The Keri Croft Show
The Keri Croft Show
Infertility Series, EP-5: Amber, Leslie & Emilee on Infertility, Identity, and Letting Go of Control
In this episode of our Infertility Series, we’re going deep into the unfiltered, emotional, and often messy reality of trying to get pregnant.
🧡 Amber shares how losing control in her life led to extreme exercise and disordered eating — and how she had to rebuild trust with the body she spent years punishing.
🧡 Leslie takes us back 20 years to when she went through infertility before having her two boys. And at the time “just relax” was the most unhelpful (and most common) advice she heard.
🧡 Emilee opens up about being pregnant after IVF… and how anxiety and fear still follow her, even in a season of joy.
This episode is about way more than test results and treatment plans — it’s about the mental and emotional toll that infertility takes. It’s about intimacy, self-worth, jealousy, shame… and the strength it takes to keep going anyway.
Whether you’re in the thick of it, supporting someone who is, or just trying to understand this journey better — this one will stay with you.
🎧 Listen now — and if it moves you, send it to someone who needs to know they’re not alone.
#TheKeriCroftShow #InfertilitySeries #InfertilityAwarenessMonth #1in6 #PregnancyAfterInfertility #EatingDisorderRecovery #MentalHealthAndFertility #YouAreNotAlone #SayTheThing #InfertilitySupport
My name is Amber and my story starts several years ago when I decided to take a chance and take a new job outside of my typical normal schedule routine. What I knew and I quickly learned after taking that job. It was a new challenge. It was something that I really craved, but I learned after taking that new job that there were some things about it that didn't mesh. It was a job where I was traveling weekly to multiple places. I totally lost control of my schedule, I lost control of my routine. I lost control of my time at home, my family, just things. I was newly married.
Speaker 1:There was all these things that I previously had a good beat on, had a good routine, you know, had a good procedure of life, and then, all of a sudden, you know all these things, all these elements of this new job were things that I couldn't control, and the type of person that I am is that when I feel like I'm losing control of things, I got to grab onto the things that I can control. So what were the things that I was good at? What were the things that I could control? I was really athletic, so I was good at working out, so I did it more because I was good at it and I it was an element of my life I could control. I learned then I could control diet, I can control what I could put in my body and what I couldn't, or what I did and didn't put in my body. And as that job continued to be not a good fit for me, I did find an element of my life that I could control and I could be good at in the midst of a lot of uncertainty that I could control and I could be good at in the midst of a lot of uncertainty. So it got to a point then where I was. You know, my craving to be more healthy and more fit then put me into a place where I was so unhealthy. So I was physically healthy, sure, but even not then I was unhealthy physically to a point where it was hurting myself and I was mentally in such a dark, dark place where that's where I thought happiness and success was was this ability to control things like diet and exercise. So you know, what became important to me when then was how I fit I was and how small I was, and now I can even verbalize those things were. For so long I couldn't, but I think back to that and I'm like what? What the hell was I doing? What was I thinking? But in the moment, that's what was important to me and that's, for whatever the reason where I was finding my worth.
Speaker 1:And you know that went on for for years I did shed the job, but the but, the um, you know the, the craving for that, that level of fitness and, um, what you did and did not put into your body, it, it ruled a lot of things in that physical part. And amidst all of that, of course, I lost my menstrual cycle because I didn't have enough body fat to sustain it. And at the time it pains me to even say this, I've never verbalized this before but at the time the lack of having my menstrual period was my self-worth in knowing that I didn't have the body fat to be able to sustain it. And for whatever reason, I think about that now it makes me want to throw up, but at the time where I was in life, that was to me like all right, I'm doing it, I don't have enough body fat to sustain this and I'm able to continue doing this. I've gotten myself to this level of fit.
Speaker 1:That is amazing. Why did I think it was amazing. I'll never know the stem of it 100% was losing control of all of those other aspects of my life and this was something I could control. But then it just led to so many different things, different dark things. But then you know, after struggling through that for probably about three years, to be very honest, a lot of things happened in life that kind of led me to my healing Started with myself, my mental capacity, my well-being, but then the desire with my husband. I had always wanted a family and I got to this point for those couple of years where it wasn't important to me anymore because of this other, such a to me now say it's like gross that I was so worried about that and I cared about it. But but I did, I did, and the fact that I can even say that now is such a growth for me because I was, I hid it for so long.
