The Liz Moody Podcast - A Raw, Honest Story About IVF, Surrogacy, & Having A Rainbow Baby

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

Author Phoebe Lapine shares her conception story in this Pros & Cons Of Having Kids episode, from experiencing multiple miscarriages, to working with a reproductive immunologist, to conceiving through IVF & surrogacy. As a warning, we do discuss miscarriage in this episode, so if that’s a sensitive or triggering topic for you at this time, it may be best to sit this episode out. If that applies to you, I love you and I’ll see you on Wednesday. The emotional weight of Phoebe’s first miscarriage, and how that informed the following three she experienced What a reproductive immunologist is & the role they played in Phoebe’s conception journey Phoebe’s full toolkit to keep herself physically & mentally healthy during such a difficult time The important role that carbs play in stabilizing your hormones AND what to look for to find the most easily-digestible carbs in the grocery store Exactly how much surrogacy costs & what you can expect an agency to do for you How IVF hormone injections REALLY impact your health and body A frank conversation about the ethical implications of surrogacy How to best support a friend experiencing pregnancy loss–and what NOT to say The surprising upsides and downsides of having a baby by surrogacy  And so much more For more from Phoebe, you can find her on Instagram at @phoebelapine or www.feedmephoebe.com. You can find her new cookbook, Carbivore, where books are sold. To join The Liz Moody Podcast Club Facebook group, go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/thelizmoodypodcast. Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Order my new book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  This episode is sponsored by: Seed: go to seed.com/lizmoody and use code LIZMOODY for 25% off your first month. AG1: visit drinkag1.com/lizmoody and get your FREE year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs today. Pique: go to piquelife.com/LIZMOODY for 15% off plus a special gift. Previous episodes referred to in this episode: This Episode Will Transform How You Feel About Your Body with Lindsay Kite, PhD Why You Need A Dopamine Detox (And Exactly How To Do It) Skincare Secrets: How To Naturally Heal Acne, Dry Skin, Eczema, & Dermatitis with Dr. Sarah Villafranco The Pros & Cons Of Having Kids The 2nd Pros & Cons Of Having Kids Episode: Pooping During Labor, The Real Cost + Sex & Body Image After Birth How To Know If You Should Have Kid(s) + Debunking Myths About Parenthood with Merle Bombardieri, MSW, LISCW What It’s REALLY Like To Be Childfree By Choice with Ruby Warrington & Vanessa and Xander Marin All The Fertility Qs You’re Too Nervous To Ask: Answered The Liz Moody Podcast cover art by Zack. The Liz Moody Podcast music by Alex Ruimy. Formerly the Healthier Together Podcast.  This podcast and website represents the opinions of Liz Moody and her guests to the show. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for information purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Liz Moody podcast. I'm your host, Liz Moody, and I'm a best-selling author and long-time journalist. This podcast is all about helping you live your healthiest, happiest life, whether we're learning how to stop hating our bodies, hearing all about what a dopamine detox is in exactly how to do one, or discovering skin care secrets from a top doctor to heal acne, eczema, and dermatitis. And yes, those are all real episodes, and they are linked in the show notes if you would like to listen. Today is a quite emotional, personal, raw episode.

We have talked a lot on this podcast about the pros and cons of having kids. We have a whole series about it that I will link in the show notes. But I wanted to open up the conversation to talk about some of the different paths to parenthood, especially since far more people struggle with fertility issues than we talk about, and the whole subject matter is so taboo. I sat down with my friend Phoebe Lepine to talk about her personal. pregnancy loss and her ensuing surrogacy journey. Phoebe is the author of four incredible books, including Carpivore, which just came out this

spring, and it's a cookbook that teaches strategies for incorporating carbs into a healthy lifestyle. I love Phoebe for many reasons. She's one of my real life friends, but one of those reasons is that she takes these struggles in her own life, like her Hashimoto's diagnosis or dealing with Sibo, both of which led to other books that she's written, and then she uses them to help other people, whether sharing health strategies, which is what she did in those other two books, or just sharing her own story so that people can understand the options that they have and that they are absolutely not

alone. As a warning, we do discuss miscarriage in this episode. So if that is a sensitive or triggering topic for you at this time, it may be best to sit this episode out. If that applies to you, I am sending you so much love and I will see you on Wednesday. Also, I'm going to link a recent with a leading fertility doctor in the show notes for anyone who wants to dive into science-backed fertility information, who wants to get questions answered, anything like that. That will be linked in the show notes. On this episode, we get into the emotional weight of Phoebe's first miscarriage and how that informed the following three that she experienced. We get into what a reproductive immunologist is and the role they played in Phoebe's conception journey. We get into

Phoebe's full toolkit that she used to keep herself physically and mentally healthy during such a difficult time. We get into the important role that carbs play in stabilizing your hormones and what to look for to find the most easily digestible carbs in the grocery store. Exactly how much surrogacy costs. Yes, we give you exact numbers and what you can expect an agency to do for you, how to go about all of that. We get into all of the logistics, the nitty-gritty details. We get into how IVF hormone injections really impact your health and your body, a frank conversation about the ethical implications of surrogacy, how to best support a friend experiencing pregnancy loss, and what not to say. The surprising upsides and downsides of having

a baby by surrogacy and so much more. One of our many goals with this episode is to normalize the fact that pregnancy loss is common and it can feel so incredibly isolating when it does not need to be. And I am so honored to be able to provide a space to have these very, very necessary conversations. If you want to discuss this episode anymore or share it to further eliminate that tabooness around these very real things that are part of our real lives that are part of our real journeys, it makes me so angry that people are made to feel shame about these types of things. So please help eliminate some of that tabooness. I would so appreciate.

If you want to discuss it with either of us, I am at Liz Moody and Phoebe is at Phoebe Lapine. I'm so excited to have you here. And I'm so excited that you've chosen to share such a personal story with us. I feel really honored. Absolutely. And I think it's going to be very productive for me for multiple reasons. First of all, just getting it out there.

But then also, people are messaging me all the time asking for advice. And it's a lot, obviously, to put a number. a DM, so I'm just glad to send them here now. Okay, perfect. Well, let's start with how did you and your husband decide it was time to start trying? So we weren't trying at all. We had one pullout method misfire that resulted in a pregnancy, and I found out February 28th, 2020. And that night, I had a date with my friend Liz Moody to go throw some clay together in Brooklyn. It was one of the last things I ever did before COVID everything got shut down. So it's seared in my memory for many reasons, but also because I was such a ball of nerves. And also, we just found out this insane

news. And I felt so bad leaving my husband that night to go and see you. And then I almost told you like five times, but I was like, I can't just yet. That's crazy. That completely reframes that evening for me. Yeah. Just that you were dealing with that. What were your feelings that you were going through in your head at that moment. Oh my gosh. I mean panic, excitement. Like you, I'd been kind of ambivalent about having kids, but had come around to the fact that it was imminent. But like a lot of my friends who I know who are undecided, I feel like they're the ones who kind of retro-time things the most. And so I had a book in the works. I was like, okay, here's the window when it would work best for our life to start trying to have a kid. And I was really trying to

work around the book due date because I'd been through that process a few times and I was like, I cannot be about to give birth when this book comes out or like having just given birth. There were a few windows that were off limits. So yeah, this timing was not ideal in terms of that. And in retrospect, I don't want to, you know, spoiler alert for anything. But that was all such BS and I should not have been retro-timing my life in that way. But of course, every woman, the second you get pregnant, naturally. That's immediately where you go, 10 months down the road. It was pretty surreal for me. And I think also someone who writes about health, knows a lot about my body. I had been having what I thought were period symptoms for the last week. And my cycle is pretty

regular. And I literally said to friends earlier that week who I'd seen, I was like, gosh, I feel kind of PMS-y and I have cramps. But my period hasn't come. It's so strange. Yeah. So walk me through what happened with that pregnancy. My story completely is in lockstep with COVID. So everything started to shut down. We decided that we were going to leave the city. We're going to go to my parents' house on Martha's Vineyard and just hole up there for God knows how long.

At the time, we were like a few weeks. We packed for like two weeks. But we wanted to stay long enough that we could see an OB in the city and get a sonogram. and, I mean, the earliest possible is six weeks. So we were kind of pushing it anyway. So the doctor didn't see a heartbeat, but was like it's pretty early. So that already got me a little worried. But we left the city.

