Mary Adkins: Weaving the Tapestry of Motherhood with Writing and Resilience

When Mary Adkins, accomplished author and writing coach, graced us with her presence on the podcast, we uncovered the tangled web of motherhood fused with professional life. Her journey, marked by the birth of her son Finn, is filled with the kind of transformative experiences only parenthood can bestow. From the financial complexities to the surprises of postpartum hospital policies, Mary's storytelling reveals the candid essence of a life reshaped by the arrival of a child. As we exchanged our own labor stories, laughter mingled with the raw emotion of shared experiences, emphasizing the boundless nature of this universal rite of passage.

Breastfeeding, a subject often glossed over with rosy expectations, was dissected in its messy reality. Mary and I delved into the challenges and societal pressures that accompany nursing, from tongue ties to the emotional weight of supplementing with formula. This segment of the conversation is a testament to the resilience required for new mothers to find balance, underscoring the importance of informed choices that prioritize both mother and baby's well-being.

The episode rounded out with an intimate look at Mary's process of penning a novel amidst the chaos of new parenthood, the trials of infertility, and the decision to embrace her family as it is. Through her experiences with miscarriages and IVF, listeners are offered a poignant reflection on resilience and acceptance. Mary's upcoming projects tease the promise of future discussions that will undoubtedly resonate with many. Join us for an episode that traverses the peaks and valleys of parenting, creativity, and the enduring human spirit.

To connect with Mary, go to maryadkinswriter.com

Want me as your birth coach? You got it!

I will help you:

☑️identify the source of anxiety you have surrounding birth. 

☑️fill in knowledge gaps to make sure that you are fully informed and confident. 

☑️learn key phrases so you can better communicate with your medical team. 

☑️emotionally process your fears so that they don’t hold power over you

Go to kellyhof.com to book a free 30 minute birth vision call.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:28

Hello, today I have with me Mary Adkins. Mary is the mother of one, a writing coach, a podcast host and the founder of the book Incubator, a 12-month program to write, revise and pitch your novel or memoir. She is the author of the novels when you Read this, privilege and Palm Beach. Her books have been published in 13 countries and her essays and reporting have appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic Slate and More. A graduate of Yale Law School in Duke University, she helps aspiring authors finish their books with joy and clarity. Mary, welcome and thank you for joining me. Yeah, I'm so glad to be here. Thanks, kelly, me too, I'm so glad, especially after I read. When you Read this. I'm so excited to be able to interview you A little bit of a fan.

Speaker 1: 1:19

So I can't wait to read your other books, but today we're here to talk about your birth story and your fertility journey and how you have figured out how to balance motherhood and career, and it sounds like you're teaching other moms and other people to do that, so I'm just really excited to hear all of it. Yeah, me too.

Speaker 2: 1:37

I love talking about this stuff so ready to dive in.

Speaker 1: 1:41

All right, let's do it. So you have one son. Tell me about how that came about. I mean, I think we all know how it came about. Well, I don't know. There's like one of two ways.

Speaker 2: 1:55

Right, yes, I have a five year old son named Finn, and he was born in New York in 2018. And we I was 35. I was three weeks from turning 36 when he was born. My husband and I we had gotten married when I was 33, two years earlier, and we met in New York. We met online on OK Cupid, which was like the dating site that people were still on back then. I don't even know if it still exists, but we had. We got married in 2015. And we had spent a couple of years, you know, being a couple and it was great.

Speaker 2: 2:31

And I just remember not really having the itch to have a baby until suddenly I did Like I actually remember when it hit me, I was in the gym and on the treadmill in our in our Queens neighborhood and I was like I want to have a baby now. I think it was. I saw a commercial or something and I just got the baby fever. So when I told him, like I'm ready to start trying, he's like oh gosh, oh gosh. He was my husband. When I met him, he was a professional vocalist and a voice teacher and he, at this point, was transitioning into medicine. Actually, like in his mid 30s. He wanted to go to medical school, so he and he had a start over from scratch with college for to take sciences, science pre-rex. So he was a full time student and was catering at night and I was like trying to make it as a writer and tutoring. So life was not easy. We did not have a lot of money, so for him, the idea of having a child was really terrifying and I'm not going to say like lie, I mean it like scared me a little bit too, but I think it. I was just more of the attitude of like look, we're going to figure this out, everybody figures it out, we will also figure it out. I remember telling him, like look, I'm in my mid 30s, like this may take us a while. It's like, okay, well, it's going to take us a while, let's start. Then, of course, when you say that it did not take a while, we got pregnant the first cycle and the pregnancy stuck and was relatively seamless. I mean, I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes at 20 weeks and so needed to manage that, but did manage that and then, ultimately, was induced up in Manhattan in April, the beginning of April 2018.

Speaker 2: 4:10

And we had our son, and, apart from the fact that at that hospital, at least at the time, your partner had to go home because you were assigned a roommate after birth and then you would stay in the room with the roommate, which that was a little traumatic for me. I'm not going to lie, I was not prepared for that and I think if I had known what childbirth was actually like and what the wake of it was like, I we would have found a way to pay the I don't know at the time you could pay like $1,000 a night to have a private room, which sounded absolutely insane to me. Like that number. I was like we don't have that kind of money, no. But in retrospect I'm like, oh, that was really hard to be alone after giving birth with my baby, not having slept and having to basically stay up all night because my roommate, who also had just had a baby, would get up and feed her baby whenever I was trying to go to sleep. It was. It was terrible and I understand there are space issues, but I I feel like now I'm an advocate against this Like I think it's absolutely horrible to do this to new mothers. It's really terrible to do to people. So that was actually kind of traumatic, but not for any reason other than I was forced to have a roommate and my husband had to leave and then came in the next morning at eight o'clock with with our really close friend, and they had gone out for drinks the night before and had a full night's sleep. I don't blame them. I would have done the same thing if I got to leave, but I didn't, you know. So, yeah, I mean, that was really the birth story.

Speaker 2: 5:45

I mean, I think just to get like a little deeper here and I'm sure many of your guests have versions of this but I did feel like I went into the hospital one person and, like, walked out of the hospital a different person and I.

Speaker 2: 6:00

I do distinctly remember this feeling that morning when my husband his name is Lucas and our friend Wes came in carrying a Starbucks for me that I had asked him to bring and we wheeled the baby Finn down to the like visitors room so that they and we were like they're holding him and passing him around. I remember this feeling of like, of it just feeling so surreal that everyone was acting like I had not just gone through this Absolutely. I keep wanting to use the word traumatizing, but I don't know if that's the right word, but like my body, I still was just bleeding profusely. I was just in the wake of having given birth and it was almost like an elephant in the room that no one was talking about. Like I just became people. I'm like why are people just treating me like this didn't just happen to my body, like I don't know what I expected them to do? Maybe just ask like, how are you doing?

