Transcription
A to Be introduction
Mimi Kwa: People say life is a journey, not a destination. But how do you know you are on the right path?
Jo Stanley: If only we could see the signs when they appear.
Mimi Kwa: Well, I’m Mimi Kwa.
Jo Stanley: And I’m Jo Stanley.
Mimi Kwa: And on A to Be, we speak to fascinating people about how they navigated their way to be here now, having a profound impact on the world.
Jo Stanley: We hope our conversations will help you reflect on everything you’ve been through to get here – the triumphs, challenges and bumps along the road.
Mimi Kwa: And if you haven’t already, find your own map to what matters.
Episode teaser
Jade: I remember one day vividly, my husband said, ‘I’ll pack the medication that you need for the day.’ And I said, ‘Okay, that’s one less thing I’ve got to worry about.’ Anyway, when we got in there, he brought the wrong one into the city, he brought the wrong injection in. And if I missed this injection, it would’ve completely ruined my whole cycle. I was beside myself sobbing.
Jo Stanley: Not a good day for your husband.
Mimi Kwa: ‘You have one job’ comes to mind, but I’m not going to say it.
Episode introduction
Mimi Kwa: For many people, being a parent is one of their great purposes in life. And most certainly, the path to holding that precious baby in her arms is one of the most personal and individual experiences a woman can have. There is no motherhood A to Be the same.
Jo Stanley: No, we have no idea the stories, events, sliding door moments that sit behind that journey. We have no idea what other people are going through, Mimi, do we? It feels as though this is particularly the case when a person very deeply yearns for a baby, but experiences infertility.
Mimi Kwa: Yeah, that’s right. And so we do really want to acknowledge the painful pathway women walk when they remain involuntarily childless due to a whole variety of circumstances. And we do not wish this episode to be insensitive at all or hurtful to anyone.
Jo Stanley: No. But while this is an episode about the A to Be of becoming a mother, it’s also about support and care and the need to talk freely and with total acceptance of the myriad of mothering experiences. Because each of us here on this episode particularly has our own stories. Mimi, you have four beautiful kids.
Mimi Kwa: Kids. Yes, I do. And I feel so lucky. I remember my obstetrician used to say that all of my pregnancies were uneventful. And I would say to him jokingly, ‘Well, I want a bit of action,’ but I do appreciate that that is the dream to actually have a boring pregnancy or a pregnancy at all.
Jo Stanley: Four children pushed out from you. That’s not uneventful. Don’t sell yourself short.
Mimi Kwa: True, true.
Jo Stanley: Well, I have one daughter, Willow, who is my greatest gift. But I very much wanted a second child, and I did try and failed with IVF and with an egg donor. And I do share that to give you just the background to whatever perspective I might bring to this conversation.
Mimi Kwa: Thank you, Jo. Yes, because in this episode we are joined by two very special guests. Dr Nicole Hope – quite possibly the most perfect surname for her extraordinary work as a fertility specialist and Medical Director for Newlife IVF, a doctor-owned fertility clinic offering personalised, supportive and affordable care.
Jo Stanley: And our other guest is Jade, whose three-year-old daughter Harper is the product of that wonderful care from Dr Nicole and Newlife IVF. Welcome, Dr Nicole.
Dr Nicole Hope: Thank you.
Jo Stanley: And Jade.
Jade: Thanks.
Mimi Kwa: Welcome. I have a daughter called Harper as well.
Jade: Oh, wow.
Mimi Kwa: Yeah, exactly. We’ve got that in common already.
Jo Stanley: I really love the stories behind how people get their names as well.
Mimi Kwa: Yes.
Jo Stanley: That’s a part of our origin, isn’t it?
Mimi Kwa: Yeah, totally.
Jo Stanley: Why Harper for you?
Mimi Kwa: Because I liked the name Harper.
Jo Stanley: Oh, there you go.
Mimi Kwa: And I obviously one day had a dream I would be published by HarperCollins.
Jo Stanley: Oh, there you go.
Mimi Kwa: No, not really.
Jo Stanley: Did you manifest that?
Mimi Kwa: Maybe. But I did love the name Harper. Do you have a story behind the name Harper?
Jade: Well, it’s funny because with my first child, we had Harper on the list and we said, ‘Definitely no way.’ And then for our second, with Harper, my mum kept saying, ‘I really love the name Harper.’ And my husband and I, one day, it was in the morning and he goes, ‘Do you like a particular name?’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ And he goes, ‘Does it start with H?’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ so it was Harper. And when you see her, she’s a Harper.
Mimi Kwa: Yeah. It’s amazing how names just fit the human.
Jade: Yes.
