with me less alone and and I think all of these like the more that people are doing and going down that fertility and IVF journey the more that people experience miscarriage all of these conversations need to be had on a public platform because it makes people feel like oh there's nothing wrong with me it also helps people like myself who haven't been through one and are friends with people that have how to navigate that and help understand where they're coming from because again as a woman I can understand

yeah what that would feel like and that it's pain but you're still not in it whether you're a woman or a man it's like unless you experience anything in life you know you've got to walk in that those shoes and also to better understand in like what you were saying about your friend who was like hey we know who the donor is now to understand that there's a sensitivity about how to approach things and I think people who haven't experienced it don't necessarily know the right thing to say and can often say the wrong thing which we've talked about in regards to miscarriage before this whole like oh you'll be fine like as in like you'll get pregnant again you know wasn't meant to lucky it was only eight weeks and this real dismissiveness which people can do that with

IVF as well well it's only your first round you haven't been trying for that long yeah bitch it still hurts I'm not pregnant and it can be really dismissive so I think it's not only helpful for people who've experienced it it's really helpful for people who haven't yeah and they can be better equipped with what not to say because the thing is as well I mean I felt like I was doing everything like you read everything to try and help the process like acupuncture like all the things I was doing like kinesiology like you name it I gave it a red hot go and it was just like oh my gosh like it feels like it doesn't matter what I'm doing I can't control this you feel like your body's letting you down the fear of like what if it doesn't happen yeah what if I can't get pregnant

you know and you do hear the stories of people who go through x amount of rounds of IVF and they aren't successful and there's this real shift in your identity and grappling with the fear of well fuck is this gonna actually ever happen for us yeah it's really scary yeah yeah but what is next for you guys after the baby it's pretty much straight into me trying actually so we get married oh yeah we're getting married this year we have to postpone our wedding yeah we did we're supposed to get married last uh october so when are you getting married same year to the day i kind of want to have a drink yeah so you're going to start trying straight away after the wedding okay so there'll be like probably at least a year realistically we'll start the process of getting

all the tests done around the wedding and then after it you know start the whole process so we want to have the sleepless nights cut short as much as possible so have a bunch of together in there it sounds great in theory the last thing i want to ask you guys is you know being that you are both career women how are you going to juggle that how are you going to juggle your careers being mums and this transitional part of your life it's hard to say i'll take some time off when fee has barbed i obviously i work as a model still 37 still working the model thank you to all my clients that still book me um but I'll kind of slowly go back to that but I it's been something that I've been working on over the last year I was like I need to have something that I can do from

home being a mum and I've been doing a lot of Instagrammy styling try on hauls and stuff like that for clients so I can shoot all that from home and it's actually like I'm really blessed I'll be able to be a stay-at-home mum I think yeah well you'll also tap into a whole new industry as well when you are when you do have a baby and you are a mum there's going to be so much more work that will come with that side of that new journey in that new chapter so you're probably lucky we're in a point of our life too where Instagram and doing things at home is absolutely thriving so it's perfect timing on your behalf I will be honest it is quite scary though with the fact that like my income at the moment is basically solely based around the Instagram and the control

that they have over like the other day they took away my ability to use music on instagram i hate when they do that i was like what is this why do they do that i don't know but they've given it back but now i've only got like music from like another country but it kind of it's literally the weirdest it's so bizarre but i just it really shocked me because i was like wow if somehow this was taken away from me that's my income gone it's just really it's yeah the thing is too one day it will like there'll be a new platform even like tiktok taking off there'll be a new platform and everyone that's basing their income solely on one thing solely on instagram or solely on facebook they're gonna have to start fresh and that's a really scary thought absolutely i mean

i guess you for us i just tell fee like we ride the wave and for me i will take some time off from work to to be with bub and spend that time with bub where we plan on going offline for a good sort of six weeks just to be in that bubble and really enjoy that that time with the first you know our first bub but there's definitely a way that i'm like will i have work after this well they want me back six weeks is a long time in media to just be disappearing yeah so there's that worry but hopefully we'll tackle all the challenges I mean like it's like you know being with someone that you love and you know you're meant to be with you just you take on these challenges together and that's why it's meant to be you kind of just work it out and take it day

by day well we can't wait to see this journey play out we can't wait to see after the six weeks that you go into your bubble we can't wait to see you come back guys thank you so much for joining us and thank you so much for sharing all of your story and also you have your own podcast where you do talk about your IVF journey. Give us all the details of where people can find you, how they can listen to you. Yeah, it's called What the IVF. I was like, you guys have never done that before.

