Mum's The Word! The Parenting Podcast - From Endometriosis and 7 IVF Attempts to Viral Motherhood: The Inspiring Journey of Martha Keith

Episode Date: June 11, 2023

TW// Miscarriage. Endometriosis affects almost 10% of reproductive age people, and can be extremely painful and left untreated can cause infertility issues. Martha Keith has experienced just this and found herself in a cycle of hope and despair through a series of IVF and miscarriages, but on the 7th try became pregnant with her second child. We discuss the lack of conversation around fertility issues and her IVF journey. Have you experienced something similar? Get in touch with us over at askmumsthewordpod.co.uk or on 07599927537.---A Create Podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

hello and welcome back to mum's the word the parenting podcast i'm kat schube and i'm going to be covering for the wonderful ashley while she's on maternity leave after the birth of her gorgeous beautiful little girl congratulations ashley i'm a dj television and radio presenter you might recognize my voice from the weekend shows on Magic Radio. Come and see me at the weekend, Saturday and Sunday from one o'clock. I'm a mum as well to a little boy called Ruben. He was born on the 8th of the 9th, 21. So he's nearly two. He's going to be two in September. And the terrible twos have come very early to our household.

So it's very fun at the moment, as you can imagine. One of the hardest things I found when I became a parent was how full-on it all is which I know everyone's sort of aware of before before you give birth but um yeah from the minute you open your eyes you're on the go that that I hadn't quite factored in and also that um you are no longer allowed to be unwell when you're unwell you just got to get through it you just got to get through that there's no longer allowed to be unwell. When you're unwell, you've just got to get through it. You've just got to get through that. There's no time. One of the most surprising things I've found since becoming a mother

is just how, basically, when you meet another mum and you can tell them the sort of deepest, darkest secrets about yourself, very, very, very open, how quickly you can tell another mum your ailments, your birth story, everything that's happened to you and your vagina in those months. And my favourite thing so far since becoming a mum is just hearing him say the word mummy,

hearing him be excited, him being excited when he sees me. And if he's watching something or he sees something new, a new animal for the first time and he'll check to see if I'm enjoying it as well with a big smile on his face and I think they're my favorite moments. Right so every week we're going to be speaking to a brand new guest from the world of parenthood to give us tips and encouragement that they've learned from their expertise or experience. Now before we start I want to issue a trigger warning as this episode

features talk on miscarriage So if this isn't for you we have plenty of other episodes for you to enjoy on the Mums the Word podcast channel Now this week we have the wonderful Martha Keith here She recently went viral when she became pregnant after seven rounds of IVF and four miscarriages sadly as well She is also the founder of stationery brand, Martha Brooke. She's here. Hi, Martha. Hi.

It's so nice to be here. It's extremely exciting. Oh, I've got some of your stationery as well. It's beautiful. Oh, that's so exciting. I was lucky enough to be given some of your stationery a while ago. One of many events these things happen, don't they? You know, in the showbiz land of going to parties and stuff like that.

It's beautiful. And I haven't written in it because it's so lovely. is the thing if you like stationery it's the getting over the hurdle of starting the first page i feel like i need like my little boy to scribble in it first and then i'll be like okay right now i can use it all of my all of my notebooks are scribbled you know you can imagine with a five and a half year old but it's an honor to be here really really excited to chat about to chat about my experiences and um yeah well your journey to motherhood hasn't been easy you said you've already got a little girl you've got she's five did you say yes yeah she's five and a half she's born um in january back in 2018 which feels like

a long time ago she is also an ivf baby and i think well i don't i don't know about you but i feel like periods have dominated my whole life yeah yeah i don't know about you, but I feel like periods have dominated my whole life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know whether all women find this, but I think back when they started, I now know about endometriosis and I didn't know about it at the time. But when they first started when I was 11 and by 14, I was just in agony every month. And I just thought it was normal or I was told it was normal. And I think that's really where this all began was these painful periods that I hadn't realized were actually a symptom of something bigger. And even though many people may have had similar experiences, but I'd have my period when I was a teenager and I would just have this like shooting pain around my pelvis like up my back down my legs I'd be unable to stand up I was just told I know you've got heavy periods kind of get on with it yeah it's all sort of

shrouded in a lot of mystery as well when you're young isn't it and and there wasn't ever I mean now I think there's a bit more awareness of it but I remember i remember when i started my period in school and i went to the head teacher and and she sort of quietly went well done my mom was so excited when i started she literally had a sanitary towel she was like that as if it's the greatest moment of my life holy grail of handing me the sanitary towel why are people so excited about periods they're so shit yeah they're so shit and especially if you have endometriosis which is so painful and so awful in the beginning i guess did you ask friends were you looking at your friends and saying are yours this painful why am i in this

i remember my best friend she was a gymnast so hers didn't start till she was about 15 or 16 you know sort of delays it a bit and she just you know pulled out a tampon went to the loo that was that it was so easy and i remember God, maybe it's just me. I'm just, you know, maybe it's me that's kind of the weird one. I can't handle pain maybe. You're like, what's happening? I'm just really rubbish with pain. And I think now we're talking about it more, which I think is so important.