Speaker 2:Now it's my story and I accept it and I'm proud of it because I'm out of it and I have this family that I love more than anything and it's just given me so much joy and just, I don't know the words for it. It's, it's, you know, it's. It's actually like physically unable for me to define, um, how happy I am now and how. I just take myself back to that and I think, why on earth were those things so important to me? I'll I'll never know, but but they were. They were my story and that's why I came here today, because I know there's other people in that spot and I beg you, I beg you to think about that your future self, what you want for yourself long term, but you.
Speaker 1:Then I had this whole new journey of healing and getting my period back, which took a really, really long time. You know you have to get your mind right with getting healthy, gaining weight, but for me it's very important to stay healthy and stay fit and stay, exercise and stay like, continue exercising can't just be like, all right now I need to go gain 15 pounds like let me do this. You know, just it's, it's gosh, it's such a mental screw. But it's also so important and you, you learn so much in your, in your journey, along the way and, um, once I got to the point where I started really healing myself and my body and trusting myself again, trusting my body again, I had really then started to get to a point where I didn't want my body to hate me Like there was like this, like she has her own identity, want my body to hate me like there was like this, like she has her own identity. And there's so many parts of healing too. That was, of course, mental, of course physical, but then, like I wanted my body to know how much I loved her and appreciated her and she took me on this journey and it was wild and I it was self-inflicted, but she withstood it with me through the whole thing. She was there the whole time. She held me, she was strong and she got me through it and for that I wanted to then like, how am I going to get you back? Like, how do I gain your trust back, because I really, really screwed with you for a long time. So there were so many different elements of healing among this trying to get my period back and, you know, spending a lot of time with my OB and talking about this with her, counseling things of my own, that just finding my faith and really growing in my faith. There are just so many different facets of this healing journey.
Speaker 1:But ultimately it wasn't all natural. I did need some help with some different fertility medications to get me over the hump, to get my period back, to get me to a point where I was ovulating consistently. None of those things came naturally to me once my healing started to take place. So then the focus shift away from my healing of my body and how are we going to find this pregnancy? Like how is this going to happen? Like how I'm all over the place with my period. I'm here, I'm there, I'm everywhere, but I'm not where I need to be in order to conceive. So then we started to utilize Clomid, which I'm sure I know many people have used before I did. I got pregnant. My first wasn't my first, but in trying Clomid I think it was like my third round of using Clomid and I got pregnant and I was scared to death.
Speaker 1:I took a pregnancy test on a Sunday afternoon when my husband was at a Browns game. I'll never forget it and like it was faintly positive and I thought, like is this what? Like, what do you mean? I've been like how could this be? We've been on this journey and going through this for four years between getting my period back and then trying to conceive. Like am I really pregnant? Like how can that be? Is this what it looks like?
Speaker 1:And I remember texting two of my friends that my best friends that knew everything about this, and they're both like that's positive, like any little bit is positive. And I just I went into this state of shock and my husband came home from this Browns game and I was vacuuming like a mad woman. I'll never forget it. And he was like what on earth is wrong with you? And I showed him and I was like it's so weird. I was like I was so scared that I was mad, like I don't even, I can't even explain to you like all these years of this pain and going through like trying to get my period back and what fertility looked like for us, for the us, and then, all of a sudden, I had this positive pregnancy test and I just I didn't know what to do with myself. It was crazy.
Speaker 1:So then I a whole other avenue is the stress and anxiety of being pregnant, when you want it for so long and you don't have it. And then you do and you're scared shitless of how you're going to sustain it. Every single day, every single day, I was a a mess because you can't control it and, just like I said before, like I spent so much time gaining the trust of my body back, I kept being like I, I really screwed with you for a long time. Do you remember? Do you know how to? Do you know how to sustain a pregnancy? Did I screw you up enough where you don't know how to sustain a pregnancy? Did I screw you up enough where you don't know how to sustain a pregnancy? Did I do that? Is this going to be my fault if something happens?
