Life Uncut - When you can't have what you've always wanted. Infertility, IVF & Miscarriage - Uncut with Chloe Fisher

Episode Date: July 24, 2023

Hello beautiful Lifers,  Joining us today is the wonderful Chloe Fisher from the Darling Shine podcast Chloe's life looks incredible from the outside. She travels the world with her husband, Grammy award nominated DJ Fisher. They look like they have it all; except the one thing that they truly want more than anything else, a baby.  Chloe has undergone IVF treatment 7 times, and had 4 miscarriages. She speaks very openly about her struggles with fertility and the toll that it can take.  In this chat we talk: The mental load that fertility takes on us How it can affect your relationship How to help a friend going through fertility issues The actual process of IVF You can follow Chloe's journey on Instagram You can also listen to Chloe's podcast Darling Shine          See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Life Uncut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose lands were never ceded. We pay our respects to their elders past and present. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. This episode was recorded on Darug Wollongong land. Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. I'm Brittany. And just as we sat down to record this, in our quiet studio, with soundproofing, it was all silent, and then all of a sudden, we heard this little, no it's like a tree lopper, there's

a tree, or a mulcher, it's like he's lopping and mulching simultaneously, there's someone directly outside the studio who is mulching a fucking jacaranda bush, and of course, it's when we have like exactly 40 minutes to the dot to record, like we're on a time frame, So if you can hear a mulcher, roll with it. But we're going to work some magic. It's not Keisha's stomach, we swear, even though she's been complaining of gas pains. Oh, Keisha, I really want to try this.

Keisha has a gas pain in her stomach. She's like a child and she hates that we said this. Sorry, do you want us to cut this out? Do you want us to lay you down on the floor like the babies do and do the cycle legs just to see if we can move it through your body? That's what I asked her in the car. I was like, why don't when we get there, let's try out that baby maneuver. But you're not about it, are you?

where we cycle your legs back and forth and then we put your knees we do like a knee pump and hopefully it pushes it out of you don't say we're not your friends you're the one resisting the help here we are here to help we are here to gas you out no sorry you're gonna gas us out sorry Keisha you are the editor so you can edit it out you can yeah you have full control over whatever we put out there do you know how much to me last night did you gas yourself out too No, no, fuck, that's usually just Matthew Johnson. No, I was on the phone to Keisha sitting there, lovely, like hadn't started getting organised for bed,

hadn't gotten anything organised for the girls, hadn't even finished having my dinner, i.e. like still in the middle of cooking dinner on the electric stovetop that we have. And all of a sudden. Power-driven stove. On every single part of our life that is driven by electricity and all of a sudden everything just goes boo and it was this power down. I was like, oh, wow, we've got a blackout.

Cool, all right. Usually it lasts five minutes and it powers back up. Yeah, and Matt walks into the bedroom and I go, babe, can you go outside and can you flick the switch on the power box? And he was like, yeah, there's something I forgot to tell you. Oh, no. So apparently there was a power outage on our – well, not apparently, I lived through it.

There was a power outage on our street. There had been a week's worth of warnings about the power outage. It was a planned outage. outage there had been six separate warnings six separate messages not just text messages emails a letter came in the mail matt had received every single one of these and had just forgotten to pass on the information at any point in time you got one job he did have to punish himself though he wanted like matt can't go to sleep without a shower so he had a freezing cold shower last night and it was really satisfying to see him in so much pain so do you have candles do you have

no we had nothing see if we'd been prepared we would have gotten candles we would have gotten a torch we would have gotten all the things that you would need we're in the middle of packing up some stuff at the moment we had shit everywhere marley gets out of her bed in the middle of the night usually to come and get into our beds the poor thing she's got there's fucking lego there's boxes there's obstacles normally we would leave the bathroom light on for her and so in the middle of the night i hear this oh mommy and she's and then i'm walking through in the dark trying to find her because my phone was on seven percent battery before i went to bed so it was dead didn't have a torch and then i find her in a little heap on the ground amongst the lego like

i can't get out of the boxes so anyway he's not my favorite person today that's pretty bad that's not very good adulting do you know what happened to me once i take this as a rogue story my ex-boyfriend from my 20s well it's not the reason but it's a pretty big reason on the list So I'd gone away to Bali for three weeks and then we went to Mexico together for ten days, right? So I had not been in our house for a month and he had also been away prior to the Mexico trip together. Anyway, we get out of the plane back from Mexico.

It was a horrible trip because we were obviously already on the decline and we walk into the apartment and I was like, oh, someone's been murdered in here. like something has died the smell it was like opening the door and smelling a dead human it was the most pungent revolting smell and he had to go to work he had this big meeting on anyway he was basically like oh my god i'm so sorry i don't know what that is then i was like holy shit the lights aren't working so anyway he dumps his suitcases he leaves i'm then left with the rotting flesh to figure out what's going on what had happened the electricity wasn't working and everything in

Now, freezer had defrosted and the meat was running down the fridge. That's how bad it was. Oh, wait for it. He didn't pay a bill. Forgot to pay the electricity bill. For a year. For a whole year. That's not forgetting to pay it.

That's not forgetting. The electricity was in his name and he just completely ignored every single like, hey, your electricity. And, like, you've got to go so long before they actually cut your electricity off. You've got to ignore those warning signs. they are very generous most electricity companies get how these people live like how are these adults well he lived single after that didn't he like is this the guy that still is this the same guy that slept on the pile of clothes on the floor because this is going to

explain a lot no that was my other ex i i had a type and it was not reliable i don't think you had a type in terms of the looks or the jobs or anything like that your type was just like fucking idiot if we can put that into one big category i feel like you know if you had those circles what are they called were they like crossover oh like not the pie charts i know like the venn diagram thanks for juicing i'm just like drawing everyone knew what i meant though yeah it's like the you and your crossover was just fuckwit i just want to make this very very clear matt is not an idiot no he's not a fuck with he's actually I always say he's sent from the heavens he's a dream come true he just

forgot a crucial piece of information he's been very busy lately and it was very inconvenient but I forgive him for that and it's okay it's hard I always have looked for like the more adult here adult in the room because like I always want someone to adult me totally and I've realized now it's almost my birthday month this birthday next month birthday month the month of August producer Keisha and I share the same birthday 21st of August this birthday makes me officially closer to 40 than 30 so I'm turning 36 so I've been on the cusp I've been on the fence for 12 months because that's what happens every 12 months you have a birthday I've been 35 for 12 months and it's good because I can in my head justify that I'm closer to 30 but now I'm over the

precipice and I'm officially closer to 40 so there are no other adult here adults it's me I also love that you finally acknowledged how old you are because I think that everybody listening to this podcast has been confused for four years like everyone was like she could be 26 she could be 44 with a really good surgeon no one knows yeah because you've never really openly said how old i always say how old i am it's just no daily mail ages you up a year they've always had me right but you've always been a year older i'm 40 to them no i know i know i'm 39 to them are you how old am i i'm 37 so they say you're 38 anyway look let's tell you what the episode's about because today's episode i think i know i've said this a few times in the past four years we do

always say this but it means we really love our work this is honestly one of my favorite conversations i think we have ever had it's with chloe fisher a lot of you will know who she is she is half of darling shine podcast we interviewed elodie pullen a couple of years ago i think it was on last year's last year season she started this podcast alongside elodie and has led us into so much of her life she's also the wife of extremely famous dj fisher but the thing that we're speaking to Chloe about on today's episode is her journey with infertility thus far. Her story about how she's undergone IVF, how she's experienced multiple miscarriages and the fact that she's only in her very early thirties. She speaks so openly and so vulnerably. And I think

that there is so much from this conversation that if you were somebody who has struggled with fertility, you will gain from, but also for anybody, if you have a friend in your life who is also struggling with infertility. I feel like you're going to gain so much from this conversation about, I mean, how to have empathy for them, but also how to hold them up during such a hard time. We're so grateful for Chloe for coming on because the conversation that we had was so raw and open and honest and sharing some of her darkest moments on this journey and some of her darkest feelings and thoughts about this process, because it definitely has been anything but easy and the fact that the struggle is intensified because by all means from the

outside it looks like things are great they're young they're healthy they've done the tests no one can find anything specifically wrong it just isn't happening for them and the fact that all she's ever wanted is be a mom and she would give up anything for that moment and hearing her talk about it it was very humbling and I think it's going to help a lot of people Chloe is someone who if you follow her on Instagram she lives an incredible life like she really does seem to have it all and yet she talks about not being able to have the one thing that she wants more than anything and how she would give up the most incredible life that you know is Instagram perfect in order to be a mom she also speaks about the mental load that fertility takes on her and

also on her relationship and she also talks about the IVF process and and kind of how she's dealt with having back-to-back multiple miscarriages. So, I mean, this could be a triggering conversation for some people, especially if you have experienced a miscarriage yourself, you're going through your own fertility journey. But I also think it would be, I don't know, almost like a comfort to hear somebody else

going through the same thing and know that you're not alone in that. Now, before we go and we speak to Chloe, there was something that I wanted to talk to you about, Britt, because I'd love to get your opinion on this. So there's a TikTok that has recently gone viral. So there was a Cincinnati woman who was flying across the States.