Because back then it was a really taboo thing to talk about your period. It was just something you had to do by yourself. Yeah. Secretly in the toilets with other girls or at home with your mum. Even when I went to an all-girls school, like, it was just really, really hush-hush. Apart from the awful moment where, I don't know whether you had this when you were at school, where everyone was sitting down in assembly and, like, you'd be standing up, like, because you were really worried that your period had leaked.

God, I know. Did you ever have that? Yes, you had your jumper tied around your waist and everything. I used to wear shorts underneath my dress. I was so awful looking back. I also had really heavy periods, but I think now we're talking about it more, which is great. And now I think endometriosis awareness is becoming bigger, but back then I'd never, ever heard of it. So it's something I just, I learned to live with. And I mean, I planned my whole life around my menstrual cycle, you know, from probably about the age of 18, I'd be planning with. I planned my whole life around my menstrual cycle. From probably about

the age of 18, I'd be planning holidays. I'd be planning going out because I knew there were certain times of the month where I just wouldn't be able to do it. It got to the point where I had problems with my bowel. I was clinically anemic. I'd just be going to work, putting on a brave face and coming home just absolutely exhausted and even though i had been to the doctor about all these other ailments nobody ever said oh maybe it's maybe it's this i i do think that when you've got a male gp you're not to stereotype but my gp was so bad he was just you know pull yourself together you know this is just do you think it's because he didn't know about it or because he didn't want to talk about it? I don't know. Maybe awareness was just not a big thing back then.

Maybe it's hard when you've got a young girl in front of you and it's something you don't experience yourself. I don't know. I don't know. I think times have changed. I mean, this was going back. I'm old. You're not old. We're the same age.

Take that back. No, I'm not old. No, we're not old. No, no, I'm not old. I've turned 40 this year and it's been traumatising for me. It's been traumatising hard. Do you think it's the pressure of last chance saloon to be a mum that it's always been on you? You know, not you on most women. That this is the, you know, the clock is ticking.

I think motherhood and age is a really, it's really hard. I think you do. You don't really compare yourself to other people at all when you're younger, do you? But then when you get to about 30, you start to kind of compare where you are in your life versus people of a similar age and things like babies and marriage. Yeah. It's quite hard. Yeah. And I think especially when you, when you struggle with your fertility, I think it's really, really difficult when you see other people doing things and you feel like you're a high. So I think for me, it was, I'd always

imagined, you know, to have a family by a certain age. I think that was probably the 40 thing being really, really difficult for me. But anyway, so I didn't, it wasn't until I got married four years after marriage that I finally got referred to a consultant. this was you know probably having been through this for 20 years and finally um had a laparoscopy which is where they go in through your tummy button and a hysteroscopy where they go in through your vagina and discovered i was absolutely riddled with endometriosis you know it's rapid right around my bowel around my pelvis around my ovaries you know i was it was just it was everywhere and for anyone that doesn't know about what endometriosis is what what is that exactly that is wrapped around endometrial tissue so tissue that's similar to the lining of the womb

grows elsewhere in your body and they don't really know why it happens but or you know how it even gets there but it can get all into your abdominal cavity and you know for some people it's it's it's really debilitating it depends on kind of what level you have so what happens is every time you have your period obviously your menstrual tissue breaks down you bleed but that tissue as well also breaks down so it causes it builds up and it causes scarring so scar tissue that you know can really damage parts of your organs and it's extremely painful and if left untreated could cause infertility problems so i think for young people nowadays who have got extremely heavy painful painful periods it's really important they get them checked out because i was just told to get on with it and actually over time it can build up

and become a real problem so i i had i had so much of it and he was great he removed he removed a lot of it there's a lot of the scar tissue as best he could, but I was told I would never be able to have children. And this was when I was in my early 30s by this point. And it was a really hard... How did you feel at that moment? I think I always, when you're younger, you sort of think, oh, you can work hard and you can, you know, achieve what you want in life. And then there comes to a point where you realize that that's not the case. And I just think I remember feeling like an absolute failure. There was one thing I really wanted to do in life and I couldn't do it. I felt like I really let my husband down.

