Lizzie & John

With a long family history of infertility on both sides, Lizzie & John were worried conceiving the first time would be hard, but they had good luck the first month they tried and their son Luke was born after an uncomplicated pregnancy.  3 years later, and ready to have another, what they thought would be smooth sailing turned into all the things they were worried about the first time. Welcome to Secondary Infertility...

Buy on Amazon

The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine and Motherhood by Belle Boggs as discussed by Lizzie can be found wherever books are sold. 

Useful links with more information on Endometriosis can be found here:

• American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
• The Endometriosis Foundation
• Wikipedia for Endometriosis

Transcript

So far through the show we've had good discussions about miscarriage ectopic pregnancies azoospermia, genetic issues, and the havoc infertility can wreak on a marriage.

Some experience infertility through basically just never being able to get pregnant. Others find getting pregnant to be easy but actually bringing the pregnancy to term and having an actual baby in the arms the possible part. This is waiting for babies. I'm Steven Mavros. And today I want to bring you a story about what it's like when you start off not infertile. Here's an example. You're a couple you get married when you think it might be a good time to have a child with a goalie or any other euphemism you want for stopping the use of contraception. And it just happens. You get pregnant. You have a normal pregnancy you give birth have a healthy child.

You treasure and enjoy what it's like to be a parent even though the concept of eight hours of sleep seems like a forgotten dream a year or two or three later you decide you want to give your child the Sibyl and grow your family. So you do the same thing you did last time you play the goalie and. Nothing happened. You try some more. And still nothing happens. You think wait I've done this before. What's different. This is what's known as secondary and for two and for some it can be just as devastating as what those who've never once been pregnant go through.

Today's story comes from Lizzie and John Rothwell who are in their early 30s when they first thought about having a child. One of the first questions I always ask when interviewing someone is whether they always knew they wanted to have kids but I've never gotten this response. I felt like. My whole life since I was in adolescence I have been making monthly payments on a very expensive power drill.

That I would be really upset if I never got to use it.

So there is a biological drive to have children in addition to wanting a family.

Yeah I have no analogies I just knew I wanted kids. It was easy.

Now Lizzie's down payments for her power drill seemingly paid off and they conceived very quickly. Now I say quickly but it wasn't easy. Right before they started trying Lizzie was struggling with something that at first appeared to have nothing to do with fertility. Basically from May of 2012 until I got pregnant with Luke in October of that year I was in constant abdominal pain.

And I've gone to see a gastro intestinal doctor once in Philadelphia and we sort of ruled out like scary stuff like Crohn's disease and stuff but we hadn't gotten any further. And then I got pregnant and that all went away.

I felt miraculously better. Like instantly it was yeah. It was.

Yeah that was really a trying period because you know it was terrible.

You were laid up. There were some nights you couldn't get out of bed. So we would play as Yeah. So we.

So had you noticed a correlation between the pain and your periods.

No I always had really bad periods. But it was like that spring they got like really bad. And then like just more and more it wasn't just during my period it was like all of the time. And it was like it was really disabling like I started a new job and I felt like I couldn't really cope with it because I just was in pain all the time. I was very surprised that I got pregnant then because I wasn't we didn't burn in the mood at least I wasn't in the mood at all but I was in a lot of pain.

So abdominal pain and sex don't necessarily mean they're not the best.

So that kind of you know totally came out of the blue. And statistically speaking I think we just got really fucking lucky.

Did you ever find anything that was helpful outside from getting pregnant.

I tried on showers. We got some. Ideas.

Meditation is kind of like a weird purchase.

It was very very well very highly recommended people who have IBS situation.

So when did you do that meditation. I don't really remember get very first let's. It wasn't just here. I'm just general meditation too. So I just got solidarity and I get to the only part I remember was that you entered a room like a vault that had a wheel and you could spin a wheel to either speed up your digestive track or the other way to slow that.

Yeah. That's yeah. And you visualize your pain level as a dial too and you try to dilute that.

And you feel like it was helpful.

I don't know maybe maybe if I had stuck maybe if I hadn't gotten knocked up I would have stuck with him.

Maybe if you had maybe if you had IBS opposed.

Well but you do I mean that's just the center of it so.

So sure I had it it just wasn't the root cause of the problem. Right. As far as I can tell.

Now Lizzie at this point had done enough Google research and suspected she probably had endometriosis. And this is why getting pregnant solved her problem. Her GI doc who hadn't thought of sending her to a good ecologist yet essentially confirmed her thoughts.

And when you finally did get pregnant and you followed up with that gastroenterologists.

Yeah I was like I felt a great deal like oh that makes sense we were starting to suspect that maybe there was end of it and she said like I just need to stay pregnant for the next 15 years.

I was like oh cool.

You have a prescription for that?

Let's take a moment to talk about endometriosis for a second. So the endometrium is the layer of cells that lines the inside of the uterus. These cells are responsive to hormones particularly estrogen and plump and grow over the course of a cycle and then slough off during a period. OK. Can we all agree slough is just a weird word? anyway endometriosis is when cells that act just like the endometrium start growing in places they shouldn't notably outside the uterus on the ovaries and anywhere in the abdominal cavity basically places you do not want.

Cells that grown reaction or hormones can either get in the way stretchin and inflame surrounding tissues or in some cases even causal organ and tissues to stick together which you definitely don't want. One of the difficulties have been endometriosis is that it's hard to diagnose. It's rare to be able to see it on an ultrasound. And often the only way to confirm that someone has it is by doing a laparoscopy or a surgery where you take a camera and look into the abdominal cavity. Not exactly ideal. So the main symptom of endometriosis is abdominal pain. For most women the symptoms are at their worst around their period. But for some this pain can become chronic. And last of all month long the other complication of

endometriosis can but not always be infertility. One of the clues that someone has endometriosis is a near complete relief of symptoms after a woman becomes pregnant and suddenly the hormonal balance in the body has changed and shifted and estrogen is no longer the dominant force. So those cells sort of become quiet. Mind you it doesn't cure the problem but when someone is pregnant and often during breastfeeding when a woman is not getting a little psycho The symptoms can stay away. Coming full circle given that Lizzie had this intense abdominal pain it did get worse around her cycle and then started to become chronic with no signs of gastrointestinal problems and disappeared completely with pregnancy.

The theory was she most likely had end ended the truce. So Lizzie with her chronic pain finally calmed from getting pregnant but went on to have a normal pregnancy and she gave birth to their son Luke when she was 32 years old.

After giving birth and breastfeeding for a while her periods return and thankfully weren't nearly as bad as before and she wasn't getting any pain between her periods. So after three years of enjoying life with her new son John and Lizzie decided it might be time to try for another child back before conceiving Luke. Lizzie was pretty sure she was going to have a hard time conceiving the first time around even before she had the bout of abdominal pain. So the second time around she was