We've wrapped up Season 1, but when Hayley goes... When I start trying, we'll do Season 2. Season 2. Yeah, it's basically a podcast about Faye's journey to our first bub, the trials and tribulations of it. And we also interview a lot of women who have had some pretty insane journeys to fall pregnant or to not fall pregnant and how they've dealt with that so it's a pretty yeah no I have listened and I can highly recommend

it to anyone that has any remote interest or is thinking going down that path it was very informative and you you did it in a really nice way it was very colloquial and very relatable and I think that's what people need but also I think like it's really empowering that you've covered stories of women who didn't end up with the outcome that they wanted as well and what that looks like and how you cope with life when you have to change change paths again and kind of accept something that it feels like a lot of loss and a lot of grief so i love that you've covered that as well so for anyone who's listening and i do think that sometimes it can be overwhelming constantly hearing podcast stories of people who are happy and pregnant but then that's there's

some solace in that as well yeah where can people find you on your instagrams fiona faulkner yeah i'm f-a-l-k-i-n-e-r i'm hayley willis it's a hayley underscore underscore willis double Oh, the old double whammy. And watch our podcast. It's at whattheivfpodcast. Thank you, guys. Thank you for such a laugh, and it was so informative. And you guys go have a great day, have a great birth,

and we can't wait to hear the news. We wish you and your vagina's well. Good luck. Thank you so much for having us. Thank you for having us, guys. It's been awesome. All right, guys, you know that we never finish an episode without our suck and our sweet, our highlight and our low light

of each and every week and Brittany has just taken about 15 minutes to think of what hers were so you're gonna go first okay my suck was super easy last night uh I went down for a little like picnic for dinner Bondi Beach with my sister and a few friends wasn't a date yeah it was really nice actually it was really nice evening had fish and chips we're having a little drink it was beautiful I'm sitting down there's four of us sitting around eating our food this dog comes it's like it clocks us from like 100 meters away it starts running wait this is your suck yes ran straight up to me i had a potato scallop in my hand took the potato scallop out of my hand it was like a big chunky staffy like bowled me over took the potato scallop and i was like cute and

then he pissed on my rug i was like what did i do to deserve this did you say something to the owner no because the owner was like up the hill i just ran off then it literally came ate the scallop did we ran no yeah true story terrible terrible dog owner behavior why was that dog not on a lead grass you know dogs go wild no i'm not okay with that i'm so not okay i would have been devastated about my potato scallop but also if my dog that's why i got three you always buy backup potato scallops you never know what's gonna happen if my dog stole someone's food actually i take that back my dog has definitely sold stolen a child's muffin at the fuck i'm just gonna stop seeing stop that has 100% happened to me and I was like very sorry don't have my wallet with me must leave

and what is your sweet my sweet was a few nights ago when I left your house here after the recording I was walking back down the hill to my house and this this girl on the street having a little vape you could tell that she was in a restaurant and she was out just like having a breather and she jumped out in front of me she was like Brittany and I was like oh hi she's like oh she's like I will hope I always think I'm gonna run into you I was always wanting to run into you I love you guys so much I love your podcast and it was like a normal froth session which I love like she just wanted to tell me how much she loved the podcast I was like I've just been at Laura's house now chatting away and then she goes oh I hope you believe how much I love the podcast I'm like no