I just felt, I think failure was the first thing. And I think secondly, it was a kind of grief. Gosh, this is around this time that I was told this and my sister also got pregnant. And of course, I was overjoy the first thing. And I think secondly, it was a kind of grief. Yeah. Gosh, this is around this time that I was told this, that my sister also got pregnant. And of course I was overjoyed for her, but it's this really weird thing of this kind of lodging in your chest of this, you know, this pain of, gosh, maybe I'm never going to have, maybe I'm never going to have this.

Like a permanent lump just sitting there. Yeah, like a permanent, like anxiousness in your chest. And I think what's what's really what really I find so strange is that at school you I mean I went to

a Catholic school and it was drummed into you the fear of fear of getting pregnant the fear of getting pregnant outside of marriage

or the fear you know no one ever talks to you about fertility no no it's it's

you know you have to get told about sex and all that jazz but yeah the act of sex and all the rest of it but nothing about no no so i spent my whole 20s you know paranoid yes straight on the pill we're like trying actively to not get pregnant condoms you know all the things i do not want to get pregnant um i remember you know taking the morning after pill at one point because i was really worried that a condom had broken but no one ever tells you that it's just not necessarily gonna happen like that for you and the more i'm really passionate

now about talking about this because i think there are so many people that just assume or you know i'll get to a certain point in my life and i'll have a baby yeah it's great yeah but it just doesn't it doesn't work like that for everyone and i've for it's a real disconnect between people that find it quite easy to get pregnant and then people that struggle and when you struggle it's it's so so hard to explain how you know the feeling of walking around and you know you see babies so you see babies and pregnant people everywhere well yeah and it's that age as well where everyone is falling pregnant because everyone's had the same idea we'll wait till we're 30 and do it then so suddenly you do that and also it's like it's like the other way around

as well if you have had a night say where the condom was broken or you haven't managed to get the morning after bill suddenly you see um pregnancy tests everywhere don't you and then you're like well i'm definitely pregnant now because so it's the minute that you focus on something that and you've been told you can't have a child. I mean, your world has just been completely turned upside down. It's so hard. And I think, you know, for anyone that's been trying for a number of years and struggling with it or has tried before they've got pregnant,

they'll know it's just this heartache of wanting something so badly. And obviously the more you want it, the more it's probably not good for you because probably your body builds up a level of kind of stress, something so badly. And obviously the more you want it, the more it's probably not, it's probably not good for you because you're probably, your body's, you know, builds up, you know, a level of kind of stress to, stress, which obviously probably doesn't help. Although my,

this consultant guy who I've now been seeing for about 10 years, he's, I love him. He's amazing. He's convinced that stress doesn't make a difference because he's like,

people get pregnant all the time and whatever the situation. But, so he said to me, you'll never, you know, you'll never be able to have children naturally. But at least he put the naturally in whatever the situation. But so he said to me, you'll never, you know, you'll never be able to have children naturally. But at least he put the naturally in there. He put the naturally in there. He wasn't like, you'll never be able to have children.

You know, you'll not be able to have children naturally, but there are things we can try. I really feel grateful that I did eventually, you know, push to get referred and find that out, find out that, you know, I do have this condition. It's a really, really difficult feeling to not be able to do the thing that you really want to do. And I think for many women, I'm sure they've been in this position where it's impossible to explain to people that get pregnant easily. And you think, oh, sorry, I remember someone saying to me, oh, it took me

six months to get pregnant after I got married. And I thinking god that's just you lucky thing that's just i would what a dream what a dream yeah so it was at that point we embarked on as you said what has now been you know seven rounds of ivf and becoming very familiar with the fertility clinic and two hysteroscopies you put your body through an awful lot oh it's it's such a lot i mean ivf is a lot it's financially draining physically draining emotionally draining you know you you women as women we're tough you know we will we'll do this we'll do this if we if it's something that you know we really really want it's actually amazing how tough we are i think i said my life's been dominated by periods but you know all of this all the fertility stuff all the ivf and then of course there's childbirth and then there's a menopause i mean god what do we can we just get a break can we get a break it's so hard

but um no so ivf is well the first thing to say is that it really depends on where you live as to how much you get funded for which i think is wrong it's a postcode lottery so it has nothing to do with you know how well off you are it's to do with literally where you live is that in terms of being in wales or england do you mean no no so it's done by um like local clinical authority it seems to be completely random it's just how they allocate their funding so i think there's a one or two areas of the country and it's like it's basically by postcode that will give you no rounds at all in the nhs up to three rounds on the nhs that seems bizarre how how did they make that decision? It's completely random. It's not even remotely related to, as I say, how wealthy the area is.