Speaker 1:I struggled with that the entire first trimester, quite honestly, the whole pregnancy I was so scared, I was so anxious and I couldn't understand why at that point. Then I would talk to some of my friends and no one was that stressed about it Like they were in the beginning. They were like people got it like the first couple of months, but then they were just like loving life and enjoying pregnancy and I wanted to be there so badly and I and I was like I enjoyed every minute of it. But I also always had this fear and anxiety and this stress on my mind all the time.
Speaker 3:Happy birthday, dear Danny, years old. Proudly, I have two boys that are 21 and 24. So it's quite a while ago that I went through this and it was shocking that I had infertility, had infertility. I, my mom, got pregnant early and easy, and so I had no thought that I was, I was having issues. It was like, wait a minute, how, how is this even possible? And I'm an only child, so we have no other way of knowing that that she may have had issues. So we just kind of, you know, we tried for two years and nothing happened, not even not even a thought, not even an inkling. It just kind of was like what's going on?
Speaker 3:Fortunately, my gynecologist was a friend of ours and was like, okay, well, let's start doing the small things, let's check to see, let's check him, let's see if he has issues, and didn't have any issues. And then checking me and, to the best of my knowledge, I didn't have any issues. And then checking me and, to the best of my knowledge, I didn't have any issues either. So, um, we, he decided, let's start doing Clomid. So we were doing the, I was taking the Clomid meds to try to get things moving and, um, you know, it'd be the checking my temperature. I went through the whole thing of before we went to him. I did the whole checking your temperature. You know, going to bed seeing what the temperature is, waking up in the morning seeing what the temperature is, am I ovulating? You know all those fun things that we get to do to see if things are working. And you know it was the it was the middle of the day calls where you're like honey, it's time, come home. And he'd come home.
Speaker 3:And you know you're trying to make things as intimate as you possibly can. But really, let's be honest, like you got to do it, let's just do what you got to do it, let's just do what we need to do. And you know there would be those moments where it's like the pressure is on you to do it. Now the pressure is on him to do what he needs to do and it's like do I need to move? Do I need to do this? Do I need to? What's going to make you more comfortable? And it gets to the point where you're like just be quiet, just let me do my thing right. And so there's that intimate part of the whole thing.
Speaker 3:And then you know you're hearing all these old wives tales. When you're done, put your legs up the wall and all that fun stuff, so you just feel very for the woman, you feel very vulnerable, you feel it's so mechanical and kind of just disheartening. You're like this isn't the way it's supposed to be. And that's when you kind of go to a place where you're like what's wrong. You know you start questioning what's wrong with me and that you know, like we question everything we do that isn't working out for us. Why. Why is this happening? And you know, all the while everybody else seems, like everybody else is getting pregnant, your best friend's getting pregnant and you're trying to be happy for them and um, and you're just sitting back and going I just want to do this the normal way, like I just want that, the, the, you know the element of surprise and you don't get that.
Speaker 3:So when all of those didn't happen, that's when we started then him going off and having to go to the fertility clinic and having the sperm spun and all those things racing over to go get it and put it under your armpit and then keep it warm and into doing the IUI. So basically taking as my ex-husband said, it's taking the turkey baster and basically dropping it off at the front door in hopes that something's going to happen. And so the first time it took with my first son, which was great we, it was wonderful, we had a great pregnancy, I loved being pregnant. And then with my second son, it took several times to work and that that again it's like come on, like why can't I just do this next one? Then you know the right way whatever the right way is these days right and um. So we worked on that a couple times and sometimes there was a moment where you were like, do I want to keep doing this? Do I just want to give up, or do we just? You know, usually they say, if you just don't think about it and you're not in the moment, it just happens. And you know, we did that for a while before we decided we want to do like we wait. My boys are almost three years apart. So we waited some time, obviously, and um decided well, here we are, we got to do this again. So um finally got pregnant with him and again, pregnancy was fantastic. It was just the getting there that was difficult.
Speaker 3:If I had advice to give to people who are getting married trying to get pregnant any of that stuff. I always tell them don't assume that it's just going to happen naturally. First of all, just be aware that in the world that we're in, given all the stuff that we have going on, that we, our bodies, are, they're going through transitions and we may not be able to get pregnant as quickly as we think we can. Just because your mom did, doesn't mean that you will. So I just tell them be prepared, know that it's not your fault, know that it is normal.