I think she was flying like from Cincinnati to California, she'd booked herself the window seat and she planned on taking a nap the whole time because she had to do a big conference when she arrived in California, but she'd only had something like 90 minutes sleep the night before. So, you know, she needed some decent sleep. Now this is the situation. She was sat next to two children and when she arrived to go to her seat, there was a woman sitting in her seat, the mother of the two kids. And basically the mum turned around and she was like, oh, I'm going to sit here if that's okay. Can you take my seat? And her seat was in the row directly behind, but it was a middle seat. Now this is where the internet is divided. So this woman who'd booked herself the window seat,

she like pre-planned it, pre-paid for it and everything else. She refused to take the middle seat because for her, she wanted to get some good sleep. And so therefore she forced the mum to take the middle seat. Now the mother was quite disgruntled about the whole thing and made a bit of a scene to the point where somebody else in the row next to her ended up having to pull the mother aside and saying, you know, look, it's not your seat. You're not entitled to it. I think you should just let the woman be. Who do you think is in the right or the wrong here? Or what do you think is the overall nice thing to do? I don't know why this has divided the internet because I am on this woman's side I am on this CEO jewelry woman's side that already pre-booked the window

seat now when I say this I've been asked to change seats before for this reason and I've done it because at the time it suited me it wasn't a big deal it let a family sit together I'm like yeah sure I've also been someone that has asked someone else to swap seats with me before so that I could sit next to my sister like we've been separated on a plane and I've asked to change and people have let me I haven't been refused but they're not big changes but that's situational in this situation this woman hasn't slept is about to go to a big important meeting where she's presenting in front of 500 people she wanted to sleep she booked it she paid for it she's entitled to it I also don't like like the way we say it like the words I think it makes it sound worse she refused

to move and forced the woman to sit in her seat at the end of the day she just said no I'm going to stay in my seat and the woman has to stay in her seat that was it but I think it's the way we write the heading too I don't think there's anything wrong with saying this is my seat I'm sorry I'm going to stay here also the kids were 11 and 15 they weren't two yeah they're not babies if they were toddlers and children I have no doubt this woman would have swapped she would have done the right thing and been like well I'm not going to let two toddlers sit on their own of course I'm going to let the mum stay well I think overarchingly the internet was saying that this woman did the right thing like you know how dare how dare this mother think that just because she's

a mother she's entitled to sit next to her children my only thing is why the fuck would you want to sit next to someone else's kids i would prefer to take a middle seat anywhere on a plane than to sit next to somebody else's unsupervised children i have my own children i need to deal with i don't want to deal with someone else's kids yeah but it depends the age they're 11 and 15 yeah but like an 11 year old kid isn't necessarily well behaved you're assuming that an 11 year old can sit on a plane and not be distracted and not need them oh my mom i want some snacks oh mom my ipad's not working well yeah i feel like those things are still gonna happen with an 11 year old yeah but you assume an 11 year old to put their headphones on and

they're either on a game boy a video game or they're watching a movie like it's not like they're kids that can't you know that's what i think they're not crying because their ears aren't popping and i don't know i just think this woman's completely entitled to say no anyway there's a whole deep dark web of plain etiquette for changing seats like you can get lost in there there are so many people that have gone viral for their situations where someone has asked them to swap there was another woman this woman went crazy at her like this huge scene on a plane because she refused to give up her premium economy seat for an economy seat so that she could sit with someone she knows that's wild how is that not the most mainstream plane etiquette that you're

not gonna like it's not like someone from economy can come up to business and be like do you mind if we swap seats so that i can sit closer to someone in business like why would you downgrade a seat you've paid more for yeah but i don't think there's anyone who's actually going to think that that's a reasonable thing i think that there is a different conversation when there are kids involved purely because like an 11 year old can't fly on their own without having some supervision they can but they're going to be supervised by cabin staff right and i think sometimes when you book a flight like we've been in a situation before where we've booked flights and just purely because there haven't been that many seats left or when we've rocked up to the gate we've been

separated as a family and like I've been stuck with both kids and Matt's been at the complete other end of the plane which is great for him and he has no problems with that. He probably booked that ahead he's like oh well. So like and I get it I get the people who don't have kids will also think well I'm entitled to sit in the seat that I have booked for myself and I also understand why some people who have children are like yes I may not have been able to get the seat next to my child but like you never know someone's kid could be neurodivergent there could be reasons why they need to sit next to their 11 year old child that goes beyond just I want to sit with my kids because I want us to be a family I think I don't know there's part of

me that's like no this woman didn't do anything wrong but there's like a nice and empathetic and kind thing to do and then there's the thing that's the best thing for yourself but also I could literally sleep anywhere I could sleep in a fucking bus stop you sleep upside down I could sleep anywhere so I'm a bit of a different kettle of fish it's also different if that was a situation you had the two little kids like two and three and Matt was at the back of the plane I think that's different if someone asked me to swap in that situation of course you're going to because it's I feel like it's just human decency but people don't people don't have time and you know people feel very protective over the plane seats that they get but ultimately like we've said it's

the public transport of the sky no one's having a great time on a plane but it's also dependent Here's a question, Laura. You say you'd just do it. It's also dependent. If you're on a 20-hour flight to Europe, you're not moving to a middle seat. Fat chance you're moving. You would 100% stay on the window. It's dependent on the route, the timeframe, heaps of stuff.

I think I'm too, when we speak about conflict avoidance, I think I would not want to say no to someone. I would just be like, I'd do it. So you would give up a window seat on an 18 to 20-hour flight to Europe for a middle seat? For someone who had kids if I was on my own, yes. 11 and 15. not toddlers 11 15 i think i would but because i don't care i wouldn't i have a very different

feeling about planes i do not care where i sit i honestly i could as long as i'm not sitting backing onto the toilet i don't fucking care if it was if it was if it was backing onto the loo then i think i would say no but it would be hard to say no i pretend to be asleep that's your best bet sit down go straight to sleep that's what i do anyway what if they wake you up people have tried to ask me to move seats i just didn't know i was asleep just faking it all right it it's time for Accidentally Unfiltered. All right, this story happened to me on Christmas morning. My partner and I were sleeping in bed at my in-law's house with our five-month-old puppy asleep in the middle of us underneath the covers. Life was perfect. This was until Luna, the in-law's

dog, came barreling into the bedroom wanting to say Merry Christmas. My puppy got so scared, jumped up, started barking to defend us. As my partner got up to take the other dog out and stop this bedroom kerfuffle i was left gagging with the most awful smell i had ever smelled in my life everything was happening so quickly i didn't understand what was happening my partner said he couldn't smell it but that's when i realized the disgusting liquid that was all over my face yes my dog was so scared he had sprayed his anal glands all over my face i ran downstairs disgusted screaming i've got anal juice on me don't come near me i was mortified this is not okay it is not okay but do dogs spray yes no juice do they yes you have a female dog it's

mostly boy dogs that do it i think but yes it is disgusting it smells like rotting fish i don't know why we're here again but we are it is so gross and i know that you have to like manual I know Buster has to go to the vet to manually like get the juice out. Keisha's face. But I didn't know that they just sprayed it around like when they're scared. That's how I know when Buster needs to go to the vet and have it done is when he'll just accidentally squirt it somewhere in the house and then we're like, okay, my house stinks.

He's a squirter. Let's find it. He squirts. Ask him how to do it. Ask him. Get the goss. hey buster can you show me your tricks how do you do that daddy take me to the vet okay that's a good turn all right i've got one for you a few months ago

this is also this is not actually gross it just just shows how deep this couple's love is a few months ago i decided to be more sustainable so i purchased myself a period cup first day of my period comes along and i put it in an absolute dream i went to work i went to the gym it was so comfortable all day long i go to my boyfriend's house after work and at the end of the day i try to get this cup out i'm in the shower you know to protect from the spillage going everywhere a couple of minutes go by and it turns out i can't reach it it's so comfortable because it's traveled so far up inside me it's in my lung it is impossible for me to humanly bend that way and get it with my own fingers i call my boyfriend downstairs i can't get it out she's still in the

shower at this point in time i'm gonna have to go to emergency he comes into the bathroom he whips off his t-shirt and he says t-shirt once he's in the shower he's like we can do this 20 minutes later 20 minutes i'm laying on the shower floor and my boyfriend is elbow deep trying to get my full day's worth of period cup out he finally manages to get it out it is a traumatic experience for both of us never ever am i using a fucking moon cup again but thank you to my wonderful boyfriend i don't understand this i think you're using the wrong size i've been using them forever mate the first time it does get hard to get it out because you're not used to it but you're using the wrong size that's when you thought you had a tumor laura because you put in the extra extra extra

tennis ball still to this day i'm not convinced you put a moon cup in i don't know what you put in but i put a coffee cup in she's like there's this coffee mug in there i put a frank green water bottle up there and I was like it's working so she's so uncomfortable I do think some people just have very long cervixes and some people have very short cervixes as well everyone's cervix length is very different some people would find it so easy like a couple fingers boop and then some people have to rummage around up there in their flesh pocket to try and find it what okay look I'm gonna give you some insider gossy what you do have to do is like bear down you know how they like I think they might tell you that when you're having no when you're having giving child

it don't they say like bear down where like you push with your diaphragm and your muscles you do that so you you do it like a like like a what's that kegel when you kegel you do that and it pushes the cervix inside like it pushes the cup down a little bit and then you grab it and pull it out when you are having a baby you push into your bum like you're doing a poo so they'll say they'll say push into your bum so you're like but if you even if you kegel now goes up yeah but also goes down everything it goes like this it just tightens in a circumference so it pushes down Mine doesn't even touch the sides anymore. I don't know what mine does when I kegel. That's where the Frank Green bottle went. She's still up there.

