You're listening to the fertility docs, uncensored podcast, featuring insight on all things, fertility from some of the top rated doctors around America, whether you're struggling to conceive or just planning for your future family, we're here to guide you every step of the way.
Speaker 2Hello everybody. This is Dr. Susan Hudson from Texas fertility center. With our next episode of fertility DocSend sensor . We have again Dr. Carrie Mediant from
Speaker 3Sorry . Interrupted your Susan
Speaker 2From fertility center of Las Vegas and Dr. Abby Evelyn from Nashville fertility center. You have your body and we have two wonderful guests with us today. We have Dr. Tony provost, one of my colleagues at Texas fertility center. Hey Tony.
Speaker 4Hi everyone. Thanks for inviting me.
Speaker 2And we have one of his patients, chassis being Lee. Who's going to tell us a little bit about her story today, too . Hey chastity .
Speaker 3Hi, everybody. So happy to
Speaker 2Hear . Good stuff . We're so happy and it is always good to have lots of people together. And whenever we have people together, we got to talk about food.
Speaker 3Always the best thing ever. Yes. Great subject. What have you guys been cooking recently? I couldn't kill soup today. Kale soup. Oh, and it was so good. It sounds really healthy. I don't know if I can handle it. What
Speaker 4Sort of , what sort of protein did you have in that
Speaker 3Turkey? Sausage? Oh, nice.
Speaker 5Yeah , actually good with some carrots.
Speaker 3Light seasoning. Okay. That sounds good.
Speaker 5Really impressed by that. I would have no idea how to cook kale. How do you handle Cassidy ?
Speaker 3I use my Instapot. Oh, so I've heard amazing things about that. Is that as good as everybody swears? It is. It is the rave . Okay . And that sounds much healthier than the Nutella macaroons that I was making last week or the week before. Like you , you could actually subsist on, on kale soup with Turkey sausage, because it actually has some redeeming nutritional value or the stuff that I've been baking has zero nutritional value.
Speaker 2But the MACRA is like so pretty on your Facebook page.
Speaker 3He did. And they were gone within two days.
Speaker 5I can make divinity that's the last year and a half I've made like three or four batches of divinity because I could never get it to set up. And I just kept trying . And I was like, if I try NEF and every time I would change something around and finally the heavens opened up and by the identity actually set up and it looked like it was supposed to, they didn't have the consistency. So I'm done. I'll think I'm gonna make it again. Cause
Speaker 4Abby , as a , as a non cooker, can you explain what divinity is to me? I've never
Speaker 5A lot of sugar. It's Cairo syrup and it's sugar. Basically. That's basically what it is with some egg whites that fluff it up, but it's, and you put a little bit of a nail in it and it's real light and creamy. It's almost like eating a marshmallow. If you have ,
Speaker 3And Susan, your husband's been on a nutritional plan. I don't want to say diet cause that's kind of a four-letter D word, but um , on a nutritional plan recently.
Speaker 2So, so he went Quito back in September, which for, for most households, it's an adjustment, but you have to also understand I have celiac. So we do gluten-free because of my celiac. And I all said, don't do well with eggs and potatoes. So we were gluten-free egg-free potato free or chicken, egg free. Cause I do use duck eggs and potato free. So now we've added Quito to the Hudson household, which sometimes makes things a little , um, interesting. But , um , it, anybody who knows me knows that I'm always looking at recipes and trying to figure out what are I , I'm a , I'm a true believer of not eating things that don't taste good. I love food. And even though I have all these dietary requirements and everything like that , um, that I really work to make sure everything does the best we can and we have all survived him going keto, amazingly
Speaker 4Good . I had a goose egg,
Speaker 2I have not had a goose egg. I I've been a little nervous about trying goose eggs because apparently goose eggs are more allergenic. And
Speaker 4For the first time this week, one of my wife's coworkers gave her a one. They have a couple of geese that lay eggs and it was about four signs, the size of a chicken egg, and it had this humongous Oak , uh , yolk . And so , uh, we, we just , uh , basically did the sunny side up and split it up around four people. So it's pretty interesting. It's pretty rich.