Jo Stanley: She has a special middle name though, doesn’t she?
Jade: Yes. So Harper’s middle name is Nicole, after Dr Nicole.
Jo Stanley: Nicole.
Mimi Kwa: That is so wonderful.
Jo Stanley: Do you get that a lot?
Dr Nicole Hope: Not so much, Nicole. But the Hope. Yeah, so a few come through with Hope as a middle name.
Mimi Kwa: How does that actually make you feel, the contribution that you’ve made, that somebody wants to name a person after you?
Dr Nicole Hope: Amazingly privileged. Yeah, just very rewarding to be part of someone’s journey towards having a baby, whether it’s doing IVF, or I have a lot of patients who just need some help but don’t actually end up doing IVF. So just to be able to be part of that and help people is very rewarding, and to get some acknowledgement on the other end is really special.
Mimi Kwa: Yes. I can’t think of any greater recognition than for somebody to name their child after you.
Dr Nicole Hope: Yeah, it’s amazing.
Jo Stanley: Well, this is a story of paths intersecting, and your two paths intersected because you found yourself, Jade, in Nicole’s office seeking fertility treatment. So we’ll get to that, but I suppose you were in that office because at some point in your life, Nicole, you wanted to be someone who worked with babies and wanted to be a doctor. How did this all come about?
Dr Nicole Hope: I don’t know why, but since a young age I was just fascinated with reproduction and the menstrual cycle. That sounds really bizarre. But I remember seeing a first tampon in a friend’s bathroom, going home and asking my mother what it was. Asking for a full explanation of what happened and how you got pregnant, and then promptly went to school the next day and told everyone all about it.
Jo Stanley: Were they all horrified? I remember my daughter was one of the first to understand how babies were born and telling everybody really young, in year one or something, and getting parents like, ‘What? Your daughter told my daughter this.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, it’s true.’
Mimi Kwa: Absolutely.
Jo Stanley: What do you want?
Mimi Kwa: So Nicole, how did your mum handle it when you asked the question? Because lots of parents struggle with how to actually communicate ‘the birds and the bees,’ to their children.
Dr Nicole Hope: My mother was always quite a practical, no-nonsense sort of person. And really, aside from Santa, she didn’t really lie about anything else. So I think she just told it to me straight.
Jo Stanley: So from there you were like, ‘Okay, this is me?’
Dr Nicole Hope: Yeah, I was always really interested in it. And I think obviously when you’re young, you don’t translate, ‘Oh, I want to be a doctor and a fertility specialist,’ but I was always quite interested in that. And then as you go through schooling and you actually realise that’s a pathway that you can go down.
Jo Stanley: It’s lucky you were smart enough to become a doctor though. I could have gone, ‘Yeah, I really want to do that,’ but just would not have got the marks.
Dr Nicole Hope: Well, I think, yeah, there are so many different ways to come into the fertility or pregnancy field. Some people may do nursing and be a midwife or they may do nursing and be an IVF nurse as well. Through the IVF clinic, we have trained fertility counsellors, and we even people in our administration team and our finance team. Everyone needs to be focused on supporting patients. Because our patients are coming through IVF, often it’s very emotional and there are lots of things going on. So it’s really important that everyone, not just the doctors, is understanding and really supporting of our patients going through the process. And obviously, one group I didn’t mention was our scientists who are in our lab. They’re actually the ones doing a lot of the hard work with our eggs and sperm. So they go through and do a science degree and specialise in embryology. So there are lots of different, obviously all medical-based, but without actually doing medicine.
Jo Stanley: You’re saying I couldn’t do it with my arts degree. I get it. But however –
Dr Nicole Hope: You could have done counselling.
Jo Stanley: I could have done counselling.
Mimi Kwa: You would be a great counsellor.
Jo Stanley: But there you were in her office. Intersecting lives here, Jade. Can you give us a picture as to how you found yourself in that office?
Jade’s decision to seek help from a fertility specialist
Jade: It was three years into the journey of trying for a baby. We’d been under a gynaecologist for a while.
Mimi Kwa: And you already had one child?
Jade: We already had one child naturally. First time around, no issues conceiving her. And then when we were ready to start trying for our second, it just felt like the weeks and months just kept dragging out. And I was under a gynaecologist for a while where they had done a laparoscopic surgery. I always stuff that word up. And they had just said, ‘Look, I think everything’s fine. And I just think that maybe your tubes are a little bit sluggish, but you’ve got to give it time.’ So we’d give it another six months, then another six months, and it just wasn’t happening. And it got to the point where one day I just went into my GP’s office, just for a general checkup and chat, and I just broke down in her office saying, ‘I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’
And yeah, at that point she said, ‘You’re going to have to go to an infertility specialist.’ And it was a shock. I was like, ‘How can I be going through infertility if I’ve already had another child? This just can’t be possible.’ So from that moment, she wrote out the referral and I went to see Dr Nicole.