Speaker 1: 6:58

Maybe that was it, but act like you had a medical procedure or like I had a medical procedure. Yes, right. And while I want to advocate for birth as a natural phenomenon and not a medical procedure, it is a complete metamorphosis of your body and there is trauma that is inflicted on your body parts, regardless of what manner you gave birth.

Speaker 2: 7:23

And.

Speaker 1: 7:24

I just I agree. I think that oftentimes what you see is just everybody's paying attention to the baby and nobody's paying attention to the mom.

Speaker 2: 7:32

The mom, yes, and I think part of the surreal thing is that if I even had a cold, people would be like how are you doing, how are you feeling? And this felt so much more dramatic than that. It's like I have a gaping hole in my body right now. I have undergone this, like you said, this massive transformation. The fact that no one is kind of checking in just felt so odd, because all the attention was on the baby, and that was one moment where I felt like, wow, I've never experienced anything quite like this.

Speaker 1: 8:08

Yeah, it is really, really odd and I think we can definitely do better as a society when it comes to checking in on moms, but also I understand that it's kind of awkward because of what just happened. What do you say sometimes? I? Think people struggle with that especially if it was your husband and his friend Right, Then he's probably like I don't want to ask about that.

Speaker 2: 8:28

Yeah, they're two men and they don't get it. I mean, I don't even feel like I got it until I had you don't know what it's like until you do it. We don't talk about it a lot. We all talk about it.

Speaker 1: 8:37

Yeah, we're all talking about it. Oh, this is what it's like. Yeah, unless you're looking for that information. It's not like you know, you don't get a pamphlet in the mail. It's like this is what it's like when somebody has given birth.

Speaker 2: 8:48

Be sure to talk about this Exactly.

Speaker 1: 8:51

No, handbook no. So you said, you said you had an induction, right, mm-hmm. So then do you remember how long did that take and what all you went through?

Speaker 2: 9:01

Yeah, so we came in versus. We were there at five and we arrived, you know, a little early and we're in the waiting room for a while. And then we went back and they did they put a balloon in my cervix and I forget what that's called.

Speaker 1: 9:16

There's lots of different kinds. Oh, okay, there's like a cook's catheter. There's a fully catheter. There's a fully balloon.

Speaker 2: 9:22

Just different brands, and so that was. I remember that was supposed to sort of cause cramping, like some feelings of cramping. Well, in my case it caused a lot more pain than that. I ended up throwing up from the pain actually, which I don't really do that, so it was a little bit alarming, although it was bonding for my husband and me in a way, because he was having that. We would make jokes afterward about how I had to go to the bathroom and then I started throwing up at the same time and he was just like having to clean up around me.

Speaker 1: 9:55

So it was like trying to figure out where to put which hole.

Speaker 2: 9:57

Yeah, exactly, so it was like bonding in a way, because he's like I don't know. And then just some of the classic they almost felt stereotypical kind of couple birth stories where I'm like begging him to give me food and he's like I'm not, I was told not to and I'm like just stick me some crackers because I just was so hungry. But anyway, the.

Speaker 2: 10:15

I don't even remember. I think they gave me pain medicine. After that I had an epidural I and then they started the pitocin and the rest of I mean, the worst part was that, that moment in the morning.

Speaker 1: 10:27

And then it was a pretty.

Speaker 2: 10:29

I slept through a lot of laboring because of the epidural and would just doze, would chat with my mom and sister and Lucas, and so it was essentially that for most of the day we ended up starting to push around seven PM, so he'd gotten there around five and then pushed around seven, about 14 hours I guess, and and my son was born around eight PM, so it was or seven, 40, I think. And then the family came in to see him and we had tacos. I immediately was like someone nice tacos from across the street.

Speaker 1: 11:05

Yeah, yeah, I think that New York experience is all right.

Speaker 2: 11:08

You see that right there, that, like you look at the one you're like I want that, go there and get me a burrito bowl, yeah Right.

Speaker 1: 11:17

Yeah, that's, we had Wendy's next door when I delivered and it was not that that's special, but we had an employee discount there. Yeah, and in my husband the badge and they remembered me because I'd been coming in every time I had my ultrasounds and scanning and they're like she delivered it. She was like so excited. They said they sent a bunch of junior bacon cheese burgers for the staff and everything, so that is like an only in New York story, you know where you're just like go to that little place, that's.

Speaker 1: 11:45

You know, wendy's isn't a little place, it's a franchise. But whatever you know, the place next door and you know, get your get your food.

Speaker 1: 11:52

Yeah, I love that. Well, that's great, I think. As far as the balloon goes, I feel like it's either fine or just turns into a medieval torture device. It just kind of depends.

Speaker 1: 12:05

And I think my theory and this is not scientifically proven because I don't, I don't know that you can is that I feel like everybody's cervical innervation is different. Some people have a very sensitive cervix, while others that there's not a lot going on there. And I think that when you're putting like that tension and pressure and stretching the cervix, for some people it can just be really intense. But also what you're doing is releasing hormones, because inside the cervix you know as your baby's head will push on it, there's more hormones released that help trigger the labor process, and I think that process is something that makes people have that physiologic reaction of vomiting, because it's really common to have someone vomit when their baby is super low in the pelvis. And I just wonder if that's part of the process of the cervical balloon, because you're kind of mimicking that pressure of the baby's head before the baby's head is like down there.

Speaker 2: 12:59

That's really interesting.

Speaker 1: 13:00

I mean, that's just my experience, so I don't know that there's data on that. That's just something that I've observed in the theories that I have from observing that. But it is pretty common for women to have some sort of physiological response to the mechanical dilation of the cervical balloon, and then just as common for them to not really have any response whatsoever. And so I'm like why did I caught him here?

Speaker 2: 13:22

There's definitely something going on.

Speaker 1: 13:23

Yeah, why the?

Speaker 2: 13:24

variation. I just remembered a kind of beautiful moment that I left out. Can I share that? Oh, yeah, go ahead. So when he came out, he wasn't thriving I forget all the words you don't People like me do. He was not thriving. So they did the thing where they kind of they just kind of rushed away with him to make sure he was breathing and stuff, so I hadn't held him or anything yet, and my OB, who I had seen throughout my pregnancy, did deliver me because we had scheduled the induction. It worked out that way.

Speaker 2: 13:55

And I was really glad because I really liked her. But this moment in particular I've thought about a lot since then and it's really special to me and I didn't realize in the moment how much I would come to really appreciate it. But as she was sewing me up and I still hadn't had even seen my son yet, I hadn't even seen his face, it's just crazy to think about. This happened before I had even ever seen his face. But she quoted to me Khalil Gabran, who has a poem on children, and the line she quoted to me were your children do not belong to you.