Speaker 5I just have some issue with eating eggs. I don't know what it is. It's just, I don't know . I just don't like eggs and you know, maybe it has something to do with what I do for a living. It just didn't say provider
Speaker 3Doosan , problem promise us if you're ever going to eat a goose egg that you just either get an epi pen ready, or you just go plunk yourself right out in front of the emergency room door and have yourself.
Speaker 2I think I'm more likely like an Austria to get ostrich egg or something like that just for the adventure of it.
Speaker 3Yeah. It's definitely a question,
Speaker 5You know , the state of, you know, given COVID-19 and all that, you just never know where things are going to come from. So not that much of an adventurous eater. I don't think
Speaker 2That's true. That's true. Well, we have a new segment to our podcast today that we hope to repeat on all of our future podcasts and it's our ask the docs segment. And um , so what you can do is you can go to our website, fertility, DocSend censor.com and there's a place that you can post anonymously questions and we will answer your questions on our podcast . So our first question is from one of our listeners and they said, hi , big, thin, other than the obvious reason achieving pregnancy, why is art so important to society? Thanks. What do you guys think?
Speaker 5Wow, that's a challenging question. I don't know where to go with that one. I think for, I don't know about society, but for an individual patient, particularly if somebody wants to have more than one child, I think it's advantageous to do like IVF and freeze embryos so that those embryos will be there. And genetically there'll be the same majors, the patient, even if the patient is several years older when the embryos are transferred. So I think for an individual patient, you could argue that that's a good reason to do IVF or art.
Speaker 3So I would say, I think it's more, when you look at the stability of a society, the family unit is a large part of that. And having, having a family unit means you're you , you are without a doubt thinking about people other than yourself. And so that is, that is always a stabilizing influence as we have seen with recent events here in the country. Um, and it's something where you are ensuring genetic diversity by having more people who are able to conceive you're stabilizing people. And then the other thing to consider is that for different generations , um, both financial and life structures are very different. And so one of the things, when you look at whatever random internet site, there's always some, whether it's Buzzfeed or HuffPost or whatever , um, you always see articles about, you know, this is how millennials right now are ruining the world. And then you see the clap backs from the millennials of, well, the reason we're running in the world is because there's no financial stability. We've already lived through one recession working on a second. Um, we've already lived through September 11th. And so the things that our parents were able to have were with a stable job and a house and a spouse or a meaningful, significant other who's long-term , they don't necessarily have. And so by default that pushes them into later years with childbearing and you don't really want to destabilize an entire society by having a bunch of childless people who would otherwise really love to have children, you know, childless by choice is totally fine. But when your heart's desire is to have kids and you can't have that and you can't have it because of external influences, finances and job situation and all of those types of things , um, it's, it's very, very, de-stabilizing very disheartening. So I think there's, there's a lot of other things speaking to the need for art, besides just the obvious of one individual wants to get pregnant. I would definitely agree.
Speaker 6Um, as a retired soldier, my career was coming like one of those things that I wanted to focus on, but I also want it to be a mom and had I not known about my situation and had to freeze my eggs. That's something I definitely would have done until I got to a position to where me and my boat , my me and my spouse, both my husband, we were both military dual military. And so we were in the military during the nine 11 stations . So we were basically rotating on and off deployments. And so we definitely wanted to start a family, but not so quickly because we hadn't had an opportunity to kind of live with each other or get an opportunity to kind of know each other and enjoy life, but definitely wanted kids. And so I think that if you have an opportunity to freeze your eggs to where your, your career is, where you want it to be, you're financially stable. You're just basically stable all together is , is great.