It's just purely based on your postcode. I wonder if people have moved to make things happen. They may well have done because it is so expensive. So we got one round on the NHS. I'm fortunate that that IVF clinic is a really good clinic and also does do private rounds. But the private rounds there, because it's an NHS clinic, are really reasonable. Because some of the rounds I looked at at other private clinics,

it's just ridiculous. And they add all these extras on embryo glue. And also, I know my friend went through it, and I hope she doesn't mind me talking about it. They do deals on it. So you can have three goes for a certain amount. and i just think the price on a life like that where you can buy it as a almost a groupon no the private clinics is the practice really strange they're like we do with this you know pay extra for embryo testing or you know all these extra things then

you don't know whether you should do it or not so and also you don't want to think that you're going to have to do it three times like that but to put that on someone to put that on a person that then they go and have to do it again and you're a bit getting penalized for not buying the deal in the beginning because it hasn't worked for you i think is barbaric you when you start off you have a fresh cycle so you're having to you know swell your ovaries and follicles up to get the eggs out and is that uncomfortable is it oh yeah so you essentially you're you know you have lots and lots and lots of scans internal scans so they go up your vagina you know and you've been poked a lot i've been potent i mean literally the lady i went the other day to the doctors and they were like oh do you mind if

i was like seriously i've had so many people stare at my private parts. You can do what you like. I remember someone the other day moaning at me about having a smear. And I was like, do not moan at me about having a smear. So, you know, they work out your timing versus your time of the month. And then you have to start injecting yourself. And I really hate needles. I just hate them so much. I just can't even look at them.

So my poor husband he was he was had to do the majority of the injections so it's either in your stomach or in your thighs and then you have these pessaries that go up your vagina again and not pills and stuff and essentially what they're trying to do is they sweat they're trying to get you to produce more um follicles in your your ovaries but my ovaries swell up to the size of tennis balls and it is so painful like you know you're really struggling to walk can you feel them yeah you can really feel it it's really uncomfortable and you feel sick all the time and you can imagine you know how much hormones affect you just feel i just i would burst into tears like all the time just spontaneously start crying and meetings and things are so embarrassing did you tell people that you were

going through this at the time yeah people aware well i i count myself extremely fortunate that i run a business so i was actually really open and honest with my team because you know i could i kind of couldn't not be and also i i try and you know lead by example i think it's really important to be honest about these sorts of things and i would want them to tell me if they they had something actually subsequently i did have a girl on my team go through ivf which is i'm i'm really glad i'd had my experience because i was able to you know give as much time off as she needed and you know create that supportive environment for her because it is such a lot and you you're expected to turn up to work put a brave face in it i think if i was doing

my old my old life because i before i started martha brooke i worked for a really large corporate company who shall remain nameless and i remember it was like frowned upon if you took you know any sort of leave for anything you know related anything other than a death i think i would have found it really hard in that in that situation i think it's possible that since then i left there 10 years ago that people are becoming more more understanding of these sorts of things. But, you know, I was very open with my team. If stress doesn't help in terms of getting pregnant anyway, the stress on you of keeping that secret and having to put on a brave face every day is not healthy to try and make the IVF work the best it can. No, because you're going through this cycle of, you know, hope.

And then if it doesn't work, you know, the kind of despair it's, it's, you know, you do need that support around you. I think it's, even if you don't, you know, tell everyone at work, and I understand if you work in a different environment that you, you wouldn't having a one or two people that knows that can give you that support because, you know, you're injecting yourself and you're turning up at work and you don't feel great but you know you get on with your job so yeah so you you do this process where your your your ovaries swell up and then eventually you get your eggs collected and

it varies very much by woman and by age as to how many eggs you know you produce and i think that's the thing for some women that find it really hard they may only produce one or two one or two eggs and then you you mix them with the the sperm and you hope that they're going to fertilize and then you get so much hope on that it's so it's it's the weird the weird is that that feeling when you're waiting overnight for them to phone up and say how many are fertilized and then you wait a bit more for they for them to tell you up to five days as to how many are good enough oh god what did you do with yourself it's it's it's horrific and then hopefully you get one that's good enough to put in and if you're really lucky you get more than one so you can have free