Mimi Kwa: And what was that moment like, when you realised that there was actually somebody that you could go to for help?
Jade: Well, at that point I wasn’t really sure what to expect when my husband and I first met Dr Nicole. We just went in there thinking hopefully we can get some answers. We’ve been under a few doctors now, so we’ll just see what happens. We were at a point where we were desperate. We would try anything if it was going to result in having a baby. So I think after meeting Nicole, within two weeks, we finally had the closure that we needed that we hadn’t had in the whole three years.
Mimi Kwa: So what was it that she said to you that made you feel that this was the right path to go down?
Jade: I think with Nicole, so from meeting her and giving us our results, she gave us all the options. So there was no point where I felt that we had to go down the path of IVF. She gave us all the options available to us. And at this point, the age gap between my first child, she was four at the time, and I just didn’t want a huge gap between my kids. It was already getting to a point it was quite lengthy. So I just said to Nicole, ‘What’s going to be our best option?’ And she said, ‘IVF.’
Jo Stanley: It’s frustrating for you though, that you had that time where you were asking your gynaecologist at the time, ‘What’s going on?’ And did you feel dismissed by him?
Jade: Definitely. At that point, I think it was our last meeting with our gynecologist, he was very dismissive of it. And basically the answer that we got, ‘Well, you need to go down a holistic approach. There’s nothing more that I can do for you, and it is what it is. So you’re just going to have to keep trying.’ And I think the frustrating thing for my husband especially was at our appointments, he did ask, ‘Is it something that it could possibly be me? Do I need to go get tested?’ And he was like, ‘No, you’ve had a child before. It’s unlikely that it’s you. More than likely it will be just it’s not happening or it’s Jade.’
The need for fertility-awareness education
Mimi Kwa: Really that sliding door or pivotal moment you opened up for yourself was when you broke down with your GP. And isn’t it coming back to Jo’s point about you feeling dismissed by the specialist that you were being looked after by. It took that breaking down to actually get the help that you needed. And so when you look back at that, how does that make you feel about how you were held within the medical world?
Jade: I feel a tad let down in a way. But I think it was because I’d already had a child, which is why I was more so dismissed. It was like, ‘Your body’s done this before, it knows what to do, so it’ll just happen when it happens.’ So I’m just fortunate that I do have a really good GP that takes the time to listen. That was probably the biggest thing that, yeah, she was listening to me. I hadn’t really shared a lot of my journey with her because I was already under a gynaecologist. I felt that I was getting the care that I needed, but it was only until she said, ‘No, I need to stand in here and refer you to somebody else.’
Jo Stanley: But I think a lot of it is, well, firstly education. So I too had a first child and desperately wanted this second child, but I didn’t know. You introduced me to the term secondary infertility.
Jade: Yes.
Jo Stanley: I’d never heard that term, secondary infertility, Nicole. I was 37 and had my baby and thought, yeah, get pregnant again. Same thing. Didn’t get pregnant. And I think to your point, Mimi, there’s a lot around actually allowing yourself to hear the voices inside you that’s saying something’s not right, because you were saying to yourself for a long time something’s not right.
Jade: I just felt that something wasn’t right. I knew that there had to be something bigger than just it’s not happening. And I wasn’t prepared to give up. I wasn’t prepared to just accept that, ‘Oh, it’ll happen when it happens.’ So yeah, I think that’s what led me to Nicole.
Jo Stanley: And is secondary infertility common? Like I said, I’d never even heard that term.
Dr Nicole Hope: Yeah, it is common. And it’s becoming more common as a general population, we’re delaying that age of first birth. So potentially in Jade’s situation, she got pregnant easily the first time because she was younger, her eggs were better quality and could potentially deal with some of the other things going on. And then as a woman does age and the egg quality starts to deteriorate, then if there are any issues with the sperm or other problems, the eggs are less tolerant of anything else. And so you often see people get pregnant just because they’ve been younger and then they wait a few years and they aren’t able to get pregnant anymore because they’re older as well as they’re being maybe another problem there.
Jo Stanley: And is it ideal then though that people seek help as soon as they can because time is of the essence, really?
Dr Nicole Hope: Yes. I mean, there should be allowed some time to get pregnant naturally. So sometimes –
Jo Stanley: What’s a good amount of time?