Speaker 2That's awesome. Chastity kind of along that line. So we asked Dr. Pope's and chastity and her husband , um , today to come and talk to us a little bit about fertility care in military families and what happens when you're in the military and need fertility care, how is it potentially different? And I know Chelsea, you've kind of had some experience on, on both sides, the civilian and the military fence. Um, so if y'all could kind of share with us your perspectives on that.
Speaker 6So when we begin our , um , fertility process through the military, basically just even going through the process of getting pregnant and finding out that we were in , in we're were infer . Um, the military process is very slow , um, great process, but slow altogether. There are a lot of doctor's appointments prior to it. Um, there's a long waiting list. Um, I think we spent the first two years just trying to identify that my food hoops were blocked on both tubes were blocked. And then we spent the next three years in Germany, right. We spent the next three years in Germany going through , uh , IUI , um, process and then in vitro cycles, which caliber a waste of time because my tools were blocked. They were completely blocked and we were able to get pregnant in one, but it was a catastrophe.
Speaker 7Uh, the doctors won't, we're not able to tell us that because for tools we'll block, once she became pregnant, the , uh , I don't know how to say it , but whatever was in her system because of two Bibles , actually the reason why she couldn't carry on the pregnancy, it was destroying the infield at that , at that time, until we got here and we went to San Antonio and a doctor actually told us why was the recent and explain to us, we're going to try to open up the tools and if I can not open them, I'm just going to take them off until you leave. And that was a ,
Speaker 6Yeah, that was, that was a very dramatic and drastic event of that took place. And it took a while to get over that part, but the entire process within the military , um , you also have to include PCs moves . So when I started the conversation, you say , oh, the first two years while we were in Korea. Um, so then you have a language barrier and different medical procedures. And you're talking to, we were talking to our doctor was off the installation. So we had a Korean doctor. So now we have a language barrier. Um, our, our medical records were actually in Hong goals. So we could, we actually had to have friends that were translating it for us. Um, and then we PCs to Germany. Again, another language barrier.
Speaker 3What does PCs mean? I'm not a military person, so I
Speaker 6Don't know those are , so we moved, we moved from location to location. So PCs is permanent change of station where your military service will move you from one duty station. And you're usually there 18 months or longer. So you start,
Speaker 3I heard it in Korea and then went over to Germany. And then after that came back to San Antonio,
Speaker 6We were actually, we were stationed here at Fort hood. And one of the things that we did because I was already pregnant, it kind of assisted along with the process of sending us to biopsy when I had a miscarriage, because now they have my entire medical history. Um , this is not covered through Tri-Care. So this is there's a lot of military, I say, deployment money that went to get used . You had a question,
Speaker 5We haven't had an outside doctors play a role because that must be really scary to be speaking English in South Korea and not really be able to communicate well. I can't imagine how challenging that would be to try and communicate what's going on with you and what they're trying to do.
Speaker 6So it is, it is very scary. Um, but I really wanted to, I don't know how to explain it .
Speaker 7I want it to be able to call my wife a mom and be able to celebrate mother's day with her. And I didn't care how much money was going to cost. So
Speaker 5We went out to see if a private physician,
Speaker 6Yes, none of these were referrals from our Tri-Care Tri-Care process in overseas is even longer overseas than it is stateside . Um, you're talking about years years, your, your rotation, your rotation of time of being at that location could actually be coming to an end before you even get an opportunity to see someone on that installation. When you're overseas, even though you have military doctors, you don't necessarily have those specialties on military installation because you're, you're there for a mission and it's not so necessarily catered to the spouse or the pre on the procreation of family, because you're there for a mission you're there for a purpose. And having children at that moment is , is something that is not at that mission. So those specialties are sometimes not on installation and you can get referred to , um, off the installation doctors. But again, the process is very long. We just so happen to get very, very lucky. Um, so what came as a very negative time and a bad time being pregnant, being excited PCs saying to Fort hood and to go to your first OB appointment and not your heartbeat was devastating. And so we get back in the fight. We, we go on a couple of deployments and to get, you know, our mind together and to get back into the fight of being parents, because at the end of the day , um, I knew I was going to be a mom that was just the end of the day conversation for me. And I have a great husband who will support that until the end. So we would have probably went bankrupt and still been trying ,
Speaker 5You know , I think that's one thing that's key. Just as a side note, when you said, I want to get back into the fight, you know, so many people get really discouraged and, you know, I can see a you're, you're a fighter and you're, you know, you jumped right back in and a lot of people just get derailed. They just get emotionally draining. Can't do it. So I think that's great that you were able to do that. That probably made all the difference for you.
