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E245: The Craziest Fertility Story I've Heard w/Alex Gooding | Lila Rose Show · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:00
  They lost our one and only boy embryo.
• 0:02
  What do you mean they lost? That's a good question.
• 0:04
  These are none of the things that they tell you when you're
• 0:06
  signing up or IVF. And he's like, this is life
• 0:09
  threatening. You could die, your baby will
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  die. You need to go have a DNC today.
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  They put you under. You weren't sure if you were
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  going to wake up. Yeah.
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  It's messy, it's beautiful, but it's very messy.
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  When I saw your story, I was like, she's my hero and now
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  you're really my hero. I was extremely inspired.
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  I've heard hundreds of stories on this show, but this one might
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  be the craziest. It also made me laugh and cry a
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  lot. Time and time again, Alex
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  Gooding was faced with an option of life or death for her and her
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  babies. Time and time again, doctors
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  would tell Alex that she should terminate in order to save her
• 0:50
  life. But in an amazing show of
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  strength, courage, and sacrificial love, Alex fought
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  for both her life and her children's lives.
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  In this interview, you'll also hear about Alexis experience
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  with IVF. Now, we've covered IVF on this
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  show many times before and we've discussed the many ethical
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  issues with IVF, including the fact that there's over 1,000,000
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  babies who are currently frozen in IVF clinics, as well as the
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  millions of babies lives who are discarded or destroyed via the
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  IVF process. If you want to learn more about
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  the ethical issues with IVF, including from the perspective
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  of former IVF doctors, you can click the link in the
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  description. It's crucial to note, too, that
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  while the process of IVF not moral, once a baby is conceived,
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  that baby is infinitely precious and unconditionally loved by God
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  and equal to every other baby. So we celebrate every single
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  baby no matter how they were conceived.
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  If you or someone you love are ever facing an emergency medical
• 1:47
  situation regarding bioethics, so you're not sure what decision
• 1:51
  to make, I have an amazing resource for you.
• 1:53
  NCBC is an organization of trusted medical ethicists and
• 1:57
  they run a seven days a week, 24 hours a day hotline for anybody
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  who's facing an emergency medical situation to call.
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  The number for NCBC is 215-877-2660.
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  That's 215877 2660. Also, they have a fantastic
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  website with great resources and guides for medical ethics and
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  decision making. And that website
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  isncbcenter.org. That's ncbcenter.org.
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  If you want to help us bring on more voices like Alex, please
• 2:28
  like this video. Hit that subscribe button.
• 2:31
  Make sure that you're subscribed.
• 2:33
  And also if you're listening on podcast app, make sure you're
• 2:35
  subscribed over there and leave us a review and five stars.
• 2:38
  That also helps the show grow. Alex Gooding, welcome to the
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  podcast. Hi, I'm so glad you're here.
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  I am too. I I'm going to start crying
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  actually, just because I saw when I first saw your story
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  online, I think I might have started to cry because I thought
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  what a what a woman and such love and such devotion and it
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  inspired me. I know people listening for to
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  you are going to be inspired and encouraged and your yes to God
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  and your yes to life and and and loving your little ones is an
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  inspiration. So thank you for sharing that
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  with the world through social media.
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  Thank. You, I'm already choking up, but
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  we're not. This is a great start right
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  here. Okay, All right, for people who
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  are meeting you for the first time, give us some of your
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  background. Okay, so like a brief drive by
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  in a paragraph. I am a stay at home mom.
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  I have 8:00 kids. I am Christian, I'm Orthodox
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  Christian. I home school.
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  I live in Arizona and I'm very busy and happy and married and
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  yeah, just trying to live through the life of raising the
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  eight kids in 120° heat, so. Amazing.
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  It's pretty hot. Yeah, Arizona gets really hot.
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  It's so hot. Why do we live there?
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  I don't know. Hey, come to California.
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  It's very expensive here, so I can't.
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  Do that. I'm sorry.
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  I I, I I dream of the day we're going to change that.
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  Yeah. But Arizona is also gorgeous.
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  It is beautiful and from like October to April, there is no
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  better place to be. Have you no snow, No hurricanes?
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  Really no earthquakes? Like no tornadoes?
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  It's great. Occasionally A tarantula though,
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  right? Scorpion.
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  Oh, Scorpion. Yeah, so like wear shoes in the
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  house. That's the only thing.
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  OK, the one downside. The one downside?
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  Well, we also have rattlesnakes here too, in addition to our
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  earthquakes. We actually saw one on the fence
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  outside our house recently. No.
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  It's a little scary, a little baby one too, that when so that
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  when it rattles, you don't know that they're there.
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  We think you can't hear their rattle because they're babies,
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  but their venom is more poisonous than their the parent.
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  Well, that's horrible. I'm very sorry for you.
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  We survived. Obviously we're all still alive.
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  But so you're from Arizona, you have 8 beautiful kids, every
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  single one of your children. I know there's stories attached
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  to you, your marriage and just where were you, where you were
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  at in your marriage? I'm going to just go backwards.
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  So starting with your beautiful Chloe, She was just here in
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  studio. This is what caught my eye
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  originally about your content. And I thought, this is such an
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  incredible testimony that has tell me about pregnancy with
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  Chloe and tell me about what happened and what the doctors
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  were telling you. Okay, so Chloe, he's extra
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  special because with her pregnancy, I had a C-section
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  scar ectopic, which means that she implanted in my C-section
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  scar. So it's extremely high risk.
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  It's a pregnancy that ACOG recommends termination, which is
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  really sad. And so right from the get go, 5
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  weeks, we knew this. And so it was like a really
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  heavy burden our entire pregnancy knowing that her and I
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  were both in danger the entire pregnancy.
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  So that's that's Chloe. But our whole story leading up
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  to Chloe is what's like kind of makes Chloe so special to us
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  because we have 8 kids and we each one of them kind of were
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  brought into this world, not how we expected.
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  And so to get to Chloe and to say yes to like having her and
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  not living in this what if, because that was like the huge
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  thing when doctors would tell me like you should terminate
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  because you could die. I just couldn't sit there and
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  say, well, what if I don't? Or what if I what if I keep her
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  and I do die? But what if I don't keep her and
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  I don't like and I wouldn't have died Like I could never live
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  with myself if I had chosen not to keep her One that choice is
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  never really on the table. But that's like what I would
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  like sit and be like why would I kill my baby over a what if like
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  I could die tomorrow? I could, I could not, you know,
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  something could happen and I wouldn't be here anyway.
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  So it's like, how come I would just choose to not have her over
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  what if so? So that's sort.
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  That's Chloe in a quick nutshell.
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  So can I go back? Please do.
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  Let's go back. The whole story OK, so my story
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  is really complicated in the sense that nothing, none of our
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  children came into this world easily.
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  I when I was a kid I was sexually abused by my dad and I
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  had an eating disorder after that and my eating disorder was
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  so bad that they told me I couldn't have kids at all.
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  Like anorexia was really sick. Did treatment in La Jolla for
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  like when I was like 15 and they're like you can't have kids
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  like you've ruined your body too much.
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  So I didn't think I could ever have kids.
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  My oldest is 13 and she is from a one night adventure and I did
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  get pregnant when I was not supposed to.
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  And so with Emberley, I was 20 years old, had just turned 20.
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  I was going into my senior year of college and I ended up
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  pregnant with her. And I faced that same choice of
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  like, I could choose this path that everyone says is easier and
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  I could get rid of her or I could not and I chose not to.
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  And I, I was pregnant my whole senior year of college.
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  I went for education and I had Emberly during my student
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  teaching and took four weeks off of student teaching and came
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  back so I could finish graduate and have a degree that I could
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  go get a job. And getting pregnant with
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  Emberly was a really big deal because it was my turning point.
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  It was the moment that I was like, I'm going to stop being
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  selfish and being in my eating disorder and not eating and
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  drinking and doing drugs. I'm just going to stop doing
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  that. I'm going to do it because I
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  have this baby to take care of. So I did that and I had Amberly
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  and she's amazing. She's 13.
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  She's like a photocopy of me and all the ways possible.
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  We love her. And then I ended up meeting my
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  husband when Amberly was nine months old, and he loved her
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  right away. We end up getting married.
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  He adopted her. It was, it's truly like such a
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  blessing because I thought for the longest time that like,
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  nobody would love me because I had Emmy and, you know, I was
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  wrong. That's not true.
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  And I'm so grateful that like I met Matt and this we got
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  married, all this stuff. And then Matt and I tried to
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  have a baby for two years and I was so mad because I was like, I
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  did it right. This time.
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  I got married and like have a job and like I should be able to
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  get pregnant now. It's it shouldn't be this way
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  because now I want a baby. And my husband went through like
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  fertility testing. Turned out he had male factor
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  infertility, pretty mild, but he wasn't ready to do anything
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  about it. So we didn't do anything about
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  it. We tried a whole nother year and
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  ended up pregnant finally. So it took two years and we had
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  our daughter Ava, she's 9. So our first 2 girls are four
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  years apart. And Ava's perfect little perfect
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  little Gooding baby. She was like the first, first
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  official grandchild like that. My in laws had had the
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  experience of knowing from birth.
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  We love Dava and we knew that OK, it took a really long time
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  to get pregnant before. So as soon as my cycle returned,
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  like I was a pro tracker. Anyways, after infertility
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  stuff, we started trying immediately.
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  We tried for a whole year and could not get pregnant.
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  And I'm like, OK, we're going to go to the fertility center and
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  we went and the doctor is like, yeah, male factor in fertility.
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  All you need is an IUI. You'll be pregnant next month.
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  Like this will be great. You're you'll you'll have an
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  April baby. Do you want an April baby?
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  Like I want any baby? Any baby is great.
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  And he was like, great, sounds good.
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  And so he's like your husband will need to do a semen analysis
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  again, just so we have, you know, the rec everything updated
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  record wise. And here's a prescription for
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  Clomid and like you're good to go.
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  Like we'll call you and give you the go ahead on the day that
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  you're going to take Clomid. And at the time like we're like
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  baby, I was a baby Christian. So like that I had 0 convictions
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  on anything. I was just like, yes, babies
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  like babies are good. And we should have the babies.