Dr Nicole Hope: Well, I think it depends on whether there’s an issue that’s been identified. So if someone has really irregular periods and isn’t ovulating well, you don’t need to make them put up with that for 12 months before you go, ‘Okay, you haven’t got pregnant, now I’m going to do something about it.’ But then in that situation, you might start some medication to help with ovulation. You wouldn’t necessarily go straight to-
Mimi Kwa: You wouldn’t lead straight into it.
Dr Nicole Hope: IVF in that situation. But there are situations where there isn’t any point to continue naturally. So for example, if the male has a very low sperm count or if there’s something definitive like the fallopian tubes being blocked. And sometimes I do often get a woman come and see me who’s maybe 39, 40, hasn’t had any children, but says, ‘Ideally I would like two children.’ And what I often say is, ‘Okay, well, if you get pregnant now, by the time you have a baby, you are 40, 41. By the time you can even think about having another baby, you’re going to be 42 at least. And then it gets really hard to get pregnant because of the age.’ So sometimes with those women, there may not be anything wrong, but in that situation, if they’re wanting to have more than one child, I might recommend doing IVF earlier because firstly it does have the highest chance of pregnancy. But secondly, it may allow us to freeze embryos to use in the future.
Mimi Kwa: And freezing eggs is something that fascinates me, because I have a number of female friends who are going through that process now, which is really intensive with the hormone injections that they have to-
Dr Nicole Hope: It’s basically an IVF cycle. It’s exactly the same as someone doing IVF would do. You just stop at the point where you retrieve the eggs.
Mimi Kwa: And how do you identify with somebody who wants to freeze their eggs for a potential future pregnancy? How do you identify the right age to do that? Or is it very clear?
Dr Nicole Hope: Yeah, so some women come in and they say, ‘I’m 30, I’m not planning on getting pregnant till I’m in my late thirties.’ And if there’s a clear plan not to be pregnant beforehand, then that’s a good idea. We usually do tests, and one of those tests we do is called an AMH test to assess how many eggs someone has left. And if you see that someone’s in the lower range, that might be another reason to freeze eggs. Or if you take a medical and gynaecological history, if there’s something suggestive that they may struggle to get pregnant, then if you already know they may have some issues, that can be a reason to freeze eggs. And look, if someone comes and they’re 35 and they’re single and they’re not wanting to be a single mom just based on age, that would be a reason to freeze eggs as well.
Jo Stanley: This sort of information, I just think needs to be so much more commonly shared.
Mimi Kwa: Yes. To your point about education.
Jo Stanley: Well, because also we believe so much around just the chance conversations can be the reason that you are then pushed down a certain path. So Jade, if someone had actually been in your circles talking about the fact that, ‘Oh, you can struggle to have a second baby,’ maybe that might’ve changed things much earlier for you.
Jade: Definitely. When we went through all the options with Nicole. My mind was blown because I was thinking I didn’t know any of this. I didn’t know that this was available. And just to see how advanced the technology is and what is available to people that are struggling to have kids. It’s unbelievable.
Mimi Kwa: Why do you think that you didn’t know? Because there’s so much that I didn’t and don’t know as well. Do you think that it’s a stigma around it? Do you think –
Jade: Definitely.
Mimi Kwa: Okay.
Jade: Definitely.
Mimi Kwa: And why is that, do you think?
Jade: I still think it’s still very taboo. It’s not something that’s widely spoken about and it should be. So yeah, it’s one of those things people don’t like to talk about openly. And I guess that’s why I was so keen to come and do this today because there needs to be more awareness around it.
Jo Stanley: What would you have loved to have been told or what kinds of conversation would’ve been helpful for you?
Jade: I think around definitely what’s available as far as infertility and what can happen after you have your first child that it doesn’t necessarily mean that you will fall pregnant straight away and what options I’ve got available. So as far as, I’ve got two daughters in there, if they want to go traveling in their twenties, I’d be the first to say, ‘You know what? I’m going to book in with Nicole. You need to get checked.’ Because I figure people find things out too late in the process that there are issues or it could have been prevented years ago. So yeah.
Jo Stanley: That AMH test around the eggs, I discovered that I had no eggs and I was like, ‘But I had a baby.’ I didn’t know she was a miracle baby. Honestly, just should not have happened. But if I’d done that test in my twenties, maybe I would’ve gone, ‘Oh, well. I’ve locked down the husband. I might as well have the kid.’ Right? But are you an advocate for doing tests like AMH tests to find out actually what your future might look like, like much younger, Nicole?
Dr Nicole Hope: Yeah. Unfortunately, there’s no Medicare rebate for the AMH test. So it does cost about $90. But it is just a blood test. And even if you do it at a younger age, it is quite predictive of when you will run out of eggs.
Mimi Kwa: Wow.