Speaker 6It did. It really did. And you know, when we started this, I said, you know, Dr . Price is like, he's the greatest. He came at the best time in our life. Um, my first Sergeant , um , which is one of my senior leaders, he's my mentor. He was actually one of Dr. Froze , his patients, his wife, him and his wife. So it was like, everything was going so wrong. And I was literally struggling where I had been so proactive in my career. I was willing to beginning to struggle and my mentor for me to the side. And I said , you know, out of everything I've done in my career, I fast-tracked , the only thing I kind of want to do is be a mom and we're struggling with this right now. And so he, he gave me his car, Dr . Postcard, and it took me a while to like call and,
Speaker 2And I know a lot of our patients, you know, it takes a long time from the time somebody actually suggests you do something to, to picking up that phone. It's, it's amazing. How, how much of the fertility journey is that first step? Isn't it?
Speaker 6It is. I mean, it , it literally was nine months to the day that I called and made my first appointment to see Dr . Prose nine months to the day. Um , I actually volunteered to go on another rotation because of the disappointment. And so I advocate on infertility and the struggles and, you know, just staying in the fight of the process of becoming a parent, becoming a mom, becoming a dad. And I talk , I talk all the time. There , no testimony. There's no time. I won't give a testimony about, yes, I've been there where we're trying not to see each other cry with the pillow turn and I'm crying because you know, this is something that I really want to give to him. And he's driving to work in the morning and he's crying because it's something that he wants to give to me and, you know, just staying in my face. And like I said, nine months to the day we call , we made our appointment and immediately , um, we stood up, we were looking, I was like, oh, he's military, he's he's military. This is great. He's going to understand our struggle. He's going to know about these rotations. We can throw out these military terms, he's going to grab them up. We're good.
Speaker 5So that's pretty cool. You didn't even know he was military when you made the appointment. Well, that's great. Well ,
Speaker 6Yes. I mean, literally it was like, we pray for him and he came and it was, it was perfect. Every sense . It , it literally has been perfect. I just talked to your team earlier today. It's bitter sweet . And, you know, I was literally about to cry on the phone. I was like, because I'm really going to miss you doc ,
Speaker 5Interesting or latest up to your surprise. Tell us the telescope, how things happen , how they've evolved.
Speaker 4So w we've been together , uh , since about 2015. So we're not just talking about one baby, we're talking about multiple babies and I'll let her tell that story. But , um, if you could just tell us what, what it was like. Um, I guess overseas, I know a lot of our troops are stationed in other countries and , uh, as I've done this previous podcast , explain that we have a system in the United States at some locations where infertility care is available, but really nobody has any infertility care in Korea or Japan or Germany. So how do you seek out that care? How expensive is it , um, how successful is it , uh , for you and your colleagues who are trying to get into fertility care in another country
Speaker 6Overseas? We basically use the old Google. Um, we talked to a lot of resources , um , a lot of doctors on posts and basically , um , even though they couldn't refer us, they gave us the listing of who they would recommend or who they had recommended for. So, okay. So let me back up a little bit for soldiers is a little bit different. Then say I E if I was married to a international civilian in Korea. So if I was an American soldier and I was married to a Korean, it would have been a lot easier for that person to receive the services that was so difficult for me to receive. And so they do have those connections. They do have those point of contact . It's just a little bit harder for those soldiers to get those resources, but don't let anyone tell you that they're not there because they are out there. The facility in Korea, even though the language barrier was , um , there, it was amazing. They brought in translators to make sure that I understood when I did do my egg harvest there, we did do two cycles of M I R U I N. And in vitro cycle there , uh , they just did not take, and we always had a translator there. They always try to make sure that we had even our physician in his English was broken, but he made sure that we were very comfortable. It is scary. But again, sometimes if this is something that you want, you kind of have to put yourself out there. Germany has some of the greatest , uh , facilities. Um, the hospitals are a little bit scary when you , when you're, when you're accustomed to different things in the states, the food, the