simon and do a frozen cycle um which is less bad than a fresh cycle but still depending on how much drugs they give you it's still pretty um pretty full-on and then once they put it in of course you've got the horrible two-week wait where're after, you know, two months of going through this, you're waiting to see whether it's worked. How did you manage the hope going into it? What did you? We were really lucky with our first round of IVF. We had my daughter and then since then we have had six rounds and four miscarriages. For me, because I had had one positive experience that really helped me because I knew what the outcome could be at the end but I think if you've never had that the hope and then despair it's it's just a lot because you can because the process is so draining and takes so much out of you you have to believe that it's going to work

yeah that's what you're holding on to the what the holding on to this outcome I can i can have this baby at the end of the day and as soon as you stop believing in that you just just don't want to do it anymore um and i i did get to that point this time last year i was at my lowest point and how many rounds had you been through by then so that i've been six six rounds by then five rounds trying for the second baby i just had the fourth miscarriage and it was it was all it was the worst of worst of all the miscarriages um i mean you may know they could deal with miscarriages in different ways i've had them i've had all of the options now and it was the worst way of dealing with it i'm sure i won't go into detail but i'd been in a hospital and it was it was really really awful and quite actually

quite traumatic are you offered any counseling after that is there anything available what happens what happens would you i mean do you just go home? I don't understand the process. So it was a process called manual vacuum aspiration where it sucked out of you. And they were trialling this hospital the use of a virtual reality headset. What, were you put on a virtual reality headset? So you put on a headset

and it looks like you're walking through a field while they're doing this process. Oh my God. Oh my God, that's bizarre. No, it's so bizarre. I was honestly, I was so, I honestly can't tell you how do you get to choose your scenery no you don't no no no i honestly at the end i had to take this i had to take this headset off because it was just it was just really weird yeah really freaky really freaking me out so no they don't they

don't you're kind of sent home and that's sort of it i mean luckily my my ivf clinic have offered me um counseling i did actually have some hypnotherapy to process to process some of it i mean luckily my my ivf clinic have offered me um counseling i did actually have some hypnotherapy to process to process some of it because i just was really finding mainly the headset mainly the headset yeah the virtual reality but it's really weird because i saw this on the bbc news actually like really a few weeks after i'd had it done and they're talking about how great this virtual reality headset was and i was thinking it really wasn't great it's really glitchy as well it didn't really even work i was so yeah it might work for some people though maybe it does maybe it takes your mind it takes your mind yeah i much prefer the one where they put

you to sleep and you wake up and they've done it it's much better anyway um so i just had that and then they'd refer me to a recurrent miscarriage unit to do some investigations to see if they could work out why you know why i kept miscarrying and of course they know that title as well that was horrible yeah you know they don't know that what i find so frustrating is that they don't they often don't know um they don't know why people miscarry but although actually with that pregnancy they did some genetic testing on on the whatever they took out of me and they found out that it had an extra chromosome so all right okay so that was reassuring that i knew it wasn't something that i just i kept feeling like maybe

it's something i'm doing wrong so that was in a way reassuring but so then i had this other another last summer i had another hysteroscopy and they found i had a large polyp in me and various other bits of tissue and they took a lot of it out of me and i woke up and they said to me oh we put two coils in you to stop your womb collapsing we're putting we're putting you on hrt and i had no context to any of this i just thought they were you know just doing a bit of investigation and i and i and also the words hrt being said to you when you're trying to get pregnant and oh we put two coils in to stop your your your your womb collapsing i read this on the bit of paper that was next to me and i woke up from the general anesthetic and they were like,

oh, you can go home now. And I was just like, I've got some questions. So is no one going to talk to me about this? Oh my God. And I remember going home and this was pretty much exactly a year ago

thinking, God, well, this is never going to happen. This is never going to happen for me now. I'm taking HRT. I've got coils in me. I pushed and pushed and pushed and eventually went to see the consultant who did the operation, but they never came to see me afterwards. It was the strangest thing.

I mean, the NHS have actually been really, really generally quite good through this, but I found that experience was not so great. And she explained what they'd done and it was all for a good reason. They'd cleared me out and they didn't want the wound to collapse down. So trying to stop it from collapsing with these calls. Anyway, the calls were eventually taken out. It's eventually off the HRT. And really long long story short we then decided in the autumn to have one more roll of the dice do you think it would have been one more roll of the dice how how do you put did you set out and did you go we're going to do this no no no and the whole way through my husband said to me whenever you want to stop we'll stop it must have been hard

for him to watch yeah i think i think he found it i think he found it difficult to see there's been times i really have just found it really tough on my mental health um and i think the thing i found really hard is that friends and family just haven't really understood you know there've been times i've been really really struggling with it and i just felt like quite lonely because I didn't really know anybody else who was going through anything similar and it was was really really hard and I don't know whether it would have been the final roll of the dice maybe I would have found you know the strength to carry on with it but the weirdest thing though Kat so I had another embryo and um my my dad um

really said unfortunately got very ill and he passed away just three days before the embryo went in oh i'm sorry and the embryo was about three four days old and i got pregnant oh wow so oh i got goosebumps i know it's really honestly and my my mom not my mom not being very helpful kept going come on philip and i was like mom stop putting this pressure on me that's very sweet i was sweet though because she kept thinking, you know, it's something to do with the spirit of my dad. But isn't that beautiful? Because everybody finds some faith in terrible moments that happen like that.