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  That is the answer. We should have babies.
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  OK. And so the day I was supposed to
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  take the Clomid, they call me and they're like, you cannot
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  take that. Your husband's semen analysis is
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  severe. You don't qualify for an IUI
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  anymore. You have two options.
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  You can do IVF or your husband can go and go to a urologist for
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  six months and take some meds and we can come back and see how
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  it he's doing and all that. And that's where that those are
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  your options. So we've been the IVF route.
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  We didn't know any better. We didn't have any weird
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  convictions over it. Like at the time it was very, it
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  was just like, yeah, like you can't have a baby go do IVF.
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  Great. So we did IVF, we did IVF.
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  We ended up we had five, five embryos, 4 girls and one boy.
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  And we were like, OK, we're going to do a boy and a girl so
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  that it's equal. And then if one sticks, then we
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  don't know. And it's like a natural
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  pregnancy, like a spontaneous 1. And we're going to like be
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  surprised. Well, both babies stuck.
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  And we were very excited and we thought, OK, great.
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  We're having boy, girl twins. This is fantastic.
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  When we were pregnant with them, we were like Matt and her were
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  like, we're going to have all the babies, all our babies.
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  We're going to have like all those embryos.
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  We made them. There are babies.
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  I'm like picking out names for all the babies, babies when
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  they're embryos, which to me felt like totally normal.
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  I'm like, yeah, they're like babies.
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  So we named our twins Hannah and Porter when they were five days
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  old as an embryo, which is awesome.
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  We went all the way to our anatomy scan thinking we're
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  pregnant with a boy and a girl, Hannah and Porter, and then at
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  20 weeks you're not pregnant with a boy and a girl, you're
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  pregnant with girls. I'm like, that's wrong.
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  No, like that's a boy and a girl.
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  So all this drama, they lost our one and only boy embryo like.
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  The thing What do you mean they lost him?
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  That's a good question. At the time, we didn't know what
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  that meant. We're like, what do you mean you
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  don't know? And they're like, well, we think
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  we've misplaced him, OK, These are not the things that they
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  tell you like when you're signing up for IVF and they're
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  like, we can't do anything until your girls are born.
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  And you need to, we need to do adna test on them to prove
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  they're fraternal, to prove that they're not like an embryo that
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  split and they're identical. Even though they're die die 30%
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  of die dye pregnancies are identical.
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  Anyways. It's a little rare in the IVF
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  world for a five day embryo to do that.
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  But so that's what we did. And then in July 2018, we had
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  our girls 37 weeks perfect little babies.
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  We did their DNA tests. They were absolutely fraternal.
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  And so then we contacted our clinic and we're like, so they
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  are fraternal. We need to find where you've put
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  her child and it took about six months and in December of 2018,
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  they're like we found him, we mislabeled him.
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  It was actually embryo 3 when it should have been embryo 5.
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  And like to do that they had to thaw the our last three embryos
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  and retest them, this whole thing.
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  And in that process, one of our embryos came back abnormal,
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  which when an embryo tests normal and abnormal through it
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  was PGS testing, they've updated it.
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  It's now called PGTA, it's called a mosaic embryo.
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  So some of the cells on the outside of the embryo test
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  normal and some tests abnormal. Those babies, by the way, a lot
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  of the time self correct and they're totally fine.
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  So we had apparently originally signed off on our IVF paperwork
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  that abnormal embryos would be discarded.
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  And so, and again, I say that because at the time we didn't
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  really have any strong convictions about things like
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  it, it God really used this because each step, it's almost
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  like he took my pro-life for me, but not for you.
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  Because that used to be my stance when I was like 20, like,
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  I'm pro-life, but I'm not going to tell you what to do.
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  And each step he kind of like convicted me a little more.
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  So keep that in mind though, because it's going to come back
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  up. So we end up being told, OK, we
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  found the boy and then you have one more, we have one more girl.
• 17:25
  And then that other one was abnormal.
• 17:27
  So we're like, OK, that's fine, We're going to transfer a boy.
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  And we did when our girls were eight months old, I stopped
• 17:36
  exclusively pumping for them, transferred Porter and he stuck.
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  And it was amazing. And we thought like, wow, this
• 17:44
  is like such a God thing to lose your baby once, find your baby,
• 17:50
  get your baby like amazing. And then we lost him at 14 weeks
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  and losing Porter was really hard because I never thought
• 17:59
  that I would go through a miscarriage.
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  I had ADNC and I had this OB that was so sweet because I
• 18:09
  wanted Porter's remains. And she's like, we don't do
• 18:14
  that. It's just it's not a full baby
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  anymore after that. And she pulled some strings.
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  And so three weeks after my DNC, we were able to go get Porter
• 18:27
  from the hospital in like a biohazard bag.
• 18:32
  And she's right. Like you can't tell what parts
• 18:36
  of him are like there, but like he's there, that's his body.
• 18:40
  And in the Orthodox Church, like you don't cremate, you bury, you
• 18:45
  bury. And we're, we're in Orthodox
• 18:48
  then. But like, it's very interesting
• 18:50
  that that like, desire to like keep our baby was really strong.
• 18:56
  So that was 2019. And after that loss, my husband
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  was like, I don't want any more babies.
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  I don't want to go through this again.
• 19:04
  I don't want to lose a baby again.
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  We didn't make any decisions because I was like, wow, you're
• 19:12
  grieving and I'm grieving. And like our girls, they were
• 19:17
  just heartbroken because we had like talked about their brother
• 19:22
  for a long time. And anyways, so two months later
• 19:30
  we got pregnant on our own and it was twins on our own, which
• 19:37
  is amazing because like how can you have male factor infertility
• 19:40
  when the struggle is the sperm side?
• 19:42
  And then we found out they were fraternal twins and then we
• 19:45
  found out they were boy fraternal twins.
• 19:48
  So we lost Porter, but we got 2 sweet boys and we ended up
• 19:56
  having them in April of 2020, which was not fun because their
• 20:01
  pregnancy was very high risk. I end up with placenta previa
• 20:04
  where the placenta is over your cervix.
• 20:06
  And so I had multiple bleeding episodes.
• 20:09
  I landed in the hospital. In the beginning of April, which
• 20:14
  everything was shut down, by the way, in April 2020.
• 20:18
  And I had four kids at home and nobody was allowed to come up
• 20:22
  into the hospital. And my oldest was in second
• 20:24
  grade and was like schooling from home in our thousand square
• 20:28
  foot house with my mother-in-law, like holding down
• 20:31
  the Fort with four small kids. But we had the boys.
• 20:35
  They spent two weeks in the NICU.
• 20:37
  I exclusively pumped for them again because I couldn't nurse
• 20:41
  either side of our twins. And after the boys were born,
• 20:45
  Matt's like that last embryo, you got to find somewhere for it
• 20:49
  to go. That was really hard.
• 20:54
  I was not 100% on board with that decision at the time.
• 20:59
  I thought that's what I was supposed to do, that I was
• 21:01
  supposed to just follow what my husband said.
• 21:11
  It's probably one of the biggest like regrets in my life.
• 21:18
  So I found a family the the wife had gone through breast cancer.
• 21:26
  They had like a 7 year old or I think it was like 7 at the time.
• 21:31
  And they had been trying but because of chemo they just she
• 21:34
  couldn't get pregnant. So we adopted out her embryo,
• 21:41
  our little girl, to her and she had her and she shares a
• 21:48
  birthday with Hannah and Heidi, which are our twin girls from
• 21:51
  IVF, just three years apart. So that happened and in the
• 21:57
  process of that happening, we ended up getting pregnant again
• 22:02
  on our own and we got pregnant with twins again, a boy and a
• 22:09
  girl. And we lost them at 13 weeks.
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  And that time the OB that I had did not work a miracle for me.
• 22:20
  And we we don't have man, sorry, we don't have them with us.
• 22:29
  So we lost Theo and Nora at 13 weeks and Matt was like, he
• 22:34
  wasn't, he was, we were really caught off guard getting
• 22:38
  pregnant that time. And it was like a hard thing for
• 22:41
  him to accept that we were like going through this again.
• 22:44
  And then we lost them and it was a lot.
• 22:46
  And we were like, OK, we're going to try on our own thinking
• 22:49
  that we didn't have any embryos anyways.
• 22:52
  So he tried for 5-6 months and got pregnant again with our
• 22:59
  daughter Grace and and then we lost Grace at 15 weeks.
• 23:09
  Sorry we lost grace at 15 weeks and I had ADNC scheduled for a
• 23:17
  Friday but it was so weird COVID stuff.
• 23:22
  And so they cancelled it. They were like, it's not life
• 23:24
  threatening. Now this is a God thing because
• 23:27
  like I'd I had had history of hemorrhaging during Porter's
• 23:33
  DNC, during Theo Nora's DNC, during our C sections, like I
• 23:38
  just was a bleeder. And so I would have never chosen
• 23:44
  to like not do ADNC because I for my safety, like I needed
• 23:51
  that, but they cancelled it. And then I went into labor and I
• 23:54
  had Grace at home that Friday, same day that they cancelled, I
• 24:01
  had her in the shower. And you know, like I know in
• 24:11
  live action that you guys share like pictures of babies.
• 24:15
  It's one thing to like only see black and white ultrasounds.
• 24:18
  It's another thing to see pictures.
• 24:20
  It's another thing to hold your baby. 15 weeks. 15 weeks.
• 24:26
  The crazy thing is like in the moment, I like made Matt go get
• 24:30
  a colander from the kitchen to catch her.
• 24:33
  And when I we were holding her in the shower, we both were
• 24:37
  like, Oh my goodness, she has like a nose.
• 24:42
  I know that sounds super like, duh, it's a baby.
• 24:45
  Babies have noses. But like when you're holding
• 24:47
  your baby and she has fingers and toes and a nose and her
• 24:52
  mouth opened, like that part like threw me for a loop because
• 24:57
  I'm like, could move her, her chin and her mouth would open.
• 25:01
  And we're standing there and we're like, wow, God really
• 25:05
  makes these beautiful babies. And then I passed out because I
• 25:09
  hemorrhaged in the shower and I was taking my ambulance to the
• 25:15
  hospital in the middle of the night with Grace still attached
• 25:22
  by her umbilical cord. While I was loaded into the
• 25:25
  ambulance, the ER that we were in, they were not very great.