TVs , um, the nice hospital rooms. Um, Alfred , I freaked out really bad when I went to a hospital room in Germany. Um, it was terrible. They're much smaller and they're not private, correct? No, they're not private at all. They're very small. Um, when I had my transfer , I almost like freaked out because I went, they put me under. And when I came to, I literally had a sheet over my head and everyone, it was like five of us in a row. And when I took out and I stood up and I looked to my left and my right, I was like, oh my God, I'm dead. Just like, imagine it was something out of a horror movie. And I freaked out so bad and I started screaming and the lady came in and this German lady, and she's like, no, no, no, no. And she just laid me down and put the suit back over my head. And they finally roll me into my room. And I was studying. I was like, oh my God, get my clothes and get me out of it . But, so what happened? So once I read , so once we PCs, once we left from Germany, I was pregnant. So when we got here, we did our first OB appointment and that's when I found out no heartbeat. And so we miscarried , um, after that , um, we kept , we took a break. We literally had to take a break and I promise you if anyone is listening to this, it is okay to take breaks, take several in between . Um, so we, I took maybe a six month break. I just went on a couple of rotations , um, NTC, feel problems to kind of get my mind off of the miscarriage and get back into work, just to get a focus. It was kind of like my grieving moment. Um, and then we came here because we had has , yes,
Speaker 2Cassie , I have a question. We have patients all the time ask us, should we take breaks? How do we take breaks? And what I encourage the patients to do, if they're wanting to take a break is to kind of visualize and plan what they want to achieve during that break. What, what would be your words of advice for how to make the most of that break that you need to take?
Speaker 6So what I did when I took my break, we kind of had to get over the grieving moment because I literally, we saw that we saw the embryo, we heard the heartbeat before we left Germany. So we had to grieve over the miscarriage and then we taught . So I'm a huge planner. So we talk and I'm like, okay, I'm going to volunteer. And literally we had just PCs. We didn't have any of our , uh , household goods. We had no bags. We had no clothes. The only thing I had was my military gear in . So I'm like, okay, I'm going to volunteer to go to the field. I'm going to volunteer to go on this rotation, which is like 45 days of training. And I said, when I come back, we're going to come back and we're going to re-establish where do we go from here? Do we continue to try? Because this is expensive. This is non Tri-Care money. This is all of our savings. And that includes the medication. And as we all know, the medication can sometimes be very expensive. I think the only thing that Tri-Care pay for were like my labs. That was it. And so when we took the break, we literally, we sit down, I did my 45 days rotation. Then me , when I came back, I was kind of in a clear space of being a little bit over agreement, but I was in a good mental space to kind of say, where do we go forward? And so we talked adoption, we talked fostering. And then we looked into fostering, which was a difficult process. I was like, oh my God, this is crazy. Adoption is, is difficult. And fostering is difficult. We're literally two financially stable personnel that just want to love someone to bring someone in. And you know, this, this process is drastic. And I was like, okay, I want, I want something. That's a part of us, that's you and me. I want to see us in one individual, the personalities, you know, that's really what I want to see. And that's where my heart was. And so we cannot took a break from talking about fostering and adopting, and we said, okay, we'll get it for a baby. So we got for a baby for a little while, which prefer baby's name. So , um, Romeo and we got close . So we had a Yorkie and a , a pit bull. Don't ask me why that's a good combination, but they were perfect together. And they , they, so they feel, they feel the void, but not necessarily, you know, we had, we'd been so many places in our world, in our lives, visiting the world when we were in the military and we bought this big house. When we got here, we were pregnant. We bought this 3000 square foot home. All of these bedrooms, we're talking about, all the kids were going to be the parents where everyone's kids come to visit. And now we have these for babies . Nobody's for babies are coming to our house. And so I said, okay, where we're at the nine month stage, less , let's revisit, let's revisit and start looking into where. And that's when you know, it , it really became difficult because you have fertility specialists everywhere. And so I reached out to Betsy long waiting lists , long waiting list . Oh my God, that's an idea
Speaker 4Clinic in San Antonio, Texas, about a hundred miles .