Speaker 3:There are more people out there than you know that are going through this same situation.
Speaker 3:And to reach out to those people, it can tear a couple apart if you don't have a good support system. And thankfully my my husband was was great, he was very supportive. He was like you know, whatever we've got to do to get it done and and go from there, just have and have a good support system. What I would tell people that you tell people that are support your support system. I would tell them to not say that you understand that you or that you know what we're going through or what they're going through. I would say just have a listening ear and let the person speak on how they're feeling and let them just be heard and feel like they're in a safe space. I've learned that you learn patience and you learn to appreciate what you have to work really hard for, and they're the best part of my life. They're amazing humans and they're adults now, so it's like you look at them and you're like I did everything I possibly could to raise these two great humans and they're doing fantastic.
Speaker 4:So Hi, I'm Emily. I'm the mother of three and a half year old twin boys, and my infertility journey really started a year after getting married, in 2019. I think we grow up in adolescence and young adulthood just trying not to get pregnant, and so when you actually want to get pregnant, when you can't, you're confused. So that was kind of our situation that we had and I did all of the things the cycle tracking, the ovulation strips, the little bracelet and then, you know, it started going down more deep rabbit holes of supplements and vitamins and my diet and all those things and finally went to my doctor and again they only because I was young, it was like you got to take your time, it'll take some time, and so after a year came and gone, you know we finally started down the medication track and again it's a spiral that you kind of go through and you hope each month that, okay, this will work. And so, you know, we started with the medications and then moved to the IUIs funny story about that later, and then we moved on to more of the bigger stuff with IVF and then, once we were diagnosed with unexplained infertility, we realized quickly that we had a 1% chance each month of getting pregnant. And so we decided as a family to go through IVF and it was probably one of the more positive experiences I've ever kind of had, with the support of my doctors and that staff, and we were blessed with twin boys. So we did a single embryo transfer, that split. So we did a single embryo transfer, that split. And so you know, when you go through the IVF process they tell you, you know, our goal is for you to get pregnant with one single, healthy baby. And so then when I went in for that first ultrasound, when there was two beings on the screen and the doctor told me to stop talking because I was so confused, I was like did it split? Is it an alien To hear they're having identical twin boys? You immediately are now in a high risk category, and so I feel like my whole kind of journey has been a challenge, but I think I've gotten stronger because of it. I was very blessed to be able to free some embryos. I've had some loss since then, but now I am pregnant again, and so I'm very blessed to have you know this as an option for our family, and I am also very excited to close this chapter.
Speaker 4:My journey impacted my mental health greatly. I became a very shell of a person, and when you have friends and family around you getting pregnant, it's hard not to feel that jealousy and kind of. You step away from the situation and ask yourself why me Like, why is this not happening to me? And I still think that impacts me today, because how I carry myself, you know, as a mother and as somebody who's going through a pregnancy right now, I'm not who I'm used to being. I think infertility robs you of all that joy, because you always have the worst case scenario in the back of your head. When I was pregnant with my boys, I truly didn't feel relief until I was holding them Because, again, you just think your mind just goes to the worst place possible. And so I really think that my mental health has taken a huge hit in this stage of my life. But I do. I am confident that you know I'm almost there and we're going to start in this next stage in life and I can kind of start to be myself a little bit more again.
Speaker 4:Even when my kids were born, my mother who who had twins my brother and sister are twins she knows what she's doing. I typed out a four-page letter when I was leaving for one weekend of like what to do, and it was just my anxiety and it was my way of like coping with the situation. But if there's one person in the world I can trust, it was my mom, and for that to even impact my trust in her, I was like who are you? So? It's, yeah, and it's even today. People are you so excited? I'm like, no, not really. I'm very grateful, but I also have this anxiety in my head because, again, I've also seen where things aren't always perfect and go. You know perfectly, and you always have that thought in your head. The one thing I've learned, though, is that every story is different, and just because it happens to one person doesn't always necessarily mean it happens to me, but my problem is is that I do put that in the back of my head. That could happen, not that's going to.