Speaker 2: 14:27

And I forget the exact next line, but the spirit of it, which is what I always think about, is like your children are on loan to you and they actually belong to the universe and like you are just, they're just in your care for a period of time and it's so in the moment.

Speaker 2: 14:43

You know, I'm just like in this stupor or whatever. And so I remember thinking, oh, that's lovely, but not fully registering. And then of course they hand me my son and I'm just like in love and I'm holding him and things from there were full of activity. But then later I went back to that moment and I looked up the poem and read this little poem and I thought about it so many times since and how profound that was for me in terms of thinking about myself as a parent and what my responsibility is and how I don't own this person. Yes, I created this person physically, but I just love that idea that, like, our children are all alone to us and when I've told people that particular part of my birth story, they're like wow, that was like really a gift, that was really an offering that she took the time to do that in that moment and I'm just so appreciative of it.

Speaker 1: 15:40

Yeah, that's really. That's a really nice thing to do, when someone's just kind of sitting there unsure of what's going on.

Speaker 2: 15:46

And would have been worried. I don't know if she was doing it to distract me or not, but if she was, I appreciate it, because I think if we hadn't been talking, I would have been like where is he? Why is what's going on? Why? Is someone and instead I just was kind of paying attention to. I'm like she's talking to me, I should listen to what she's saying, and then he was there, you know.

Speaker 1: 16:05

so yeah, yeah, that's really interesting. I had a similar. My daughter had a similar response to birth, just didn't respond. My husband was the one talking to me. He's over there and he's, like you know, just telling me what's going on. And then suddenly I heard her cry and he said, and I could see, and I think either he told me or I saw her little hand come up and then heard the cry, like she just suddenly was like, you know, the life was breathe back into her and she didn't need a lot of resuscitation. It was just she was stunned in that moment. You know, and I'm not sure if that's similar to what happened with you, sometimes they just don't breathe right away and they're just kind of like, yeah, so at that I mean it's, it's scary and having that distraction which my husband is always a distraction, he's always talking, yeah.

Speaker 1: 16:52

And to have something like that. I think is real important.

Speaker 2: 16:54

I really do too, and I don't. This is one of those moments where I am grateful and retrospect of what I did not know, because I didn't know until later that he wasn't thriving. I just assumed this is what they do. They must be just wiping him off. I don't think I assumed anything was wrong but, like you said, it's so fuzzy that it you're kind of like I don't really remember what I was thinking. I might not have been thinking anything because you're stunned, right yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:23

And even with medical background, it's fuzzy. I didn't know a lot when I delivered my first, because I was a postpartum nurse, which I totally remember, those double rooms, that's oh my gosh, did you you?

Speaker 2: 17:33

worked in the double room.

Speaker 1: 17:34

Because I worked there? No, I didn't. I called them when I went into labor and I was like my room, oh, you knew, you knew. Yeah, I was like no way. And then I just remember it was just the difference between the two birth experiences having worked in postpartum and then working in labor and delivery was completely different and understanding what was going on. But they're still fuzzy. There's still parts that are fuzzy because there's just so much going on and it's so emotional.

Speaker 2: 17:59

Yeah, it overwhelms your brain. I actually, now that we're talking about it and I'm going back, I do. I remember watching my husband's face to see because I couldn't see the baby, but I could see him. I could see my husband's face who was watching and, like your husband talking through it Lucas wasn't talking through it but his face looked calm. So I remember being like, okay, well, he doesn't look alarmed. So I'm going to take that as a good sign. I assumed if things were bad it would have shown on his face.

Speaker 1: 18:31

Well, it sounds like it all happened in under five minutes, and that's when we do the Apgar scores. So those are the like. The first one maybe wasn't as high as expected, and then maybe the second one, by the five minute period, was fine. So or sometimes you know that first minute that can seem like forever. Yeah, it might have been one minute so who knows how long it might have been one minute.

Speaker 1: 18:51

Because sometimes they don't respond immediately. They kind of look alarm, alarming, like their physique is alarming, and so you know, then they just take him to the warmer to do a couple of things and make sure, just so that they can have everything there to resuscitate if necessary. And then oh baby is like oh, wait a minute, what are you doing to me? And then you know I'm good. So yeah, I don't know if they debriefed you on what happened, but just guessing, those are some possibilities.

Speaker 2: 19:18

They were pretty vague, I remember it might have been that, just because I remember them being like yeah, at first it was like wasn't breathing, but now we're good. So it was like oh OK. Like basically it was like now we're good, like OK, I'm just going to assume things are fine now.

Speaker 1: 19:33

And there's been kind of an evolution and I just remember New York being real procedure oriented in the hospitals versus some of the places that I'm working here they're trying to really be a little bit more. I mean, I work with midwives now and they try to be a little bit more holistic.

Speaker 1: 19:48

But you know, just space is such an issue in New York. They just want to get things done. So I think at the time if I remember so, my daughter was born in 2015, there wasn't as much emphasis on things like skin to skin and the golden hour, and maybe in that three year period things changed, because I know that by 2018, when I was here, we did it a little bit differently, but still there's been an evolution.

Speaker 2: 20:12

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 20:13

I just remember there was so much more like put the baby on the warmer, do all the things, then give the baby to mom, then have the baby go get a bath and all that stuff when I was in New York versus here.

Speaker 2: 20:25

So we did promptly do skin to skin and then my husband also did skin to skin. Oh nice, yeah. So we. Once he was okay and breathing. I remember him being with us for what felt like quite a while, like through the tacos and everything.

Speaker 1: 20:41

Through the tacos. Yeah, good, so you weren't really separated. Did you get separated before you went to postpartum?

Speaker 2: 22:31

I did? Yeah, I did. But it was like it felt like after, like, my dad had showed up with the tacos, my parents had held him, my sister had held him, we had done skin to skin, lucas did skin to skin, and then at some point it was like, okay, we're going to take him and then you're going to go, and it was like okay. So I don't even, like we said, I think they feel like time warps in this situation, but it's like, was that 30 minutes or an hour? Probably not an hour. I don't think they gave us the full hour, but it was probably like 30, 40 minutes.

Speaker 1: 22:58

It could have been and it just depending on the day and the load of babies in the nursery, that had just been more they may have waited. Because you only have a couple nurses doing all that stuff. So if they're backed up they probably wouldn't have taken your baby. So then afterwards you went home. We already talked about how your hospital stay wasn't exactly what you're hoping for. So what was that transition like?