We went to my parents' house. I told them I was pregnant, which I really didn't want to do because I didn't want to have to have a conversation with them, if anything went wrong. But we were just living together in tight quarters. I was not going to be drinking. I was just like I had to tell them. And then two weeks later, I miscarried or I started to miscarry. And it's funny, like, I feel so fortunate to be part of a community where I know of many friends who have miscarried. And I won't say, like, I feel lucky that many of my friends have miscarried.

But it's so common. It's just a reflection of think of the population at large. But, you know, I guess I have relationships where people felt comfortable sharing that. Someone who was a little bit older than me was kind of on the early wave of having kids. She told me about her miscarriage and she just said, I wasn't prepared for how physically gruesome it was. Like, I was prepared, obviously, for the emotional element. And when I experienced it myself that I immediately remember that comment from, I don't know, seven years prior, I was like, oh, my God, it's excruciating. Do you just start seeing blood, essentially? Yeah.

It's like a really, really heavy period, but it's more, you're actually going through kind of labor pains, like your body trying to get rid and eject this pregnancy. If I'm putting my comedy hat on, I remember in one of my more comedic moments saying my husband, I guess natural labor is off the table. I know now because this is so painful. Like there's no way I'm doing an unmedicated birth. And I thought I was tough. I thought I had a pretty high pain tolerance for all of the health things I've been through. But no. So yeah, sometimes it takes women weeks. It took me probably five days of being in bed laid up. But my first step was I called the hospital because that's where all of the providers are on the island.

It was this tiny island. And they were just completely inundated by all of these summer folks who were rushing the island. And just a lot of summer folks who were giving birth and there weren't enough OBs. Actually, when I arrived, I tried to get a provider there. And they were like, sorry, we have a wait list. Were you? I miscarred at like eight and a half weeks. And I went to the emergency room and they basically just took my numbers and I went in for blood

tests for a few days just to like see them going down. And that was their protocol. It was just to make sure that they got to zero at some point. But do they just send you home and say wear a pad? Yeah. If you're further along, they'll do a DNC, which is an actual procedure. But most of the time, no, it's like let your body work itself out. Can you take me back to what your emotional state was during those days?

Oh my gosh. Well, first of all, there's just so many hormones flooding your body. But I was really panicked, A, because again, it's gruesome and it's a lot to experience. And then I did actually pass the sack. So, like, I saw it. And that was totally gut-wrenching. I mean, I just totally broke down at that point. It was after I thought I'd made it through the hard part. part, and my husband was amazing, just like held me and whatnot, and we both cried.

And then I think it was a clarifying experience. We were like, okay, we're ready. This grief is real. That was incredibly clarifying, but I don't know. It was a really lonely time. I mean, I can just fast forward and tell you that I had four miscarriages in the course of an exact calendar year. Oh, I forgot to say that. So morbid. The date of miscarriage number one was April Fool's Day. And my mom and I are both like really, really mischievous. And again, I joked, I'm like, is this karma for all of our April fools? But I had to tell her immediately, this is not an April Fool's. Like, this is happening.

I mean, of course, she read it all over my face. But then my fourth miscarriage was April Fool's exactly a year later. So can you tell us a little bit about the second, the third? Yeah, yeah. So I don't want to dwell too long. the story, but there's a whole B-plot about this dental trauma I was also having in tandem and this predatory dentist who was doing all these unnecessary procedures with anesthesia, which is not pregnancy safe and did not give me any warning. In fact, told me it was fine.

So that had happened also right before I left the city. And then my second miscarriage was in late summer. So I'd given myself like a bit of downtime. And I'd been in dental pain from the moment of that first procedure of leaving the city nonstop that entire year and ended up back in the dentist's office in August. And again, she was like, I have to give you a root canal, again told me it was safe for pregnancy and I miscarried two days later. Do you connect those two things? I would say that it's never one thing. But I do, of course, think that there's so much rooted in the mouth. I don't know that it was like the anesthesia that cause it. I think it's more evidence since this woman should not be practicing medicine of any sort anymore.

But yeah, I mean, after four, it wasn't just the dentistry. I'm curious, though, because I imagine when you're going through something like that, it's hard to not be going back and saying, should I have done this? Should I have done this? Absolutely. Even if your intelligent brain knows, like, this was not your fault. This was not something you did. So how did you handle that and pointing to things like the dental,

procedure or other things in your life? Well, I had a lot of anger at this practitioner, obviously. I would have had a lot of anger at her if the pregnancy plotline hadn't even existed. Like, I was in full on pain for almost a year. During COVID, during a time where I did not want to go into doctor's offices and open my mouth unmasked. It was like the most vulnerable. Obie is probably the only discipline that feels quite as vulnerable. But yes, I mean, that part was completely negligent, black and white. And then, yeah, of course, and I probably did the first two times, blame her in my head for some of it. It was a really strange mix of things because I was, of course, optimistic enough to just go back and try again. I always forget the

expression if it's like a real fool's errand is to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different outcome. But I feel like there was something different each time to where I would convince myself, I didn't have a dental procedure before try number three. So it was going to be different then. I may have like, I don't know, done a different diet or done hypnosis. I did hypnosis. I did reflexology. I did all sorts of things. I just like peppered in as being like, okay, I'll just work on my mental state. Because after a certain point, I was like, am I in this cycle of trauma now of waiting for the other shoe to drop? The answer is absolutely. But I'm not blaming myself or saying it was my mental state that caused the miscarriages. I mean, women, unfortunately, give birth as a product of rape,

give birth in war zones and famine. But once I got to the fourth, I was like, okay, I need to go get medical attention and dig deeper and see what's going on. And so I saw a reproductive immunologist who was amazing. They ran all sorts of tests. And my background of my health woes is in the autoimmune umbrella. And they found clear markers that it was my immune. system that was like stepping in to stop these pregnancies and lots of different types of antibodies at different parts of the process. And so for the last time, I was doing this treatment plan. And so what happened is they just put me on tons of different drugs to suppress my immune system. So lots of steroids and then some other injections. I mean, it prepared

me for IVF later on because it was a lot of different things. And that ultimately didn't work. And the fourth time, even amidst all those drugs was like the most efficient. And I was just like, God, my body is just really, really getting good at rejecting these pregnancies. Was it always around the eight week mark? No, it was quicker and quicker. As the reproductive immunologist reminded me, he was like, well, you're doing this naturally. So like we can't really give you exact statistics on that. Naturally meaning not a tested embryo. I was over 35 at the time, what was considered a geriatric pregnancy. and they always make you feel like once you hit a certain age, your eggs like step off a cliff. So yeah, in theory, every single time, maybe it was a bad egg. Maybe it had nothing to do with my immune system. But having that testing point to some real things, on the one hand, it was liberating to some extent because I could stop the mental game of pointing at all the different things I could have done. But then also a little bit defeating because I was like, what is it going to take for me to have a pregnancy stick? and the come down from that experience of being on those steroids and all those other hormones

that I was on was the darkest period of the entire thing. It was bad. I think as a result of the medication and just the come down of the hormones and whatnot. But that's when we kind of knew. We were like, I'm done. I've hit my loss quota. And that's really important. I've heard so many infertility stories now and so many alternative paths.

to parenthood. And I think the hardest thing for a lot of people is knowing when to stop. Because you'll never have tried every single thing. There'll always be more variables that you can tweak or biohack or whatever you want to call it. But for me, I think maybe in some ways being previously a little bit ambivalent and not being like it is my utmost dream in this world to be a mother. And also just having the experience that I've had, dealing with autoimmune disease and writing about and getting really clear about kind of my approach to my body. I was like, oh, no, emotionally, physically, like full stop. And Charlie, too, I mean, talk about how he was dealing with it. Like, it was excruciating for him to see me go through

this. So I think he, even more so than me, was like, I don't think this is a good idea to continue down this path. So that's when we start to explore surrogacy and adoption. and just see what else was out there. I'm still working through that element of grief and frustration. That said, I will say that I am not jealous of anyone who has been pregnant, and I don't mourn the actual process and the experience. It's more like not being able to do it and having a certain small degree of self-loathing towards my body for that and just making everything hard.