• 25:32
  They didn't realize that Grace was still attached to me.
• 25:36
  And when I was like, I am hemorrhaging right here in the
• 25:42
  hallway on this Gurney. And they're like, wait, why?
• 25:47
  Like, well, there's a baby in my lap right now in that same
• 25:51
  colander. The colander is still in the
• 25:53
  picture. And so they rushed me back to a
• 25:55
  room and this ER doctor comes in and just rips the umbilical cord
• 26:00
  and I'm like, what are you doing?
• 26:02
  So they keep me in the hospital. The nurses were great in L&D or
• 26:07
  postpartum, whichever room they went to.
• 26:09
  They weighed her. They gave me a box for her, put
• 26:12
  a little hat on her, all these things.
• 26:14
  It was beautiful. But they let me leave without me
• 26:18
  passing my placenta. I know medical stuff is crazy.
• 26:24
  Well it took two weeks and me almost going septic and
• 26:27
  hemorrhaging 3 times for them to finally manually extract Grace's
• 26:31
  placenta. This is all at Christmas time
• 26:34
  too. It was wild.
• 26:36
  But we got the Grace and we got to see her and hold her and it
• 26:40
  was it was amazing. So all of that happens and Matt
• 26:45
  is like, I really do not want to keep doing this.
• 26:50
  But then we end up pregnant again.
• 26:52
  It's wild because like, how can you go from like can't get
• 26:55
  pregnant doing IVF and then a whole bunch of losses and now we
• 26:59
  have these all these babies. So we got pregnant with Claire.
• 27:03
  And at the time I had found out I was pregnant with Claire, the
• 27:07
  woman that adopted our embryos, that family, she texts me and
• 27:12
  she's like Alex, the IVF clinic is trying to charge me embryo
• 27:17
  storage. And like you only adopted 1
• 27:21
  embryo. And they're like they're saying
• 27:23
  there's another embryo in that straw.
• 27:27
  So that one embryo that retested abnormal was in the same straw
• 27:34
  as the embryo that was tested normal that we adopted out.
• 27:38
  Now, if you don't know embryos, it's property, it's a very, it's
• 27:44
  a very specific contract that you have.
• 27:46
  So this family had no rights to our baby.
• 27:50
  And I was like, good, because that's my baby.
• 27:54
  Except I had just found I was pregnant.
• 27:57
  And so I told Matt I was like 8 weeks pregnant.
• 28:01
  I was like, listen, if this baby makes it, we're still, I'm still
• 28:07
  having that baby. Like that's my baby, so I got to
• 28:09
  go. Ahead really quick.
• 28:11
  So that originally when you mentioned the five embryos
• 28:14
  through IVF, one of them they said was mosaic.
• 28:17
  Is this the same baby? Did they think that they had
• 28:20
  discarded the mosaic but they actually didn't actually had it?
• 28:23
  Yeah, so they thought clinic. So that wasn't a good clinic
• 28:26
  anyway, they were a good. Clinic because they failed.
• 28:28
  But they did destroy her. But that's why it's wild,
• 28:31
  because it's like, OK, they're clearly not efficient because
• 28:35
  they lost. It's human error.
• 28:36
  Though yes it's like it's crazy human lives yes, which is why
• 28:40
  it's crazy so this one baby is in limbo.
• 28:44
  This is this is March 2022, so just so for.
• 28:47
  Folks listening, this is the of the five, this was the one that
• 28:50
  they said they genetically tested.
• 28:51
  It's not. It's like it's got a problem.
• 28:53
  It was normal, but then it's not.
• 28:54
  Going to survive. And so they had said, well,
• 28:56
  we're just going to discard it, AKA destroy it.
• 28:58
  And at the time you didn't have the conviction.
• 29:00
  Like you said, you're like, OK, I guess that's the right thing
• 29:01
  to do. So you thought this embryo was?
• 29:03
  Gone. Yeah, we, I literally did not
• 29:05
  think that we had any more embryos.
• 29:07
  But I had gotten very close to Becca, who adopted our little
• 29:12
  girl, and we're still friends, and I'm sure she'll watch this.
• 29:16
  And so she's like talking to me. And I had said to him, like, I'm
• 29:22
  pregnant, like I hope this baby makes it.
• 29:24
  And then she like a week later, it was like they are trying to
• 29:28
  charge me embryo storage fee. We don't have another embryo
• 29:32
  that we adopted from you. We they are saying there's one
• 29:35
  more embryo in that straw because they freeze embryos in
• 29:38
  twos. So.
• 29:40
  So she was with our other little girl.
• 29:44
  Yeah. So you had just given birth to
• 29:46
  Claire? Or I just got pregnant with
• 29:49
  Claire and so I was like. Well, I and this is #7 of your
• 29:53
  live birth, you've had how many in heaven at this .4544?
• 29:58
  Four. Wow.
• 29:58
  Yeah, I know. I had to.
• 29:59
  I'm like, how many by that mommy?
• 30:01
  So we got, we went through that pregnancy about halfway.
• 30:04
  I was flagged for placenta accreta and went to an MFM and
• 30:12
  they cleared me. They're like, no, you're fine,
• 30:15
  it's all good to go. And I was like, OK, great.
• 30:19
  I had a really amazing midwife who only does hospital births.
• 30:23
  She was a NICU and P like this lady is incredible.
• 30:28
  I wanted AV back after 2C sections, which is pretty not
• 30:34
  heard of. Like you don't typically find
• 30:36
  people to do that. And so I was able to do that.
• 30:38
  I had Claire at 37 weeks vaginally, had to be back.
• 30:43
  Got it. No pain meds was beautiful.
• 30:46
  She was like 612 at 37 weeks on the dot.
• 30:51
  Amazing. And after 30 minutes my placenta
• 30:55
  did not come out. So we're waiting and everyone's
• 31:00
  kind of like side eyeing and we all start realizing well they
• 31:07
  were wrong. You have a Creta like that's not
• 31:11
  good. And so there's two options.
• 31:13
  You either get rushed to a DNC like in the operating room where
• 31:18
  they hope to clear it out that way, like through a DNC, or you
• 31:23
  can end up with a hysterectomy if you have a like an accreta
• 31:27
  that is not diagnosed because they're just not prepared.
• 31:32
  My midwife was amazing and went elbow deep manually retrieving
• 31:39
  my placenta. No pain meds, no pain meds.
• 31:43
  It was wonderful. I got a lot of shots in my
• 31:48
  thighs to stop hemorrhaging and other lovely and tightly things
• 31:52
  that are not for the Internet world.
• 31:56
  But they got it out eventually and there was 0 conversation
• 32:01
  about anything like hey, you had an accreta, you should be very
• 32:09
  careful deciding to ever have any more kids.
• 32:12
  Never had that conversation, but I digress because then we had
• 32:18
  Claire. I breastfed Claire for a year
• 32:21
  and then we started preparing to have our last baby, that embryo,
• 32:25
  OK, that embryo is in San Francisco, we live in Arizona.
• 32:29
  And I was like I am not moving that embryo.
• 32:31
  That embryo is staying there. So no one loses this baby, OK,
• 32:37
  And I'm going to fly there and I'm going to do the cycle at
• 32:40
  this IVF clinic. I'm going to pay the horribly
• 32:43
  obscene amount of money for my one baby that I have left.
• 32:47
  Did that. And really quick question go.
• 32:50
  Did they say that this baby, they still saying it's mosaic?
• 32:53
  Yeah, So meaning. I had to sign paperwork.
• 32:55
  Were they like, what are you doing?
• 32:57
  They're like, why would you do that?
• 32:58
  There's paperwork that says like your embryo tested abnormal or
• 33:05
  mosaic. And we do not recommend
• 33:08
  ethically for you to transfer this ethically.
• 33:10
  Yeah, we do not recommend this because it's a high risk of
• 33:14
  miscarriage and they want their numbers to be.
• 33:17
  Ethically for their bottom line, yes.
• 33:19
  For their bottom. Line they want to just destroy
• 33:21
  this. In their view, they're like,
• 33:23
  this is a baby we want to destroy because this is not it
• 33:26
  is disabled or it's going to die anyways in their minds.
• 33:29
  So they don't want their numbers, they want to boost.
• 33:32
  It's the weird thing about IVF world for the most part is it's
• 33:36
  all, and as somebody that's gone through IVF, yeah, you are
• 33:40
  looking at clinics going like what's your live birth rate?
• 33:42
  What's your like success rate? Because you don't want to go
• 33:45
  somewhere that's not successful, obviously.
• 33:48
  But then on the flip side, you get in my situation where
• 33:51
  they're like, we don't really want to transfer this because
• 33:57
  it's going to make our bottom line look bad because it most
• 34:02
  likely won't make it, which is not true.
• 34:04
  It's not true. Mosaic embryos often self
• 34:06
  correct. And there's there are Facebook
• 34:09
  groups out there of people transferring their mosaic
• 34:12
  embryos, giving them life. There's a lot of them that they
• 34:16
  are genetically fine. So it's very interesting.
• 34:19
  So I signed this waiver and doing all this flying to San
• 34:22
  Francisco like. There have been so many times
• 34:27
  when I've been looking for an OBGYN or a pediatrician or a
• 34:30
  family doctor when I wonder, is this doctor pro-life?
• 34:35
  So how do we find pro-life doctors?
• 34:37
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• 34:40
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• 34:43
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• 34:46
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• 34:50
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• 34:55
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• 36:46
  I've got to ask one more quick thing before we hear this
• 36:48
  incredible story. You've used the word DNC
• 36:51
  multiple times. Yes.
• 36:53
  And I think there's such confusion about this.
• 36:55
  I know people have got been in your DMS about this and I've
• 36:58
  seen it constantly. There are people who support
• 37:01
  abortion and maybe they're they're well-intentioned.
• 37:03
  They're not even like trying to do a gotcha or anything.
• 37:05
  And they say, well, look, you had a DNC, therefore you had an
• 37:08
  abortion. Yeah.