Speaker 6Yes. Um , very long waiting lists , very , um , a lot of stipulations. You have to be a certain weight . You have to be a certain height and age. And if you're anywhere near a high risk of , and I was getting ready to be 35. And so all of those categories, I was a no, no, no. And no. So I became at the bottom of the list, I had to lose about 40 pounds. I was like, I'm gonna see this happening, honey . So we're going to see something else. And literally , um, I just got into a dark space and I was ready to just like call the army quits. Um, I was like, you know, I have fought for my country. I have volunteered for all the hard spots . And here I am a soldier that really just wants to start their family. And Tri-Care is not assisting. I'm not even asking Tri-Care to assist. I'm just asking you to provide me with a certified doctor. That's going to be great to assist me with starting my family with this difficult. And so we went to the MC and we met with a major, a very strict and direct major. She was like, listen, if your tubes are blocked, honey, and we can't open them up, we're going to just take them out. And I'm like, okay. I like her. She's straight into the point. Well, when she took my tubes out, I was on a lot of medication. And I think three days later I was like, oh, just Googling. I'll have any tubes notes. Who've me. No baby. Oh my God, no baby. Oh , righty . Then back on deployment, I go, who has a rotation? That's coming up. And um, my first one was like, you're going to too many rotations. What's what's going on. You're volunteering to be away from your husband, way too much. Is something going on between the two you have like , no , we love each other. We are just trying to find, just trying to find some help to , to get a baby. Then he was like, really me and , um, his wife's name is Suzanne she's . Like, we just went and saw here, call this guy. He's great. And I was like, yeah. Okay. I stuck it in my pocket. And I walked out and I was like, so how about that rotation? And I went to Germany six months, six or seven months , um, actually a week before my birthday and a week before, two weeks before our anniversary. And I was, I was back in Germany just trying to stay focused on work and not really think about having a baby and just trying to get mentally prepared and physically prepared. Um, and literally nine months to the day when I came back, I was actually, we got off the plane. He picked me up, we were in the car and I called Dr . Paul's office and made my doctor's appointment, like on our way home.
Speaker 3So at that point, when you met Dr. Probes , did you go straight into IVF because you are already like mentally prepared for it. So we obviously you have to have the testing first and the blood work and yada yada, yada, because God knows none of us .
Speaker 6We went , we sit down and we had a great, a great first meeting. We went over all of our , um, my medical records, basically my history. I was like, yeah , have no tubes , um, have had this many cycles of IVF. And he was like , um, well, let's talk about ed retrieval and let's talk about it. The purpose of it was, it was, you're not too old, you're not too fat. Um, it was nothing, it wasn't anything negative. It was all positive. It was when you're going to see someone, and this is something that you want to do with all of your heart. And someone begins to kind of tell you that negative stuff, you immediately shut them out. And when we met him, he comes in with a smile he's already military, and I'm already telling them about my full, my full schedule of things that I have going on because the army keeps rolling. It does not stop because you want to get pregnant. Um, he's like, oh yeah, we can do this. So we're going to do, let's pull out this calendar. He gives me this binder full of stuff and he's writing stuff down and I'm leaning forward. And so when I'm leaning forward, I'm happy, I'm excited, I'm bouncing and I'm ready. And I'm just like, and we leave. And I'm like, yeah, I like him. We're going to be
Speaker 3Dr . Probes. How long did it take? Like, did you do anything different knowing that Chassidy was military to expedite things because of her deployments and all the other stuff?