Has anything been helpful in you healing that self-loathing with your body? I mean, honestly, no, but a lot of people who had very long, fraught journeys told me in advance. They're like, and not everyone gets this, their rainbow baby, their happy ending. But once you have the baby here, it's not a Band-Aid. It doesn't pave over the experience. It doesn't make any of the grief go away or magically disappear. definitely sands down the edges. And I feel like that's true for every element. So my feeling towards myself and my body, but I still sometimes, like, get a little triggered by it. We ended up in the

ER with our daughter and my husband. And he's just a nervous talker, like, told the ER person. And she was born via surrogate. I was like, why is that relevant? They're not going to x-ray my vagina. But I'm like, what makes anything about her health different the fact that I didn't birth her? I don't know. But I have to say I very rarely have those feelings in life. Do you ever feel judgment from other parents when, say, people are like talking about their birth stories or things like that? And you're like, oh, this is my daughter, but she was not born from my body. Yeah. It's always an awkward thing to tell people. People then worry, like, oh, what's her story? What's her sob story? And I don't want to feel pitied or anything like that. And so most of the time, I just don't say anything. I'll just go along. But, you know, I had. a friend of my mother-in-laws be like, oh, I'm sure you carried well, like, blah, blah, blah, say things like that. And I was just like, yeah. And people, when they saw me with a two-month-old, a three-month-old, and also, by the way,

it's like, side note, why is anyone commenting about my body? By even older men being like, wow, you look great, you know, things like that. My friend was like, you should just be like, yeah, I do. And so that was my response. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I do. Well, it's reason number like 7,561 to not comment on people's bodies because you have no idea what they have gone through. The mattress that you sleep on is one of the highest exposures that you have. Like, if it's off gassing, you're breathing that in for basically a third of your life.

And most conventional mattresses are loaded with synthetic foams, flame retardants, microplastics, and more. Plus, if it's not comfy, you're going to be tossing and turning. You're going to be really hot. And sleep is the foundation of health. It is so important. Because of all of this, if I were not going to invest in any other part of my house, no other things in my house, I would invest in my mattress. And in fact, I have four years well before I had much money to spend on any of these things

because it is such a big needle mover. The birch mattress is incredible. It is made with organic cotton, natural latex, and ethically sourced wool. So it has literally no off-gassing. You can not smell anything right when you unbox it. It has no microplastics, no synthetic foams or flame retardants. And the wool makes it so breathable, which if you've listened to this podcast for more than five minutes, you know that I run very, very hot.

Like I am a furnace. Zach has basically accepted that sleeping next to me is like sleeping next to like a little fire. And the birch mattress has been a game changer for that. It's made me sleep so much better. Like I can see my sleep score going up because I'm not hot all night long. It's also hypoallergenic, which is really worth paying. attention to if you find yourself waking up stuffy or congested. Dust mites in a conventional mattress can actually impact your breathing and your sleep quality without you even realizing

it. And again, we need to be able to breathe to get good sleep and getting good sleep is the foundation of our health. And then comfort wise, Zach sleeps on his back and then I sleep on my side and my stomach. So we have two completely different sleep styles and we both wake up feeling really good, no aches and pains. CNN actually named the Birch mattress, the best mattress for side sleepers and wired named it the best organic mattress period. So there you go. Birch has options for every kind of sleeper in your household. They have three firmness layers. I like the Lux Natural, which is the medium one. And then parents, they even have a Birch Kids natural mattress. Burch ships right to your door. It sets up in minutes and it comes with

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And when they ask you where you heard about us, please make sure to mention the show. That is branch basics.com and use code Liz Moody. People send me DMs all the time where they're like, I got the most compliments of my body when I was going through cancer treatment or in a horrific breakup. or I had a surrogate who birthed my baby and then I was walking around with my newborn. There's so many examples of that.

Yeah. And that kind of conversation, too, and it slowly gets easier. I mean, everything is a phase in parenthood in general. My daughter is a year of 14 months now. And so, yeah, I feel like besides that one little ER hiccup, I'm just not as triggerable. What was the most helpful to you at that time in terms of? of tools or practices, and then what was the most helpful thing that other people did for you at that time? Oh my gosh. I mean, people did a lot of unhelpful things. I was going to ask that next.

So if you want to start with that, we can start with that. They're all the kind of normal platitudes of the wrong things that people say. I'm sure I've done so many wrong things when my friends are dealing with grief. And I would love the honest take where, you know, nobody has to like smile and say, oh yeah, thank you so much. Like a lot of toxic positivity. Okay. And, and And in the form of people who had successful pregnancies being like, well, at least you can get pregnant. That's a real triggering one for someone who's had multiple losses. I have empathy because even having all these collected stories from friends who had been through it, you don't truly know until you've experienced it yourself. What do you mean by toxic positivity specifically?

Like, I'm sure it's going to work out. The universe has its plan. Really, I think that what you should do is just truly just hold space and say you're sorry because that's all. you can really say is like, I'm so sorry you're going through this. It fucking sucks. And there's nothing else that can really make it better. That's the thing is I think everyone always just wants to fix and to smooth things over and to be helpful. But ultimately, I mean, just holding space, be like hand at your back, you know, is kind of all you can do. What does holding space look like specifically? Does it look like texting you and saying, hey, if you want to chat right now, I'm available?

Yeah, I think it's saying I'm thinking of you. No need to respond. I mean, I've had friends lose parents, and I feel like having never been through that myself, I never know what to say. And Charlie, my husband, has lost his father. And I'm always like, you should write that person because I truly don't know what to say. But I think it's actually the same no matter what your loss is. It's just, I'm here for you. I'm so sorry. You know, anything you need. Was there anything that Charlie did? said that was particularly helpful. Him recognizing the physical ordeal and being the first person to push the alternatives and to say, I don't think you should do this again.

That was important for me in feeling like I wasn't giving up, having someone else just like open that door, even though, of course, I was thinking it and probably would have gotten there. And we started to have conversations with other people. Honestly, that was the most helpful thing that I did for myself at that time was just be like, I'm going to just reach out to these random people. I know who I'm not even particularly close with and just ask them about their experience with surrogacy. So I reached out to people on Instagram who are like friends of friends. I probably only knew five people max. Even that. I probably

found those five people like through the grapevine at that point and just set up a time to talk with them. Also talk to friends who had done adoption and just hear about their experience and just not commit one way or another to any of these paths, but it made me feel better hearing other people's infertility stories, hearing their positive experiences with surrogacy, and just knowing, like, again, I don't want to toxic positivity myself or anyone out there, but how lucky that we live in an age where these options even exist. I didn't engage in the chat rooms or Facebook groups. I have friends who went deep. I also, I had a friend. friend at the time, several actually, who had horrific losses, like stillborns at eight months

and seeing their resiliency and how they got through that. I can't put myself in those shoes and imagine what that loss is like. That feels to me much more traumatic than what I went through to some extent. But who are we to compare? There are so many layers to it and so many different experiences. Well, and that's why I do think it's so important. It's something I say over and over and over, but suffering isn't comparative. And we have such a instinct to make it so or to apologize for our own feelings of suffering. And it's like it exists in the spectrum of our life. The suffering that we feel is real regardless of the suffering other people feel.

And we can feel compassion for ourselves and for other people experiencing suffering. Yeah, absolutely. I think if anything, it was inspiring to see a friend go through a horrific experience like that, to find community in it via strangers on the internet, via chat rooms, and to ultimately get pregnant and getting pregnant after loss, no matter what's happened, I think is one of the bravest things you can do. I've had to summon my own bravery to do it. It really is incredible how resilient people are, though. Yeah. I'm sure there's people listening who are like, I can't imagine having three miscarriages and getting pregnant a fourth time. And there's

so many things that we can't imagine as human beings. And when we are in those situations, we find a strength and a resilience that we didn't even know that we possessed. Absolutely. And that's one of my big takeaways from the experience, too, is we're unimaginably strong. And there's no glory in it a lot of the time. Like there's no badge of honor, but it's a fact, nonetheless. Did you do anything to help yourself from a physical or mental perspective when you were at that low, low? I'm curious if you did anything to support your mental health or if you did anything to clear

the steroids or the hormones or you just have such a holistic health perspective. You know, it's funny. I can't remember the holistic things I did being any different than what was already in my toolkit. And I feel very lucky that I had pretty well-homed tool. kit. But my answer is really dorky, and it's that I started horseback riding, which is something I did all throughout childhood and was a real love and passion. And I started after the first loss, again, COVID, having to find new activities. It was one of the safe things to do COVID-wise.

