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This episode has discussion of IVF and miscarriage, but it is a joyful episode with a wonderful guest.
I just wanted to give you the heads up.
Growing up in rural Oklahoma, Christy always wanted to be a mother.
I always wanted kids.
I knew I always wanted kids.
I loved kids.
She knew how her family did things.
The plan was simple.
Love, marriage, baby carriage.
I am easily a hopeless romantic, or at least was my childhood, I would say.
I have parents that are middle school sweethearts.
They've never dated anyone else.
And in fact, my mother's parents were like grade school sweethearts.
And if you want to know how, like storybook my grandparents' story is, my grandpa rode a horse to school and would come pick up my grandma and take her to school.
So I come from a long line of romantics, you could say.
But Christy's story winds up being not so linear.
It's not as simple as dating, falling in love, getting married, and then having children.
It turns out to be much more complicated than that.
I remember thinking if I don't get back together with my ex and if I'm this old and I'm not with someone, I'm going to do it on my own.
From the Boston Globe, this is Love Letters.
I'm Meredith Goldstein. mention this, but for those who aren't aware, I have never wanted kids.
I used to wonder if the feeling might grab hold of me one day, but it never happened.
That said, I've been surrounded by women who wanted children.
I've had many long conversations with friends about whether they'd be open to having kids alone if they didn't find a partner.
I've had some ambivalent friends who kind of wanted kids, but wondered if kind of was enough.
And she was like hey, this is weird, but I'm about to go to an egg freezing information session with the doctor.
Want to come?
And I said, sure.
So I went in with her and the doctor absolutely thought we were a beautiful gay couple.
We were not.
But that day I learned all about what he called the reproductive train, which he said is in full power, sitting in the station with eggs until you're about 35.
Then he said it leaves the station.
Then at 45, it parks. in another place.
That reproductive train.
Choo-choo.
My friend, the one who was getting the information, was single at the time.
She was thinking of freezing her eggs just in case she wanted to have kids when she was older and met someone to do it with.
But she did think, maybe this is something I'll wind up doing alone.
She was thinking she could always find love after having a kid if she wanted to.
It didn't have to go in one particular order.
That makes me think about Christie, a teacher who we're going to call by just her first name today to protect her identity at work.
Christie has a great appreciation for romantic love, but also knows how to make family choices without it.
She sent us her story and I wanted her to tell it because it's all about being flexible, about the plan and the timeline.
To start, despite Christie's family finding love in her small Oklahoma town, Christie is does not.
The dating pool where she grows up is basically a puddle.
I've met previous boyfriends before.
There was nothing ever too serious.
I had a boyfriend in high school.
I'll ask about a year.
But I never felt, especially growing up in a small town I was going to find my future husband there.
Christy wants to study science and she wants new experiences and research opportunities.
So she applies and gets accepted to a big university a few hours from home.
It's a fresh mix of faces, so much potential.
She thinks here's where the path begins to job and love and all of the next steps.
First, love.
I always just had this moment in my head of like, oh, we're going to do a meet cute.
That was always just in my head of what was going to happen.
She gets her wish when she's in her early 20s, still an undergrad.
I was out changing my bicycle tire, which I found out later was a great way to get guys' attentions because, oh my gosh, I had tools.
I was by a bicycle.
I had many guys stop to ask if I knew what I was doing.
After two guys had already offered to help, I took my bicycle wheel off and I was just walking across the apartment complex to air it up.
And another guy stopped to ask if I needed help.
We talked for a bit.
And it's funny because he knew the like four people from my small town that were also at this large college.
And we talked for probably about an hour.
And I was just like, oh, that's so cute.
And in my mind, I was like, oh my gosh, this is my future husband.
This is my like moment.
And it was funny because for the first time in my life, usually I had that constant movie reel of like oh okay, this is the story I'm telling my grandkids.
This is like who it's going to be.
I'm going to call this guy, actually, I'll call him Guy.
So Christy and Guy start to date.
It's quite convenient because he happens to live in her building near campus.
That's how we saw her outside with the bike.
To put this in perspective for timing, the video game Rock Band is a huge deal when they start seeing each other.
Every Thursday night, Christy and Guy get together, play Rock Band, have some drinks and enjoy each other.