And whatever people want to believe or whatever gets people through as well. So I can't even tell you how grateful I am that at every point I kept thinking, God, this is going to fail again. And I wanted the scans. They said I was a bit small. and that for me has always been the sign that I was gonna I was gonna then lose it and I thought oh god this is happening up for the fifth I can't I said I said to Chris if I have a fifth miscarriage I really am done I can't if it's a negative pregnancy test that's one thing but if I get pregnant again I have a fifth miscarriage I can't I can't do that again so I thought we were we were heading that way and then for some reason this it's hung on and um yeah i'm due now next month with my second baby so thank you philip thank you

although although my mom said to him as he was dying that i would name the baby i was just gonna say little girl called philip i mean no no no no my mom is called Philippa. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, the pressure. Philippa and Philippus, I'm not, I'm not. Chris is like, we cannot call the child after my mother-in-law. You can't do it to her. I can't do it. Oh, God.

How's the pregnancy been? Yeah, I think anyone that's got pregnant after infertility will tell you that you just feel on edge the whole time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did it through a pregnancy and I hadn't had a miscarriage before that. And it's between those scans. You're fine for a day or two, aren't you? And then you're like, okay, well, I want to have another look in there now. And I was like, if I could get to it, I could just constantly look.

If I could literally buy myself one of those ultrasound units, I'd just scan myself every day. That's how I felt. Because you're like get something, I could just constantly look. If I could literally buy myself one of those ultrasound units, I'd just scan myself every day. That's how I felt. Oh, I haven't felt it. Yeah. And before they start moving as well, I found that panic between the scans. They were too far away. And the NHS is like 12 weeks and 20 weeks.

That's all you get. That's all you get. It's just not enough, is it? So we went privately a couple of times for scans, which are horribly expensive. i just for my peace of mind i just wanted to see that there's still the baby yeah understandable after what you've been and then um they've they've they've been really good actually um they've been scanning me every four weeks great which i've i've really really needed i think i will not relax until i'm holding no i completely understand holding the baby in my arms so how long have you got left then until the

baby's arriving? Just over a month. I didn't tell people for such a long time because I kept thinking I didn't want to jinx it. I didn't want to jinx something going wrong. But now I definitely am relaxing a bit more into it and really just honestly extremely excited about meeting her. Yeah, of course. And my daughter, bless her, she's wanted a sibling for so long. And I remember she's remarkably in tune to what's been happening, even though we've not told her. I remember the first time I had the first miscarriage, I was crying in the toilet. And she came in, I think she was about two. And she said, I'm never going to have a sister.

That's what she said. And I hadn't even told her what was happening. But she obviously picked it up from conversations that I was having with my husband. That's terrifying, isn't it? So terrifying. And she went off crying. I was like, oh, my gosh, I've having with my husband. It's so terrifying. And she went off crying. I was like, oh my gosh, I've not even said anything. And then she said to me, I remember,

I think it was after, I don't know, the third time trying. She said to me, mummy, can you have another seed put in your tummy? Because I really would like to have a brother or a sister. That pressure too. I know, I know, I know. It's really sweet, really, really sweet.

So in her mind i've been having seeds put in my tummy that haven't quite grown and it's quite a beautiful which is quite a nice way of thinking about it um i found it really hard to imagine that it's really happening um when you know when you've when you've been on the being on such a weird journey it's sort of weird to imagine that this is actually gonna happen but it's a very wriggly baby so yeah it's really nice because with my daughter i had um a placenta which was on top of her so i couldn't feel anything at all oh wow so this for me is such a different experience like feeling feeling the baby move is i felt i felt it was really alien like at the end it was like i just felt really

it is strange but i just i feel whenever i feel I move I just feel lucky I feel you know I feel have you had any cravings I've had no weird cravings disappointingly no just lemon I really wanted lemons all the time

that was it really I'm very much looking forward to having a glass of wine yes get that champagne on ice ready for when the baby's in you obviously can't do it through the IVF either