All right. On that note, let's get into the chat with Chloe. Today's episode is one that I have been so looking forward to for such a long time. We have had Chloe Fisher's work wife on the podcast before, Elodie Pullen. You all know who she is, but Chloe has such an interesting and vulnerable story herself around her own fertility journey. Chloe is an incredible businesswoman. She has started her own multiple businesses in the past. She's also the wife of Fisher, who is a very successful DJ. You may know him, Grammy nominated, and she's one half of the incredible podcast, Darling Shine. Chloe Fisher, welcome to Life Uncut. Thank you so much for having me, girls. I feel really terrible because

we've been trying to line this up for so long. And just because of wherever I'm here, they're everywhere in the world, it's like actually impossible. So we made it. Yay. I was about to say the reason Laura's like, we've been looking forward to this for a long time is because we almost get there and it's lined up and then you're like, oh, I'm sorry. I partied in Ibiza too long. Welcome, welcome to the life of trying to record a podcast when you live in Ibiza. How do you manage to actually coordinate and get everything done? Like, I mean, alongside having what seems like the most hectic amazing fun-filled life at the moment but how do you actually organize to do the podcast because we find it hard enough and we live in the same

fucking two minutes away around the corner oh no our listeners probably are sick of us because it actually is quite impossible because paul plays his residency in ibiza on a wednesday night which when i say wednesday night i mean 3 a.m thursday morning till 7 a.m thursday morning oh my god And Thursdays are always a write-off because by the time we get home, we need to sleep. And then Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, we're generally on the road. So, again, that's, like, quite difficult because when I say on the road, it's, like, every day it's a different country.

So we're, like, just to set up and try and find a minute. And then we've really only got, like, Tuesday or Wednesdays to do it. And then with the time difference, it's, like, two-hour window of, like, my morning and then Elodie's evening. But then Elle's got mini. so and she's a single mom so it's literally our producer is like whenever we got a minute and whenever she catches us she tries to always get more and more and more and we're like no no no at capacity today at capacity checking out it's just yeah it's really difficult it sounds like

our producer keisha every thursday night fish is performing three am to seven like you just said do you go and party every single time he performs because i feel like for me but i'm an old soul I'd be cooked I'd be so exhausted I'm tired just listening to that yeah no no I can't the hardest part is and like I absolutely love it because we have lots of family and friends that come over and travel and we've pretty much had visitors the season starts at the beginning of June so we've we've had visitors since June till actually Elodie left only two days ago so there's always new people coming and going and they want to like experience it and they want to do everything on the island and I forget and they forget that I still work like I I have the podcast I run Paul's merchandise

I run our podcast merchandise I don't book our travel but I liaise with our agents and I do all that sort of scheduling so you do forget that you do have to like have a normal life in amongst all that but getting back to the the shows sorry people expect you to be able to like go there and go hard every single night because you've got new fresh people coming in but no I can't I I have gone to every show up until today we've still got friends here today that are fresh and I'm like seriously considering tapping out for the night but it's just you feel guilty because like people are only here for a week and they want to you know experience it but when I say go hard like I'm not like a lot of them I'm not drinking and I'm like I you can't like you you literally

but you'll have some nights like right now for example it's 8am which is super early for Ibiza everything's off no cafes are even open at this time like you don't this is like unheard of but I'll have to have like I'll sleep this afternoon sometimes I'll like go to have a really early dinner go to bed at eight sleep through till like two wake up at two get dressed sometimes I go to bed dressed and makeup and hair and everything and just roll I used to do that for school when I was like six years old school uniform to bed because I've wanted to go to Ibiza for so long like I've traveled the world but I can't I haven't got there yet because I'm so scared it's so good no but then I can't keep up because I'm like I don't I feel like I need to go for just three days because I

don't have it in me like I I think that's pretty much all you need that's all you need that's all you need babe three days all right next year Chloe I'm there yeah come it's so beautiful your life across Instagram looks totally amazing I think for so many people who kind of are able to look in and come along for the journey of what your life is it seems so magical in so many ways but obviously the thing that we're talking about today and one of the things that you have been so vulnerable about across your own podcast is your fertility and this conversation around how it can sometimes seem like you have everything that you want in life but sometimes you can't have that one thing that you really desire. Before we get into unpacking all of that we do ask our guests the

same question and that is do you have an accidentally unfiltered story? Yes it's taken me a while to actually think about one because I was just saying to the girls I feel like I'm a little bit boring I'm always so anxious because I always get injured as well I don't know why I was just talking about this with Elodie the other day for someone who's so careful I'm always the one that hurts myself but I was talking to Paul last night he my husband Fisher's name's Paul if you guys are wondering who Paul is because no one knows him as Paul and I was like what is something I've done that's really embarrassing and he we kind of thought of a few things and stuff that were terrible and he's like what about at our wedding where so I don't know if you've seen it and I'll

have to send you the video but basically you know when you make your grand entrance you have the wedding ceremony you go away and like you make your entrance to the reception yeah well I wasn't wearing shoes for some reason at that point I don't know why we're in Bali so maybe I was just like no shoes I think I actually hurt my toe the day before so that's why I didn't wear shoes after the ceremony anyway so we were walking into the party you know everyone's standing up everyone's cheering cameras are out and Paul's like what are we gonna do like you know everyone does their weird dance move and shit at the end and my maid of honor in front of me the best man lifted her up when they got to the end and like it was like in a barley hut and her head went

straight up into the grass like roof and I was like whatever you do do not do what they just did and so like yep sweet let's be normal people so we skip on in and he spins me around but because I had no shoes on my foot was on my dress and as he spun me he literally flicked me so hard that I slipped and hit the deck completely face down onto the floorboards in front of everybody and there's this video there's photos there's everything and I remember being on the ground hands and knees face on my cheek on the floorboards are going oh my goodness did that actually just happened everyone is pissing themselves laughing I'll have to send you the photo sequence and the video it's so embarrassing you have to send us this because when Elodie was

on the podcast she told us about the time that she stuck her head through the hole basically she was at a casino and you know when they pay money out to you and they have like a tiny little hole that they put the money through she stuck her head into that and got it stuck and then she sent us the photo because when she was telling us on the pod I was like surely this isn't real or like it's going to be a really vanilla version of what it was and she was like I have a photo she's got like full dark 90s eye makeup on and her head is dark oh my goodness this is something I'm going to share side by side I need you flat on your face and I need Elodie's head stuck in a cashier's register I cannot believe she did that well I actually can believe she did that but I've never heard

that before that's amazing it doesn't surprise me I'm gonna send it to you because it's fucking wild surprise me well tell us let's uh before we get into the fertility chat tell us how you and paul aka fisher met like we love a love story here we actually met in bali we met when i was 20 i'd been in like a relationship my whole life through high school it was like my first trip a girl's trip went to bali and i don't know if you're familiar with the place called alley cats but there's a place in bali and it's in poppies lane and it's like the aussie bar where everyone goes to you drink these things called double doubles like aussies that are listening again like yeah yeah i know the double doubles like the double shot of vodka one shot of red bull you're pouring

that extra joss energy shit in them like gross like gross and i remember he was sitting across the bar all across yeah the bar from me and i knew a few of his friends from marubra and i was like oh i'm gonna kind of go over there and talk to these guys and he still to these days like you picked me up but apparently i basically i looked across the the room and i gave him like the head nod like that oh no and then there's these photos of me on his lap and I guess yeah the rest is history I tried to run away from him for a week in Bali because I was like god this guy like is intense won't leave me alone he would not leave me alone but he'd just appear everywhere I was and then yeah he was pretty persistent and yeah we've pretty much been together literally ever since

then I was yeah 20 and he was 27 so how many years has that been now then well it was yeah 12 12 years ago 13 years ago yeah married for in feb when was it that you started thinking i mean when you've been with your partner for so long when was it that you started thinking like this is the guy that i want to have kids with or even started thinking like i want to be a mom yeah well we we were together for like maybe three or four years and we kind of like had like a little break maybe for a month or two and personally i've always wanted to be a mom if you ask any of my friends from school like any person that knows me I was always the one that was going to have kids first I've always wanted that I've always said like if I was to fall pregnant at any point

in my life whether that be in high school or throughout my whole I would have had this baby like that's just me I was always born to be a mother with Paul and I it was never like a really strong thing for him but I think that you know as the years went on and as he saw how maternal I was you know things sort of change and especially now with Minnie where Elodie's daughter's godparents and like Paul and Minnie are literally best friends like the best friends you can ever imagine it's beautiful so they have like this crazy connection and you know especially since Minnie he's just like he's basically a dad to her because obviously sadly Elodie did lose her partner three years ago but yeah we we started sort of trying pretty much at our wedding well