Jo Stanley: Can you believe that?
Mimi Kwa: You would never have known. So just coming back to the stigma around discussing fertility and everything that we are talking about today. Nicole, what is your perspective on it? Is there a shame that as women we carry for perhaps not being able to fulfil our fertility destiny that’s expected of us within society?
Dr Nicole Hope: Absolutely. I see a lot of couples who tell me that they’ve stopped going to their friends,’ kids’ birthday parties. And they’ve lost touch with friends because they’re having children and they’re not. So it affects their friendship circle. It affects how they feel, as you’ve alluded to earlier, as a woman. And you expect that you’ll be able to get pregnant and that sense of failure that you can’t do the one thing you are meant to be able to do biologically. And I actually see the same thing in male patients as well.
Some men who have very low or no sperm, again, a sense of failure. And if we do end up doing IVF, just terrible guilt because ultimately it’s the woman, the female partner who is going through all the injections and the procedures for, ultimately, what may be a male fertility issue. So it’s really tough on couples and yeah, there’s a lot of guilt as well as just the general grieving for that life that you thought you’d have but are not having. And you know what? We try at our clinic to be mindful of the costs of treatment, but it is still a costly process. It also holds people back in terms of buying a first house and doing all these other things that they would’ve expected to do. So it has a huge impact.
Mimi Kwa: I think even within the process of IVF, it’s not always smooth sailing, is it? There’s obviously some very pleased parents who come out the other end of that long, difficult, challenging process. But there’s also the failures in between, which can be very difficult. And it was very heartening to hear that you’ve got a huge team of people who support people through it. But Jade, did you even imagine that there were so many people who would be supporting you through the journey?
Experiencing the Newlife difference
Jade: I think when I started with Nicole and then I signed up with Newlife, it was unbelievable how much support was available to us. Even from down to teaching my husband how to administer the medication because you are doing quite a lot of injections and it’s hard. It’s not easy to do. Every day there was a counsellor who would ring, check in on me, and she’d talk about how I’m feeling. And that was just because we chose not to share our journey with friends, in particular. Some of our family knew, but not all our family knew. It was a real silent battle that we were going through. To have someone to talk to was just, it was unbelievable.
Mimi Kwa: Do you mind if I ask how many rounds you had to go through?
Jade: We did two cycles of the medication. And then the second cycle, we did the actual retrieval and did the full IVF process.
Mimi Kwa: And that was successful obviously with Harper being born.
Jade: Yes.
Mimi Kwa: I was present with a couple, just coincidentally, at the time when they got a call from their IVF clinic to say that the retrieval had been unsuccessful. And I think it must have been about their eighth round, their eighth cycle. And it makes me feel like crying now because just being in the room when they got that call and they were just devastated. And you must see people, Nicole, couples who are so determined and they did successfully have a child at the end of the following round. But you just must see all sorts of cases of some people who are successful after one or two cycles of the process and some people who just persevere for a really long time.
Dr Nicole Hope: Yeah, both of those things.
Mimi Kwa: And in between some people who give up.
Dr Nicole Hope: Yes, absolutely. I think just the other day I got a Christmas card from one of my patients who did well over 10 rounds of IVF. And a little bit similar to you, Jo, we ended up moving to egg donor and then eventually embryo donor. Neither her eggs nor her husband’s sperm, but they have a daughter through an embryo donor. And every year I get a Christmas card with the daughter, and she’s getting old now. But they really wanted to be parents and they persisted, and ultimately in the end it meant not using either of their genetic material, but their desire to be parents was so strong that they continued.
Jo Stanley: There is something very special in you to be able to sit with someone who’s going through that.
Dr Nicole Hope: Yeah. On my desk, I always have a box of tissues. I reckon I have maybe a 50% strike rate for crying.
Mimi Kwa: We always have got tissues here. I was going to say, well, there’s one of three so far.
Dr Nicole Hope: Yeah, it’s hard. And sometimes you do have to say to people, ‘It’s futile to continue with your eggs or your partner’s sperm or both.’ And that’s really hard as well.
Mimi Kwa: With the Christmas cards that you’re getting from the embryo donor child’s family – it just made me think, you’ve been doing this for a long time. What was it that made you want to start your own fertility clinic?
Dr Nicole Hope: Well, I did work with one of the larger clinics, and during the time that I worked with them, they got bought out by a private equity company and then listed on the stock market. And you just noticed changes that were happening that it was more about the bottom line. And every year the prices would go up and up, but then little things just got cut from the service. And I started to see that for some of my patients, the money side of things was becoming more of a factor. These were patients who really needed to do IVF and just couldn’t afford it. And so I had a group of colleagues who we all worked together and we were like-minded in feeling that, ‘You know what? We could do this. We could offer an amazing service and offer it at a reduced price and yet still be offering all the bells and whistles and not compromising on things.’ We’d been thinking about it for a few years and it was just trying to bring everything together and make it all happen.