About a year into this arrangement, Christy says, can we define this relationship?
Guy is tentative.
Christy does not like this.
Thus, a pattern begins of breaking up, kind of, and getting back together.
It's an ill-defined but strong connection where, even when they're not together, they're still very much in touch.
This persists over many years in various forms.
It's amazing how time flies in this state of off and on.
Eventually, Christie is approaching 30, living like an adult.
She wants to start making moves, making decisions, adding to her life.
She starts thinking, wait, I know I want to have kids.
And I don't have to figure out all this relationship stuff before I have one.
I was in graduate school and I was doing the little bit of dating I did.
I just thought, you know what?
I think I could do this on my own.
And for a little bit of context, my two youngest brothers are adopted.
So I at first thought maybe I would just adopt.
I'd even looked at there's like emergency foster care you can do.
I'd looked at and just considered all these different options.
And so that had always been in my head.
This is revelatory.
Just the idea that she doesn't have to wait for anyone.
And I want to say Christy is the first woman who's ever told me that they've thought about adopting a child and having a kid in a very planned way on their own in their 20s.
Usually I hear from people in their late 30s who say, OK, I need to make this happen now.
But Christy is someone who turned the timeline on its head pretty early in her life.
But right as she's about to start pursuing being a single mom, Guy shows up ready to be back together.
He's a bit more grown up and he loves her.
They become a more official couple.
By her early thirties, Christy has become a teacher for high school kids.
Guy is out of grad school and working.
They've been together for well over a year when they're on vacation and something big happens.
We went to this cabin and it was fun, but I remember at the time We went like hiking and I was so exhausted and I didn't know what was going on.
Like I'd never been this exhausted in my life.
And so we just went ahead and enjoyed our trip.
And then that following week I came home and I realized I was pregnant.
So again, we aren't even living together at this time.
So I took a picture of a pregnancy test and I was like, hey, guess what?
And I sent it to him and he was pretty excited.
They wait a bit to share the news.
At 20 weeks is when we ended up telling our families.
We had my family and his mom over.
We kind of just sprung it on them.
It was interesting reactions from the family.
Ultimately, they were happy because our child was the first grandchild on both sides.
And both of our parents had been pushing us for grandkids.
They'd always wanted grandkids.
And so they were really excited.
But then me specifically got a lot of pressure from my mom and his mom about us then getting married.
But Christy is thinking we're already doing this out of order, so what's the point of rushing marriage?
If anything, she needs to know what living with him is like.
So she moves into Guy's house, sharing real space with him for the first time.
It's suddenly the whole nine yards, for the whole nine months.
And it's good.
And when the baby is born, it remains good.
Christy and Guy transition to parenthood together really well.
They start talking about a second kid, which Christy wants for sure.
But then it gets complicated.
Keep in mind, in 2020, the pandemic begins.
COVID hits Guy's community really hard.
His best friend and two family members die.
It's devastating.
Over time, Guy starts to get quiet.
He's drinking more.
By 2022, Christy notices it's becoming a problem.
One time when we were in the park took a chug of his water bottle, assuming it was water bottle.
Come to find out it was straight vodka.
So I was like, oh, okay, we're doing this.
Pretty soon, Christy no longer feels that it's safe for her and her daughter.
So she leaves and gets her own apartment. early in 2023.
She's juggling a three-year-old and figuring out who she is on her own.
Her parents are a wonderful support system during this.
After about a year, Christy starts to feel like herself again, with a new routine.
But she thinks about the fact that she wanted at least another child.
And this is when her daughter, who has always wanted a sibling, gets more persistent about the same thing.
She loved the idea, especially of having a little sister.
So she would bug me a lot about wanting a little sister or talking about having a baby sister.
So it was actually very painful when we had first left because I was all on my own.
I was dealing with my own heartbreak and my new reality.
And here is a three-year-old hounding me to have a baby.
Three-year-olds can be precocious.
And my little child, being my little child one time, asked for my age.
And I told her, I don't even remember when this was.
It was some point in the last three years.
And she said, Mom, that's close to 40.
You can't have a kid.
And so I was like, great.
My child is now also commenting on my biological clock.