That was a real outlet for me. And I felt like movement was actually really healing. It forced me to breathe riding horses requires a real attention that running on a treadmill, I guess because without the inherent nature doesn't require and being out in nature. And so that was pretty heal. And just commuting with horses. I mean, there's so much with equine therapy. So that was really healing for me. You mentioned you had a well-honed toolkit at that point. Can you talk about some of those tools that you'd honed over the years? Yeah, just knowing what an anti-inflammatory diet looks like for me, knowing when to pull back on sugar, caffeine and alcohol, those are always kind of my biggies. And of course, when you're pregnant, you pull back on two of those things to a large extent.

I love my sauna blanket. I'm a real sauna blanket girly, which I know is not the most accessible prong of my toolkit. But then also just knowing when to prioritize sleep and stress management of any kind, just knowing when to allocate time to that. COVID was such a time vortex. It was a really strange time in terms of how did we balance self-care versus working one foot away from our bed at all these things. It was kind of like a daytime soup anyway. But yeah, I think it was just giving myself space to heal. And my walking quest with Charlie was also quite feeling. And finding the bright spots, yeah. I love that. Your new book is all about carbs, and you mentioned to me that carbs are incredibly important for our hormone health. So can you talk to me about that? Yeah. Women's bodies are so finely calibrated. It's a blessing and a curse. And I think women, I feel like, are even more drawn to extremes when it comes to dieting, especially in today's current culture. But our bodies are so fickle that any extremes in dieting can really have a cascade effect on our hormones. And our bodies know that any time of starvation, nutrient scarcity is not the right time to bring a new

life into this world. So a lot of people who go super low carb end up losing their periods and experiencing all sorts of other hormonal issues like adrenal fatigue. And it's why a lot of professionals, fertility experts and reproductive endocrinologists, don't recommend going on super low carb diets. And then it's always about finding your specific balance because then a lot of people with PCOS, you know, have issues with fertility, people with certain types of insulin resistance or blood sugar issues may have fertility issues. So it's finding that balance where you're having enough carbs to be able to convert thyroid hormones, but not so few that your body feels that scarcity. Let's consider this almost a side outbreak. and let's talk about some of the stuff from your new book for a second, and then we'll get into the surrogacy journey. But can you share some fun facts that you learned about carbs while

researching your book or some new ways to think about carbs that people might not necessarily be considering? Yeah, I think we can get really bogged down in the wellness site geist, you know, about good carbs versus bad carbs. And honestly, it's just such a privileged conversation. I think people could always benefit by taking a step back and realizing that like 75% of the global population gets the majority of their nutrients from carbs. And in some places, obviously, they're going to be less processed than in our country, but a lot of those carbs are white rice. Like that is one of the biggest sources of carbs in the global population. And that's been true for generations. So it's not really the carbs themselves that are the issue in our modern day and age and

responsible for all these chronic illnesses, though, of course, metabolic health is part of it. But I think it's not just what's on our plate, but how we're eating our carbs, how those carbs are being processed in, everything we're doing after our meals, before our meals with our daily life. People find it so much easier to omit than to change any other aspect of their life beyond what's on your plate. And ultimately, in terms of our long-term metabolic health, our blood sugar, our stress management, our sleep, our digestive system, our long-term gut health, our good critters and our large intestine, those are all hugely predictive of our carb tolerance and our ability to regulate our blood sugar. So I think people can get a little bit to myopic about what's

happening on any given moment, on any given day, especially now that we're biohacking and getting these continuous glucose monitors and everyone's worried about blood sugar spikes. But I think it's always getting bogged down in the minutia that leads people to an unhealthy relationship with food, to too much stress in many arenas of their life, but then also of really losing sight of the long-term health goals. So I always try and encourage people because sometimes the choices that we make for our metabolic health, like going paleo, keto, having a meat stick instead of a whole apple, are not necessarily the right things for the health of our gut. And so how do we balance those two things. I think the health of our gut is tantamount, but like everything, it's a

balance. Can you give us maybe two or three actionable tips from your book that we could begin to implement in our lives and feel the way we want to feel? Sure. So specifically, because it's a cookbook, I'll do some kitchen things. I'd say one, which is really easy. And I think getting away from processed foods, you feel like, oh, God, but I need the convenience. Trust me, I get it. I have a 14-month-old. But this tip actually will save you time, and that is just to not peel your veggies. There's no reason for it. But butternut squash, like sure, you'll take the skin off. But delicata squash, no, you can keep the skin on.

But potatoes and carrots, there's no reason to peel them. And the skin has so much more fiber than the fleshy center. And if you were to boil down all the science where blood sugar science overlaps with gut health, it's not rocket science. It's just fiber. You want to eat more vegetables. and you'll be good. Okay, so that's one.

So number two, cool down your carbs. And you don't have to do this every time you eat, but I think it's a really cool tip for taking something, a starch that can be easily broken down into glucose. And if there's no fiber at play, reach your bloodstream fairly quickly into something that essentially acts like fiber in the body.

Cooling down your carbs builds resistance starch, and resistant starch does not get broken down again. It doesn't get absorbed through the small intestine. it passes to the large intestine and feeds your good gut critters. So it's both going to lower the total carb count of your carbs, but then also create something really nutritious and good for your gut out of it. Is that all carbs? So most carbs have resistant starch in their raw form.

So if you're someone who likes overnight oats, you're going to get a lot of that resistant starch built in. It's only once you cook oats and cook rice and whatnot that you lose some of that. And obviously we're not going to be eating raw rice and pasta. And by the way, beans too. Beans have their own resistant starch built in also once they're cooked. So you don't have to worry about it as much. But it's not something that you want to constantly hack and worry about. It's just a nice tip that I think makes me feel better about eating leftover pasta and to know that I'm not going to have kind of as big of a blood sugar spike as a result of eating a more indulgent meal that's leftovers. I found it really interesting to look at pasta specifically. So, I think there are a lot of myths around carbs and there's a lot that involve gluten. And I've been gluten free for 13 years because of my Hashimoto's. I know it does not play well in my body. It's not true for everyone. Glutin is not inherently evil. But a lot of people go to Europe and they're

like, oh, I'm so sensitive to gluten in the States. But when I go to Europe, I can have pasta or baguettes and I feel totally fine. And in the case of pasta, I think people say, oh, well, there's less gluten in that flour that they're using for pasta. And in fact, the exact opposite is true. They're using semolina wheat, which is specifically used for pasta because of its high gluten content because it's high protein. And people are like, oh, high protein. Yes, that means high gluten.

Gluten's a protein. And that's how you get that perfect, chewy bite that, you know, the Italians love with their pasta. The difference is not, again, in the what, it's the how. So versus the industrial processors in this country that dry the pasta as fast as possible. and basically shocks the protein into shape, it makes it much harder. It like tightens the mesh in a way that makes it harder to digest. Whereas in Italy, they use this slow drying process. You can think about like searing protein on the stove.

You don't want to take protein directly from the fridge and then put it in a hot pan because it causes it to tense up that's happening in a similar way with pasta. But essentially, because of the slow drying process, even when you start with a flour that is higher, and gluten, it's still going to be easier for you to digest just because of the way that it's processed. So I thought that was interesting. Is there something we can look for on the box or something when we buy it here? I'm thinking of like there's like bronze dried pasta I've seen. There's this one brand that's made in Italy and's an Italian word, Lento.