Speaker 2: 23:18

for you. So I was terrified we were going to break him, you know, because he's so little. So we did spend a stupid amount of money I think it cost over $100. But like I got some car service that I didn't want to take him home in a regular cab, I was like, absolutely not, we can't do it. Like we need some. So I booked some fancy car service that's specialized in taking babies home from the hospital with their parents, and since we had to go all the way from Manhattan to Queens, it was really expensive. But whatever money well spent, because it relaxed me that it was this like massive SUV. We had our own little infant car seat, but I didn't even know. I remember the driver showing us how to. We didn't know how to work it, so the driver's like do that. So we went home and I, my gosh, the breastfeeding was a thing. It was a thing for me it was real hard.

Speaker 2: 24:08

It was in the hospital. It wasn't really working. We had a lactation consultant come and put on the, this little thing that assists the baby I forget what that's called, but it looks sort of like a shield, a nipple shield. So that was helping. But he was not getting quite enough food in the hospital so we did have to supplement with formula. So when I got home I was so terrified I was very pulled. I was pulled in different directions on one hand, like obviously what mattered to me was that he had enough nutrients. On the other, I really wanted to breastfeed and I felt like, since he was kind of breastfeeding, there had to be a way that we could make it fully work and not just partially work. And the lactation consultant at the hospital had sort of whispered to me like he has a tongue tie. I was like I'm gonna nerves unless you clip that tongue tie. I'm like why is she whispering?

Speaker 1: 25:04

She was like it's controversial, for I don't even know why. I don't know why they're controversial.

Speaker 2: 25:09

She goes, you have to go to Long Island, Literally like whispering to me and write down this name. She's like they only do this in Long Island. I'm like what do they only do in Long Island? Why did it feel? It felt, yeah, it felt like weirdly secretive and I didn't understand why it was a secret. So I ended up we went home, still not nursing enough. I ordered the scale where you could measure it.

Speaker 2: 25:33

put the baby on it to see how many ounces of food he had gotten, because they're so little that if they ate more ounces you could actually see that change in weight. So I'm like he's not getting enough food. So we booked the man in Long Island who does the time tie surgery. We booked the man in Long Island and rented a car.

Speaker 2: 25:51

And by this point he's like a week or two old and I've been trying, he's not with that. We have the nipple shield, my nipples were bleeding and all that, but I just really wanted it to work and so we went out there and he clipped the tongue. I faced the other direction, I was sobbing, I couldn't handle it. I couldn't believe we were doing surgery on the week old baby. I felt really guilty about it. And then, but immediately after, he did start nursing without the nipple shield. So it was like oh, oh, my gosh, oh my gosh. It was so happy. And then I ended up.

Speaker 2: 26:23

I breastfed for four months. We pretty much that whole time, supplemented with formula. There was a very short period of time where he was actually getting enough, but we did kind of both the whole time, which I, in retrospect, I feel like if I had ended up having a second child, I would have been much more open to that, because it really did help with taking turns at night. I didn't have to necessarily have pumped as much as Finn would need. This could give him formula at night and I could actually get some sleep. So that was really helpful and that's ultimately why I ended up stopping breastfeeding because it was like I'm just going to need more sleep than this. The waking up and by that point he was sleeping a lot more, so it was much more like I was getting up to pump, or because my breasts were hurting and it was like I think I'm done with that. So I stopped and that was pretty. That was a good choice. I remember feeling like I think I made the right choice for me to stop at four months.

Speaker 1: 27:22

Well, if he's sleeping through the night. And I think it's all so individual because both my kids were so different and everybody has to, just kind of factor in what's working for them to decide. I mean, just because it's not working, yeah exactly. That's what's important.

Speaker 2: 27:34

Yeah, and in retrospect I look back on that and it's like what, that sort of obsession with breastfeeding I don't really know how to unpack where that was coming from. Was it cultural pressure? Why was I putting that pressure on myself? And I mean, I don't know, and I think probably it was cultural pressure. It was just this assumption of it's better to breastfeed. So I have to do that. Of course I have to do that and I think it was not that it's their fault at all, but it was unintentionally exacerbated by the.

Speaker 2: 28:08

I ended up hiring two more lactation consultants who came to our house afterward. My insurance covered one and then when that didn't really help, I like paid out of pocket for the other one. It was someone everyone recommended and so these people would come. So in total I saw three lactation consultants and because it's their job, I get it. They want you to breastfeed more than anything because that's their job, right.

Speaker 2: 28:31

But I remember at one point my mom one of the lactation consultants was in our apartment. We lived in this, you know, new York, so small apartment in Queens. So my mom was kind of trying to give me personal space with this lactation consultant, but she could hear everything even from the other room and my mom was sending me these texts that were basically like you know, fed is best. Essentially, she's like. She's like you don't have to do anything. This woman is saying this woman is obsessed with you breastfeeding. It's okay if you don't want to do any of this.

Speaker 2: 29:03

I remember really appreciating it at the time but also being like, okay, mom, like I can't read these texts and work with this woman at the same time, but it was so well-meaning.

Speaker 2: 29:11

It was my mom basically being like I think she was just worried about me. She's like you don't have to do this, like if it's not working, you can let this go. I think it ended up sort of snowballing because I think once you at least for me once I committed to being on the breastfeeding wagon and I'm like I want to nurse. Then there are people there whose intention is to help you and they do help you, but they're all in also on like making that work. So everybody ends up having this very single focus on nursing at all costs and it can get a little bit out of control. I think in my case it did get a little bit out of control, and by out of control I mean just like a little bit obsessive seeing all the specialists charting like how much formula has he had versus breast milk? I need him to have more breast milk tomorrow than he did today.

Speaker 1: 29:58

Just like getting a little bit obsessive in a way that probably this wasn't necessary, right, yeah, so what do you truly, in your core, want to do? If that's the kind of a dedication, because it's always, it's a challenge, there's going to be a challenge there, right? It's not the easiest form of feeding.

Speaker 2: 30:18

So it is most of the time You'd say a lot of the time it's hard.

Speaker 1: 30:22

Most of the time there is some sort of challenge because we aren't, I think, because we don't live in the village the proverbial village anymore, right, we're not watching our sisters and mothers and aunties and everybody breastfeed like it's a normal thing. We don't do that on the day-to-day basis. Right, we all have to overcome the learning hurdle, and for some it's easier than others, but I feel like there's always a challenge. Every single mom that I help breastfeed for the first time is like what am I doing? And neither does the baby, because the baby has to learn as well. So there's always going to be a challenge to overcome the breastfeeding hurdle.

Speaker 1: 31:02

And for you there are additional challenges because of the tongue tie and then the imbalance between supply and demand. And so if that's what you truly want, if that's where you want to focus your energy, that's fine. If it's not working out absolutely, I think everybody needs to find that balance and I think everybody needs to feel empowered to find what works for them and just utilize the resources with an open mind, which is so hard when you're hormonal and you have this tiny human that you're trying to do the best. They say breast is best. They say that right, but what that means is nutritionally, that is what is created for your baby. It's considered to be nutritionally perfect.