And I don't even know where she got this 40 number from.
But I was so floored when she's like, she's telling me I'm 40.
I'm like, thank you.
But her daughter isn't wrong.
Christy starts to think about it.
The clock is ticking.
I knew I wanted my child to at least have one more sibling.
She thinks okay, I guess the next step is meeting someone new, to date them and then make a baby with them.
No pressure.
She tries dating apps, but she quickly realizes it might take longer to find someone than she'd be willing to wait.
I don't know if I'm just extremely picky.
I mean, I probably am to a degree.
Again, there was just no one terribly interesting.
I'd found a lot of the people available were either single dads as well, Or there were a lot that didn't want more kids.
And when Christy's honest with herself, finding romance is not her first priority.
Having the second kid is the first priority.
So I was just coming to this conclusion.
If I wanted another child and I wanted it to be my biological child I might as well do it on my own.
So that just pushed me into this idea.
Well, let's just do IVF.
In the summer of 2024, Christy looks into in vitro fertilization.
Her mother is worried at first.
Her concern is really that if Christy has a second kid on her own she'll be less dateable, less likely to find love.
She's thinking about odds.
What I tried to explain to my mom is I'm a single mother, whether I have one child or two.
And she tried to tell me she thought dating would be easier with one child.
And I was like, well, maybe.
But again, I'm still a single mom, no matter what.
And so it just seemed like just the most obvious, logical choice for me.
What does Christy do next?
How do her choices affect her love life?
More when we come back.
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This time, it really is personal.
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Back to Christy, a single mom with a three-year-old.
She has supportive parents who assist when they can.
But really Christy, is that single mom doing all of the things?
Now she's decided she'd like to have a second kid on her own, but time is of the essence.
She's decided IVF is the way to go.
Her first appointment is July 2024, the week of her 38th birthday.
She quickly finds out she is not the traditional patient.
One difference for me coming into IVF is that I am what I found the Internet calls a single mom by choice.
And I'm also a little bit different in that group in that I've had a child before.
I knew going into IVF, I'm not going into IVF because of fertility issues.
And so I didn't necessarily need what's called a reproductive endocrinologist, because I don't have issues having children.
I have a partner issue and lack thereof.
I always think about how, when my single friends looked into IVF, so many people were like oh, but you might meet someone.
Or, well, it might be too much for you to handle without a partner.
Christy got some of that feedback, too, years ago when she first looked into IVF.
But this time around, people respect her choices without trying to make her doubt them.
So I found a lot of people are supportive of that, because I think they already think I'm quite a good mother.
And so they support the idea of me having another child.
There's a lot of planning involved in IVF.
Her doctor is optimistic.
I remember him telling me that I'm his favorite type of patient because I'd had a kid before.
I'm not coming in with a fertility issue.
And he thought I'd have really good success, wouldn't struggle like a lot of people might.
And I know, at my age in particular, once you hit about 37 38, you start getting to the point where your eggs are having more issues and there aren't, as I mean, I hate to say normal, but you just have more issues at my age.
Because about that point, 50 of your eggs are most likely unusable would be probably the easiest way to describe it.
So I came at a really good point biologically to consider doing this as well.
Worth noting, the subject Christy teaches, biology.
So that pretty much then told me, okay, We're going to do this now then.
One of the first decisions Christy has to make is one of the most important.
Because of her partner issue, she needs to pick a sperm donor.
I had really looked at sperm donors really early on, because it's just a little weird for me at least to conceptualizing having a child with someone I didn't know.
Because I'm not having like a one night stand explicitly, but in some ways it feels like I am.
I don't know this man.
I don't even officially know his name.
When dating and mating in the wild, you fall in love and get what you get.
But in doing IVF, Christy can choose which factors in a partner are most important to her.
It's quite a variety of choices people make on how to come up with who they want as a sperm donor.
So my daughter is biracial.
And even though her dad is black and I'm white, she has a lot of my facial features in.
She looks very strongly like me.
When I was picking who I'd want for a sperm donor, in a way, I really wanted my next child to look a lot like my own child, if possible.
And so I was looking through different donor banks.
I ultimately decided I was going to pick sperm from a black donor.