It's like slow. It says it on the front, it's slow drying. So just look for slow process, slow drying, something like that on the box. And that might be easier on your digestive fact. Interesting. Also, I'll just side note on that. The same is true of bread to a certain extent. People again will talk about, oh, you know, it's because of GMO wheat or whatnot in this country. There is no GMO wheat. It is hybridized. So it's bread in some cases to have a higher degree of gluten. The glyphosate and the pesticides, it's a whole other part of the conversation. But again, it's not necessarily in the what. It's the how, how bread is industrially made to have as quick a rise time as possible. And, some of the time it's done by adding vital wheat gluten to increase the elasticity. But it's very different than how bread used to be made 100 years ago and how bread is made at the farmer's market using a sourdough starter. So sourdose starter is a bacterial process that actually

eats away some of the gluten and the carb content in your loaf and is generally easier to digest. So look for bread that's made in a longer, more gentle fashion, preferably sourdough. and look for pasta that's made in a longer, more gentle fashion. And that might help your digestive tract as you're eating it. Yeah, you may not have as hard of a time with those types of carbs. And all of these tips really just speak to looking for foods that are less processed. And I think now we're just conditioned to think of less processes like, oh, you know, not to eat like Cheetos. But in reality, an almond is very different than almond milk is very different than almond flour. So a whole almond very different in terms of your blood sugar than the almond milk,

than the almond meal. And the reason why that is is because when we pulverize the fiber from the original almond into lots of microscopic bits, it's not going to be as protective for our digestive track, and it's not going to be as protective for all of the carbs or sugars that are coming through and entering our bloodstream. So I like to give people the visual for this of our intestinal wall as this fine mesh sieve. And if you were to pour apple juice or even almond milk through it, it would be a waterfall. But if you were to mash up some almonds, as you would in a nut milk bag, or mash up an apple,

all of the skins, the pulp would kind of create this fibrous sludge in the mesh that even if you were to pour the apple juice through again, it's going to be a little bit more of a drip drip into the pale and less of an unobstructed stream. So that's how fiber slows down our carbs in general, our sugars in general. And fats and proteins are helpful to some extent. They slow gastric emptying, you know, the release of our food from our stomach into our small intestine. But they don't have that kind of beautiful, protective, sludgy mesh element that fiber does. So you always want to think about and be a little bit skisking. skeptical, I think, of the fiber content that's on the back of any sort of processed food. And I put

bread into that category. I put pasta into that category. Certainly almond milk. If you think about the fiber and almond milk, is that actually being protective? Maybe it'll feed your good gut critters to some extent. But from a blood sugar standpoint, it's just not going to be that helpful. Okay. Breakover. Let's dive into surgacy. Okay. When did surrogacy first enter the chat? Oh my gosh. Well, I think I was always aware of it from the few people I knew who I'd seen do it. I am pretty critical of social media on a whole.

But it is an interesting thing that I was seeing these friends of friends go through a process that then planted a seed in my head to let me know that that was an option. So after the fourth miscarriage, when I hit my limit, I knew I had to take a break. I wanted to explore it to have some conversations. Honestly, my biggest misgiving besides the money, which is significant, was IVF. I was very, very wary as a hormone girly of doing IVF and taking all those drugs, which is ironic because I had just been through a crazy experience of a medicated attempt at pregnancy. But I had some preconceived notions about IVF.

And obviously, when you're making a baby in someone else's womb, you need to first get your eggies out of there and make an embryo and then pass it off to your gestational carrier. How did you guys tip over into being like, yes, we're definitely going to do this? How did you get over those misgivings? So we did a lot of info calls with various agencies. We first surveyed the people we knew, asked which ones they used. and all of these agencies have free info calls. So it was actually really helpful. We showed up to the first info call,

and we had no list of questions, because we didn't even know what to ask. We didn't even know what was involved. And we educated ourselves with those free calls, which was nice. And each agency kind of has a different price breakdown. Some are all-inclusive, like white glove service, and some are a little bit more a la carte, but also less of a guarantee.

And so you have to decide what you're comfortable with. Some are specific to certain states. Some are more national. And we ended up going with a little bit more of a white glove one because we heard multiple people who had good experiences. But I think the real reason why we went with them was that even though it was more expensive, the initial deposit you got back if you didn't decide to go through with it. So anything up until accepting the match, you can get your money back if you don't go through with the match. The match takes, we were getting quoted like a year from most of the places. And I think during COVID it stretched even longer. Ours ended up being about eight months. So for me, I was like, I want to at least have this plan B on the calendar. Because again, the retro timing, it just moves the needle so far out. And for us, it did end up being a full three year process. So at least it made me feel good that no matter what happened with my body, even if we decide to try again, and maybe make embryos and try putting one inside of me to see that if it was, in fact,

an egg quality issue, we at least had that on the back burner so that I didn't feel so much pressure with like the mounting push of the time. The number one rule of habits is to make the things that you want easier and the things that you don't want harder. Yet so many of us want to eat healthier, but so few of us actually take the steps to make eating healthier easier. That's where Marley Spoon comes in. What I love about this company and what's different than all of the other companies out there that are doing like stuff in the same arena is that you can customize your choices based on the effort that you want to put in.

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Yeah. I don't know how I got over it to do it the first time other than I had no choice. Like we needed to do it in order to have surrogacy be a real option. And then the injections were not as bad as I thought at all. I think they feel scary because they are injections. Yeah, well, if you're afraid of needles, they would be scary. But even the idea of injecting something feels more serious in a way than taking a pill. It absolutely is.

Luckily, I had to get through that because I was getting three shots a day for this last pregnancy. So I got to rip off the Band-Aid a little bit with that. But I talked to people who had been through the real ringer with IVF, and I only ended up doing two rounds. so I never really had that infertility experience. But the people who I talked to who had done it so many times were like, honestly, the injections, the needles are the easiest part. It's the easiest part of the whole process. What about the hormones?

So I personally didn't feel crazy or really that different at all. You towards the end start to feel very bloated because you have like ballooning eggs inside of you and way more than you normally have. So you start to feel that in your abdomen. Post retrieval was a really long and uncomfortable runway for me. And I have friends who walked out of the office in a pair of skinny jeans and took the subway home and went on living their life. For me, that was not the case.

I was in like drapey linen overalls for full two weeks. Did you feel bloated or what were your symptoms generally? Yeah. So, I mean, we can talk about IVF and gut health and concerns there. What are the concerns there? You have antibiotics that are happening during the actual procedure. In fact, most people don't even know that. It's just happening during the procedure.

But because I asked about it, I was aware of them. But that's obvious any time that you're doing any sort of surgery, which it kind of is, you want to make sure that there's no infection. But then the anesthesia. I mean, anesthesia is basically like putting your digestive organs on hiatus for the length of time that they're in your system. And then it takes a while for your intestines. kind of start working properly again. So one of the big things that they'll tell you is to take a stool stopener, to load up on electrolytes. You are really dehydrated as a result as well.

But the stool softener, I was like, yeah, like, I'm not buying colase. I'm not buying that over-the-counter crap. Oh my God. Lesson for round two. I started colase like three days before the retrieval. Were you just constipated for a really long time after your first poop? And that first poop is like excruciating. And then, yeah, it kind of just adds to the general bloating. But yeah, I just felt very inflamed and bloated for a long time and uncomfortable and a lot of pain. Was there anything else that you learned or advice you would give to somebody who is freezing their eggs, going through IVF that helped bring your body into a state of balance or made the process more comfortable? Yeah, I would definitely say to eat whatever an anti-inflammatory diet is for you. They'll say, it's okay to have a glass of wine or whatnot, but I just didn't want to mess with that.

from an inflammation standpoint. I went off alcohol, caffeine, and the second time I was pretty sugar-free. I think I took out dairy. I just wanted to eat as clean as possible to have the best outcome. So my first time, I got a totally normal number of eggs, but it was not a fertility issue. And then the eggs like literally disintegrated. It's a quality issue. And we just couldn't make embryos. We got one from that round. But it wasn't. hasn't statistically what should have happened based on the number of eggs that were taken. And so then my doctor was basically diagnosing me casually with endometriosis, which for the record, I mean, probably I fit the bill. The only way to truly know for sure is to have excision surgery. And my daily

life was not being impeded by enough issues for me to go down that route. And I wasn't sure I even wanted to carry. So I was like, yeah, let's just try again. And that's actually when I went back to my reproductive immunologist who is an endosurgeon, and we chatted. And he's like, just try it again. He's all trial and error. Basically, every fertility doctor views the first time as like an experiment. So that's also what I would say to people is that I was very cavalier that I was just going to have to do it once and be done. And I think most people have to do it more than once and to be prepared emotionally and financially for that to be the norm. The first time they're just experimenting. to see what works for your body.