Speaker 4Well, I don't know that I did anything different, but I, you know, being a retired physician from the military, you know, I know some of the challenges that , uh , military couples face in getting fertility care. Um, and I know the resources that the military has , uh, and , uh, both inside and outside. So I think I was able to, first of all, you know , give , uh, Jesse and Herman hope because , you know, they had , um, had a lot of disappointment that point, they had several cycles that had not worked and people started to feel like it's never gonna work. And they remained excellent candidates. She was still relatively young at 35. She had a great, you know, good ovarian reserve, meaning that she was going to make a lot of eggs. And I felt very, very confident that if they did IVF again, that they could have success. Um, and so that's the approach we took. I think within several months we had done another IVF cycle and that was just a matter of, and she had a great response. I think we had a total of seven embryos that we were able to , um, uh , to use. And so at that point, it's just a matter of helping her plan, her pregnancies from that group of embryos, we obtained from that IVF cycle.
Speaker 2One thing that I often tell my patients is that your state of mind in going into a cycle is so, so important. And it really sounds like when you met Tony, it was click. We're going to go positive, go, go, go. D did you feel more positive about that cycle as compared to the cycles you had previously done overseas? Okay .
Speaker 6Absolutely. Like totally. Um, I don't even know how I can really, I'm going to try to explain. So, like you said, with the hope when you have so much negativity and negativity, and this is never going to happen, I don't care if it's this much hope or this much hope. Just being able for someone to be able to give you that. It just gave me a glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel. Um , because we did one fresh, we did one fresh embryo and it didn't take, and most people would say, okay, I'm done. Don't even worry about it. No, he was like, I didn't , he didn't even give me the option. He was like, okay. So we did the fresh one that intake, let's set you up a date to do the frozen ones of what works this count these days, you're going to call me with this cycle star . So there was never even a break to kind of just like, okay, it didn't work. Um, so maybe no, it literally was like, not even a second. It was like, okay, so the fresh didn't work. So we're gonna , you're gonna come back and see me. We're going to test this. You gotta call me when your cycle starts. And we're going to set up the next day to put the frozen ones. It it's . I was like, okay. Cause if he has faith that the , the next ones are going to work, who am I to say? No . Okay. You're the doctor. We're with you. You just tell me where I need to be and we'll be there. And we got Cooper. So Cooper's our first and oh, so Cooper was your first frozen transfer then, huh? Yes. And so, oh my God. I remember that day. It was pouring down, raining here in Texas. We're going through the April showers and I just kept calling the nurse line and I was like, I'm so sorry to keep calling you. And she's like, well, Dr. Rose is going to call you. And I was like, okay. And she, I guess she felt so bad for me. And she was like, but congratulations. And I begin this scream through the phone. It was so amazing. I was just like, then you don't care anymore. All of the negatives, all of the, the miscarriage, the fail IVs , the it's like you're pregnant. And it's like, oh my God, I'm pregnant. I'm pregnant. We're pregnant. Oh, great. First ultrasound when you saw ,
Speaker 7Oh, that was great. And to hear how, how hard and fast that heartbeat was going, that was, And I was like this little boy going to be ,
Speaker 6That gives you chills. You've been through the struggle and oh , it, oh, it's so like, I'm getting talked out . It's not going to cry . It gives you chills. It literally does it freezes the hairs , stand up on your body and nothing else in the world matters. None of your child's intimate tribulations . None of it matters. It's just that moment. And we can't even talk about the birth when we had , when I had Cooper in my arms. Oh my God. That was like, I was like, we should call Dr. Paul's like at baseline hill . He's like, I'm sure , like , I don't need the articles with you. We talked to you when we come, but I really don't think that you understand like how important you are to us. Like I literally was on the phone crying with Amy earlier because I was like, this is so bittersweet. I'm going to have to just come and see you guys sex this periodically
Speaker 4Always welcome. We love seeing your children and seeing you guys you've been very special patients. I've really enjoyed working with you and getting to know you.