And if you know anything about sperm banks, which maybe the average person doesn't like anything, there's not a lot of options for black donors, just like anything.
And so I...
Had mixed feelings about that.
But again, I'm already kind of in this game.
I'm raising a mixed child.
And so I felt comfortable for myself picking a black donor.
And it narrows down your search quite a bit when you put that as a filter.
And this one looked a lot like my ex.
And I really had to think about that because in some ways that would probably up the chances of my child than looking like my potential child, looking like my current child.
There are also these intangible things that call out to her. about who she wants her kid to be.
I do remember he loves swimming, and I have always loved swimming.
And so that just really stuck out to me, because he talked about really loving swimming and just almost being athletic as well as kind of meditative.
And I just thought he seemed like very self-aware.
And there was just a lot when I read his personality.
I was like, okay, I can see that.
Because it's kind of weird.
It's not like you're dating this person.
But at the same time, you kind of want someone that would be someone you'd pick.
Because I think some...
So much personality I do think comes from DNA ultimately.
So I was like I want to pick someone I think I'd at least be friends with, or someone that makes sense to me.
There's a blur of appointments and tests.
And then in January of 2025, it's time for the egg retrieval.
And just to be clear, Christy isn't freezing eggs.
She's freezing embryos with the donor's sperm.
So the egg retrieval is honestly the hardest part on your body.
And through the process.
It's actually a little bit funny.
So part of why my parents ended up adopting is my parents had fertility issues after the first two kids.
And I came to find out my mother did IVF, which I kind of vaguely knew because I was like a grade schooler, but I didn't know a lot about that process.
And so it's funny because my parents have been very supportive and very helpful of me through this journey.
And so I've ended up talking to my mom and dad both quite a bit about their own experience with IVF.
Her parents really get it.
Christy's dad goes with her to support her at the egg retrieval.
She gets 22 eggs on her first try with 13 fertilized and 7 embryos.
That's a lot for the average IVF round for Christy's age.
Once she has those embryos, there are a few weeks where they do things like genetic testing.
In mid-March, she starts more shots, part of the lead-up to the embryo transfer.
Christy gives these shots to herself at home.
Sometimes her daughter watches as Christy gives herself the shots.
My biggest decision was when and how to tell my child about this whole thing.
Because again, one of my biggest things for my daughter is I don't want to make promises I can't keep.
Now obviously, sometimes you make promises and things go awry, you know, despite what you're trying to do.
So I decided early on I was not going to tell my child until my first trimester for any of this.
She doesn't know anything's going on.
She sees me like giving myself shots.
I just tell her, you know, I'm not sick.
I'm just trying something the doctors want me to try.
Somehow that's been okay with her.
She likes to watch me give my shot sometimes and sometimes she's just over it, doesn't care.
And then the transfer itself.
This happens May 2nd, 2025.
Another big, really anxious part of IVF is what's called the two-week wait.
So after you do the embryo transfer, you wait two weeks before you go back and have a pregnancy test.
The doctor will do a sonogram and see if the embryo, as the community usually says, stuck.
So if the embryo is there and growing and developing.
Christy said she had a feeling pretty soon after her transfer that it had worked.
I had symptoms pretty early on.
The tricky thing about the two-week wait, though, is you are taking a lot of supplementary hormones.
And so you're going to feel pregnant from those hormones, if nothing else.
So I waited, I think, about a week.
But I went in and it had worked.
I had really good numbers, in fact.
So I ended up all of May then having a successful pregnancy.
Christy emailed us with her story offering to be on the podcast not long after finding out she was pregnant.
By the time we got to our scheduled interview, things had changed.
After a bunch of doctor's appointments,
She can explain.
And so my first scan was great.
Had a really strong heartbeat.
Was actually measuring a day ahead of where he should have been.
And so then, on my next scan, I just thought it was probably going to be just, you know, something I have to get done.
It was on my to-do list.
And I came in that following Wednesday at eight and a half weeks.
And the heart rate had slowed quite a bit.
And I had been a bit nervous about six weeks.
My symptoms were kind of waning.
And I remember getting in, I'm on a subreddit for IVF.
I remember posting in there.
I was like, okay, did you guys have symptoms kind of come and go?