we were always like never not trying, but I, I think I went off the pill like five years before my wedding and, you know, it kind of, we were never really careful, but I actually didn't know that it was like, I thought it was quite hard to fall pregnant. I didn't really think that it was like easy, which it's sort of is meant to be easy still. So it wasn't until we actually fell pregnant for the very first time, which kind of like for us was like amazing. It was actually at our wedding believe it or not like the night of our wedding or the day after our wedding I mean I don't know who has this on the night of their wedding they're pretty fucking drunk not many people too tired not many people but the yeah so we actually fell pregnant probably within like

days of our wedding and that was literally when COVID hit so that was probably around the beginning of March 2020 and thought nothing of it came home from the wedding we went straight to America because he was working there but that was when literally the shit was getting locked down and we're like do we go do we not go do we not go and anyway before I left one of my girlfriends like you should go see this naturopath this acupuncturist she's amazing just like if you're trying for a baby now like just sort of like see how your body's working when I saw this woman I went and got a full blood count went to America got to America working one day and I opened my laptop junk who reads junk mail don't know me crazy opened my junk mail one day and i had an email

from my doctor saying hi um your blood results have come back and your hcg has risen and you're pregnant and i was like what like it was crazy and so that was like my first ever initial moment of falling pregnant and it was like that was easy you know and everything went down within like i think I was in America for 48 hours and Australia announced they were closing their borders. So we got in the like, basically turned around and went straight home. First planning that was home quarantine. Obviously I've just found out that I'm pregnant, had all these crazy symptoms. Like my boobs are massive, like eating blocks of chocolate, like just loving everything. And then we moved to the Gold Coast from Sydney. And shortly after that, I think it was around

maybe seven weeks. We had our first miscarriage. Oh no, maybe like it was actually nine weeks. sorry, had our first miscarriage, which then was like, okay, you know, again, miscarriages happen, but you'd never believe that it would happen to you. I mean, I didn't know until now how common they are. And a lot of women, most women don't actually talk about it. So yeah, that was kind of the start of our journey. And it wasn't, yeah, we went on for maybe another, I had to have a DNC. It was just, it was already traumatic back then. When you talk about the first time it happens it's like you're so young and you never think it's going to happen to you but you also I have had two miscarriages myself which I felt very much at the start like no one else has

experienced this I was like like where who are all these people where are they all hello it's only when you start talking about it that people turn around and say I'm part of that club that no one wants to be a part of what was that process like were you thinking okay well you know this pregnancy wasn't meant to be we just go on to the next one like what was your mind frame like at that point in time well like you said yeah no one really talks about it so the initial kind of like days after we just you know spent time together and just tried to process what was going on because at this point I hadn't really known any friends that had miscarriages either and we obviously have like a bit of a social following and a social presence on Instagram so I just one day thought

you know what I'm going to actually put this out there and just see what happens because I'm hurting so bad and I always want to try and use my platforms for a good cause and to try and make others you know in this whole instance I obviously didn't think I'd be doing this four years later but I was like if I can help one person from this saying like you know I'm 29 I'm going through this as well if you're going through it too you're not alone sort of thing and the outpour that I had from people was unbelievable I've never felt so like loved and you know I felt so supported and I felt there's other people and so many people that didn't even just respond on the message so many people private messaged me that were like

I've gone through this as well I was like wow you know and that was sort of the moment that I really realized that this happens to so many women and so many women do not talk about it still to this day no one really talks about it barely you know when you say you don't realize you didn't realize how many people had miscarriages I don't think I really did either until we even started the podcast and we started like you know Laura has spoken so candidly and openly about it but then I have had so many of my friends go through it and it feels like now that more people are talking about it it's encouraging more people to come out in the open and obviously that's a way for them to be healing you've had this first miscarriage

did you think something was wrong with you yet was there anything and when I say wrong I mean was there any part of you that thought that this was going to lead to years of fertility problems or did you think oh okay everyone goes through this next time we'll be fine yeah of course no well i mean i was like i said i was only 29 so i knew that and my mom had had a miscarriage between i'm one of four i'm the eldest of four so between myself and my brother my mom had had a miscarriage and i knew that she had so i was like you know like that's fine you know you hear oh you're so fertile after you've had a miscarriage like especially after a dnc like you know and then you're counting down the days like okay when am I going to get my period next we're going to try

straight away it's going to be easy like you know new soil it's all good I never in a million years still to this day I'm still so confused by it would expect that I thought that I'd still be sitting here but initially I didn't think that there was anything wrong I just thought that because it was such a common thing that's just my cards with the way that they were dealt and I was going to move on and we were going to try again next month and we're going to fall pregnant but that was the that's actually the first time I've ever fallen pregnant and only time I've ever fallen pregnant naturally now that I think about it what was your process then that led you up to make the decision to go and have IVF like between having that miscarriage and then deciding okay

this is not working for us naturally what was that time frame and kind of what happened there in your relationship well we still I think we went on quite a few months just thinking like we'll just keep trying you know like at that point then i started tracking my cycle but not like crazy like i wasn't doing like lh sticks and all that sort of shit like i was just like tracking my period trying to feel for like how high up your cervix is at what time of the month and your cervical mucus and all that sort of stuff so but still to this day i get i don't know it's bullshit to me i can't notice any difference to be honest or like some of this shit feels like exactly the same as if you were to get your period as to when you're like it's just like

makes no sense and also you're like hang on is this more discharge than yesterday or than like three days ago or like i know but i do also think for some people like there's a sense of control and needing to have some control and feeling like they're doing the right things in order to work towards it you know yeah yeah you start taking your elevate and all that sort of like you know the first thing that you see when you're trying to start for trying to have a baby that's i don't know i don't know why elevate always is the first thing that comes to mind it's like there's one that you see everywhere it's because we got marketed so hard not sponsored I don't even take I never did take a little bit but you know that sort of thing when you're like

newly starting but we kind of just kept on going and thinking like you know it's going to happen it's going to happen and when you go to a GP they don't actually really allow you to see an IVF specialist or they don't really declare you as like struggling to conceive until you've been trying actively and when I say actively is like tracking your cycle for 12 months which to this day now I think is actually crazy because like if you were fertile and there's genuinely nothing wrong you should fall pregnant within a year like if you're tracking it and all that like you should be able to pinpoint that ovulation date and if you're ovulating properly and the sperm's fine the eggs are fine like that's just the way that it's meant to work you know that's just me saying

it from and I'm not a doctor but like I know how shit works now and that's just in my mind a year is quite a long time anyway so Elodie and her partner Chumpy we were both actually trying and had been trying for quite some time together and Elodie was actually a few steps ahead of me that she actually went to the GP and her and Chumpy were also struggling and the GP was like maybe you should do this test called an AMH and it's basically measures how many like your ovarian egg reserve. So that, and it doesn't tell you how many exactly, cause you just don't know how many you have, you know, you're born with the amount of eggs that you have in your lifetime. Like the quality? Pretty good indication. No, like a number. Yeah. It's not the quality. It's just

the quantity. So, you know, if you've got a quite a low ovarian reserve, it might mean that you don't ovulate every month. So if you're not ovulating, you're not born pregnant because you've got no eggs that are coming out. So Elodie initially got hers. And I remember she was over at my house for dinner one night and she got the call from the doctor saying that she had a really low egg count and I was like she was really upset and we're like that doesn't matter like that what does that even mean sort of thing they sort of started to like look into the next steps and then tragically Chumpy passed away like a month later and that like was just obviously huge and it shook everyone in like every it just shook it I saw and it was so traumatic and it still is so traumatic

and it's the saddest thing in the world and I to watch my best friend go through what she's going through is just it breaks my heart every single day and so she then that I literally am like gonna cry talking about it it's so heavy we also I mean we follow Elodie so closely and know it was also just the anniversary of Chumpy's passing so yeah like last day two days ago three days ago she's an incredible incredible woman yeah and what you guys share is so beautiful yeah she's the best and then we managed to get his sperm and so she sort of started going down the IVF route herself and at that point in time I was like maybe I should go get this test as well and see if I also have a lower count and mine actually came back even lower than Elodie's and I think it was

like 2.4 or something between two and three and that's like for someone who's in their like 40s or something like that and I was 29 and what is considered normal at that age that's a good question I don't actually know it probably like in your in the 20s or like there's like a graph and all that sort of shit i don't know if you had your we'll check but i think it's like up to like 20 no up to 30 yeah i know mine was i got mine back last week and it was 15 which is definitely not brilliant yeah but then great compared to like someone that got results like yourself so it's like i feel like i'm somewhere that's not amazing but it's i'm happy yeah so when i got that test that's when i was like shit this is not this isn't good but then i sort of started thinking

look it's not about the quantity it's about the quality because if you you know I might have a low quantity but if I've got a good quality that's all you need you only need one egg you know only need one yeah so we then when started seeing a fertility specialist on the Gold Coast called Dr. Keong and I love him he's the best and he was also kind of it's all about the quality the quality the quality and so we went in and did our first round of IVF and I think I got like 12 eggs out and they always dwindled down to probably like seven because I guess they once they take them out of you then they have to see which are mature and which are immature and then they have to get rid of the immature ones they keep the mature ones that's when your partner goes and