• 37:09
  No, that's very different because my DNC's, my babies
• 37:14
  died. They were already dead and so
• 37:18
  they needed to come out. And like I went through the
• 37:21
  whole I've gone both ways. So if your baby is dead already,
• 37:27
  you lost your baby. You can have your baby at home
• 37:30
  alone, or you can go and have some medical care to help you
• 37:37
  pass your baby. I've done both.
• 37:41
  I nearly died in one of those situations.
• 37:43
  So miscarriage care is it's actual healthcare.
• 37:47
  Yes, it's it's very similar in the sense of the procedure and
• 37:51
  like what's happening, but your baby's already already passed.
• 37:56
  And it's no less heartbreaking. Like it's still heartbreaking.
• 38:00
  Like it ate me up knowing that Porter was in pieces.
• 38:04
  Like it was, it was horrible knowing that he was in pieces
• 38:11
  and like, how could you do that to my baby?
• 38:13
  And he was already dead. Like it's so it's a little, yes,
• 38:18
  same process in the sense of like what's going on clearing
• 38:22
  your uterus out. But the big difference is your
• 38:27
  baby's already dead. It's like the difference between
• 38:29
  someone burying someone who's alive and someone who's burying
• 38:34
  someone who's dead. 1 is a burial that virtually all of us
• 38:37
  undergo when we pass. The other one is a murder.
• 38:39
  I mean, it's it's horrific story.
• 38:41
  Yeah, there's one other thing, because this is I see this
• 38:44
  misinformation relentlessly that will pro-life states ban
• 38:49
  miscarriage DNCS. No, I mean I think ours had
• 38:54
  Arizona. Arizona is like red purple at
• 38:59
  best, right, like purple at best.
• 39:00
  And but they have no issues with DNCSI think our because our
• 39:06
  story gets brought up sometimes on the Internet.
• 39:08
  How like they cancelled my DNC for grace and I had grace at
• 39:12
  home and I did have merge at home and it was an emergency
• 39:16
  That more had to do with COVID policy not they had nothing to
• 39:22
  do with the fact that it was a DNC.
• 39:25
  I think there's no people should make sure we know this because
• 39:27
  this is the source of most information online about this
• 39:30
  right now. There is no pro-life law that
• 39:32
  prohibits DNC after miscarriage. The babies past.
• 39:34
  There's no issue with that. pro-life laws are to protect
• 39:37
  living babies from being torn apart via DNC or killed via
• 39:41
  chemical abortion, whatever. So that that is a very crucial
• 39:44
  distinction which is written into the laws too.
• 39:46
  If there's a Doctor Who is ignorant for some reason or like
• 39:49
  people usually end up using these stories to try to, to push
• 39:52
  misinformation, unfortunately. So I don't want to go down that
• 39:54
  rabbit trail, but I did want to. I thank you for explaining that
• 39:57
  for people. Because in my view, one of the
• 40:00
  most tragic things is when these heartbreaking stories that many
• 40:03
  women undergo of losing their babies and then needing
• 40:06
  miscarriage care is conflated somehow weirdly with now we're
• 40:10
  going to support abortion on demand for living babies.
• 40:12
  It doesn't make any sense. Like and having walked through
• 40:16
  the miscarriage care and not receiving it.
• 40:20
  In a timely manner. One it was, it was really a God
• 40:23
  thing. Like I'm so grateful to have had
• 40:25
  grace at home because I would never have seen her.
• 40:28
  Like I don't think people understand that when you lose
• 40:32
  your child in utero, the process of seeing them, it's very big in
• 40:39
  your grieving process. And if you, you can think like
• 40:42
  years ago when women had stillbirths and the nurses would
• 40:46
  just not even let the moms see their babies, that's hard.
• 40:51
  And so like, so being able to see her, it meant a lot in our
• 40:55
  grieving process. Now it was mismanaged in the
• 40:58
  sense that the hospital really probably should not have
• 41:00
  canceled it, but it was a God thing that we got to see her.
• 41:03
  And we it really solidified my like conviction on pro-life.
• 41:11
  Like every step literally was me being like, no, it matters.
• 41:17
  Like they matter. This baby matters.
• 41:19
  And that all the way to the embryo stage.
• 41:22
  Because when that last embryo, Annie, when we, when I knew
• 41:28
  about her, I was like, well, there is no other choice.
• 41:33
  We made her. We adopted out one of our
• 41:42
  biological children against what I wanted right?
• 41:48
  Like and now she's here. Are you telling me like she does
• 41:52
  not matter? She matters.
• 41:53
  She's she was a baby created in 2017 and she's still a baby
• 41:59
  through the whole mess that we went through with IVF, she's
• 42:03
  still there. So like we can't not, and my
• 42:07
  husband's like we are like at capacity and I was pregnant,
• 42:12
  like just newly pregnant. I was like, well, we have to
• 42:14
  like you can't. I have to be obedient to that
• 42:19
  conviction. I can't, I would not be able to
• 42:22
  live with myself. So January 2024, just last year,
• 42:30
  we flew to San Francisco, which is where Annie was.
• 42:35
  And this is where it's very beautiful.
• 42:38
  We got to meet, we got to meet our daughter.
• 42:43
  She's not our daughter. She's but she's our daughter in
• 42:47
  a different way and we love her and we love her parents.
• 42:51
  OK. It's complicated because it's
• 42:53
  not. It's messy, which is something I
• 42:56
  don't think people really like put together.
• 42:59
  It's messy, it's beautiful, but it's very messy.
• 43:04
  And we got to meet her and she's gorgeous.
• 43:07
  And I won't say her name on here, but like she is like three
• 43:12
  of our kids mushed together. And like, you know, I had seen
• 43:16
  pictures of her the whole journey up to that that point.
• 43:20
  And she was, I think she had just turned 2.
• 43:23
  And so it was like, or she was a year and a half or something.
• 43:26
  And I was like, Oh my gosh, you're so cute.
• 43:29
  Like you just we got breakfast with them before scheduled
• 43:33
  transfer. So we're sitting at breakfast
• 43:36
  meeting her and we get a phone call from the IVF clinic and
• 43:41
  they're like, she didn't make it.
• 43:46
  And so we lost Annie and our stupid flight was not till like
• 43:51
  6:00 PM. And so we're stuck in San
• 43:54
  Francisco wandering around me crying, like being like, I, I
• 44:01
  like fall through, like I did it.
• 44:05
  I, I tried to do what I was supposed to do.
• 44:10
  I was supposed to make sure that like she, she would make it here
• 44:14
  and she didn't. So on that walking around for
• 44:18
  hours, Matt's like, it's like, we can try again.
• 44:23
  He's like, we can try again. And I was like, don't say that
• 44:25
  if you don't mean it because man, we've got 7 kids and we've
• 44:31
  gone through everything in our minds.
• 44:37
  We're like, it can't get worse. I mean, it could, we could end
• 44:40
  on a miscarriage that that felt bad to us.
• 44:42
  Like that felt like that would be a horrible ending.
• 44:46
  But I was like, OK, you said that we can try.
• 44:49
  So we tried for six months and got pregnant and I'm pregnant
• 45:00
  with Chloe. And we went, I went to my first
• 45:05
  ultrasound. Now infertility and lost moms
• 45:09
  will get this, most of them. Well, when you've gone through
• 45:12
  that much stuff, you're like, I would like to see proof of life,
• 45:15
  OK? Like you might.
• 45:18
  And this is like annoying to some people where they're like,
• 45:20
  yeah, but there's not even a heartbeat or there's not even
• 45:24
  anything early. I'm like, I don't care what you
• 45:27
  think. If I can see a gestational SAC
• 45:30
  in my uterus, that means there's a baby in there.
• 45:34
  You can see that once your HCG is over 1000, by the way, OK,
• 45:40
  that's all it needs to be 1000. So we went five weeks.
• 45:44
  I went five weeks, 2 days. And there she was.
• 45:51
  But it looked funny. And my midwife and I are like,
• 45:56
  why is she like on the screen? You'd think like the middle of
• 46:01
  the screen, right? And she's like up here.
• 46:03
  And ultrasounds are kind of like flipped.
• 46:06
  So we're like, why is she up here in this ultrasound?
• 46:11
  We didn't know. We're kind of like confused by
• 46:13
  it, but we're like, OK, there's a baby.
• 46:16
  We kind of saw a flicker. We're like, sweet, this is good.
• 46:19
  We have a baby. And then I drive home and I
• 46:24
  drive 40. I drove 45 minutes for this
• 46:26
  midwife because in the process we had moved far away and I was
• 46:29
  like nobody else except you. On my drive home, she's like,
• 46:33
  hey, I talked to the OB, sent him your ultrasound and he wants
• 46:37
  you to go to a high risk doctor today.
• 46:41
  And I'm like, I literally just got home OK.
• 46:45
  And I'm telling my husband and I'm like, they need me to go
• 46:48
  back to like a whole different office to a high risk doctor.
• 46:52
  So I go when they get me in, they do the ultrasound and they
• 46:57
  won't tell me anything. Obviously that's what they do,
• 46:59
  the ultrasound text. And I'm like, OK, and the doctor
• 47:04
  was not in. So I talked to this doctor on a
• 47:07
  laptop in a dark room alone and he's like you have AC section
• 47:12
  scar, ectopic pregnancy. You will die if you continue.
• 47:18
  You need to terminate. I've already talked to the OB at
• 47:21
  the practice you're at and he can get you in right now today
• 47:27
  to get rid of your baby. I'm like, no, first of all, my
• 47:34
  husband is not in the room, said I will not be making any
• 47:37
  decisions today. And he's like, this is life
• 47:41
  threatening. You could die.
• 47:45
  Your baby will die. You need an you need to go have
• 47:48
  a DNC today. I was like, thank you for your
• 47:52
  time. I'm going to go drive home
• 47:55
  called my priest. He was like at the symposium.
• 47:58
  He's like, I can't talk right now.
• 47:59
  I'm like, well, I need help like bright for me, bright for me.
• 48:04
  And then I call my husband. I'm crying the whole ride home
• 48:06
  and I'm like, this cannot be happening.