It was around this time I was also tapering off those supplemental hormones.
So again, for my biology brain, a lot of this made sense, but it didn't also reflect what my first pregnancy looked like.
And so again, I didn't know how much of this was because it's an IVF pregnancy.
I didn't know how much of this is because it's just a different pregnancy.
But when I went to that second scan, I
The heart rate had slowed down quite a bit, and he wasn't moving at that point.
So the doctor, plus his soul, as my mother would say, he has no bedside manner.
I think he's a little bit awkward even, frankly.
And so he was pretty quiet and weird about it all.
I mean, I knew as soon as he turned on the sonogram I didn't hear a heartbeat that that was not good news.
And he did find a heartbeat, but it was quite slow.
So I had to come in the following Friday, so two days later.
And so, of course me, being me, was doing all kinds of research, trying to look through medical journals or anything I could find.
Because I do know enough science to know we don't know all the science.
And so I wasn't totally sure which way this could go.
And so when I went in that Friday, I found out I had what's called a missed miscarriage.
Because I never had any signs of cramping or bleeding, which are the typical signs of miscarriage.
By Friday, that then third scan, there was no longer a heartbeat and he was not moving.
Christy said, one big place of support is on Reddit, specifically in subreddits where she can bond with other people and figure out how this can go.
And it was kind of neat because there's at least three people in the world that had almost the exact same timing as me when their transfer was, when they miscarried pretty similar circumstances.
And it's interesting because I will never meet these people.
I don't even know their names.
But it was really kind of neat just to know there are three other people in the world right now going through almost the exact same thing I am.
And that felt really reassuring.
This is another moment where Christy realizes things will be nonlinear.
She was getting from point A to point B, and now she'll reset and try again.
Christy's second embryo transplant was scheduled for end of summer 2025.
She said she'll check back in with us later this season to tell us what's happening.
When Christy wrote in, she told us she had a story for the podcast.
In her mind, it was about learning that romance doesn't have to mean everything.
That you can have this full life and family in a bunch of different ways, that romantic love doesn't magically fix a life and that more single women should know about the wonderful options beyond life partner.
Christy says she wants young women like her daughter to know that romantic love isn't everything, and I agree.
But I got another lesson from this story, something that was new to me to think about, which is the timeline part of it, the order of it.
By saying in her late 20s hey, I can do things when I want to do them and find a way, she realized she could take control of everything.
And now in her late 30s, by saying okay, I'll have a kid on my own, even if it means taking a break from looking for love, she's actually taking that control to get what she wants most.
And by the way, as Christy prepares to try again with IVF, she isn't ruling out romance.
She might find love later.
She's just doing what makes sense on her schedule.
She can always shift gears.
In her mind, it can absolutely go love first. baby carriage, breakup, baby carriage, love.
If we've learned anything at Love Letters, it's that love doesn't have to be linear at all.
You have these goals, right?
You know what you want.
You know what the next year of your life could potentially look like in certain ways.
When you imagine a happy future, what are the range of possibilities?
Do you see yourself... partnered with somebody who has two kids already?
Do you see yourself like?
What are the?
I know we can't control things, but what do you like to think about?
I'm a very visual person, and I'm one that just has all kinds of just like possibilities.
In fact I was telling someone recently, I don't exactly know why, but I really love the idea of a multiverse because I just love the idea of there being me in a different world or universe, I guess, for that matter, living out different versions of how my life could have gone.
I love the idea that there is a universe out there where my partner and I did live till we're 80 together and had just this perfect, beautiful marriage and all those things and 20 kids or something.
But I just, I don't know.
I think the future is pretty wide open.
Love Letters is a production of the Boston Globe.
Our producer is Christina Honichu.
Our executive producer is Kristen Nelson.
Story edit, mixing, and mastering by Jasmine Aguilera.
Sound design by Christina Honotu.
Special thanks to Nancy Barnes and Linda Henry.
Remember, Love Letters is also an advice column.
Send any questions about dating divorce marriage singlehood whatever, to loveletters at bostoncom.
Find our newsletter at boston.com slash Meredith.
And if you like the show, please leave us a review.
I also love that you got the diagnosis of hot young ovaries myself.
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