Speaker 1: 31:45

Air quotes right, we are trying to mimic that air quote perfection with formula, and even formula companies will say we haven't gotten there, but we are feeding our baby, we are giving the best nutrition that is available.

Speaker 1: 32:01

Babies have been getting some sort of supplementation since the beginning of time, otherwise they would not have survived right, whether it was barley water, which is apparently what my mom got as a kid or something like that before there was formula, whether it's a wet nurse, because there's people that were just professional breast feeders Professional is probably a bad word, I think most of the time they were, it was either slavery or indentured servitude.

Speaker 1: 32:25

But from the beginning of time there's been some sort of supplementation for the actual mother's milk, and so to think that we are failing as mothers because we have utilized supplementation is, I think, not fair and being able to utilize our resources. I don't know a whole lot about it, but I know that there are donor milk companies and I know hospitals will have donor milk for babies in the NICU and there's just there's so many options out there. If it's your passion, yes, breast feed absolutely. You know I utilize my resources to be able to overcome those hurdles. It was frustrating but I was glad I did it and I tried not to be too obsessive and it was just. It was hard work for the first year or so when I was doing it.

Speaker 1: 33:04

But I don't think any less of people that choose formula, because you have to have your sanity, you have to be a mother to your child and you have to be a human being and you have to make life work. So I love that you're able to have zoomed out and look and said you know?

Speaker 1: 33:21

this isn't the best. I need to be a human and found a solution. That's what we need to do as mothers we need to zoom out, look at the whole situation in general during this whole time that we, our children, are on loan to us, as you mentioned, and decide what works for the family and what works best for everyone, and try to work with that, because the time breastfeeding is one of those big hurdles and deciding how to feed your baby is like one of those first hurdles that you have to decide how you're going to handle.

Speaker 2: 33:47

I love that, the way you put that.

Speaker 1: 33:49

I feel like we really overcomplicate it and I'm guilty of it. You know we want what's best for our kids, but at the end of the day, we have to also think about what's best for everyone that's involved. So then you were doing all the tutoring and writing and all that stuff, while trying to overcome this hurdle and figuring out what's best for you and baby. How was the transition from? I don't know if you did you have maternity leave. It sounds like you did in the penitent.

Speaker 2: 34:16

So this was really interesting because this part actually forms the basis of everything of what I do now, which is teaching people to write their books. So my first novel I wrote, the one that you've listened to. I wrote that one over about six years. I wasn't for most of that I was dating but like I wasn't married, I wasn't with my husband, I didn't have a kid. A lot of it I was single. So I don't know. I had a lot of time. I was married at night so I would spend hours a day working on this book. The luxury of that. I didn't think of it as a luxury at the time, but I had the luxury of time and the way that traditional publishing works for fiction is. Once you've sold your first novel, you have the option of selling subsequent novels on a proposal. So you basically just send in a description of it and maybe a sample chapter or two and your editor may just buy it before you've even written it.

Speaker 2: 35:03

So when I had seen the year before I had accepted a full-time position for the first time in many years at the tutoring company where I worked, so that we could have health benefits, so that I could have a baby and fortunately it had. Like I said, we got pregnant pretty fast. The timing worked out really well. I qualified for a maternity leave, I went on the parental leave and it was, I think, 11 weeks or like eight weeks paid, but then like four more weeks if I needed it, but essentially like, oh, I could have up to 11 or 12 weeks and my husband was in full-time school, so it was also really helpful for paying our bills. Well, the night that Finn was born, literally I was in my hospital bed the next morning and I opened my emails and my second novel, privilege, had sold, but on a proposal, so meaning I had to write it. So I basically had a book, contract and money, which was great given we had just had a baby, but I had to actually write the book.

Speaker 2: 36:02

And so I remember deciding okay, I'm going to give myself four weeks just to be a mom of a newborn baby and like, figure that out, and then I will spend the next eight weeks writing this book because I have to go back to work and this full-time job and I was not going to have a full-time job in a newborn and write a book. I know I can juggle a lot of things, but that's like too many things for a person. So I'm like this will be great. I'm going to have four weeks and then I'm going to spend the next eight weeks writing the draft.

Speaker 2: 36:33

Of course I knew I would need to revise, but I've always kind of enjoyed revision. I'm like I can manage revision while I'm back at work, but I don't know that I can generate the whole novel while I'm at work. So I did that and this time the thing that I really love about how the timing worked out is that it really it forced me to come up with a process for writing a novel, because I had to write it in a couple of hours a day when either my mom, my husband or my friend who I hired could watch Finn and I was still nursing at that point. Because I nursed until it was four months, I couldn't be gone for very long or I would need to pump or nurse and I didn't realize that. So if people don't realize this, probably if they're listening they probably do, but when you're nursing it's really you only have like three hours two to three hours.

Speaker 1: 37:23

Two to three hours yes, you have to do something.

Speaker 2: 37:26

Yeah, it's fast man. I remember we went out my birthday. Finn was born April 3rd and my birthday is April 30th. So on my birthday, lucas and I went out. He's like I'm going to take you shopping, we'll get you a dress and we'll go to dinner. Lovely idea, but two hours in it sounds like a lot in New York.

Speaker 2: 37:44

It is Two hours in, I'm like my boobs are exploding and I didn't know that yet because I had just hadn't tried that. So I went into a CVS and got a manual pump for like $19 and we went to Rosa Mexicana, which is our favorite Mexican restaurant, and I just like went to the bathroom and just manually pumped my boobs just so I could have dinner. I mean not even to save the milk, it was just like I just can't sit here because it hurts.

Speaker 2: 38:10

Right, I mean it starts to hurt, given the nursing situation and then also just childcare, I just I would have these sort of like two hours every day tops where I could, and I was like I have to do this, I have to write in two hours a day and eight weeks I have to write a novel. So how do I do this? So I had to make a plan and it works, actually did it and it was really cool in a way to kind of have to figure out to use my the part of my brain I had never applied to creativity, which is almost like project management.

Speaker 2: 38:38

It's like, okay, well, if this were a work project and I had two hours a day for eight weeks to do it, how would I break it down? Let me do it that way, but that's how that. That's how I got that done and it was cool. It really was. It was like a, and I think ultimately it was really good for me. I didn't realize that until later. We just mentioned it, but he was like I think the fact that you had this assignment to write a novel, you got the assignment the day you had a baby, but you didn't start it till a couple of weeks later. I think it was really good for your mental health because it forced me to do what I loved doing, even before I had a kid which was writing. And I don't know, I don't know when I would have gone back to it if I had just been on my own divide. I know like I don't know, I don't think it would have been that early. I'm pretty sure about that because, because I was tired, right Like on top of everything else.