Jo Stanley: Can you attribute the qualities in you that allow you to do your job well, including holding space for people who might be really grieving, to anyone or a person in your life who has given you that quality?
Dr Nicole Hope: Well, I’m a Pisces, so I think I’m just naturally …
Mimi Kwa: I don’t think we’ve met anyone put it down to a star sign before.
Jo Stanley: Yes, I love that. I don’t even know what that means. Except that my daughter is a Pisces, so I know what she’s like, but yeah.
Dr Nicole Hope: Yeah, I think I was always very interested in other people’s stories, and I love a puzzle. Literally, I love doing puzzles, but that’s a different story. But I like when patients come to see me and they’re not getting pregnant, and actually trying to work out what is going on here and trying to work out, ‘Okay, what’s the problem? How can we actually fix that?’
Jo Stanley: But I have to say that the compassion surrounding that is very different from the experience I had. I just had no care during the time I was attempting to have our second child and numerous rounds and the egg donor and all of that. When you say you were getting a phone call every day Jade, I was like, ‘What?’ I never heard from them. Already, the setup that you have is extraordinary. But there’s something in you that allows you to sit with someone’s story no matter how hard their story is. That’s pretty rare.
Dr Nicole Hope: Yeah, there have been a few times I’ve been crying as well. I’ve had patients who’ve done IVF and been successful and then lost the child. And you thought you were never going to see them again and they’re back and that’s really hard. But I think talking about that team that we have around Newlife IVF, it does help share the load because it can be really draining and it is hard to front up again and again with bad news. Thankfully we do have some good news to offset that.
Jo Stanley: Yeah, joyous news.
Dr Nicole Hope: But certainly when I see the pregnancy results come through for the day, usually our IVF nurses are the ones who will ring the patient and give them the news. And I must say I always try to hold off ringing with the good news results and let the nurses do that because they are often the ones actually at the call face and having to break that bad news if it doesn’t work.
Jo Stanley: And you have your own children as well. There has been, to some degree, a sacrifice of time with them because this is a very intense career and job.
Dr Nicole Hope: Yeah. But having said that, they’re very well-educated about reproduction.
Jo Stanley: They’re the ones in class alarming the other children?
Dr Nicole Hope: We were driving my daughter and a friend to a basketball game. My daughter was eight and my husband and I were talking in the front seat and the girls were yabbering away in the back seat. And then my husband and I finished talking about whatever we were talking about. And I hear my daughter who’s another age, she’s Hannah. Hannah, telling her friend, ‘Oh, don’t worry, it’s really common to have miscarriages.’ I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’ And her friend had told her that her mother had had a miscarriage and Hannah was consoling her.
Mimi Kwa: With some factual information.
Jo Stanley: That’s lovely. And right from the beginning, having the conversation, destigmatising it from the age of eight, that’s what we need, isn’t it, Jade?
Jade: Yeah, definitely.
Mimi Kwa: Jade on that, what would you say to other women who are maybe suffering in silence and struggling with their own fertility and self-doubt?
Jade: I think since going through the journey, I’ve actually had a few people that have come to me and shared their story because they feel that no one really understands except for the people that are going through it. My advice would be if you know something’s not right, go see your GP and get that referral. And if they’re not prepared to give you that referral, go see somebody else and just trust your gut instinct.
Mimi Kwa: And did you look at different IVF clinics, or were you very lucky and just ended up at Newlife straight away?
Jade: I think, to be honest, IVF was something that scared me. I felt like there was this stigma around it that it was just … and look, it can be highly clinical, and I just felt that you’d just go into the system, you’d become a number, and you just follow the process-
Mimi Kwa: Yeah. Which is what Jo experienced.
Jo Stanley: Yeah, very much.
Jade: And you tend to hear more horror stories behind IVF than the positive stories. When I met Nicole and she was explaining about Newlife. And when I actually had my first meeting, to sit in the waiting room and you’re with people who are going through the same thing. And Nicole said, it doesn’t matter who you meet at the clinic, even down to the admin staff and the finance staff, they’re all available to you and they’re just willing to help you in any way possible. I remember one day vividly when we were in the city. We were getting scans done, part of the process, and my husband said, ‘I’ll pack the medication that you need for the day. And I said, ‘Okay, that’s one less thing I’ve got to worry about.’ Anyway, when we got in there and it was getting close to the time I needed to take it, he brought the wrong one into the city. He brought the wrong injection in and if I missed this injection, it would’ve completely ruined my whole cycle.