• 48:11
  Like what happened to like being obedient to God and life and
• 48:16
  like nothing going wrong. Well, that's a lie.
• 48:20
  So like life is life right now. Like there's good and bad in
• 48:24
  life. And so we ended up going to two
• 48:28
  other doctors and they said the same thing.
• 48:30
  They're like, you need to abort this baby.
• 48:35
  And then one doctor, Matt, came to it and he was like, you need
• 48:39
  to tell your wife that you need to go through with this
• 48:43
  termination. And Matt looks at me and he's
• 48:46
  like, I think she said no, like, yes.
• 48:51
  And then he's like doing the ultrasound.
• 48:53
  And I was like 6 1/2 weeks. And he's like, the heart beats
• 48:56
  very low. So the baby will probably die
• 48:57
  anyways. And I was like, well, I don't
• 48:59
  like you. So I will never recommend that
• 49:03
  doctor again. And then my midwife, she also
• 49:10
  recommended terminating, which was kind of heartbreaking
• 49:15
  because she had never been that way.
• 49:21
  And then as soon as she had a heartbeat, she was like, I can't
• 49:24
  now, now I can't. And I'm like, oh so maybe like 2
• 49:28
  days ago. So it's kind of weird.
• 49:31
  Can you refer me to someone else?
• 49:32
  And so she referred me to a different Doctor Who's my
• 49:35
  doctor. His name is Doctor Holes in
• 49:37
  Arizona and he is the lead Accreda specialist at the
• 49:43
  Accreda Center of Excellence in Phoenix, AZ.
• 49:46
  He is the best of the best. He deals with Accreda patients
• 49:50
  all the time. Now you might be like, wait, I
• 49:51
  thought you had AC section scar topic.
• 49:53
  Yes, the C-section scar, ectopic where she implanted in my
• 49:58
  C-section scar. One of the most common like
• 50:01
  consequences comorbidities to that is placenta accreta.
• 50:05
  And so that's where the placenta embeds too deeply into your
• 50:09
  uterus and the high mortality rate about it, like, the reason
• 50:16
  why it's dangerous is you can hemorrhage and that's dangerous.
• 50:22
  You can die from hemorrhaging if it's not, like, monitored or
• 50:25
  washed or have a really good Doctor Who knows what they're
• 50:28
  doing. So I met with him at 7 weeks,
• 50:30
  and he's like, yeah, I mean, that is what it is.
• 50:35
  Do you want to continue the pregnancy?
• 50:37
  I was like, yes, that's why we're here.
• 50:40
  Like, no, like anything. He's just like, OK, great.
• 50:45
  I do this all the time. Like awesome.
• 50:51
  So I went to. Had he done AC section?
• 50:53
  Ectopic, yes, which is crazy. So I had complications, yes.
• 50:59
  Throughout my pregnancy we had I had like a weird abruption at
• 51:03
  one point, which is ironic because abruption is where the
• 51:06
  placenta pulls away. And so there was a part where my
• 51:10
  placenta should have been embedded, but it somehow
• 51:12
  abrupted. And so I had like both things.
• 51:15
  I had a short cervix at all this stuff.
• 51:18
  I ended up having a bleed in January of 2025 at 30 weeks.
• 51:23
  I got admitted to the hospital, magnesium, the whole thing, and
• 51:27
  I stayed for eight days. We did an MRI, which is pretty
• 51:31
  common in an accretive pregnancy, is they'll do an MRI
• 51:36
  to really get a full picture of your uterus where the placenta
• 51:40
  is front and back. And so my placenta say this is
• 51:45
  like the bottom, my placenta went up both sides.
• 51:49
  So I had purcreta, which is the most severe form of placenta
• 51:54
  accreta where my bladder was, which is where the scar was,
• 51:58
  where the C-section scar is. And then I had previous so it
• 52:01
  was over the the opening, which is that makes sense, right?
• 52:04
  If it baby implants really low. And then I also had Increta
• 52:09
  which is like middle of the road on the accreta spectrum
• 52:13
  posteriorly, which is what we found out during or anteriorly,
• 52:18
  sorry during the MRI. And you had ectopic.
• 52:22
  Yeah, so, so all four things, yes.
• 52:24
  And people like to be like, you're lying.
• 52:27
  And I I remember being like and here's my paperwork.
• 52:30
  For fun. For funsies, I also had
• 52:33
  gestational diabetes that very I'm like look, they're all
• 52:36
  listed here and it says my name on it.
• 52:40
  And when you say, people are saying you're lying.
• 52:42
  On the Internet. They're just you're sharing some
• 52:44
  of your journey. So I didn't share it right away
• 52:47
  because it was really hard. Like people think that because I
• 52:52
  didn't share it right away, I must have made it up for like
• 52:55
  social media cloud or something. No, I was terrified that I was
• 53:01
  going to die my whole first trimester because.
• 53:05
  And I guess I'm kind of skipping around a bit on Chloe, but one
• 53:09
  of the risks for AC section scar topic is placenta accreta.
• 53:13
  Your placenta starts to form by 12 weeks.
• 53:16
  So their Acog's recommendation is termination before 8 weeks
• 53:23
  because your placenta starts to grow and develop after that
• 53:26
  point. OK, So the risk if you terminate
• 53:31
  after 8 weeks, you could still end up with a hysterectomy,
• 53:35
  which is kind of scary because in my mind, as a recurrent loss
• 53:38
  mom, I'm like, great, if I miscarry, I could lose my uterus
• 53:45
  in the process and just be like, OK, that's the end.
• 53:50
  So the first trimester was very scary for me because I'm like
• 53:53
  please don't die. And then also like, I don't want
• 53:57
  to die. And also if you die, I don't
• 54:00
  want to lose my uterus in the process being like first
• 54:04
  trimester. Chloe died and then you.
• 54:06
  So it's like you both could die, Chloe could just die, Chloe
• 54:10
  could die and you use your uterus or any variation.
• 54:12
  Exactly. So what can you explain for
• 54:15
  folks as best you can? I know like obviously I'm sure
• 54:19
  the doctors were telling you all of the doctor things, but what
• 54:22
  is the reason that you can die from a ectopic caesarean
• 54:28
  pregnant section pregnancy? So the main thing is
• 54:32
  hemorrhaging and this is actually why the mortality rate
• 54:37
  is so high because of the patients that have undiagnosed
• 54:43
  accreta, like my Claire pregnancy was undiagnosed and
• 54:47
  why it was so scary because no one was prepared.
• 54:51
  Accreta patients that have Accreta specialists, those are
• 54:56
  maternal fetal medicine doctors that know what they're doing.
• 55:00
  They have an entire team of specialists in the OR if you're
• 55:03
  not in a regular OR you're in the main OR, it's huge, by the
• 55:07
  way, and it's kind of scary. And they have like an oncologist
• 55:11
  there. They have like a whole bunch of
• 55:13
  different people that are making sure you don't die at delivery
• 55:19
  because there is no increased risk during the pregnancy.
• 55:23
  While you're pregnant, you're hemorrhaging.
• 55:26
  The risk is at delivery. Does that make sense?
• 55:29
  It makes sense, but it also just makes me so sad.
• 55:34
  So sad for the state of American healthcare where if mom needs
• 55:38
  extra care, baby needs extra care to ensure that both can
• 55:42
  live, then we should just do an abortion because it's easier and
• 55:47
  quicker and there's no no risk. OK.
• 55:49
  And so? Talk that's the go to that is
• 55:52
  the go to. But here's the thing.
• 55:54
  And like there's a lot of people on the Internet that want to
• 55:57
  hinge on that, that of like abortionist healthcare and this
• 56:03
  in this scenario that I live through.
• 56:06
  And it's here's the thing, it's not.
• 56:08
  And the only way that that it's going to get better for people
• 56:13
  that have high risk pregnancies are for them to have actual
• 56:17
  doctors who are specialized in the area and are willing to, to
• 56:22
  do full care and take you to a live birth.
• 56:27
  And the only way to do that is to not terminate.
• 56:30
  Like think, think about 22 weekers, 22 week babies.
• 56:36
  OK, they used to just let them die.
• 56:41
  Now they don't. Now you have actual medical
• 56:46
  devices. They have breathing tubes to
• 56:48
  intubate them that are small enough.
• 56:51
  How do you think they got there? By actually trying, OK, And so
• 56:57
  it's the same thing with my circumstance.
• 57:00
  ACOG says that C-section scar topics should be terminated and
• 57:04
  they say that because it's easier to kill a baby early then
• 57:09
  to try to save a baby and the mom later.
• 57:13
  But here's the thing, the more we have doctors that are willing
• 57:17
  to do it, that have specialized care around this, the more women
• 57:24
  are going to survive it. And then you can't be like, no
• 57:28
  one's going to live through that.
• 57:29
  Like you're just you're doing a self assisted suicide.
• 57:33
  It's like, OK, well, you're crazy.
• 57:34
  Like it's not suicide. And people tell you, Oh yes,
• 57:37
  that I am not pro-life because I am going to basically commit
• 57:42
  suicide having Chloe and that it's not fair to my other kids
• 57:45
  and all this stuff. But the point that I feel like
• 57:49
  goes over their head is it can only get better and get better
• 57:55
  healthcare the more doctors are willing to learn how to how to
• 58:01
  take care of patients like this. C-section rates in America are
• 58:04
  so high. C-section scar ectopic
• 58:07
  pregnancies are on the rise. Like there are more.
• 58:11
  I'm in a Facebook group where people get added daily and
• 58:15
  they're like, I have AC section scar topic.
• 58:16
  What do I do? And I'm like type typing in
• 58:19
  there saying go find an Accreta center of excellence.
• 58:24
  They're not. They're not in every city and
• 58:26
  they're not in every state. My doctor doctor Holes has done
• 58:31
  over 300 accreta pregnancies and has lost zero humans zero of
• 58:38
  them. OK that's amazing.
• 58:41
  My type of pregnancy AC section scar ectopic.