And then the second time, they know how to kind of calibrate the drugs properly. I think I didn't wait enough time between my last miscarriage and doing the IVF. My gut feeling on it is that the egg quality issue was more because of that and all of the meds I was on. I didn't give myself enough time again to reset. And then I gave myself a bit more of a runway and did it again in the fall and had a better outcome. I was a little bit more careful about my diet at that time, too. And then I was also very careful to start the colase early and to be on top of my elimination because whenever you're having high degrees of estrogen or any sort of hormonal imbalance,

it's always best to support your liver and your elimination pathways as best you can. Do you feel like you have or had for an extended amount of time any residual health effects from the four miscarriages and the two rounds of IVF? Or how soon did you feel completely back to normal? No, I didn't feel myself for the entirety of those two years. I mean, because I wasn't giving myself much time. I think the literature or even the advice from doctors is wait one period after a loss and then you can kind of go back to normal. But when you're a sensitive person, there's so much going on between the pregnancy itself, even in the early days and the loss. I probably should have given my body longer to reset.

And then, of course, the IVF is just a whole other roller coaster. So I didn't truly start feeling like myself again, probably until three or four months after my second round of IVF. And that was amazing because I almost didn't even remember what my true self felt like. My skin was off. Just a lot of things were off. My digestion was off. Okay. Tell us about the surrogacy process.

You commit to it. Yeah. How much is it? It's so much money. How much money? It differs depending on what you do, but I think most people should plan on dropping 100K minimum. Full stop, like all-inclusive? It's probably more than that.

But yeah, I think you can do it on the cheap. cheaper side. I mean, it's the reason why some people do it internationally. A lot of people do surrogacy abroad because it's cheaper. Ukrainian surrogates, I looked it up at one point, I think make about 10K, which is a good salary for them, but compared to an American surrogate who would make like 30 to 50. Can we talk about the ethical implications of this for a second? Yeah. Yeah. I know there's a lot of celebrities who have come under fire for using surrogates. People are like, this is the a handmaid's tail. We're using people's bodies in this way.

We know that pregnancy is one of the biggest health risks that a woman will go through in their life. So did you have any ethical or moral qualms? And if so, how did you begin to work through those? I mean, I didn't have ethical qualms per se because it's something that these women are electing to do. I would maybe have a little bit more qualms with the situation in Ukraine, for example, because a lot of the women there are doing it for purely financial reasons.

My friends, my touch points that I had, none of their surrogates were really doing it for purely financial reasons. From the conversations I had with various agencies, they say, like, not that there are easier ways to make $30,000, but there are other ways to make $30,000. At the end of the day, it's not that much money for how much time and the physical burden of it all and all of the risks associated with it. I mean, just the amount of OB appointments and the flying, you have to fly them into your home city in order to do the implantation meds and the first eval and all of that.

I didn't really know how I felt about it until I met our surrogate. And our surrogate, similar to the stories I've heard from other people, was doing it large in part because it was a blessing. I'm sure the money was nice as well. But I think a lot of people are really doing it for the right reasons. And I think that's a beautiful thing. But in honoring the ethical kind of trickiness of the situation, I don't know how certain celebrities approach it. But I have friends who were very clear that they wanted it to be purely transactional.

Like they didn't want to be involved. They didn't want to get close to the surrogate. And that's fine. For me, from a moral and ethical standpoint, that didn't feel right for us. We wanted to have a relationship. I don't know that I needed to be like really into million. involved in the pregnancy process, but it's very much not a business transaction for us. And we wanted someone who it wouldn't be a business transaction for either. So what's the process? How do you find this

person? Yeah. So that's why you pay the agency all this money. And they just find a person. Yeah. How do they decide who goes with who? I think there's a little bit of like a witchiness to it because the main questions and the main criteria that they ask about are very cut and dry. It's about termination rights. It's about the unsexy stuff. It's about what type of relationship you want to have, which is really important. Do you want to be close? Do you want to have a little bit more of a neutral relationship, or do you want it to be purely transactional? Then there are some logistical questions, not every state. Some states are pre-birth order states. Some are post-birth order states, which means that you have to wait in order to get the parents' name on the birth certificate.

Some states, it's just immediately processed by the hospital. We ended up giving birth in Minnesota, which was a post-birth order state, and that was actually logistically quite annoying, but I know some people who wanted to specify they had the names on the birth certificate or whatnot. The intended parent pool doesn't always see eye to eye with the gestational carrier pools and the termination rights, and that's huge. So the more criteria that you add onto the list, of course, the longer the runway you're going to have before you find your surrogate. So I think some people are willing to compromise,

in the name of time. And then I know other people who wanted to specify, like the diet, who wanted to specify that the surrogate not be someone who is a working person so that if they had a medical complication, they wouldn't have to pay lost wages. Things that you would never think about that you go through in the legal process and is advice that I think the lawyer's side would give to you. But my advice to anyone going through the process is that how fast do you want to find a surrogate because there really aren't that many candidates out there. And if you're looking for someone who lines up on termination rights, finding that unicorn who also doesn't work, who also is okay to like eat all organic and have you send them a meal kit every week, I don't know.

At a certain point, you have to just let go of some control because you truly have none anyway. Which is maybe a good lesson for parenting. Absolutely. It really was. It really was. And for me, I think because I had some PTSD from my own pregnancy experiences. And it's funny because I never made it past eight weeks, but I was pregnant for a total of seven months that year, you know? It was a lot of time and just a lot of emotional roller coasters, obviously. And so I felt like I really wanted to actually have a bit of remove from the process. I didn't get that because my circuit very much wanted me to be involved.

and I had to respect her wishes. But yeah, there were times where I was just resentful that I was in this process after everything I'd been through where I had to put someone else's feelings ahead of mine. But that's just what it is. They're doing this incredible thing for you. So it's not a huge sacrifice at the end of the day. Just kind of a tricky balance to be had depending on what your experience is and what you want it to be.

How was that being in doctor's appointments and talking about due dates and all of that? And it's your biological child, but it's not being grown in your body. Yeah. Well, the amazing thing is, and I put this in my pro column, is most people who are signing up to be surrogates have a completely blissful relationship with pregnancy. I mean, my surrogate loves being pregnant. She feels her true self when she's pregnant and had really easy births and gets pregnant every time.

She's amazing. So they're not going to necessarily like understand your trauma and your PTSD. So yeah, I think there was a point where I was like, I don't know that I want to FaceTime for every appointment. I don't know that I want to go out there. Most people go out for the 20 week appointment, which is when you do the anatomy scan and shit gets real. I was like, I don't know if I want to go out. Just because I was so nervous. It was just like my own anxiety and my own heart. Even the day of the transfer, I was a wreck, just brought up a lot for me. Even though it wasn't on me, wasn't on my body. It just so much fear and like the memory of the hope.

And then the aftermath, she had never been pregnant, not naturally, before. And you never know how someone's body's going to react. So anyway, I was not prepared emotionally for another loss, another disappointment. Of course, it all went swimmingly. But my coping mechanism was to disassociate for a lot of it, have it be out of sight, out of mind. And I didn't mind that. I didn't mourn it not being my body.

I didn't always want to feel the physical experience of being pregnant. So I was okay letting that go. Or so I told myself, so I tell myself now. My husband and I actually, because it was on our bucket list, we didn't do it just to get away. But we moved to Amsterdam for the summer. And that was incredibly emotionally healthy for me, honestly, to just have a little bit of distance, both from a control freak standpoint to not be hovering.

I think that was part of two, like the dissociation is that I want to trust this person. I want them to not feel like I'm overly involved in a controlling way in their life. In order to do that, I really just had to take a step back and remove myself from the situation to a certain extent. When you think about strength and resilience, like your ability to feel energized, to recover well, to stay strong as you get older, what do you think that actually comes from? Most people say working out are good nutrition. And yes, of course that matters.

But there is a biological foundation underneath all of that that that most people, people are completely overlooking. I have been diving deep into this lately with the team at timeline and what I've learned has genuinely shifted how I think about my own health. Every single movement that your body makes every step, every workout, every muscle contraction depends on energy produced at the cellular level. And at the center of that is your mitochondria. Here's the thing that nobody tells you, certainly nobody told me, starting around age 30, our mitochondria naturally become less efficient. More get damaged, more become sluggish, and over time that impacts your energy, your strength, your recovery, and your resilience. Most of us respond by pushing more. We're

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your sleep, your skin, your cell health impacts all of it. this and urolithin A keeps your cells healthy. Timeline has done over 15 years of research and testing on this one product, urolithin A, which, by the way, most of us lack the gut bacteria to synthesize naturally. That's why many of us need to supplement it to get the benefits. This has become a staple supplement for me. It is my top way to support how I want to look and feel as I age. Support your cells and how you age with mitopure gummies from Timeline.