Speaker 4:So a specific memory that I had was when I was pregnant back in 2023. And you know, at that point, the world was back open. We are being social, we're going to do a frozen embryo transfer, but you still have to do medications with that, and so, while I'm very open, I still get very private during that process because I don't want people to be cycle tracking me or tracking my appointments, because, again, I just want to have control of kind of that narrative. And so when I was going through the frozen embryo transfer, I still had to do these progesterone shots after they did the transfer. Well, we had all these plans, and so something with progesterone shots is you have to get shots in your butt every night the same time for like weeks. And so our friend had a birthday party and, um, it obviously, you know it was past 8 pm, and so I did take my husband sneak up to one of the kids rooms at our friend's house and have him give me a shot. And I think people saw us come out of that bedroom and they're like what the heck are they doing? Um, and little did they know. Like I had needles and alcohol prep pads and oils in my purse and you know I just I was so anal about making sure that I had that shot on time and so again your mind just goes into hyper mode of like I have to do this or something's gonna happen.
Speaker 4:Um, and then the other story is I, you know, was got the opportunity to interview a job out in San Diego and I was doing the progesterone shots. Well, that required me to give myself a shot, um, and I was typically used to doing the ones in the stomach but not the ones in the butt, and you can't really do the shots in the butt by yourself it's almost impossible. And so the other place you can do it isn't your thigh. Well, 8, 8 PM came about and I was actually on the flight to San Diego, and so I had to go into the bathroom on the flight, 30,000 feet up in the air, and pump myself up enough to stab myself in the thigh while on a flight, and it was like it was one of those situations where I stepped back and I'm like you are such a badass for doing this, but like I can't believe you had to do this. And again, just kind of the whole experience trying to hide all that you know with your friends and family and coworkers was just, it was tough.
Speaker 4:Some advice I would give anyone going through this journey right now is to advocate like hell for yourself. I think that you are the only person who knows your body and your needs better than anybody, and so what I've learned through this whole process is that no one's going to have you or make you do any of these steps within your fertility journey. You have to really advocate and ask for it for yourself. And so without that, you know there's not many places that you're going to go. But the good news is is there are so many great resources that we have, even locally, where you're able to kind of get that care that you need and deserve.
Speaker 4:I'm so lucky to have such a supportive partner. You know it's in the beginning when you're going through the cycle. Tracking it's a very transactional relationship is the best way to put it. Transactional relationship is the best way to put it. And so when you find a partner, like I have, who was able to really sit down and be there with me and support me with whatever you know we needed, whether it was tests or appointments et cetera, just really made this process a little bit easier on me. You know he was the one who kept my schedules for my shots, schedules for my appointments In COVID. He waited in the parking lot when I had my you know surgery because he couldn't come in, and I'm just very thankful for kind of his support and love through this whole process.
Speaker 4:If you have a friend who is going through this process and this journey. The first thing that I'm going to tell you to do is don't give unsolicited advice. Don't make comments like, just keep, don't worry about it, don't think about it and it will just happen. Those kind of things don't help and those kind of comments really don't help support that person in any way, shape or form. When you're going through infertility, you've already you've kind of lost hope by then of it just happening if you don't think about it. You're too far gone for that. There's no way not to think about it, and so the best way and the that you can support your friend or your family member is just to be there, however, they want you to be there.
Speaker 4:Um, I think that that's like the most important, I think, for me. I have uh, my husband has a very big family. I have a big family, and so we decided to really keep it more private going through the process because, again, we didn't want to have people invested in every single step of the process, because there is disappointment, and so I think kind of just setting expectations with people as well, of like mom and dad, I didn't tell you for a reason, but I'm telling you. This output right now, I think is really important and again, it's just having people that can help. You know, respect, that I think was really huge.
Speaker 4:The positive things that have come out of my experience within this journey has been definitely connecting with other people that are going through it. You know, it's a lot of old co workers or old friends that I've recently been able to connect with again. Just being able to offer them guidance and support, I think has been really cool, and also to kind of share my story with them on a more personal level has really kind of helped me kind of open up and I definitely feel that, you know, I feel I don't even know what the word is I just it makes me feel really good to be like a support person for them, because I want them to have a safe space, because when I was going through this, I didn't necessarily know anybody going through it also at the time, and so I wish I had somebody like that that I could text or talk to on Instagram, just to be able to ask is this normal? What did you do in this situation? What should I do in this situation? And so definitely advocate and, you know, get your tribe.