Speaker 6Not the only one. No. So we have Cooper and we announced that we was having Corbyn on Cooper's first birthday. Yeah , we announced. We announced and Cooper turns four on Monday. Next Monday, he turns four . So Cooper, Corbin . And so we don't know what the next little girl is going to be.
Speaker 7We're going to find out today about product , about algo .
Speaker 4Hid that from me. Yay . I know you hoping for a girl, you are happy with anything. I know you were hoping for a girl this time, so I'm really pleased for you guys.
Speaker 6I was like, doctor , he kept the girl. Then last ,
Speaker 3Are you a little, girl's going to have two big brothers to , uh , protect her as she's grown up. Yes . Although I have a feeling, if she's your daughter, she's not going to need it.
Speaker 6No, she's going to boss them around. And that's what I kinda need. My boys are handful. We'd love them. We, we, we are this, this, this whole journey in life for us has really made us , um , appreciate and love our kids. Um, it's one thing to be a parent when it's easily given. And I tell anyone, you know, when you really have to work for something, you definitely appreciate it. People tell me all the time, like you're the greatest mom. And I said, and that's all I wanted to ever be like my entire life. Because like the greatest mom, I mean, I'm very extra with them. I go above and beyond. And I think it's literally because I never want to take it for granted because I know the struggles that we had to have them. And , um, we would do it all over again. When I say literally we would go bankrupt. We would, we would finance, refinance everything that we can and continue to work in order to , to go through this process. Because when you see, when you have them and you see them , um, it's great. We want a Cooper to have siblings. We didn't want to just have one. We wanted to make sure that he had somewhere if something happened to us, especially because we're military, we're very, we deal with death all the time. And so we definitely wanted him to have siblings in order to go through, you know, the , the mourning process. If he lost us, we wanted him to have someone that knew what that true feeling was. And they both have my personality. So I'm excited to see what the girl is going to be.
Speaker 4Oh , like Carmen laid back.
Speaker 5If you could go back to your younger self, when you were in South Korea, when you're first starting out, what would you have told your younger self? Now
Speaker 6Keep going girl. It's light at the tunnel. It literally is. Um, I think I would keep the same mind frame even though the nights were long with the tears. Um, the depression. Um, literally, I mean, so you guys aren't military. I know that the process , uh, volunteering for deployments are not something that people normally would do. Um, and I did it a lot , um, just to kinda keep in shape to keep the drive , um, to stay mission ready. And I always wanted, I wanted to finish out my career , um, on a good note, we're both veterans, military retired veterans. And so we both still work, but we're financially stable. We have a great foundation for our boys. And so I would definitely tell my younger self, like, Hey, keep your head up. There is like , it is definitely light at the end of the song, do not give up because it's
Speaker 2Jessie and Herman , that has been an amazing story. And we thank you both so much for coming and to Dr. Tony probes for helping us kind of bring together and let our audience know what our men and women in the military face, when not only are they facing the fears of our world, but facing the fears of infertility and, and that there is light at the end of the tunnel. And so I thank all three of you for your service and your courage. Thank
Speaker 6You so much. Thank you so much for having us
Speaker 4And you promise you're going to bring your children to see me when the little girl's going. Right. All right . I look forward to that visit. Yes ,
Speaker 6Definitely.
Speaker 2So to our audience, thank you so much for listening and be sure to turn in next week for more also, please subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes would love to hear from you. You can also visit
Speaker 3At fertility docs, uncensored.com , um , to schedule an appointment with any of us or submit any specific questions you have about infertility's and all questions will be answered on the podcast anonymously for our ask the doc segment . So don't hold back the more embarrassing, the better. All right . We'll talk to you guys soon.
Speaker 8[inaudible] .