• 58:44
  He has done them before and when I was admitted at 30 weeks
• 58:49
  because I had to bleed and everything he was like I just
• 58:52
  delivered two other two other C-section scar ectopic
• 58:57
  pregnancies and they didn't need hysterectomies which I was like
• 59:01
  Oh my gosh maybe I'm the maybe it like I will get lucky too for
• 59:05
  that. But the only difference for me
• 59:08
  was he followed my care from the beginning and he was like, you
• 59:12
  are our first that we have followed from the beginning to
• 59:17
  the end. We're learning so much of what
• 59:19
  AC section scar topic looks like from 5 weeks all the way to when
• 59:25
  Clove is born at 33 weeks. And he's like, it's invaluable.
• 59:29
  And it's like, those are the doctors you want.
• 59:32
  You want doctors that are willing to be like, hey, let's
• 59:37
  advance our medical care. We live in America.
• 59:39
  We should have great medical care and not just like easy
• 59:42
  access, like people like to compare like Canada or whatever.
• 59:46
  No, we want good medical care that is going to provide us
• 59:51
  every opportunity to live, including our babies.
• 59:57
  So my pregnancy. I had some complications just
• 1:00:02
  like we all predicted. I did have placenta accreta
• 1:00:05
  spectrum. I went into my delivery at 33
• 1:00:09
  weeks in one day and I was terrified.
• 1:00:17
  I thought I would die just because when you're faced with
• 1:00:21
  death, you think maybe like I am so secure in myself or in my
• 1:00:28
  faith, like I can do it. Like I'm going to be pulled
• 1:00:33
  through or I have no regrets in my life.
• 1:00:35
  And it's like, OK. But like when you're faced with
• 1:00:38
  it, you kind of are like did I did I parent my kids well?
• 1:00:44
  Did I do this? Did I tell my husband that I
• 1:00:46
  loved him one more time like am is it going to be OK?
• 1:00:51
  It was very terrifying. I cried the second my husband
• 1:00:55
  couldn't go back in the double doors to the main OR I cried the
• 1:00:59
  whole time. They almost put me to they
• 1:01:02
  almost put me out during it because my right side of my body
• 1:01:06
  would not numb from the spinal. I know.
• 1:01:09
  And I'm like, OK, well, you guys got to get this together because
• 1:01:12
  I and. I feel it my.
• 1:01:13
  Baby, like I need to see my baby before I could die.
• 1:01:18
  And I saw Chloe and she cried and it was beautiful.
• 1:01:22
  And they let me kiss her and you know, they whisked her off to
• 1:01:26
  the NICU and my husband followed her there and then they waited.
• 1:01:31
  And the thing was, because Doctor Holes had just delivered
• 1:01:35
  2 C-section scar ectopic pregnancies and ended up no
• 1:01:39
  hysterectomy. He was like, Alex, I want to
• 1:01:43
  wait and see because sometimes the placenta, even with accreta,
• 1:01:49
  will still detach and then the fight is to get the bleeding
• 1:01:55
  under control. But if you have a specialist,
• 1:01:57
  they already have things in place.
• 1:01:58
  Like I had an artery embolized. So like cutting down excessive
• 1:02:03
  bleeding? OK, so can I ask a really quick
• 1:02:06
  question before you share this next part for people listening.
• 1:02:11
  So were they saying you're you might die right now because in
• 1:02:14
  deliberate Chloe was alive. Chloe Chloe's thriving.
• 1:02:17
  She's 33 weeks. She was ready to come out.
• 1:02:18
  She would need to have some time in NICU, but she was she was
• 1:02:21
  fine. And the issue wasn't that her
• 1:02:23
  being AC section scar topic would be that she was
• 1:02:27
  necessarily going to die with the the fear would be upon
• 1:02:29
  delivery you might die. Can you explain for people why
• 1:02:33
  when you went in for operation, first of all, why they picked 33
• 1:02:35
  weeks to deliver and then second of all, why you were like
• 1:02:39
  literally preparing to possibly die?
• 1:02:41
  What could have? What would have gone wrong, or
• 1:02:42
  what would have happened that would have meant that you would
• 1:02:44
  have died? OK, So the 33 week thing, so
• 1:02:47
  ACOG actually for Accreta's they have a window of delivery.
• 1:02:51
  Delivery it's between 34 and 0 and 35 and six, OK.
• 1:02:55
  That is your window of what ACOG thinks is an appropriate time to
• 1:02:59
  deliver an Acreta pregnancy. It's just like a sweet spot for
• 1:03:03
  vascularity to get the placenta out.
• 1:03:06
  And ACOG recommendation is a hysterectomy.
• 1:03:10
  It just is in the certain in Acreta's.
• 1:03:13
  So I had a bleed at 30 weeks and my MFM, he again amazing Doctor
• 1:03:19
  holes, absolutely amazing. He's like I after all these
• 1:03:23
  deliveries, I have learned that once you have a bleed, you will
• 1:03:27
  have another. And when that is the case, I
• 1:03:31
  move our window from 32 and 0 to 33 and six and I try to deliver
• 1:03:36
  you as soon as possible. Well, he had another delivery
• 1:03:40
  when I was 32 and one and so he's like, so I can't do that
• 1:03:44
  day. So we're doing the next like OR
• 1:03:46
  day because you, I mean, in an emergency situation, I would
• 1:03:51
  have been delivered anyways. But if you know anything about
• 1:03:54
  hospitals and medical fields, it's like you got to get a lot
• 1:03:57
  of people lined up to do what you need to do.
• 1:04:01
  So he has like a very specific day that he gets the main OR
• 1:04:06
  that he has his team always ready.
• 1:04:08
  So anytime he can schedule, he will schedule it with them
• 1:04:12
  unless there's an emergency, then yes, he would get all the
• 1:04:15
  people together anyways. So my our plan was 33 and one
• 1:04:21
  that was his next OR day and that is when we were going to do
• 1:04:26
  it. And he was like, but if you have
• 1:04:27
  a bleed a second one you we're done ASAP.
• 1:04:31
  Yeah, like that now that second yeah.
• 1:04:33
  And so he is an amazing doctor and he was like, you may go home
• 1:04:39
  on bed rest after you have not bled in the hospital for five
• 1:04:42
  days. So it took about 8 days total
• 1:04:45
  for me after my major bleed. Did the MRI there, I stopped
• 1:04:51
  bleeding and he's like, go home on bed rest for 12 days.
• 1:04:54
  Don't do anything dumb and just sit, be with your kids, be with
• 1:04:59
  your husband and then come, you're going to come back at 33
• 1:05:02
  and 1:00 and you're going to, we're going to do this.
• 1:05:05
  And so that's what I did. I did not do anything.
• 1:05:07
  I didn't go to church. I didn't like homeschool.
• 1:05:10
  I was just like, I'm going to sit here and watch my house be
• 1:05:14
  destroyed by 7 children. OK, It's, it's fine.
• 1:05:18
  It was fine, but it's a lot. And so I went into that delivery
• 1:05:23
  at 33 and 1. So that's the why of that date
• 1:05:28
  then. So why was I scared?
• 1:05:30
  Well, it's still when you have a hysterectomy, not when you're
• 1:05:36
  pregnant. It's a very minor surgery.
• 1:05:38
  It's like a in and out in the same day kind of thing.
• 1:05:40
  It's laparoscopic. And the reason why is because
• 1:05:43
  your uterus is all constricted and small.
• 1:05:45
  And it's very easy for them to to do that, right.
• 1:05:49
  But when you're doing that delivery, it is extremely
• 1:05:52
  vascular. Your uterus is stretched so much
• 1:05:57
  that you could just bleed instantly, lose all your blood.
• 1:06:01
  So they are like they try to be so prepared you sign waivers for
• 1:06:05
  to get blood products. Like they have everything on
• 1:06:09
  hand to be prepared for the worst.
• 1:06:12
  And it had to be this way because this was a topic.
• 1:06:14
  Yes, baby, she was in that C-section scar.
• 1:06:17
  Exactly. She's already connected.
• 1:06:18
  Where you're not ideally connected so that the risk of
• 1:06:22
  hemorrhage and bleeding was already sky high, and in order
• 1:06:25
  to remove her, they probably have to remove the entire.
• 1:06:27
  Yes and so like the plan my because my doctor was amazing.
• 1:06:31
  He was like, listen, if your placenta can detach because it
• 1:06:36
  was per creta in the front, that's where it's all the way
• 1:06:39
  through your uterus and it was in creta in the back, meaning
• 1:06:43
  it's just really, really deep in the muscle.
• 1:06:46
  It was like, maybe it will detach and we can sew up like
• 1:06:50
  close up the hole from your uterus and basically you would
• 1:06:55
  keep your uterus, but we'd say no more babies.
• 1:06:58
  Very dangerous. OK, He was like that.
• 1:07:00
  Sometimes we can do that or it could just peel off and be
• 1:07:03
  great. Like like the, no, the placenta,
• 1:07:07
  like placenta complete peel off. And so he went into it being
• 1:07:11
  like, we're gonna see what happens.
• 1:07:12
  So there were two things going on for you #1 it was you could
• 1:07:16
  bleed out at any minute, especially if they make any kind
• 1:07:18
  of mistake or anything goes wrong.
• 1:07:19
  You could die. Yeah.
• 1:07:20
  The second issue was that you wanted to keep your uterus.
• 1:07:24
  Yes. Impossible.
• 1:07:25
  You did not want a hysterectomy. Not.
• 1:07:26
  Because this is very. This is maybe hard thing for
• 1:07:32
  some people to hear. It wasn't because I wanted to go
• 1:07:35
  on having a million more babies because Matt and I actually were
• 1:07:38
  really content with like just having one more baby after
• 1:07:42
  everything we had gone through. You're losing your like a body
• 1:07:47
  part. It's really traumatic mentally.
• 1:07:53
  Like, I know it's hard because it's like internal, but there's
• 1:07:56
  something about losing a piece of yourself against your will
• 1:08:00
  that you're like, you feel empty and it's very confusing to be
• 1:08:07
  like I, I lost a part of myself. And so the idea of a
• 1:08:12
  hysterectomy, even though I didn't want to necessarily have
• 1:08:17
  any more babies, I wasn't opposed to it either.