so it's been a oh so there's all that time as well all that time yeah all that time and I mean it's not to be all and end all but no but it is it's a well-earned glass even just having a cup of coffee It's been a... Oh, so there's all that time as well. All that time. Yeah, all that time. And I mean, that's not to be all and end all, but even just having a cup of coffee,

you know, there are certain things that you just... When every time you go through the IVF, they give you a long... Oh, it's so funny. They give you a list of things that you can't do. And it's like... Everything. Everything. It's like everything of pleasure,

but remove all joy from your life. No alcohol, no caffeine, no physical exercise, you know, strenuous exercise. And it's no hot baths. It's such a ridiculous list. You look at it and you think, but these are all the things I'd like. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And all the things that actually, you know, sometimes, I mean, I know in the lead up to me getting pregnant, I think I'd been out. Oh, the one before. I saw a TikTok the other day of this girl and she's been on like three hen do's since she found out that she was pregnant. So I sure it probably doesn't in the early days doesn't make that much difference but i think you get to the point when you're doing the ivf you think i'm

going to follow every rule so like cut out or each at each point i was like i got more and more strict i cut out all caffeine and you know i would just i was so strict so i was like anything that works um and i think they know because they're quite funny as well about pushing it too much with the exercise so you know and i quite enjoy you know going out and doing you know doing something so i had to really rein it in with you know not not pushing it too hard well not long left you've got four weeks baby's gonna be here baby philippa philip philip whatever you decide um what inspired you to create the personalized IVF journal? Yeah, so I run a stationery company and a lot of our products are inspired by kind of real things that we've been through.

So we have a book journal, which was inspired by me falling back in love with reading, which is really popular. I've been amazed about how popular that has been. And I think with the IVF journal, I know firsthand how lonely it can be and what a rollercoaster of emotions you go through. And I really wanted to create something that would help other people that are going through the same thing. So the idea behind the IVF journal

is that you can use it by yourself if you're going through IVF by yourself or with a partner, works for same-sex couples as much as it does for mixed-sex couples. and it is there to kind of help you both practically so remembering what injection to do when which i have to tell you is harder than you think yeah so much you can't remember what side of you you've done at all yes yeah and and which one you've got to take each day and so both practically but also you know emotionally to sort of process it all so

it's got lots of really helpful bits in to log you know your protocol and all the different things you need to do along the way but also it's got some really lovely self-care things in there and some nice things to help you yeah some tips so you know you talked about what you do in that two week wait it's that you just feel like you're going mad and you just want to test do take a pregnancy test every day so it's got some really lovely journaling prompts for that time and i i i didn't i really didn't know what to expect when i pulled it together it was just something that i really was passionate about about creating and it's really nice as well it's personalized you can add somebody's name to the front of it and yeah we've really blown away by the reaction since we

launched it i've had really positive response from people. We've actually even had some IVF clinics looking at ordering it for their patients, which is really unbelievable. I was thinking what a beautiful gift for someone, because it's very hard to know what to say and to know how to support someone. So maybe something like that would be a beautiful gift. For somebody that's just embarking on their own journey, it covers the whole of your cycle. And I found for me going through it, some of times when i've really felt i was going mad i would just i just needed to write stuff down to get out of my out of my head and

it's also a really nice keepsake you know at the end of it um and it's a lovely gift but also something you can get for yourself to to help to help you if you're going through the same process yeah it's a beautiful idea thank you where can people find it so they can find it on our website which is martha brooke so www.marthabrooke.com it's the personalized ivf journal and we do now also have a pregnancy journal which i'm so excited to be able to able to pull together and um yeah so a lot of our products are very much inspired by things that you know i genuinely find helpful myself as somebody that likes writing things down um but we've got all sorts of other beautiful personalized station on there that works really well as gifts yeah go and check it out it's beautiful thank you we have got a message

from a listener it comes from claire on whatsapp for those of you who do want to get in touch, our WhatsApp number is 075 999 275 37. And I've probably read that really weirdly because when you first see a number and read it, you don't know if you do it in fives, threes and threes or in a different way. Anyway, that's the number. Right, here we go then. So this is from Claire. I'm really enjoying your podcast and Instagram content from you, Martha. It's so refreshing to see someone championing women in such an open and honest way and to hear the shared experiences of lots of women on your podcast. That's to Ash. I'm 26 and I've just been diagnosed with endometriosis. It's so common, affecting an estimated one in nine women. That's very high, isn't it?

It's so shrouded in mystery, as we were talking about before. I think it's a condition that needs better PR. I would love to hear you talk to some women with this condition on your podcast, especially in terms of trying to conceive. I've always wanted children, but I thought I would choose to do so later in life. It's such an isolating experience trying to learn about endometriosis and its effect of chances of conceiving as it's so taboo and just not spoken about enough. Thank you for sharing your own experiences and giving other women a voice.