gives his sperm sample semen sample which is just like the funniest thing ever they're just so awkward they go and bat off in a room and hand it over in a cup oh it yeah I think the last time paul did it and i don't know he probably hate me that i'm saying this but the last time he did it the chick was like oh my god fisher like a massive fan and he was just like oh like there is a time and a place and that now is not it and here's my semen have a good day she goes and tells all the friends like fisher took 25 minutes to come that's what he said he's just like it was before he went in he's like now this is fucking pressure they individually select the sperm put it in with the eggs and then it's like a five-day process where you kind of have to wait and hope that they take

which is like essentially when you ovulate you release the egg it goes down your fallopian tube that's like a five-day process and when you're having sex and they ejaculate and it goes through your cervix up into your uterus the sperm then goes down the fallopian tube and meets the egg they kind of meet while during that five-day process and then once it kind of pops out into your uterus that's when they should have like kind of connected and then they will implant into your uterus wall there you go quite the journey the little egg in the sperm isn't it there's a lot like slippery slides and so uh your your quality then when they tested your quality because obviously your quantity was low was your quality okay the quality wasn't so bad because sometimes

you know you'll get I mean still when I'm only getting 12 out a lot of women are getting like 30 40 like that many eggs like it's that for me I'm like wow that's incredible yeah my quality wasn't so bad I was still I think I got maybe like two or three I think I might yeah I think I've had the max I've had is like three till the end till day five which for me is huge for that for me is massive but for like most women it's probably not that great but I was happy with that so you at this point you then went through the IVF journey and you got pregnant with your very first round is that correct god I've honestly I've done so many now that I actually can't really remember exactly what ones I think I did get pregnant I did I did get pregnant with the very

first round because you do go into IVF thinking I'm 29 I'm fine I need to do IVF there's nothing wrong let's go and I miscarried that one I think around nine or ten weeks that's sort of when it started like hitting home going this is sure you're like surely not surely not it's not going happen like and then it sort of does so I was down in Sydney at the time and I started bleeding really bad and it was it was I went into the hospital and I got like ultrasounds down there and it still had a heartbeat so they were like it's okay you know but I had like a really big thing called a subchronic hematoma and it was like a big blood clot in my uterus so it was and I think it was like separating the placenta it was between the placenta and my uterus wall

so there was kind of like a few issues there already and so that was like and when I say bleeding heaps like it was I couldn't even stand up it was you know so much blood and so you know you're thinking obviously this is not right it's not good but then when you see a little heartbeat you're like oh please just like hold on hold on and reassurance a few days went on and it just it ended up yeah I ended up having to have a DNC because they sort of like to try and make sure everything's like cleaned out and I prefer that as well like I know now a few people that have gone on to have natural miscarriages and I was always had in my mind I wanted to always have that fresh clear out and just sort of start fresh again because the natural miscarriages

my most recent one I had to do that and it was shit like it's just yeah yeah people don't really talk about like the physicality of a miscarriage like people talk about the loss and the sadness and they talk about the longing and all that side of things but I think people don't really describe because it's not a nice thing to talk about but like how fucking horrible it is like the actual physical process of passing a miscarriage and obviously that's dependent on how far along you are and all that but like the physicality of it can be equally as traumatizing as the losing of a child yeah my third one we just kept on going actually and we just it just got harder it got harder and harder and like like exactly what you just said like you know you see people on a surface

level and you see like you know how they're coping in that sense and it's hard to even to talk to people and like I don't even know I don't even have any advice and not to talk to me because it's really such a personal thing you kind of go home and you're in tears but what your body's going through like they give you medication to like bring on like essentially bring on a miscarriage and then you start cramping which they tell you is like contractions and you're hunched over in pain and there's just nothing that anyone can do to help you but your body has to you know as much as like I feel like my body in like the fertility realm has completely failed me like I just feel like I completely broken still to this day I do I do feel like I am but it's crazy what

the human body actually does like it's insane and how you can sort of bounce back quite fast at this point had you done all the testing possible had you done things like you know PCOS and fishes has its sperm tested and any other maybe predisposed conditions you both had I'm assuming it by this point like you'd done it all and did you fall into the category of like unknown infertility yeah yeah so once you have your second miscarriage you then kind of get put into the group of the recurrent miscarriage club and that's at the point where I'm you know my doctor's still sort of saying like there doesn't have to be anything wrong like everything was fine it's just unlucky that in itself kills me I hate that being told that you're unlucky but I was always

in my mind like there has to be something it can't be 29 years old and continuously having miscarriage after miscarriage and so I was really pushing to have all the tests I possibly could so we did all the blood tests you know there's sort of a process and they kind of like don't want you do everything at the start because they don't really want to put you through it because it is a lot you know and so everything came back normal there's a gene called this mthfr gene and i am positive to that but it's not really anything it's just about folate and the way that your body converts the folic acid and all that sort of stuff but you can take a supplement for it but i still believe that that's literally got nothing to do with it like yeah i did come back positive but

that's not a concerning sort of thing but like all the other genetic things all the genetic screenings that was sort of later down the track that we went and did all that and our match and a lot of people were saying there's this thing it's where you're basically your body attacks the embryo as like a foreign matter or natural killer cells and so essentially you have to do these blood tests at a certain time of the month and they also take paul's blood which is so funny because he hates needles and at one point i was getting like i went to the pathology one day and i think i had like 15 vials of blood taken out and they wanted him to do this one he's like i just don't think I can do it I'm like you're like fucking harder yeah yeah I'll tell you what you

can do I'll say you can sit in that chair and you I'll come and hold your hand but like you can shut the fuck up you come in this cup here you go yeah exactly it's so traumatic but yeah so natural killer cells like not many doctors they sort of seem to think that it's not a thing like not many doctors practice it but my doctor thankfully would allow me to do it and we were really hoping that that was actually the problem because essentially what it means is like when you're putting the embryos in even if they're tested and they're all normal and they're really good embryos my body thinks it's a foreign matter and it attacks it but it came back normal so that was that it's almost like on one hand there's a reassurance in being told that everything's

normal but on the other hand it's like you want to know what's wrong it's like tell me that there's something wrong and then I can either know if I can fix it or I can't but you're telling me everything's normal so all that's then doing for me is making me think well then the potential of having another miscarriage is just normal because something doesn't work and something's not happening for me yeah it kills me the whole thing like I like I said I'm sitting here four years later and I still don't really know what's wrong one of my best friends she was at the same she was like 29 both really healthy and she also couldn't fall pregnant she ended up having this unknown infertility and I remember when she went and got the final test like that as well to say that

everything was normal they told her it was normal and she was beside herself upset because she's like I want something to be wrong to justify why I'm going through this because she's like now it almost made it worse because she's like how do I get around this then if something's known to be the problem you can figure out another way right there are other routes you can go down but when you're told that you're perfect and keep going you know it's always worse and I feel healthy like I've always I've like grown up never had anything wrong my periods were all completely normal I was on the pill but I like I said I went off that quite early there was no red flags for me and still like I recently had a surgery because I I was like when I went to the states I was like

I need to get a second opinion on this because I love my doctor you know but I had done seven rounds of IVF up until the end of last year and it's weighing on me now and I said I was just I've got to go and get a second opinion so I went and saw this woman and she was like I think that you've got a thing called Asherman syndrome which is essentially means that your uterus lining has got a lot of scar tissue and that can be caused by miscarriages and dncs so basically when they go in and they scrape you out the way that my body is healed to protect itself it's just growing scarring and scarring and scarring because I've had so many it's just like layers on top of layers so she's like you know you're falling pregnant and yes you it might attach to like one little

bit of your uterus lining that's like good but it grows and it gets to a certain point like nine ten weeks but it can't actually grow any further because no blood's getting down there because it's actually scarring and I was like oh my god light bulb moment there it is how has no one seen no one picked up on this still to this day it's like weird because my doctor in Australia is like that wasn't the problem she's actually saying this because I have gone in multiple times and there is no scarring to be concerned on so anyway I was like look I'm gonna have to not believe you for a second go there I went to San Francisco she actually was like you have to go and see this doctor in San Francisco he's the best doctor to do this and I was like I don't

really want is there surely there's no one in LA that can do this she's like no you've got to see this doctor and got the quote 50 000 us dollars are you kidding me yeah not kidding I actually haven't even said that on like told anyone that on my podcast but because I'm just like mortified by it but I was like you know what I've worked my ass off my whole life I've like Paul works so hard fortunately we are in a position to actually to do this and this might be my only chance to have a baby and I'm actually going to put all my eggs in this basket and I'm going to do this that's just what I'm going to do so we did it and they're like we'll put an IUD in you because while it's healing hold it open to like it releases like something to like help heal your uterus lining

they also put a balloon in me inside my uterus to hold it open and I had to have that for a week post-surgery and the doctor was like it's probably one of the worst cases I've seen we've cut it all out it's all good go back in six weeks time get the IUD out I had the balloon out after a week the fact that the prices for these surgeries can be so high that they are elective surgeries that they are specialist surgeries and aren't accessible to women is just so hugely flawed and so monumentally unfair it's so heartbreaking yeah it breaks my heart there's a part of it that's fortunate that you can afford to do that yeah there are so many women who can't as well you know and where does that leave everybody? I think it's completely preying on a woman's desperation. Like when you