• 1:08:20
  But like, I, it was not my choice and my husband would be
• 1:08:24
  like just consent to the hysterectomy because it's easier
• 1:08:31
  during the surgery. And I was like, no, I just need
• 1:08:35
  to give it a chance. Maybe God will just be like, OK,
• 1:08:38
  like you did your part, keep your, keep your uterus and
• 1:08:45
  that's it. And one other clarification for
• 1:08:47
  people listening and then we're going to get to this amazing
• 1:08:51
  next part of the story is that, and I think this is also a lot
• 1:08:55
  of people just does not compute, does not compute this aspect.
• 1:08:59
  I know you're Orthodox Christian, I'm Catholic
• 1:09:01
  Christian. We are aligned on this largely.
• 1:09:04
  And I think this is the natural law too.
• 1:09:06
  But this idea that when you are, if you're going to have a super
• 1:09:11
  high risk pregnancy, right, you are not required to continue to
• 1:09:14
  have babies. Like there's not a teaching like
• 1:09:15
  you have to have babies if you're Catholic or Orthodox, if
• 1:09:17
  you have a super high risk pregnancy, but there is a
• 1:09:20
  teaching against contraception. And so you employ ABS, you know,
• 1:09:23
  periodic absence, natural family planning, and you also don't do
• 1:09:28
  hysterectomies or vasectomies as a form of like permanent
• 1:09:32
  contraception either for the purpose of avoiding children.
• 1:09:36
  Now, you could remove your uterus for a immediate health
• 1:09:41
  issue or a even cancer. You have a uterine cancer.
• 1:09:44
  So varying cancer, varying cancer.
• 1:09:46
  So you remove those parts not to avoid future children.
• 1:09:49
  This is really important. The intention of the why is this
• 1:09:51
  like, you know, medicinal or surgical intervention happening,
• 1:09:55
  but because that body part is deeply diseased or otherwise
• 1:10:01
  life threatening or harmful. And I think that again, the
• 1:10:04
  mindset, what is the operating principle?
• 1:10:06
  The operating principle is that life is, you know, sex is
• 1:10:09
  designed for procurative and unitive.
• 1:10:11
  When you intentionally separate the sexual act by doing
• 1:10:15
  contraception or you take out a part of your body as a form of
• 1:10:19
  contraception, right? Both go against the natural law.
• 1:10:22
  And I think when people understand, oh, that's the end
• 1:10:24
  goal. So all of this other like
• 1:10:26
  guidelines for how to do this is for that end goal.
• 1:10:29
  I think it helps for people to click, click, click when you
• 1:10:32
  just hear like a piece of it, you're like, what?
• 1:10:34
  What does that mean? Why?
• 1:10:35
  Because the modern mindset is just do whatever you want to do
• 1:10:38
  basically. No and like.
• 1:10:39
  Do what you want to do. Our priest, he is amazing and he
• 1:10:43
  really was like, obviously if the doctor says do not die, you
• 1:10:51
  get the hysterectomy. That's what you consent to.
• 1:10:55
  So you don't die. Like the goal is not to die.
• 1:10:59
  The goal is to stay like, and this was a very hard part and I
• 1:11:03
  haven't really shared too much of this publicly, but I guess I
• 1:11:06
  am now. When we kind of walked into this
• 1:11:10
  pregnancy, it was like a thing. It was how do I, I don't know
• 1:11:17
  how to word it, but it was like knowing that you can die and
• 1:11:21
  knowing that you're you're willing to die for life.
• 1:11:28
  It's a very weird thing to sit in.
• 1:11:31
  And so I really struggled actually with the decision on a
• 1:11:36
  hysterectomy or not. Like I originally was like, no,
• 1:11:40
  tried to save it, like just 'cause I need it.
• 1:11:43
  I like, thought that was the right answer.
• 1:11:46
  And I thought that if I had chosen A hysterectomy, I would
• 1:11:51
  be playing some sort of God role.
• 1:11:53
  Like like, OK, well, I went through all of this and now I'm
• 1:11:57
  going to have a hysterectomy and I can't have any more kids.
• 1:12:01
  And it was my choice where that's not it's not how like
• 1:12:05
  those medical decisions happen. And so like my priest is praying
• 1:12:09
  for me and I would pray the same thing.
• 1:12:12
  My whole pregnancy was like, make it so obvious, Lord, like
• 1:12:15
  make it be or it at the table here.
• 1:12:20
  You're open. Make it so obvious that this is
• 1:12:23
  to save your life. This has nothing to do with me
• 1:12:25
  playing God and like taking my uterus away because that was a
• 1:12:31
  big thing with people would be like, so you are going to
• 1:12:34
  control your fertility by having a hysterectomy.
• 1:12:37
  I'm like, no, I'm going to not die by having medical treatment,
• 1:12:43
  by losing my I'm losing the word losing like I'm losing it like
• 1:12:48
  this is not because I'm like, yeah, like take my take my
• 1:12:51
  uterus while. You're in there.
• 1:12:52
  Oh, take my uterus so I don't have babies.
• 1:12:54
  Yes, like taking my just goes. It's a life threatening me right
• 1:12:56
  now because it's it's yeah. I won't make it off this table
• 1:12:59
  and I won't get to see Chloe and I won't get to do all these
• 1:13:02
  things if you if that medical. There's no.
• 1:13:06
  Need. That's it.
• 1:13:07
  So do you think it was almost like a scrupulosity in the back
• 1:13:09
  of your mind? Yeah.
• 1:13:10
  It was. I had it.
• 1:13:12
  It almost was like I had to undo this very weird like narrative
• 1:13:19
  that I had like built in the back of my head that if I did,
• 1:13:24
  if I consented to a hysterectomy right away, that that made me
• 1:13:29
  not trusting God or something. And that's just not the case.
• 1:13:33
  That's not how medical like the Catholic Church and the Orthodox
• 1:13:38
  Church, you are allowed to have life saving care.
• 1:13:44
  I'm sorry to break it to some people.
• 1:13:46
  You actually can and nobody is mad at you.
• 1:13:50
  If you're going to die and the doctor says this is what you
• 1:13:53
  need to not die. No priest, no layman.
• 1:13:59
  They're not going to come in and be like, uh, uh, you can't do
• 1:14:03
  it. You can't save your life, Lila,
• 1:14:04
  Like you can't do that. No, they're going to be like,
• 1:14:07
  you have my blessing. Go.
• 1:14:09
  But this is where go save your. This is.
• 1:14:10
  Where it's so pernicious, right, Alex, is that the medical field
• 1:14:13
  is telling women about that when it's not true.
• 1:14:16
  Yeah, on things that are not true.
• 1:14:17
  Exactly. And that's like where it's so.
• 1:14:18
  Confusing for people because they're like, you're going to
• 1:14:21
  die, you're going to die, the baby's going to die, you're
• 1:14:22
  going to die. And so it's like, oh, we'll just
• 1:14:23
  abort, abort. But now they're using illicit
• 1:14:25
  means abort, which is direct intentional killing of the baby,
• 1:14:28
  never acceptable ever. So that's one thing.
• 1:14:31
  But then in addition, everyone's saying to everyone, you're just
• 1:14:33
  going to die all the time or else or else or else.
• 1:14:37
  And they don't have the they're not enough of the specialist.
• 1:14:40
  Enough of the questions have been asked.
• 1:14:41
  The conversation hasn't been had.
• 1:14:42
  Understand. Oh, these are the risks.
• 1:14:44
  This is how we mitigate the wrist.
• 1:14:46
  And when it comes to the point of it would be a morally
• 1:14:49
  acceptable act to remove that has that uterus in an in a life
• 1:14:53
  threatening situation, whether it's cancer or bleeding or
• 1:14:56
  whatever it is in this case, then it's totally there's no
• 1:14:58
  issue. Here there should be.
• 1:15:00
  It's wild that people like are mad about that in not just my
• 1:15:04
  case, but like many people's case that life saving care, like
• 1:15:08
  actual legit life saving care is like demonized.
• 1:15:11
  It's we made it out. Like I was scared of dying after
• 1:15:18
  Chloe was out. OK, so Chloe was born and I'm
• 1:15:21
  like, I'm like, I need to hear her cry.
• 1:15:24
  And I heard her cry and then I cried and then they showed me
• 1:15:27
  her real quick and she needed to go to the NICU.
• 1:15:31
  And then I was like that that was the easy part, you know,
• 1:15:37
  like I did my sacrifice in the sense of like persevering
• 1:15:43
  through my emotional part of the pregnancy to get her here.
• 1:15:47
  And then I was like, good, good. She's alive.
• 1:15:51
  At least one of us are making it out of here, right?
• 1:15:55
  Like how pro-life is that it's pro-life enough that I'm the
• 1:15:58
  goal was for me as a mom because sacrifice as a mother starts in
• 1:16:02
  the womb. It really does.
• 1:16:03
  Like it starts as soon as you conceive.
• 1:16:07
  Think of nausea. We're already sacrificing.
• 1:16:10
  And so for me, I'm like, good, I did my job in the sense of like,
• 1:16:15
  my goal was to get her out alive.
• 1:16:17
  It would be really not great if she died and I died.
• 1:16:21
  So at least here I am strapped down being like, good, the baby
• 1:16:27
  made it now give my husband a kiss and I'm going to pray that
• 1:16:31
  I'm not going to die. Matt, go follow Chloe.
• 1:16:34
  And he did. And I laid there for 25 minutes
• 1:16:38
  praying, Lord, please just spare my just spare me.
• 1:16:42
  And like if you feel like it, just spare the uterus too.
• 1:16:45
  So I can just be like, oh, we made it out like Scott free or
• 1:16:49
  something. And then after 25 minutes, my
• 1:16:52
  doctor was like, it's just not all coming out.
• 1:16:55
  Alex was like part of it came off and the rest is starting to
• 1:17:00
  dimple. It's where the like uterus
• 1:17:02
  starts to contract, but the placenta dimples in.
• 1:17:07
  So think of like a dimple on your cheek during the
• 1:17:09
  contraction, the placentas dimpling, which means it's stuck
• 1:17:13
  there. It's not going to let go.
• 1:17:15
  He's like, I got to, I've got to do it.
• 1:17:17
  Do I have your consent? I said Yep.
• 1:17:21
  And he's like, all right, go ahead and put her out.