I do like I believe you and then I was like are you on a date like this is getting weird now no she was so lovely it was actually she gave me the nicest review of our podcast that I have ever heard from anyone that has stopped us so if you're listening now shout out to you but it gets better she's like hope you believe me blah blah blah and then I was like are you on a date she goes yeah I am it's like a third date and I'm like amazing and then he came out at that time so he's walked out and I was like he's I was like there's a man coming up behind you is this your date and she she turned around she's like yes that's him so he comes up to see where she is she said to him babe remember how I couldn't stop talking to you about that podcast life uncut and the guy

her date was like yeah this is her and he was like oh my god he's like she hasn't shut up about your podcast on our date and I was like yes this is like life made the fact that she loved us enough to be talking on a date like a second date to this guy and he's like oh I've heard all about you like I know all about you and I was like this is so weird but we love it we love it when we see you guys out in the wild and you stop us okay my suck for the week I'm just gonna jump in and tell you mine my suck for the week is that I am so freaking tired and guys for anyone that thinks that laura shouldn't be complaining about her pregnancy i am an advocate for laura she can complain all she wants this woman is superwoman she works like 25 hours of a 24 hour day she's

heavily pregnant if she wants to tell you guys that she's tired i'm gonna allow it britney says this because somebody wrote in the reviews okay somebody left a bad review and they wrote change the channel laura we know that you're pregnant we know that you have a kid you're not the only person and i'm like yes but i'm fucking giving birth in a week and a half guys so let me complain and I'm still working full time. So it's been a bit of a nightmare, but I'm, I'm like, I'm done. I am cooked. I have literally run myself into the ground. I was having a nap before Brick came over to record. Yeah. So we're supposed to meet at seven. I get here and she's asleep. And I was like, I'll just sit with Matt in the lounge room for like an hour and let her nap it

out. Which means it's now 9 30 PM. That's why we're recording now. But anyway, um, yeah, I've just like nothing significantly bad has happened. There's been no real suck to my week, but I am so far beyond tired that I didn't know that this sort of tired exists and I'm really excited to have this baby and then I can be a whole different kind of tired but at least it won't be because I feel like an alien is trying to exit through my belly button and what's your sweet the fact that you're having a baby in a week yes and then so my sweet is just to really drive home the baby chat here you know just for anybody else who wants to leave a review about me talking too much about being pregnant um tomorrow i get to go and see my ob and they will tell me what day they're

going to induce me next week so you'll know when it's coming so like guys we are literally not even a week and a half away and i'm gonna have another human in this world we are almost at liftoff which blows my mind because you and i we don't even really talk about it we're always too non-stop and you're so busy that i forget you're even pregnant that's so weird i definitely don't forget about it and also you don't have any names picked we don't i know i want to say thank you Because you guys have been so amazing, especially in the Facebook group. I have had thousands of that, like literally thousands of you have sent me your boys names and I have read them all and Matt and I still can't agree.

So fingers crossed this is a girl because we have one name down pat for that and no boys name. And it's like sort of low key, just a little bit. I know you'll deny it, but it's a low key named after me. It has literally nothing to do with Britney. It's inspired by me. She'll never admit it, but you guys will understand when we announce it. When Laura and I have the baby announcement.

just so you guys know i'm taking this week's ask uncut off um matt is actually going to be stepping in and doing ask uncut on thursday's episode so if you have any questions for this week's ask uncut please send them on in and if you have something that you would really like a male's perspective on it he will be filling in so please send in your specific male orientated ask uncut questions and then after this week we do have one more episode before we take a quick break we're literally only taking four weeks off we like we have to take a break because laura has a new human that will be stuck to her 24 7 she'll be exhausted and she'll be healing so this is the reason we didn't take a break really over christmas and new year's guys because we knew that this

moment was going to come it will be a short break and we will be back bigger better than ever and with one more human you know what we say we thrive in chaos it's going to be great but anyway guys if you haven't left a review please jump onto apple podcast hit five stars you're going to So I'll just stop talking about babies. No. Hit a review. Leave a review. Also, if you haven't joined our Life Uncut Facebook community group,

you can do that. It's Life Uncut Podcast. It is a great, very wholesome, very empowering, and very supportive group. And you know the drill. Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friends, tell your cousin, tell your next-door neighbour, and share the love because we love love.

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