Speaker 2: 39:30

Yeah, you have another purpose outside of taking care of this tiny human that you just created.

Speaker 1: 39:34

It's interesting how everybody manages their mental health after having their first child. I've had other mothers say that doing some sort of work connecting with the outside world or their passion has actually helped, and some have found that to be overwhelming. So it's just so important to see what feels best for you and it's amazing that that worked for you. I'm listening to this story, thinking, okay, so how did you manage to do laundry? Because that's what I did. I feel like that's what I was doing in that two hours, especially in New York, like you have to wheel it down the street if you don't have it in the building.

Speaker 2: 40:06

We paid, we did the hiring thing.

Speaker 1: 40:08

Okay, cool, not the whole time and we left in New York. I hope you hired for that.

Speaker 2: 40:13

But yeah, in those months I would just drop it off and pick it up around the corner.

Speaker 1: 40:17

Yeah, oh, nice. And we had the building had a washing machine that was half the time broken, gosh or in use, right, you know, it was like always, just this okay, strap on the baby and see if the laundry machine is actually available. And then there's also. We had a huge dog and a cat. Oh, my God, I love the dog.

Speaker 2: 40:37

Strap on the baby, go walk the dog while the laundry's going yeah, right.

Speaker 1: 40:41

I mean, I was like, wow, sitting down to write would have been such a challenge for me, it was a challenge. Yeah, I mean I'm not going to discount that it was a challenge, I'm sure it was, but it just takes. It takes a lot of everything in that city, takes so much.

Speaker 2: 40:51

So much planning, interesting, like. I remember when he was I'd look back at pictures of it now and I think he was maybe two months old and I was still in maternity leave but I had friends, family friends come to New York and stay in Manhattan and they're like will you bring Finn in to meet us for lunch? And I'm like, okay, this will be fun and it'll be like his first subway ride and it was the longest day of my life. I remember it just be like I will never do this again. He has to get older, it's two and I have to have another adult with me, like just strapping him on. And then it was.

Speaker 2: 41:25

I remember standing on the platform, because the heat in New York on a subway platform is really bad. It's like very humid, sweltering and just being like what is too hot for a baby. How long do I wait? Do I get on the train? Do I tell them I'm not coming? Like this seems like it's too hot. Then, finally, the train comes. I'm like, okay, well, we're in there conditioning.

Speaker 2: 41:44

But I remember going to this hamburger place and they were so nice, they were just family friends. I hadn't seen them in a long time and like not even being able to pay attention to the conversation we were having, because I was thinking about all the things you know, like when is he going to have to eat next? Are we going to get home by nap time? I'm going to have to leave soon if I'm going to have time to nurse before nap time. It was just there's so much timing wise that goes into the new, those early months. And then you layer on top of that a city like New York where it takes anywhere from 35 minutes to an hour to get from one borough to the next. And now I know better. If I go visit friends in New York who have had babies, I'm like I will not ask you to come to a different borough.

Speaker 2: 42:30

I will come to you or I'll just see you next time.

Speaker 1: 42:34

Yeah, I was pretty lucky. I was one of the last in my friend group to have a baby. I was 36. Yeah, like you, when my daughter was born and everybody just was like I'm coming over. Yeah right, they could only bring you food they knew and do not clean yes, right. And it was like, if you feel up to taking a walk with us, that would be great.

Speaker 1: 42:55

If not, we're just going to sit and talk and I was like wow, like perfect, this is nice. But I so appreciate it because that helped me frame my expectation of new. I mean, just like your experience helped you frame your expectation of new moms. Mine was just oh, this was what was done for me, this was the kindness that was done for me. So I'm going to extend it to all new moms as well, because I just think that people forget logistics and all that stuff.

Speaker 2: 43:19

Yeah, exactly, you forget house. I mean, I saw on Meem the other day. That's like. The caption was like new parents and they're like want to meet for dinner, like see you there at 4.30. But that's when you have to do it, because I saw that too. Otherwise it's like that's where you fit in the meal. We actually still do that and he's fine, yeah.

Speaker 1: 43:39

Right. And then you have to plan you're going to pump, you're going to change them, you're going to grab all the bags, you're going to have all the things. So the whole process to be able to get to that meal at 4.30 is like a two, one and a half to two hour process. And then you get there, you get a 30 minute meal and you're like peace out. We got to go. I had waiters that were like we love new parents, we love them Because most of the time they just come in, get their food, they get a drink and they make a suit, they give us a nice tip and then they just whole ass out of there. Oh my, gosh.

Speaker 1: 44:11

As soon as that baby starts to melt down.

Speaker 2: 44:13

Yes, they always get alcohol, which ups the bill, and they are in and out.

Speaker 1: 44:20

So then you mentioned that you had some fertility struggles after your first was born. I think a lot of my audience would identify with that and would want to hear how you manage those fertility troubles. So if you're open to talking to that, I'd like to hear that story.

Speaker 2: 44:34

Yeah, so we I mean he was born in 2018. In 2019, we moved to Nashville, tennessee, so my husband could start graduate school and then, of course, the pandemic started in 2020. So, between Lucas being in grad school and having a toddler at home and the pandemic, I think time just sort of stopped. You know, and I maybe I think a lot of people probably had that experience in the pandemic, but we knew we wanted at least a second child, probably just one more, but it just didn't even seem like an option to try to get pregnant again. Life was hard. It was really hard, and it was hard already. It truly didn't even cross my mind. To be honest. It was like this we just have to make it through this. Having a toddler at home and one person in grad school and one person supporting the family and being in a pandemic in a new city where we knew no one. It was just really tough. It was definitely the toughest years of our marriage and so, coming out of that, he graduated. It was a two-year grad program and he graduated in May 2021. And that was also right around the time things were starting to look up kind of pandemic-wise. People were booking travel again, people were getting vaccinated and I was older. I mean, we both were older, but I was 38, approaching 39. And it was like, okay, well, this seems like the time Now this feels like the right time let's start trying again.

Speaker 2: 45:52

We decided to start trying that summer but, as life would have it, we got pregnant when we were on a Mexican vacation celebrating his graduation from graduate school. And, long story short, over the next nine months, I had three miscarriages. I got pregnant three times and miscarried three times, and then we decided to try IVF. It did not work for us and we ended up deciding to stop the fertility journey altogether and to be a family of three, which is where we've landed. But that was, it was really tough. I mean, it was. To be honest, it was the hardest thing I've ever gone through. It was the most difficult year of my life, and I don't know that he would say the same thing, but he might. I mean, it was. It was really tough for him too. He's had a tougher life than me, so that's why I don't know that he would say it was the worst, but it was hard for both of us.