Mimi Kwa: Oh, just sabotaged that whole cycle. My goodness.
Jade: I was beside myself. I rang Newlife straight away. I was sobbing. I couldn’t believe it. I’m like, ‘This cycle’s going to be gone.’
Jo Stanley: Not a good day for your husband.
Jade: No. And he felt even worse. He was just…yeah.
Mimi Kwa: ‘You have one job,’ comes to mind, but I’m not going to say it.
Jade: I rang Newlife straight away and they sorted it all out. They rang me back in 10 minutes and they said, ‘We have organised a new script to come through. You’ve got to go to this clinic. They’ve got a room available to you where you can go have the injection.’ And yeah, I get emotional talking about it because the service was unbelievable.
Mimi Kwa: And the timing around the cycle of IVF that actually led to you having Harper. Tell us about that.
Jade: Yeah, so …
Mimi Kwa: Quite extraordinary.
Jade: Yeah, from the day that we’d found out that yes, we were going to go down the IVF path, Nicole had said, ‘Well, it’s actually…with your cycle, you can start it tomorrow.’ And at first, we’re getting really close to Christmas and I thought oh, maybe we’ll wait till the new year because it’s just one more thing added to my plate. Anyway, my husband and my mom were like, ‘No, you’ve got to go for it. It’s there. It’s meant to be just as long as you’re comfortable, just go for it.’
Jo Stanley: The next day, to start the next day.
Jade: Literally.
Jo Stanley: Wow.
Jade: Nicole had organised all the scripts for the medication, everyone to be there to go through what needed to happen, and we started it, so…
Jo Stanley: And if you hadn’t done that at that time.
Jade: Yeah.
Jo Stanley: What would’ve happened?
Jade: So if we hadn’t done the cycles when we had done them, we actually did our retrieval the day before Christmas. Christmas Eve, we did the retrieval.
Mimi Kwa: Oh, goodness.
Jade: So if we had waited
Mimi Kwa: Working right up until the minute.
Jade: Yeah. It was really…for time, it was quite tight with the timeframes because, obviously with everyone going on holidays and so forth, I wouldn’t have been able to resume it till the new year. If we had waited till the new year, we would’ve gone into lockdown, so there would’ve been no procedures done. We would’ve waited…yeah, God knows when.
Jo Stanley: Because lockdown, there were no procedures for the whole year, was it?
Dr Nicole Hope: Well, thankfully as a group, I think the ladies who were doing IVF are quite good advocates for themselves. But yeah, we certainly had a few months of no egg collections. And then we did have some limited number of egg collections. But yeah, initially in that first lockdown in particular, we had people ready to start.
Jo Stanley: Yeah.
Dr Nicole Hope: That just got cancelled. Yeah.
Jo Stanley: I remember there was some very emotional lobbying from some women. So with all of the variables that were taking place at the time and the looming lockdown, had you not retrieved your eggs then and there, Harper would not be Harper.
Jade: Definitely. We got one embryo and that was Harper.
Mimi Kwa: Meant to be. If there isn’t a more profound sliding door moment than that, really.
Jade: Literally. And all I remember was one of the nurses at Newlife, she kept reiterating, ‘It only takes one. It only takes one.’ She used to just continually say those words to me all the time, and I hung onto that. It was like I’ve got to believe it.
Jo Stanley: My daughter said to me when she was two, she said, ‘I wanted you to be my mommy.’ And I said, ‘What do you mean by that, darling?’ And she said, ‘Even before I knew you, I wanted you as my mommy.’
Jade: Oh my goodness.
Mimi Kwa: They choose us.
Jo Stanley: I really believe she did choose me.
Mimi Kwa: I’m sure that she did.
Jo Stanley: I really believe that. And your four beautiful children (gesturing to Mimi), they’ve been crowding in just going, this one, this one.’ Fair enough, if I were to choose a mother, I mean, this is very strange, but you’re a very delightful mother.
Mimi Kwa: Oh, thank you. You do it well.
Jo Stanley: Aw, thank you.
Dr Nicole Hope: But do you feel profoundly that to have four connected with eachother and with you and John?
Mimi Kwa: Oh, yes. Every day. I’ve got this pendant that I wear that my daughter Berry had made for me, and inside this tiny little orb, which is only about five millimetres across, is a photo of our family. And I just love that. I just carry that with me. I guess it’s almost like having a locket and a photo of the family. But to me, having a family – that’s my world. And so I really feel for people who really want a family and are finding it so difficult to have.