That's from Claire. Any tips? Is there any way you can go? Is there any research? It's fantastic that she's found out in her 20s, I would say. I think that's really, really great. I definitely think,

I presume because she's got the diagnosis, she's seen a specialist. I think my first thing is don't assume. I think she's already thinking like this and it's just going to be easy. And it's hard to say don't wait until you get into your thirties because I think a lot of us do nowadays. And obviously one thing I just, you're not really aware of is how sharp your fertility drops off as you get older. So I think definitely for her, you know, starting, if she can have something like a hysteroscopy or a laparoscopy

where they can clear some of it out, it can really help your chances of conceiving. So I don't know whether that's been offered to her as an option. There are other things that you can do to kind of manage the endometriosis to kind of keep it at bare bit. So she should definitely talk to, you know, her consultant about that. Or if she's not in a relationship right now she could go through the process of having her eggs collected which it you know can help because you've got them then um for storage for me the issue was never producing the eggs although i did have a lot of endometriosis around one of my ovaries it was the fact that through having sex i was never going to get pregnant because of where the some of the hmos is in it's sort of killing off the sperms it comes in oh wow so i think think it also depends where your endometriosis is. If you've got a lot of it in the kind

of ovary area, it's really, really difficult to get pregnant because they don't get down. So yeah, she could look at possibly egg collection. I think definitely looking at what treatment options she can have now so she's not leaving it to her 30s. But if she is in a relationship, it's something she could think about possibly earlier. Although I know that doesn't work for everybody. I think a lot of us don't you know meet the right person or think about doing this until our 30s i know i mean i didn't leave my other half till i was 37 i think 36 so there's so much there's so much pressure and you can't go on your second date should we no but i now no but i didn't take anything at all to manage this you know until i

was in my 30s so i think the fact that she knows about this is great. I think definitely talking to somebody who is an expert in both fertility and endometriosis is really, really important. As my guy was, because he does both IVF and he does the endometriosis stuff. So finding somebody like that and having the conversation with them and seeing what they would advise you, I think is great. She's absolutely right, though. We don't talk about this you, I think is great. She's absolutely right though. We don't talk about this enough. I think it's as common in women as diabetes. Yeah.

I mean, it's terrifying. I don't know. As common as asthma. You know, and it is crazy that we haven't been talking about this enough. And that people are just brushing it off as it's a heavy period.

It's a heavy period. It's not a heavy period. It's not. It's something that you can affect, you know, many organs of your body. And if left untreated, is much more likely to affect your fertility. So I definitely think she should investigate.

If something feels wrong, I think check it out. If something feels wrong. I mean, it's fantastic she's got the diagnosis. I think that says to me she's hopefully already, you know, having somebody that's... Because you can't really get a diagnosis nowadays without having some sort of internal investigation. So hopefully she's got a better understanding of whereabouts it's affecting her body, because that's important,

because it can be, it depends on the severity of it as well. I've had some really lovely messages on Instagram from people that have been through similar experiences who I know have found themselves extremely difficult to conceive. Are there some good, I was going to say,

are there some good groups that you can join? Are there some... The Endometriosis Society are really good actually. They've got a lot of good resources. I've never really joined a group myself. I would say though, if you're thinking about going through IVF, to find somebody to be your IVF fairy who can be at the end of

WhatsApp or whatever who's been through it because it is quite tough. No one really understands. No one really gets it unless they've done it themselves. So even if it's just someone you follow, I've had a few people now who are messaging me as they're going through it. And I've actually really enjoyed, you know,

supporting them through the process because I know what it's like and how hard it can be when you don't know anyone else around you that's been through something similar. So I wish this lady all the best with her because it is so hard. Thank you very much for that.

And thank you, Martha. It's been so wonderful to meet you. Thank you for being so open and honest and congratulations. Thank you. And we can't wait to see, I mean, do your babies go on your Instagram? Do you pop them on there?

Will we see them? My first daughter, bless her, she's called Hermione. She was all over the Instagram, but we'll see with the baby. We'll look forward to seeing baby's feet, maybe, in the picture when she gets here. Thank you, Martha.

It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Kat. We love to hear from you. Get in touch on WhatsApp, where you can send us a voice message for free, even anonymously if you want to, at 075 9999-27537 or you can email us at askmumsthewordpod at gmail.com askmumsthewordpod at gmail.com or leave us a review on apple podcasts

it all helps we're going to be back with another episode same time same place next week