Speaker 1: 46:46

Yeah, he also didn't have to go through the physical. It's different for him parts of that. So that's yeah, I think I mean that's part of what's so difficult about it is because you're going through the physical aspect of it as well, and especially I mean miscarriages alone, I would imagine. Did you have to have any procedures with the miscarriages? Yeah, I had a.

Speaker 2: 47:04

DNC with the third one. All three of them were missed miscarriages, so that's the term. I didn't know. I think part of what was so traumatic about all of this for me was that I knew nothing about miscarriages. I didn't even realize how many people I knew had miscarried. I thought I knew one person who had miscarried, because no one talks about it and so I didn't even know a missed miscarriage could happen. I didn't know it was called that.

Speaker 2: 47:27

But it's a missed miscarriage when you, your body, doesn't know it's miscarried yet, like it's still things. That's pregnant, so you haven't bled, but you go to typically and what happened with us is you get an appointment to get an ultrasound and you find out there's no heartbeat. So it's at that point. It ends up being called another term. I'm like what is the term for what's happening to me? Have I already miscarried? Have I not miscarried? I haven't bled yet, and the term is medical management of missed miscarriage, which is like a weird sad tongue twister and also not even a term. It's just like a flip the phrase.

Speaker 2: 47:59

There was so much that was surreal and knew about it to me and that was one element that felt. I remember at one point thinking it's kind of sitting that there's not even really a word for what's happening to me right now, because that's kind of what it feels like in my body too, like I don't even know how to understand what this is. But yes, I had the DNC for the third one and then for the other two, took medicine to kind of accelerate the bleeding, and I forget the name of the medication. I can never pronounce something I cannot pronounce. That's what I remember.

Speaker 1: 48:28

Yeah, there's a couple of things. Most of them are hard to pronounce. So then did you for the first two, did you were you at home for that, or did you have to go to the hospital for that?

Speaker 2: 48:35

For the first two I was at home. I mean both of those. We just kind of went to a routine ultrasound and found out, and then was yeah, and then basically took the medicine. I mean, interestingly, for the second one, I started to bleed before I even took the medicine, but I was still supposed to take it, even if I did start to bleed, because it could assist in the process. So I did so. I guess it was still a misdemeanour because I still found out about it before I bled, but I just I ended up. Incidentally, I happened to start bleeding the next day but I was only in the hospital.

Speaker 1: 49:07

For the third one so then, what happened with the third one, where you ended up needing to go to the hospital? So did it start off the same way?

Speaker 2: 49:13

It was also missed. The third one, frankly, was the hardest, and not just because it was the well, they're all in different ways but the third one was the most kind of devastating because this third one, we had had several ultrasound appointments and the heartbeat had been normal. So the third one was the most shocking because in the others there was never anything to give us hope other than the fact that we were pregnant. And it was like, hopefully we'll be optimistic, because in my first pregnancy that year we had an abnormal ultrasound first. So then the follow-up confirmed that I had miscarried. So I wouldn't say I was prepared for it, but there had been a red flag, so to speak. And but for the third one there had been no red flags, there had only been green flags, and so it really fell Like.

Speaker 2: 49:59

I remember the feeling right now, sitting on the table and just being like are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? How? How is this happening? It was going so well. And it's funny because a couple of people have said to me like how did you have so much hope after the first two? And I don't know. I mean, I think in some ways I've always been an optimistic person, but I think I also statistics were on my side. I mean, it was like well, very, very few people have three of these in a row, and I've had two, so probably I'm not going to have another one.

Speaker 1: 50:31

Especially after having a successful delivery before. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 50:34

Like I did not feel irrational to have hope. It felt very sensical to have hope, and especially after a couple of normal ultrasound. So we ended up deciding, though, to do the DNC to test the embryo, because it had been my third one, so my OB had recommended it.

Speaker 2: 50:52

So we could do genetic testing on the embryo and what we found was that through that genetic testing was that it was a trisomy 21 embryo, so which is Down syndrome. And I also didn't realize, like even after she told me that we went back in. Once the test results came back I was like, oh, could that be why I miscarried? And she said it almost absolutely is why you miscarried. Most trisomy 21 fetuses do miscarry. They can make it to term, obviously, because we have people who have Down syndrome but, like most, actually don't. And one more thing I did so many things I didn't know in this process and that was one more of them. Like that could be a reason for miscarrying. But this is why we then moved into IVS, because what we were told in our understanding was that by this point I was almost 40.

Speaker 2: 51:39

And chromosomal abnormalities of eggs at my age were just so much more frequent that that would explain the recurring losses, and so fertility treatments to us seemed like OK, well, this could be the way that we get around the chromosomal abnormalities. Because if you have the option in IVF, everyone doesn't choose to do this, but some people you can and do. And we did choose to do genetic testing on your embryos to see if they are chromosomally euclid, and if you implant a euclid embryo it's much more likely to result in a life delivery and a baby. So that was sort of our. I think we both reached this point at the same time with the third miscarriage. That was like we can't have more of these. Not that with IVF you can prevent a miscarriage, but it was the whole. Keep doing the same thing and wait for whatever that saying is.

Speaker 1: 52:35

The definition of sanity. We can't keep. The definition of sanity is continuing to do the same thing and getting a different result. We can't keep doing this.

Speaker 2: 52:42

This result is too painful every time, so we're going to have to change courses. And so it was like IVF or stop altogether. We gave IVF a shot that didn't work, and so it was like OK, this is where we are.

Speaker 1: 52:55

So in doing all of this, you are trying to eliminate one of the potential reasons that maybe the pregnancy wasn't implanting appropriately or being carried full term, but then, after doing the genetic testing and implanting healthy embryos, it still didn't work. So then you're able to say, ok, well, maybe there's not something that we can really understand as the reason. Or if we do seek understanding, it would take a whole lot more invasive testing to be able to figure out how to do all this. And it's just after everything that you've been through physically.

Speaker 2: 53:26

I'm assuming that you guys decided that it was just not worth all that, yeah, and we never got embryos that were implantable, so we just didn't. We never even made it to that point. So it was in some ways a very simple process for us. It was a very clear end of the road in a way, and it was a really really hard one more for me than him, in the sense that he had found all this very painful, but for that reason he was ready to stop and he was ready to stop sooner than I was. But while for me it was really hard to let go, it was so clearly the end. If I was honest with myself, it felt.