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OSO1 goes in and it clears out the senescent cells so it helps skin function like healthier, younger-looking skin. It is not masking the signs of aging. It's not targeting one thing. It is actually rolling the clock back at a cellular level. I've been using the face moisturizer for almost six months now and I love it so much. It feels amazing. It goes on really smoothly. it's not tacky at all. And I actually see a difference, which I just feel like is never the case with skincare. You want to always like see a real difference and you're kind of like, do, do I? Do I? And this I genuinely do.

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oneskin.co with code Liz. Going back to the money part, if they don't get pregnant the first time, do you pay more money to do another round? Or is it like $100,000 and somebody will get pregnant with your child? No, no matter what you're paying more. Maybe you are paying the surrogate more. Everyone does it differently, but usually the fertility clinic fees are not included at all. That's just a separate thing. So yeah, of course, every time you do. another transfer. Some fertility clinics, though, will give you a package and be like up to three tries. What I will say is that every part of infertility is insane. I know people who have done

10 rounds of IVF, that's no cheaper than surrogacy, unless they had insurance to cover it, but I don't know many insurers who will cover that many rounds. It adds up. How did you guys work that into your budget? And even make peace with the amount of money it is. I had this one financial decision that I made that was a poor financial decision. And my husband was like, in a year you won't even remember this. And I think about it every single day. Like I wake up in the morning and I'm like, that could have been this vacation. That could have been this other thing.

And I think about all the other things that money could have been. How did you make peace with the fact that there's so much money? And especially given the fact that so many other people are doing this without spending that money. Well, the funny thing is, is that the reproductive immunology package that I bought was like $6,000. And I was like, oh, my God, I balked at it. I was, like, mad at the clinic for not being more on it because of this money I'm paying. And then, like, after I'm like, oh, my God, that was the cheapest thing we did. No, how to wrap our heads around it.

I think for me, part of it was doing the down payment and thinking we would get it back. So that was like, I just need to rip off the bandaid and put the money in. And then, I don't know, I don't think in hindsight like that. Once it's gone, it's like the money spent. But actually, it being a COVID year, we weren't spending the way that we used to. My husband's business was slow, but I was a food creator. I honestly was doing pretty well and not traveling the way I used to, not eating out the way I used to. So it's not like that made me flush with cash. But actually, it was a year where as a freelancer, my cash flow was probably the best it had been. I think I covered the down payment just from my business. I was happy with myself that I was able to do it. And then kind of the next step you don't

put in until you make your match. So we had a nine month runway to figure out how we were going to save and pay for that. What surprised you the most about the surrogacy process? Oh my gosh. What surprised me the most, or I guess what I was unprepared for was the amount that society reinforces a pregnancy. I mean, you're walking around with a visual sign that you're about to have this momentous change in your life. And even with your friends, it's like they can see just by your size, they can remember how far along you are. So I was basically operating in the world with this huge impending life change on the horizon that so rarely got validated, well, never got validated by strangers. And even with friends, I mean, of course we talked about in conversation and what

stage we're at. But it's so different even when I see my friends who are pregnant now, you know, we're in our late 30s, so we don't see people as often as we are like. So all of a sudden, I see a friend who I know intellectually is due in a few months, but I see her belly and how much has grown since the last time I saw her. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I realized how close and where she's at in that process. And I don't know, it's even as dumb as a pregnant person being on the subway. Someone's going to give up their seat or say, congratulations. Like I would assume, obviously it hasn't happened to me, but that happens quite often when you're pregnant or people just asking you in a joyous way, like when you're due and whatnot.

And so I think I was, again, able to disassociate for most of my experience. And then my daughter was due in February. And then January came. And I was like, oh, my God. All the grief hit me. Like I just kind of brushed over a lot of things. There was just so much that still needed to be processed about my experience and about coming into motherhood in this particular way. And I think one of the reasons why I wasn't able to process is I didn't have that slow seeding of validation.

So one thing I didn't think I needed and was surprised by was the shower. I've always thought showers were dumb. And I have not enjoyed going to everyone's shower. But for this particular experience, and I would say to anyone who is, thinking about exploring adoption or surrogacy, I think the ritual is so important. It helps you solidify and it helps you realize that people are rallying around you in a more traditional way, even if your experience has not been traditional at all. I think it's a really important rite of passage and it really changed. It was like a gear shift for me once we did a fun like

bachelor's style shower with a lot of tequila and sushi. The benefits of not. not caring. True. Did you find yourself focusing sometimes on the benefits of not caring to almost self-soothe? Yeah, I think that's why we did the big trip. Of course, I could have done it pregnant. But my friends who had young kids were like, you guys, this is your lot. Just take advantage of it. Treat yourself. Go on the crazy trip. Live your life. Like do the things that you wouldn't be able to do if things had gone differently. And that was an important mentality shift for me. Like there's going to be benefits and drawbacks of every single rule that you go down in life and enjoying the benefits instead of focusing on what you're missing now on is important. Yeah.

Yeah. I think that's great advice. Okay. So then you get the baby. Well, we had to go to Minnesota first. I know. And you were like waiting there in the snow every day. Like is the baby going to be born?

It was negative 19. But I will say, so you ask how they decide. I don't know. maybe I'm just trying to self-soothe about the financial side of how much I spent on this agency that had their methods. But I do think there was some witchy matchmaker style intuition that they had because our match was a really good match. And then it also was in Minnesota where all of my husband's family lives, which we did not tell them. And so we had the benefit of not having to pay for a hotel room or having the nerves of flying out in time. We got to go and stay with his family.

It ended up being two and a half weeks that we were there. And you were there for the birth? Yeah. And we're there for the birth. How was that? Oh, my God. Well, I will say when I had that panic in January, like when it all hit me, I, of course, being the woo-woo wellness girlie I am, went to my body workers and my acupunctures and they were both like, your vibration right now is 100% like a third trimester vibration. Like whatever's happening in your butt, you're holding on to this life change, even if your hormones are not necessarily experiencing the full journey in the way that a pregnant person would. And when I was in the room and our surrogate was about to give birth, I felt like it was me. Like Charlie had to hold my hand, hold my back. I was so nervous. I'm like

going to cry, just like thinking about it. But I was like, I was having so. sort of physical experience. It was pretty wild. Obviously, much less painful than the physical experience that she had. But one thing that I talk about with friends is that I had the husband experience. Like, I had the non-carrying partner experience. And so it was interesting to go through with my partner. Like supporting her. Yeah. Feeding her ice chips and things like that. I kind of had the same bewilderment of a partner who's not caring. It's just being in awe and being able to do nothing other than cheerlead and support. But it was amazing to be able to experience the birth as a husband or a partner does as well to just stand on the sideline. Like, this is miraculous. It was so crazy. And then they held the baby up and they were like, what is it? Because we didn't know if it was a boy or a girl. I was like, a girl? Did you immediately have the feeling of this is my child? Absolutely.

I mean, she looked like me when she came out. Not that she didn't look like my husband, but I saw my traits, my features. I didn't think I would immediately, because most newborns kind of look like blobs and have similar features. I didn't know that I would like see myself in my child, period, in that first moment. But I really did. And I don't know. I mean, maybe it sounds like narcissism that that would even matter.

But I think with surrogacy, you're searching for any thread of connection. And I felt it immediately. I felt it immediately. And yeah, I think it like kind of erased the whole process. What's the after process? Like, do you hang out with her? Do you take the baby home? And you're like, thank you so much.