are literally at your lowest and your most desperate. And when I say, just like, I want to go back on the whole money situation, you know, when you're struggling so hard to conceive it, like exactly what you said, women are so vulnerable and I would do anything to have a baby. Yes. I am so grateful that I, and I say this all the time and I don't want this to come across like, we're just like these people that would just throw money around but like i would give my life i would give anything to have a baby like i don't even fucking want to be here without a baby like it's that's how far like like i would do anything so that when i got told that i was like i have to do this i'm gonna put my life on hold i'm gonna do we're gonna do this and it does it breaks my heart

so much so there's so many women out there and families and men that like can't go through this because of financial reasons and you know at the end of all this and like I'm not at the end of my journey nowhere near but I do want to like start a charity or a foundation for women and not necessarily women like men as well you know like there are same-sex people that go through IVF and they can't afford it but like the whole system is just it kills me it kills me how much it is and it kills me that people can't afford it and I don't know what I would do if I look I haven't I still haven't got a baby but like I just you're desperate at this point but I anyway sorry long story short I went back and saw this woman said is there anything else I spoke to the surgeon who

did it he said get this IUD out for a start because like what the fuck is the point of having an IUD the whole point is to fall pregnant you know like why have I got a method of contraception inside me and she's like I can do this one other thing it's called a saline flush I'll do an ultrasound and I'll flush saline to see if like the lining's like fine and I'm like why could you not have just fucking done this in the first place like why and so I went in there with Paul laying on the chair opens you up like when you're having a pap smear opens you up then your cervix is obviously closed like your cervix is at the top of your vagina but it's obviously closed and they like she shoved this like thing through there put a balloon in opens me up and start

squirting this saline she's like oh yeah no there's actually still some scarring in there and I was like are you joking like oh my god but i was actually going in to see her for the news that it was all good and that i could start ivf next month like i thought i was meant to be pregnant right now but when she said that i was like i started breaking inside this has all just happened like march this year much april this year and so she goes i can break it i'm gonna break let me see if i can squirt this in you to try and break the scarring so we don't have to do this surgery and i'm like do it so she starts doing it and the pain excruciating pain that it was causing she tried to do it three times and i was crying paul was crying she's like do you want to leave

the room paul and i'm like he's crying because i'm fucking shaking and when i sat up there's like i thought it was saline everywhere there's fucking blood everywhere and she's like i think that you either need to have the surgery again or you need to go down the route of surrogacy so chloe i i used to do those procedures that's something in australia that we do as radiographers i was a radiographer a long time we flush the tubes right i don't understand how you got to that point and that hadn't been done yet like that's something that we would do quite early on in somebody's journey but also i've never seen someone experience the pain like you just said you'd experience like i had never that's not a normal reaction so i don't know

who this woman was or what she was doing yeah it blows my mind but I'm so sorry you had to go through that that's insane that people are being treated like that yeah I'm officially traumatized like I've got full-on like PTSD from it all now oh Chloe I want to take you back a little bit because I know that we've kind of jumped ahead to where you're at at the moment in your fertility journey but we spoke about the second miscarriage that you had and then I know that you were pregnant again which is your third pregnancy how do you when you get pregnant again for the third time and in this instance you were having twins how do you be positive how do you be excited like does that still something is that still something that you feel when you have an early stage of

pregnancy or are you just kind of like almost willing yourself to not be excited just in case yeah you don't you're not excited at all you do the test like you obviously I kind of like feel the symptoms like early on when I'm doing IVF and I can kind of tell if it's worked or not and then you pee on the stick and you're like you're scared like you don't want to look at it obviously but then I always would like pee on the stick before I would tell anyone just so I can like pre-experience the moment just in case it's like not good or so yeah my third one yeah I fell pregnant and it was twins and I only put one embryo in so it split so um it was like a miracle and I was like oh my god this is just the best ever but you know you're kind of at the point where you're just trying to

protect yourself and you know I would Paul and I would obviously know and he would just be like it's so weird because like you want to be so excited but you're also just like don't get too excited but it's like why should we not get too excited because if I was just like any other person they don't know this feeling of loss so they're just like oh my god we're pregnant let's tell you know let's tell people but for us between the two of us we're like let's just try not to tell anyone until you kind of like get more reassurance but I just feel like every single day you're just sitting waiting for something to every time you go to the toilet and you wipe you're like waiting for there to be blood or you know and I then did experience again another

big bleed and that was when we lost one of we didn't know we're having twins at that point but when I went and had an ultrasound they're like oh there's actually two sacks here and there's one with the heartbeat but there's also one that doesn't have a heartbeat and so my body passed that one but I was still obviously just holding on to the hope that well I actually didn't pass the other the first one it was just sort of like bleeding heaps and I think it like maybe a week went on and I was still bleeding a lot and we kind of had you keep on monitoring it and you keep on tracking it and like making sure my levels were still going up and then just one day they just stopped going up and yeah it was I was really fortunate to have Paul with me at that point

because a lot of the time he's always traveling and on the road. So I'm doing this like quite alone. My family is so supportive and my mom's amazing. She'd always be by my side and I always had Elodie and, but yeah, when we went in and had this ultrasound, it was just like, and again, I mean, you would know with the ultrasound clinics, it's like, this is like a clinic for women. And I'm sitting in there knowing that I'm about, I'm experiencing like my third miscarriage and then there's like women next to you that are like fully pregnant and stuff and it's it's so hard because you're just trying to like like smile with them and be happy for them but then you're like you're just dreading going in there you know yeah you also think it's so unfair

yeah like you're like yeah you know it's the last thing you want to be surrounded by somebody else's happiness when the one thing that you want you don't have yeah but you also want to be happy You also want to be happy for them too. That was my hardest one I think today for sure because we went into the ultrasound room and we like had the ultrasound to like see if this one was still alive and we were like looking at the screen and they were both like together and like hugging and that was when I looked at Paul and Paul was like then crying

and then there was no heartbeat and they're like, but they're together and they were just, that was like the moment that I was like, oh my God, there really is twins in there. They were though, when I found out later, when they do all the testing, but like all of them they take when they do the DNCs, they test them and they're all normal. Like they expect if you're miscarrying them to be chromosome issues or something and they're always normal.

And these twins were actually funny. I actually laugh about this now because I'm like Paul's a Scorpio and they were actually going to be Scorpios and they were twin boys. so i was like maybe i like dodged a bullet there you're like oh my god three pulls maybe you could do it but no you know like it just you know i'm trying to find any fucking thing funny out of like these situations because they're just so grim you almost need to don't you because if you if you can't i mean also something that i think is really underspoken about is the the toll and effect it has on our partners as well yeah because it's such a personal journey that as women we go through

it's happening in our bodies it's happening to us that sometimes it feels like your partners are very separate to it even though they're going through their own feelings of grief their own feelings of inadequacy in terms of how they can support you at this point in time like what was that doing to your relationship or how was Fisher responding to this and I ask this because I remember him sharing a story on Instagram and I don't know which pregnancy loss it was but he cancelled a gig yeah that was this one yeah I thought it might have been I think there was something really special in that because you very rarely see men talk about miscarriage yeah it's it's definitely like a lot of people write to us and say you know look after each other look after

each other because like this can make or break people and for us we're very fortunate that it's definitely made us stronger yeah I mean I speak for probably most women who are going through this as well like you feel so much guilt because you know you both want babies and you feel like you're letting the team down a little bit and especially when you can't really get answers and you're not really you think you're moving forward but then you keep on having loss after loss you just you feel so guilty for them and you're ripping that experience of fatherhood from them as well but for us and I think and I feel I do feel so bad for Paul because you know I do say a lot you don't understand like how I am deep down like and I feel so selfish saying that

now looking at in hindsight but you know he's away a lot obviously because of his work and you know he's trying to support our family our future family and and it must be so hard for him to watch me going through this and he must feel he feels so helpless in the sense that there's just not really much he can do about it and you know I sit back at home like all the times I've been pregnant and don't go to a lot of the trips but he must be also on the other side of the world thinking like what happens if something goes wrong and I can't be there for her and I try my best to support him as much he doesn't like he's a man's man and you know he doesn't really like to show that much emotion but we definitely have you know our moments where we just sit there and hugging

each other and it's just like you just say like what you know so many whys and we are the best that we've ever been we're so supportive of each other and we're so happy and we're so in love and you know it's just like the little missing piece of the puzzle that we can't quite find to fit in yet but yeah it definitely has made us stronger for sure I think the whole experience what is it like for you I mean you've created the most incredible community with Darling Shine and you speak so vulnerably and openly about everything that you've experienced and what infertility looks like what is it like having to rehash that all the time and I say this because I can only imagine from our experiences we often get people who come up to us on the street who

say oh you spoke about that thing and that really helped me and it's amazing it's a privilege to help people and to feel like you've been able to offer a bit of light to someone who's in their darkest time but I also know it can come as a huge burden because you might be at a period where you feel okay you feel like you're on top of your feelings about this you know it's always there in the back of your mind but then people will come up and say I want to talk to you about my fertility loss or the thing that happened to me or my miscarriage and I know personally for me when we did a big episode around miscarriage when I experienced my first one and I was experiencing my second one and I had people still being like thank you so much for talking about your first