Speaker 2: 54:03

I remember telling a friend at one point I feel like I'm yelling at someone to love me and they just don't. I'm swimming upstream, I'm trying to squeeze lemon out of a lemon that has no juice. This is not going to happen. It can't because I can't keep putting us through this. We're not going to be the family that does eight rounds of IVF and just hopes one of them works. And the reason we weren't is because I wasn't going to put them through. That I knew again, if I was quiet and honest with myself, I didn't want to pick me through that and also we couldn't even afford that. Also, it just wasn't even an option because it's so expensive, it's not cheap and we were paying out of pocket for it. So all of those facts on paper were like it's done, mary, that's just it. And so I started the. I mean, luckily I have writing, because I ended up at work on a memoir about this now because I did process through writing and that's how I've always processed all of this and I think it's. I'm so happy for your podcast. I think it's so important that we tell these stories and I really wanted to share mine. So I've written a lot about this.

Speaker 2: 55:12

But I had to start this really weird mental and emotional process of letting go of this dream, letting go of something that I had always just assumed I would have. It was like a vision of something I had pictured since I was a kid, like oh, family of four, I'm from family of four, I won a family of four and part of it was even consciously changing what the actual fantasy looked like, like when I literally would picture myself in five years or my family in five years or 10 years. Who was in the picture. What did I picture vacations like? What do I picture Fentai School graduation, like and removing one of the people from that fantasy, like it was really literal on one level, like that.

Speaker 2: 55:53

So yeah, it's made me very passionate about speaking really openly about this stuff, about secondary infertility, about pregnancy loss, about IVS, about all of it, because it was very lonely. And another reason I have wound up writing about it is that I remember looking for memoirs on this and finding very little. There's just not a lot by way of books. So I really care a lot about this now and want to speak more publicly about it. I mean, my friends and I talk about this all the time now because I'm at the age where many of my friends are undergoing this kind of struggle, so it's a really common conversation behind closed doors. At a certain age, I think it shouldn't have to be closed doors.

Speaker 1: 56:44

It's such a huge part of life, it's so common, and just like we don't discuss what the woman has been through after delivery. So, mary, if you could go back and I ask everybody this if you could go back to any part of this process, if you could take a message to yourself from yourself and just kind of give yourself support in those moments that you wish that you had had, where would you go and what would you go back and say to yourself?

Speaker 2: 57:07

Well, since this is just sort of like a magical realism, time travel thing, anyway, I'm going to add an element to it.

Speaker 1: 57:15

You can go anywhere you want. I'm going to add an element to it. Yeah, let's do it.

Speaker 2: 57:19

I would go back and be like go talk to this person. This person has had a miscarriage and can explain some things to you that will be helpful for you to hear. Or like you're not alone here. Go find this community. Like go follow this person on Instagram. Go read this book. Like you're not alone, because it took me time and digging to realize that I wasn't alone. But I wasn't, and so I would go back and like point out some resources, basically for myself. I think that's it.

Speaker 1: 57:47

Yeah, that would be so helpful, but you're kind of doing it.

Speaker 2: 57:49

Yeah, I hope so.

Speaker 1: 57:51

Yeah, especially. I just think that I'm so happy that you're doing a memoir because I think that, especially the way that you write and with your ability to verbalize trauma in an emotionally relevant and profound way, without additionally traumatizing the reader and yourself, I think it's so important because there's so much that needs to be communicated as far as, like, the realistic things and thoughts and just all the struggles that you're going through internally during that process, but also physically, and then to be able to normalize some of their natural reactions and some of the things that people probably don't talk about that they think and feel, and some of I mean just based on your first book that I read some of the absurdity of

Speaker 1: 58:34

it and some of the ways that we all in our humanity get through it. That might be kind of ridiculous or unusual. I just I'm thinking of the like I mentioned before. We started recording the scene in your first book where the characters continually ordering Domino's pizza and getting HOA messages asking to stop having so much pizza delivered. You know just all the stuff that, the mundane things that a person goes through and doesn't even think about sharing but then is so relatable to somebody that's been through a process. Yeah, I think it's just.

Speaker 2: 59:13

I'll read it, man. I'm gonna put it out on an audiobook as soon as possible, because I'm gonna be reading it on the way back and forth to but to work.

Speaker 2: 59:21

Yeah, exactly, I think some of that absurdity I didn't indulge because I have finished a draft. I'm not trying to traumatize anyone or, frankly, even make someone's that. There are obviously some sad parts, but I think it's much more about like commiserating, yeah, some of these thoughts, some of the absurdities, and like how we come out of it. Okay, I mean I, yeah. For example, when we came home from our ultrasound where we found out about our second miscarriage, I ran I write about this like I went to check the mail and there was like a pair of maternity genes that I had ordered from a thrift store and like just the timing of that just being so, you know, like are you kidding me?

Speaker 2: 1:00:05

But also like I ended up putting them on and wearing them and really loving how they fit and and and having this kind of this meaningful experience for myself where I realized I'm not actually less pregnant than I was yesterday. My body hasn't changed at all. I know more now, but but I get to wear these jeans, so I'm gonna wear the jeans, you know you earned it.

Speaker 1: 1:00:31

You get to let these jeans support your body and make you feel comfortable during this really crap.

Speaker 1: 1:00:37

Yeah, exactly, I just love that you were. I mean that you remember times like that, because I think a lot of people just kind of they're going through this traumatic process and they're blinders on, just like, oh, this sucked, I'm gonna forget about this, and that's kind of how I am. I stuff it down, I'm really working on it just. But especially being in healthcare, that's how most of us work through a lot of the stuff that we deal with. We do a lot of stuffing down of the emotions and not necessarily having that awareness of some of those moments, and so to be able to recognize it and write about it, I think it's gonna be a real gift for a lot of moms and probably healthcare providers. I think healthcare providers can read your memoir and, even having not gone through a miscarriage themselves, would have a lot of benefit from just, you know, living that with someone because it's so hard from our if we haven't been through it, it's hard from our standpoint to really care for someone that's going through that situation.

Speaker 2: 1:01:27

Yeah, I love that point and I think I feel like it's also very much. You know, this experience really brought me back to what we've already talked about. I feel like I had thought the morning after I had a baby, which was just like wanting someone to be, like how are you doing? Like just basically wanting acknowledgement.

Speaker 1: 1:01:44

It's a lot to me. Easy question you can just yeah, yeah, if you don't know what to say, how are you doing is a really good start. The rest of it will probably come out over time in the conversation. Yeah Well, mary, is there anything that we didn't talk about that you wanted to share?

Speaker 2: 1:01:55

No, I mean, I hope I'll have at some point more, more, more details, but I don't know, it's still early. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:02:02

Well, we can always. Well, let me know when you do have it, and we can always do another interview, or we can do a promo, a re-area episode, however you want to. However you want to approach it. I'm really excited and I think it's going to help a lot of people. So, in the meantime, you got three novels out there that I I definitely recommend the first, and I'm going to read the second and third. I can't wait for them. I'm hard to come out. Thanks so much.