It's so funny. So the cool thing about our agency, and I don't know if other people do this, but we had mandatory social work meetings. So to talk through every element of it, even before we started the process. And then there'd be a check-in with the doctor and talk about the birth plan and whatnot. And luckily, like, we were pretty chill and aligned about a lot of things. I know I have friends who've done it, who've had a little bit of friction over what the surrogate wanted their birth plan to be versus what would be acceptable to them as like a neurotic New Yorker. Again, there's like sometimes some personality dissidents. But ours, we're. was pretty smooth and the hospital is fantastic that we were at and we each got our own room to recover and Charlie and I got some time alone with the baby, which was important. And it must be such a roller coaster ride for the surrogate as well because not only are your hormones crashing after birth and you're not getting that kind of immediate skin to skin time. But I think she was so emotional

seeing us with the baby, you know, because that was her why was to have that moment. And so Yeah, I'm sure it must have been really hard to just go home. I mean, she's a machine, so she was discharged in like two hours and walked out of there. Did you talk to her about whether it was emotionally hard for her to see the baby go home to? No, we never had that conversation. She's doing it again. So, I mean, I have to assume that she had a good experience with it on a whole. I think it was hard for her. She really wanted her kids to meet the baby. And that was just logistically complicated because we wanted to get home as soon as possible. We had been in Minnesota for almost three weeks and just wanted to get home to our space. I liked our agency

and was happy that we shelled out for it because of the experience that they gave her. They gave her a lot of support along the way. There was monthly zooms with other surrogates, like all talking together. And I think part of that is just reinforcing what the process is and what it's going to look like and talking it through. And then you come home with a baby. With a baby. How is your adjustment to motherhood? It was actually much more natural and kind of seamless than I thought it was going to be. And I heard from some of my friends who struggled were like the silver lining, and I hope it's the same for you, is that once the baby's here, a lot of the early anxiety

and a lot of like the small stuff, you just let go. It's so small potatoes given everything you've gone through to get to this point. And of course, the fear doesn't go away that something freak and awful will happen. But I don't know. For me, carmically, I was like, I've paid my dues. Like, this is the prize and it's amazing. And I just want to enjoy it and, like, not let anything ruffle my feathers. Are there any lessons that you've learned from the process of the four pregnancies, the four miscarriages, or through the journey with surrogacy that you could share? I think the overarching one is a huge surrender. and I would tell people who are married to their timelines or their whys behind things to just let that go. And I wouldn't say to read into like the lesson of the universe in the same way that I did necessarily.

But to take it as an opportunity to really get clear with yourself. I think a lot of us operate under societal pressure. I mean, I could have very well have not had the previous experience I had and felt like, oh, I had to get pregnant. And then that would have made my relationship with everything that happened very different. And maybe would have changed how far I was willing to go or not or to soldier ahead. I know a lot of actually a lot of people who have dealt with secondary infertility who felt very compelled to give their first child a sibling. It's not like that trauma or that grief involved in that infertility journey is any easier than for a first time parent.

It's just different. But for them, the thing they had to get clear on was, am I doing this at the cost of the child already have, both financially, but also it takes a lot of time. Like, there's so much logistics of going back and forth to the fertility clinic. There's so much emotional labor in it. I know I have friends who had to stop and take stock and be like, why do I want a second child so bad? And there is no right answer. There's no one who can say, my dream of motherhood is any more compelling than someone else's

dream to have a big family. I think for all of us, when we hit these roadblocks, it's having to mourn whatever vision we had for our future and just rethink it as a different beast and a different journey. So this is part of our pros and cons of having kids series. So I'd love for you to just leave us with what the pros and cons of your experience of bringing your wonderful daughter into the world were and having your wonderful daughter. Oh my gosh. Well, I think it's made me a lot more empathetic towards my own parents. For better or worse, it's also made me more empathetic towards myself. And it just brings up things that you don't necessarily remember from your childhood, from your infancy that they do and helps you reconnect with that person. For me, it was such a

surreal experience of both entering this new phase of adulthood that was very, very, scary, you know, having something else completely dependent on you, but also like a real throwback to remembering what it was like to be a child. And I think that's been really beautiful. And as someone who wasn't particularly immersed or interested in her friends' kids, or, you know, I'm an only child. I'm much younger than all of my cousins. I've never been around a lot of kids. I didn't really understand how fascinating it is to watch their development and to watch them take in the world. And what was mind-blowing to me was just like what fully formed people they are from the onset. And it sounds like such a cliche because people say it all the time. But it was amazing to me just her intuition as a

being. Like she tried to suck my titty like immediately. I was like, that's wild. I've nothing to offer you. Sorry, girl. Here's the bottle. But yeah, just every little stage blows me away. I think what I didn't expect from parenthood, because you see it in the movies and you hear people talk about all these milestones. I'm like milestones. I mean, they're happening every day, especially at the beginning. Every day is a different milestone. It's like whiplash things happen so fast. We haven't got into the biggies yet.

They're coming soon. Like the walking and the talking, those I'm sure will remember. But I think it's just the lesson is to be present every day as much as you can while also balancing the things that made you feel alive before you. had a kid. And do you have cons? Oh, the cons. Oh, well, yeah. You're like, your time is not your own. You do not sleep as much. Certainly launching a book with a child was very different. But sorry, I'm dipping back into prose. It made me really clear about what was worth my time and not. And frankly, like a little resentful about certain aspects of the book process that I did not like. But it was clarifying in that way because I was like, this is not worth my time. I would rather be spending it with my kid.

Do you feel like you have a different relationship with cons because you work so hard to bring this child into the world? Yes, the cons like don't really carry as much weight for me. I don't sweat the small stuff. Yeah, the little inconveniences when she's fussy, the sleepless nights. I don't know. And I've heard from other friends who had infertility experiences who feel the same way. It all just feels like a drop in the pale or it feels like small potatoes at the end of the day in terms of the bigger joy and the bigger life shift of having her with us. She is such a joy. Is there anything else that you'd want to say to somebody listening who is going through a journey like this, who's interested in a journey like this, who's curious about a journey like this? Is there anything that we didn't cover? I will say like despite feeling really lonely in my journey and I know there are so many people out there who go through this and who don't have real touch points in their community who they know have had a similar experience and they can talk to openly and personally about it. Luckily there's the internet. Even if you don't think that those people exist in their community, they do. I promise you. There are all these people who you don't even realize who are so invested in your happiness and are cheering you along. So I'll I'll give you just a little silly touch point, but my book came out a few weeks ago. It's my fourth book, not that that makes it any easier, but I've been getting some messages from friends, and I've been shocked that more than one person, a handful of people, have been like,

oh, the book's so great, blah, blah, blah. But seeing your bio on the back, which is just a regular author bio, lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter, they're like, that made me cry. And just hearing that it touched them so much. Makes me feel loved. You are love. Oh, thanks. I know, but it's such an insignificant line change for most people, but for me, a big shift and for everyone around me, just understanding.

Thank you, Phoebe. Thank you. I'm so glad that I got to have Phoebe on to tell this story because I think it is so incredibly important to discuss pregnancy loss and to reiterate that it isn't shameful and you do. do not have to grieve alone. If there is a single person in your life that you think could benefit from hearing that message, please send them this episode as well. I really want it to help as many people as possible. If someone shared a link to this episode with you and you're new to the podcast, welcome.

I'm really glad that you're here. If you're not following the podcast, I know so many people listen and they do not follow, you want to follow the podcast. That's how you're going to get alerted of any future episodes. we have so many great ones coming up. So all you're going to do is go to the main podcast page on whatever platform you like to listen on. That's the one that lists all of the Liz Modi podcast episodes. And you'll see the word follow under the logo on Spotify.

And then there's a little follow with a plus sign button on the top right of that same page on Apple Podcasts. Also, if Apple is your podcast platform of choice, they recently updated how new episodes show up in your feed. So you're going to go to that little button on the top right of the main. podcast page, the one that lists all of the Liz Moody podcast episodes, and you're going to click turn on automatic downloads. That way you will get the new episodes in your feed every single week. You want to do this even if you've been following the podcast for years, even since the healthier together days, because this update basically changed things up. So if you don't do this, they will stop showing up in your feed. And we do not want that because we have so many good

episodes coming up. We have one coming up about what being in an open relationship is really like. And It is with somebody that you would not picture for this type of conversation. And I just found this conversation so, so fascinating. So I don't want you to miss out on that one. We also have one that dives deep into the neuroscience behind creating the life of our dreams. And this is like hard science-backed information. You do not want to miss that one. We just have so many good ones coming up.

So make sure that you're following. And I love you. And I will see you on Wednesday for the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast.