The journeys people go on to have children are surprising, empowering, painful, beautiful, devastating, and enlightening. A woman who went through reciprocal IVF with her wife, a transgender man who gave birth to a child last year, and a new father who had “twiblings” via gestational carrier are among those who shared their stories with us.
Transcript
When it comes to fertility and having kids and planning to one day maybe have kids, there is a lot of information out there. And there’s a lot to talk about, because there are so many ways to potentially become a parent. Your journey to building a family might involve adoption, gestational carriers, egg freezing, IVF, reciprocal IVF—
I’m interested in all of these things because I know I want to have kids someday. Not right now—Mom, sorry about the current hold on grandkids, but—not right now. But someday! I’m one of those people who has pretty much always known that. And I want to learn more about what my options are.
Like I said, there is a lot of information out there already, in everything from personal blogs to medical journals. And yet. Somehow, there are so. many. things. related to fertility and different ways to pursue parenthood that no one ever tells you.
Like Dionne, for example, is a woman who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016. Up until her diagnosis, no one had ever told her that chemo could drastically impact her fertility, and, as she said,
Dionne: I had never thought of it because I didn't have a reason to.
Or take Sophie, who was considering freezing her eggs but lacked clarity about the process.
Sophie: I didn't know what to expect going into it because there's just not a lot out there right now.
Or there’s Trystan’s story:
Trystan: I'm a transgender man. I was told that when I transitioned even hormonally just by taking testosterone that I was closing the door on ever becoming a parent biologically.
For a long time, no one told Trystan that he could actually have biological children.
Or take Leslie, who told me that things didn’t go as planned when her fertility journey had multiple false starts. She said:
Leslie: I didn't know how to navigate that. Nobody tells you what to do. Nobody tells you what you can expect afterwards.
I want someone to tell me all the things that no one ever tells you.
So that’s what this podcast is for—to walk through some of the many different possible paths to pursue parenthood, including struggles with infertility, which are incredibly common. The pursuit of parenthood doesn’t guarantee that you will have a child, so we’ll talk about that too. And we’ll take all of these stories step by step. You could even say we’ll be taking Baby Steps! We’ll start with things to think about before your fertility journey even begins, and then we’ll talk to people who have aimed to have kids in all different ways.
Before we get too far into this, let me say: I am not a medical practitioner, I am not a fertility expert, I have not had children. The questions I’m asking are questions I genuinely don’t know the answers to, and would very much like to find out. If you are curious about building a family, either sometime soon or further in the future, and you’d like to be informed about potential fertility journeys from the people who’ve been through them, we’ve got some diverse stories for you.
This is Baby Steps, a podcast about fertility, families, and the many diverse paths that people take in the pursuit of parenthood. I’m your host, Marie McCoy-Thompson.
Subscribe to our show on your preferred podcast platform. Our first episode drops February 13th, and we’ll be putting out episodes weekly after that. Stay tuned!
Baby Steps is a podcast from Carrot, the leading global fertility benefits provider for employers. Learn more at carrotfertility.com.
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