one but I was in the middle of it again and that was super triggering for me and I wonder what it's like knowing that like this must happen to you all the time you know what actually now that you say that I did listen to your very first miscarriage episode and that was when I was when was do you remember what year that was um probably like four or five years ago now so my oldest daughter she's four and it happened just before if five years ago it happened just before she was she was conceived yeah I think it must have just come out just before I had my first miscarriage I actually still remember literally the exact place that I listened to it because that was like one of the most pivotal moments in my journey listening to it like I didn't know and I'm like wow it was so

informative I also felt at the time this is going back five years ago and there's been so much more conversation about it now like so much and it's incredible to see nothing that was it that was the only thing that there was that I could find yeah and I just you know and I think now like I'm so lucky I have two beautiful girls but I felt like I was being punished my experience was I feel like I was being punished for having an abortion in my early years and I just it was horrible so you know the more that I hear people speak about it and talk about their experiences and you know being part of this club that no one wants to be a part of but I just I really I really like hold so much admiration for the women who are kind of forging forward and being that light

for other people but I understand the burden that that carries as well. Well I don't think we realized at the time either that you really were we were just having a conversation as friends that what you know Laura wanted to talk about and help other people but I think you really did pave the way for people to be more open like there really wasn't a lot of people talking about it I think that's definitely a reason why I shared at the very beginning that initial post that I shared but going back to your question it definitely is difficult because like I'm out in the public a lot especially with Paul's shows and it's like the weirdest environment to have these conversations like come and talk to me on the side of the street but like in the nightclub I'm like I can't hear

you for a start I know what you're saying but like you're trying to tell me about your most recent miscarriage and I'm like it's so I feel I don't want to be insensitive in saying that there's like a time and a place to talk about that stuff but it's definitely not in a nightclub because with our podcast and exactly what you just said before like I feel like the whole purpose of us doing our podcast is to sort of like shine light on a topic that doesn't get any light you know and we want to make people feel less alone and I want people to talk about it but yeah it definitely is quite heavy to be approached constantly about talking about miscarriage and recurrent loss and you know what and I think what I get a lot now and you know four years in it's like recommendations

and like people's advice and I still to this day get and I like know nothing against these people because obviously everyone's only trying to help but like you have to see this doctor this doctor's amazing. Or like, this is, if you haven't tried this, you've got to try. I'm like, I do not want any more advice. I'm on the road that I'm on right now. And I've listened to it all. I've like investigated majority of it, but I just need to do me right now. And like the advice doesn't really help. It's like someone being like, have you done acupuncture? You're like, yeah, it's the number one. It's also so important to like, and with this, I think this is such a valuable tool for people to take and kind of like make sure that they check themselves in their own lives, especially

if someone in their life has had a miscarriage because often when something happens but that is traumatic or that grief is kind of the outcome of it people want to fix like we want to fix something and in order to fix we like to try and give advice but like you can assume that if someone's in this situation they've read it all they know it all they've already done it all and advice sometimes is absolutely not what they need I think on the other end of that and I did want to ask you your honest opinion to put it out there to people that might have friends going through it or in your situation you know how friends and family should be dealing with it what do you say to those people that have friends or family going through it like what's your best advice yeah I think for

me it's like obviously be there for them my favorite thing and I'm kind of contradicting myself here maybe it's because I'm so far in but at the very beginning when I was going through all this probably two years ago my group of friends there's actually an amazing article that I'm going to send you guys to share with your audience. And it's spoken from a woman going through IVF and it's like to the friend. But my favorite thing that my girlfriends, I sent this article to them and a few of them would come back every now and then. And they'd be like, hey, I listened to the podcast. I heard you saying that you've got, for example, this MTHFR gene. I've done a bit of research and like, did you know this? Like, did you know this about this? Like, it's like so weird

to come, like, it's such a weird thing that made me happy. But when I did have those odd friends that would come to me and be like oh I've just done this bit of research about IVF and like did you know this and that I'm like oh my god you're actually spending time out of your day to research what I'm going through so you can better help me like I'm not asking you to tell me what to do but like just you saying that I've actually educated myself on this so you know you're not alone like I know I know what you're going through not like physically or mentally but like I know the process of what you're doing because yeah it's so lonely well how do you feel about the saying maybe have faith that it happened for a reason like how do you feel about that because I again I know people

are just trying to support someone and help them and I'm sure they think it's a comfort but I'm sure you probably don't feel like it's happened for a reason you know I actually say it a lot myself about myself I don't know how I feel about when people say it to me it sits differently but when I say it to myself I truly do believe that potentially the reason why we haven't had our baby is because we needed to be there for Elodie and Minnie and be there to support her through these first few years of Minnie's life without having Chumpy around and we were really able to step into those shoes of like god mom and godfather wholeheartedly and without any distractions of our own child so I get peace in knowing that that's the reason why I we haven't got our baby

yet is to sort of help her Chloe just to to kind of understand like the full sort of complexity of what you've been through with recurrent loss have you had four miscarriages or three miscarriages to date I've had four four miscarriages I just had my most recent one at the beginning over this last new year period and what for you now like have you ever had a period where you've decided to take a break or do you just keep on forging ahead with the thing that you want the most yeah well if for our lifestyle is really difficult not so much our lifestyle like I'm pretty good like I'm not a crazy party animal I'm there to support my husband where I can I listen to my body where I need to rest and I don't go on all the trips but it's definitely difficult to keep pushing forward

when we're living all over the world if I was living in Australia permanently I probably would punch on and I would just go back to back to back. Unfortunately, my last round of IVF in Australia in November last year, we didn't get actually any embryos to the end. That was like a whole nother like trauma bomb because you never think that's going to happen. And then it does. And you're like, wow, we just did, I just did two weeks of needles and shit and I got nothing. And got zero eggs. Do you still have any embryos on ice? Yes. I have three embryos in Australia on ice and I have two in the States because we did a round of IVF in the States with this doctor before I did the surgery. So I do, I've got two in America

and I've got three in Australia. So at this point we sort of are having a break because I obviously I'm in Ibiza right now and I'm here until the end of September. Post all of the IVF, I think, and this surgery, my body's actually not quite right at the moment. My periods are completely all over the place. I'm getting like really bad period pains throughout the whole month, like ovulation pains period pains my periods are like 23 days one day of bleeding like the whole process I've gone from like completely normal cycles to completely abnormal cycles so I mean this is only just in the last week that I've sort of just been like no I'm gonna I actually just want to sort of like get my body completely back gearing properly but then like you know we're just weighing up sort

of all options too like it's such a big step to sort of think about adoption or surrogacy because again like I'm 31 and I just literally never would have thought that I would have that I could potentially not carry my own child it's still the thought of that actually freaks me out completely but in saying that I don't want to keep on using my embryos that I have and wasting them essentially if I'm going to keep losing them because I guess the step after that would then be like donor egg and I'm like I cannot even sit with that like that I'm like you know I'm not like being disrespectful for anyone that has to use donor eggs not at all but like while I'm in the position that I still have my own embryos there's so many steps in like unexplained

infertility and recurrent miscarriage that you kind of have to process you know there's like seven stages of grief it's like 100 stages of unexplained infertility and the way that you process it it's all completely different and I'm gonna start seeing like a counselor soon I never thought that I would really I would usually use our podcast as like my therapy room and I loved that because I feel so good and even this podcast right now like I feel so good talking about it like it actually it's like a weight off my chest but I do feel like there's so much that I need to when I'm alone I'm like there's a lot that I need to start processing and there's a lot that I feel like I haven't I don't think I've grieved any of my miscarriages properly I kind of just

would be like just brushed under the rug like let's keep going let's keep going like tunnel vision how much if you could kind of describe it but like how much brain space does this take up for you in terms of like it's just like the entire brain yeah but that's what I mean every day of my life is this something you yeah i think about all the time yeah literally not one since the moment of my first miscarriage in march 2020 not one day i don't think has gone by that it's something isn't on my mind and i feel like you actually when you're on this journey you're your only advocate and if i'm not constantly researching looking up every symptom looking up anything that's happened to me looking up everything to do with unexplained infertility if i'm not doing it who the fuck is

doing it for me if I'm not trying to find answers like my doctor's not sitting at home when I'm not sitting in front of him as his patient trying to work out what's wrong with me that's not really his job but you know unless like you know we're actively seeing each other but like every single day or it's not like you know even though we're you know we're still trying actively but like every day of the month even though I'm trying to like not think about it right now every single the time that I feel like I'm due for my period I'm like oh my god my boobs are a bit sore maybe and it's like you get this little bit of hope every single month I actually look at myself like from an outside person now and like I look at me I can be like I feel so sorry for you like

you poor thing you get hope every month that for some reason you're gonna have this like miracle for pregnant and then it's just like you get your period and you're like oh well hey babe I caught my period again today and he just is like i'm so sorry like literally that's the conversation we have every month so i don't know i'm gonna see out this season we're like investigating other options but like nothing's set in stone we're just trying to like yeah fucking take each day as it comes would you try like surrogacy or something like that because you've still got a few embryos left do you feel like you're almost at the point where you're like like you said before you're like do i risk or explore the five left that i've got you know do i keep risking if i just don't think