So it’s so wonderful hearing both of your stories today around that. And Nicole, do you have a sense of things being meant to be? I mean, you’re a doctor, so you’re a medical science woman. But do you have sort of a spiritual sense of the organic nature of life and that some things are just meant to be?
Dr Nicole Hope: Absolutely. But as you said, I am also a bit medical and scientific, and I think…I don’t know if this is helpful for patients, but when things don’t work out, I definitely much prefer it if I can give them a medical or a scientific reason to explain that it is harder when there aren’t any answers. That’s for sure.
Jo Stanley: Okay, so I want to wrap this up by…
Mimi Kwa: We hope.
Jo Stanley: Asking the question of all of us, I suppose, because we are all becoming the ‘A to Be’ of our lives. It’s sort of contributed to by everything in it, including the children we might have. So how has being a mother made you who you are, Jade?
Jade: I think for me, it’s definitely made me a lot stronger as a person and a lot more grateful just for everything in life and to not take it for granted. That’s probably the biggest thing that I’ve taken from my journey and being a mother. And especially since going through that IVF journey, I’m just humbled, but I’m so grateful.
Jo Stanley: Mimi?
Mimi Kwa Oh, I think I’m just so grateful as well. But every day don’t you just get a lesson? You get some sort of reminder of what you need to learn and where you need to step up.
Jo Stanley: How has being a mother made you? Because you’ve sacrificed quite a bit for your career.
Dr Nicole Hope: Definitely. As a medical person, I think a lot of people who do medicine are sort of that type A control freak kind of people. And definitely there’s a lot of that in me. But once you have children, you start to realise they’re not you. They’re their own person and they’re going to do their own thing. And you can try and guide them and support them, but ultimately you just have to be their mom and you can’t control everything that they do. So I actually have found that sort of quite helpful for me in my work situation. Sometimes they’re going, ‘I’ve done my best. I’ve tried to guide people in a certain direction or do a certain thing and it hasn’t worked, but I’m not able to control everything.’
Mimi Kwa: And you’re a busy woman. You are helping other people realise the dream of having their own children. So how have you managed to, and this is an overused and probably inappropriate phrase, but how have you managed to juggle your parenting and professional life?
Dr Nicole Hope: Yeah, so I think ultimately I have a pretty amazing husband – so we are coming up to 21 years next week. But we had the conversation when our kids were little, and he ultimately decided to be a stay-at-home dad. And that’s been interesting, but he’s been amazing. And well, my son doesn’t swim anymore, but he was a sort of competitive swimmer. So we had the training seven times a week and being at the pool at 4:30 in the morning and my husband did all of that stuff. Dinner was always on the table. Don’t know about the clean house, but…doesn’t even matter. I mean, you let that go.
Mimi Kwa: It’s okay, you’re bringing babies into the world.
Jo Stanley: That’s right. You’ve got a higher purpose than dusting, Who cares?
Mimi Kwa: Jo, what about you?
Jo Stanley: Well for me, I think one of the greatest things and shifts in me since being a mother was very much that sense of acceptance and release of control, which sometimes you’re taught in really brutal ways when you’ve got literally a shit storm in front of you and you go out. You’re out in public and kids are doing whatever. So there’s that kind of acceptance. But I think too, Willow has taught me just presence. Just being present, because you can’t shift anything. You can’t change anything. Just to accept and be present in this moment with her is the greatest gift ever.
Mimi Kwa: Really. Aw, you have both been an amazing gift to us. Thank you so much for joining us. We always like to end our discussions on one question for you both, which is what is your individual essence of being? Like what is it to be? Nicole, do you want to go first?
Dr Nicole Hope: I want to…I mean, it sounds a bit corny, but I do want to…
Mimi Kwa: There’s nothing corny.
Dr Nicole Hope:..provide hope for my patients. And I want to be honest and I want to do my best.
Jo Stanley: Hope is one of the most important things in life. Yeah, Jade?
Jade: For me, it’s about being honest, living with integrity and being authentic. That’s so important.
Jo Stanley: And you’re doing it right here, right now by having this conversation for the world.
Jade: Yeah. I’m so glad I’ve been able to share it.
Mimi Kwa: Thank you.
Jo Stanley: Thank you ladies. Thank you for listening. We love you joining us for our A to Be chats.
Mimi: Yes, we do. Please see our show notes for our acknowledgement of country and all the people who help us put this podcast together, as well as interesting links to our guest’s work and other references we’ve mentioned.
Jo Stanley: We’re Jo.
Mimi: And Mimi from A to Be. Rate, follow and get in touch on our website.
Jo Stanley: And let us know who’s A to Be you’d like to find out about.
Mimi: We can’t wait for you to hear our next conversation.