my body's gonna hold them yeah no we're definitely exploring it at the moment and like you know for me the end like I'm just trying to get past the idea of like the process and I'm just like the end goal we need to just keep our eyes on the prize and like at the end of the day the end goal is to have a baby in our arms and if it means that I can't carry it then that's my journey then that's my journey it breaks my heart because like I I actually really want to be pregnant and like that's all I've ever I swear to god like put every single thing else aside in my whole entire life like the only one thing that I've ever wanted is to be a mom and carry a baby and do all that but it's just great I like it I don't know it makes me just feel so weird that I might like

die one day not being able to carry my own baby I'm like what the fuck I know and I mean this is in no way trying to be like I think as soon as you do hold your baby no matter how that baby comes into the world it will fill the hole that you feel that you have and that love will have somewhere to go you know yeah totally I know I can envision it I can like I can envision that like initial moment of me putting that baby on my chest like I know it's like it's gonna happen it's just like it's taking its time how do you deal with pregnancy announcements around you like when friends or other people in your circle are saying you know well we're pregnant I'm sure people are almost hesitant to tell you for fear of upsetting you but how does how does that affect

you it definitely hurts like there's like a little part of me that I'm like fuck like I'm so happy for everyone like I'm over the moon for everyone I think and like one piece of advice that I do have is like have empathy in people and it just may not seem like a big deal to you but for the person who's struggling it's actually a really it really is a big deal and all of my friends have got children now and it really does mean a lot to me that most of them like came to me before you know or not even necessarily before everyone else knew but like would tell me one-on-one and be like hey like I hate that I have to tell you this but I'm like I'm pregnant and I hate that it's like I hate that I have to tell you this because it's it should be really exciting moment for you to tell

me this as a friend and I'm so like it makes me so happy to see everyone with children like I it really truly does because like it's such a special thing but I think it's just like really important the way that you tell a friend that is struggling that they don't find out through social media or through Chinese whispers although at this point in time where I'm at now like I do find that some of them have had to like go through Elle and be like I'm pregnant how could like how do I tell Chloe and sometimes Elodie has told me where she's like oh you know so-and-so is pregnant and it kind of gives me a minute to like to try and not choke and process and like you know I'll message them straight away and be like I'm so happy like I you'd be fucking malicious if you

weren't happy for them like you know it's like it's yeah it's just yeah it's a weird thing it's that beautiful reminder as well though that people can have very complex feelings you can be happy for someone and sad for yourself and those things can live in parallel and I think it is so much worse when people are fearful of adding to hurt so therefore they keep it a secret because not only do you then not have the ability to be included in it you're so excluded from it that it makes you feel even more alone when you already feel alone in what you're going through yeah and it also feels like they're almost like feel sorry for you you know like they have it's just it must be so difficult and I personally one day when I am pregnant however that may be to tell someone who's

struggling it would be so hard and I would for sure be in tears because I know how that person feels because I've been there and it's really is difficult it's because you yeah you have so much love for them but you you are also a part of you you're grieving within yourself as well the loss for you you know you still want all your friends and everyone in your life to feel like they can come to you with those moments as well like there's a feeling of almost like embarrassment like I can't believe you felt like you couldn't tell me like of course I'm going to be sad I already feel like you know even Elle and I we speak about it so much on our podcast and I feel at the moment it's like very much we don't really speak about my journey because everyone kind of

is sort of like up to date with it all and it's nice to come back on and rehash a lot of it because does definitely feel like therapy a little bit for me well Chloe we think you are completely amazing and we are so very grateful for you coming and speaking about this and i know that there are so many there's just so many women who struggle and who feel like their bodies are failing them who feel like they can't have that thing that they want you know that one missing piece of the puzzle and just genuinely thank you for sharing your experience so vulnerably yeah we are we're proper rooting for you and we cannot wait to hear the news one day however the journey gets you there when you're holding your little baby yeah thanks so much girls I really appreciate you guys having

me on that was just so so lovely I was so nervous it's so weird because like we have a podcast but I was like sweating I'm like fuck I really don't know about this and then is that because we're super intimidating it's because it's so weird being on the other side of an interview when you are used to being in control and that's something that you have when it's your own podcast knowing that you're going to be on the one getting interrogated it's like yeah I actually think I prefer this side of being the interviewer well Chloe we'll have you anytime yeah we'll have you anytime thank you so much girls you guys know we never finish our episode without our suck and our sweet our highlight and our low light of each and every week what was your highlight Brit my suck

and sweet it's a weird one and you'll understand why in a second because it's the same thing it's the suck and the sweet and I feel like it's a suck and a sweet for both of us in a way so on the weekend someone recognized me which is great because it means they love the podcast you know anyway the reason it's my suck is because they went oh my god I love you like that and then they said oh my god I love you Laura and they called me Laura so they thought I was you that's I mean like means they don't really follow us on Instagram but this is this it was a man but this is the problem I was like okay I'm stoked because you obviously love the pod you love everything about it that's great cool mistake me as laura but then i'm shattered because

i'm like you actually don't know who i am to be do you know what though i don't actually think that's offensive at all because one no it's not you're hot no no no it's an audio medium like not everyone follows across social media for people who follow on just listening to the podcast you may not know which is which and that to us is weird but absolutely fine totally it wasn't anything like the only he recognized purely on looks like it's not like he knew that I was from the podcast so he saw me so he knows enough like he follows enough to know but then was like told me and then the thing is I just went along with it because I was so awkward you know when you don't want to because he was like trying to do a nice thing I didn't want to correct him and say

oh what you love her so much that you don't know who I am so like oh thank you thank you so much and they're like oh you left Maddie at home tonight and I was like yes I just rolled with it and I was like definitely left man at home tonight off the kids totally and we just had a whole conversation and now we're hanging out as friends and I've got to pretend I'm you for the rest of our life. Do you want to borrow my kids anytime? I'm going to have to and bust them. Okay, all right.

Well, my sweet for the week, it was my sister's 40th birthday. Not actually her birthday, but she had a birthday party on the weekend and I'm dubbing it. I reckon 40 is the new 30. You do have to say that because we're about to turn 40. No, I reckon it is. Like, okay, my 30s have been great. They have been fun.

I loved my 30s. Looking back, I liked my 20s because they were so fun and fucking wild but they were a clusterfuck of chaos and stress and not really knowing what I wanted to do with my life and feeling self-conscious and all of those things wrapped up in bad decision making but also like YOLO because I was 20 and then my 30s I feel like I've come into knowing what I want out of life like feeling way more confident with myself being happy in you know with relationships and obviously it comes with other stresses but then I think 40s are the years your kids they're not tiny little babies anymore you get a bit more of your body autonomy back

I won't even be having kids until I'm 40. I'm only entering the trenches at that age. Not necessarily. I mean, you're only 35. You've got five more years ahead of you. 36 in four weeks. No, let's not age you up. Okay.

But I, I mean, I see a lot of my sister's friends. I think like back when we were in our 20s, you would think, God, 40 is so old. And then as you get older, you're like, nah, this is going to be my prime time. I'm coming into it. And they're all so happy. It was beautiful, beautiful day. Have you seen those kids where teachers write at school and they're like, tell us what like draw a picture and tell us what you think a 30 year old is and a 40 year old is

and like woman on a zimmer frame yeah 30 30 is like a grandma my grandma's 30 and she can't walk and i'm like oh my god because now you're 30 i still feel 20 but also kids don't have any understanding of age i say molly like how old do you think i am and she'll say 14 because you're old i'm like yeah you're just my girlfriend so fuck yeah tell everyone and then all right well i mean i completely cocked that up because i'm supposed to do my suck first i just realized but I just realised she's been saying that for four years. Every second sweet she's like, damn it, I get it mixed up. Do you know what?

Because I like to focus on the positives and my suck for the week is that I still have a half-made dinner sitting on the stove which I only got through – you can't eat. Actually, it's a lie. It's in the bin but I had half-cooked chicken breasts and I was like, I don't think I can put half-cooked chicken breasts back in the fridge. God, no.

That's not on and then cook them again the next day. Unless you want to be off work for the rest of the week. Well, I have been feeling a bit sick. Dinner ended up in the bin last night and we – yeah, I just went to bed. I was like, what do you do in a blackout? And we went to sleep. Isn't it funny? Because back in the day, you know, there was no electricity.

What did people do? They went to fucking sleep. I reckon they went to sleep at 9pm. I think they talked. I think they sat around the fire and they actually communicated. Yeah, that's probably why Keisha's humping. That's why back in the day they used to have so many children. It had nothing to do with lack of contraception.

It just had to do with lack of electricity. Well, once the lights are out, guess it's not that. And also, I think the real issue was that I had not charged any of my devices. So I had like a flat computer, I had a flat phone and I was like, okay, I guess I'll go to bed then. I've never met anyone that more consistently has low battery phones and computers than you in my life. Well, at least I'm consistent.

At least now she can say it was the blackout. Anyway, guys, that is it from us today. We hope that you loved the chat with Chloe. I mean, we absolutely did. And if you've got something out of it, please jump onto Apple Podcasts and leave us a review. Share it with someone who might be going through their own fertility struggles. And you can follow us. If you haven't yet subscribed to the podcast, but you listen every week, go, if you listen

on Apple, jump onto Apple Podcasts, hit that little plus button, and you can kind of do the same on Spotify, if you listen every week on Spotify. Don't forget, tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friends, and share the love, because we love love!