• 1:17:24
  Put me out and I just remember being like, I really hope I wake
• 1:17:28
  up from this and I did 4 hours later.
• 1:17:31
  I woke up in post op not with my baby and not with my husband
• 1:17:38
  completely flat because when they embolize your arteries, you
• 1:17:41
  have to delay flat for four hours.
• 1:17:45
  So I'm like completely flat. They wheel me into the NICU
• 1:17:49
  completely flat and I'm like there's my baby.
• 1:17:52
  She's on C pap, which is where it's like over the nose breathe,
• 1:17:56
  helping breathing with pressure and oxygen.
• 1:17:59
  And they wheeled me to my postpartum room.
• 1:18:02
  I pumped laying down because I wanted to pump for her in the
• 1:18:06
  NICU. It's it was wild.
• 1:18:09
  I finally at the four hour mark, I was like, OK, Matt, it's been
• 1:18:14
  4 hours. Come leave Chloe for a minute
• 1:18:17
  and come help me because I had to be able to get up, get into a
• 1:18:22
  wheelchair and then be pushed down to the NICU like I had to
• 1:18:25
  get. Up.
• 1:18:26
  You wanted to go to Chloe. Right.
• 1:18:27
  But like, I had to actually be able to get up.
• 1:18:31
  Yeah. And I'm like, they won't help
• 1:18:33
  me, you have to help me. And that's normal.
• 1:18:35
  Like post C-section even they're like, once you can get up from
• 1:18:38
  the bed into a wheelchair, go. So I did it.
• 1:18:43
  Got down to the NICU. Chloe's in the NICU 25 days,
• 1:18:46
  which is pretty standard for a 33 weeker.
• 1:18:50
  She did amazing. She really didn't have any big
• 1:18:53
  setbacks, was a feeder and a grower.
• 1:18:57
  Taking her home was incredible. All my kids were like the baby,
• 1:19:03
  The baby's here and they they're oblivious.
• 1:19:05
  By the way, I did not tell my children.
• 1:19:10
  And some people think that that was like wrong of me in case I
• 1:19:12
  died. But why would I burden my kids
• 1:19:16
  with anxiety that their mom was going to die?
• 1:19:19
  That makes no sense. So I didn't tell them.
• 1:19:21
  So they they were just like, Chloe's born early.
• 1:19:26
  And like, now Chloe gets to go home after a month.
• 1:19:29
  Like, this is great. And it all worked out.
• 1:19:33
  Like, everything is great. We don't know why she's early
• 1:19:36
  and we don't know why mom is crying, but like, it's
• 1:19:39
  fantastic. And it was.
• 1:19:40
  And so now Chloe's six months old, and she just walked in the
• 1:19:45
  door. We got to see Chloe.
• 1:19:47
  Yes. When I saw this baby, I was
• 1:19:49
  like, this baby is an Angel. She is so perfect baby, look at
• 1:19:55
  her. Hi Chloe, you have a good.
• 1:19:59
  Walk my beautiful baby. She's so perfect, Alex.
• 1:20:06
  You need to take a baby. You got a little hair on your
• 1:20:08
  There you go. So yes, Chloe is 6 months.
• 1:20:11
  She's definitely alive and so am I.
• 1:20:15
  We both made it. She's.
• 1:20:18
  Welcome to the show, Girly. She's the sweetest of eight
• 1:20:23
  babies. Like she just Hi goes with the
• 1:20:27
  flow. Yeah, welcome.
• 1:20:30
  We are so glad you're here. We're so happy to see you girly.
• 1:20:37
  But yeah, so like, why so crazy? Because I look at her and I
• 1:20:41
  think about that five weeks when they were like, you need to
• 1:20:45
  terminate and I was it couldn't I couldn't live with myself with
• 1:20:51
  a what if. And like look at this, like she
• 1:20:55
  obviously made it. She obviously was a she was a
• 1:20:59
  good what if good, what if to to keep and she's perfect.
• 1:21:06
  We love her. So that is the crazy story.
• 1:21:12
  Wild, right? Like start to finish and all
• 1:21:16
  that to say, here I am six months post hysterectomy.
• 1:21:21
  Recovery is hard. I'm still recovering like
• 1:21:28
  abdominally. Like I still have tenderness
• 1:21:31
  from my belly button down, which is not fun.
• 1:21:36
  I'll never have a period again. It's I guess it's a cool perk
• 1:21:41
  kind of. I still have my ovaries.
• 1:21:44
  So a lot of people ask this like how can you 'cause I breastfeed,
• 1:21:49
  I still have my ovaries so I can, I still have hormones.
• 1:21:53
  Please don't throw up on camera. She can do.
• 1:21:57
  Whatever she wants, she. Can do whatever she wants.
• 1:22:00
  So I can still nurse. I still have hormones, you know,
• 1:22:05
  I am at a higher risk of like like early menopause.
• 1:22:10
  I'm a higher risk for like bladder prolapse as well.
• 1:22:14
  So I do, there are risks to having a hysterectomy, but those
• 1:22:19
  risks, you know, the benefit outweighed it.
• 1:22:22
  And that's like 1. She's alive and I'm alive.
• 1:22:25
  So we're good to go. I can, I can go to PT and I can,
• 1:22:31
  you know, do what I need to do for my body now that we're both
• 1:22:36
  alive and well. So we made it.
• 1:22:39
  We made it. We made it.
• 1:22:41
  Alex, when you woke up after being out for four hours during
• 1:22:45
  that surgery, they put you under.
• 1:22:47
  You weren't sure if you were going to wake up.
• 1:22:49
  Yeah. What was it like when you woke
• 1:22:52
  up? What were you thinking?
• 1:22:53
  What was going through your mind or your heart?
• 1:22:54
  I just remember being like shocked because after going
• 1:23:00
  through everything that I've gone through in my life and I
• 1:23:03
  think I always, I think I always have like been waiting for the
• 1:23:09
  other shoe to drop. And so that probably was a big
• 1:23:13
  part of my fear was I was like, and it would be me.
• 1:23:17
  I would be the first patient of my Doctor Who like wouldn't make
• 1:23:20
  it And and that would suck for everybody.
• 1:23:25
  So waking up was like the shoe didn't drop.
• 1:23:28
  Like we made it. We made it like how crazy that
• 1:23:33
  the other shoe didn't drop. I didn't die, my baby didn't
• 1:23:37
  die. She's healthy and happy and like
• 1:23:42
  perfect for her adjusted preemie age.
• 1:23:47
  She has the best support anyone could ever ask for.
• 1:23:54
  She has parents that love her, siblings that literally love her
• 1:23:59
  to pieces, and she has godparents that love her.
• 1:24:04
  She's got church, other church family that love her.
• 1:24:07
  It's it's crazy that someone, multiple people thought that
• 1:24:14
  like she was not worth being here.
• 1:24:19
  Are you all right? She's just showing her opinions
• 1:24:23
  about the whole thing. What did you think about it?
• 1:24:25
  Are you glad? What did you think that we did
• 1:24:27
  it? Oh yeah.
• 1:24:31
  Alex, what's your advice to women and men who may be
• 1:24:35
  listening about how to see the the poor diagnosis, the fatal
• 1:24:43
  diagnosis, even the high risk pregnancy, the unplanned
• 1:24:46
  pregnancy? I mean, you, you've been through
• 1:24:47
  all of it. You've literally been through
• 1:24:49
  the IVF pain of well I had struggle with infertility but I
• 1:24:53
  know there's these issues with IVF but I really am tempted to
• 1:24:56
  IVF like all of the things you have been through.
• 1:24:58
  All of it. Yeah.
• 1:25:00
  I think the biggest thing, the biggest thing is when you're
• 1:25:07
  going through hard stuff, especially in the world of
• 1:25:12
  fertility, is not to make quick rash decisions.
• 1:25:21
  We can all, yes, we all do it and we all live through regrets,
• 1:25:28
  but some things can't be undone. And so you should take it with
• 1:25:33
  great care in your marriage or if even if it's outside of
• 1:25:37
  marriage, take it with great care for the lives at stake,
• 1:25:43
  because there's always more than one life going on here.
• 1:25:47
  There's the life that you're growing or lives like in my
• 1:25:51
  case, twins three times. Hey, and your life, Chloe
• 1:25:56
  Gooding. She's answering the question.
• 1:26:01
  She is, yeah. Take great.
• 1:26:06
  Take great care. You should not never rush into
• 1:26:10
  anything. Never.
• 1:26:13
  I think that's the biggest take away.
• 1:26:16
  And when you are not rushing, are you OK?
• 1:26:24
  Are you all right? Are you hungry?
• 1:26:28
  And she's like, Mom, this is a long interview.
• 1:26:31
  They're almost done. Chloe girl.
• 1:26:33
  I think as Christians you should have somebody that you're
• 1:26:39
  getting biblical advice from. Don't drop.
• 1:26:43
  So a priest, a pastor there, there should be somebody that
• 1:26:48
  you are saying, hey, I need some biblical counsel.
• 1:26:53
  What do you say though the couples?
• 1:26:54
  I've heard this biblical counsel that tells them to abort, the
• 1:26:58
  biblical council that tells them to contraceptive.
• 1:27:01
  I mean, that's the thing, right? We're living in that space
• 1:27:05
  today. There's actually denominations,
• 1:27:07
  there's actually people that out there are promoting abortion in
• 1:27:10
  the name of faith. I don't know what to tell those
• 1:27:13
  people, to be honest. Like, I don't know, to me.
• 1:27:21
  To me, I don't think that God wants anybody to take a life of
• 1:27:26
  a baby. Like I just don't think that's
• 1:27:30
  the answer. And if you have someone that's
• 1:27:33
  supposedly you're like pastor, your priest, someone that's
• 1:27:39
  giving you biblical shepherding and they're telling you that I I
• 1:27:44
  would say go seek the mother opinion because keep the church.
• 1:27:51
  The Church doesn't teach that. They just don't.
• 1:27:59
  Alex, you're my hero. You are so much my I mean, I
• 1:28:03
  when I saw you, when I saw your story, I was like, she's my
• 1:28:07
  hero. And now you're really my hero.
• 1:28:09
  I mean, even more than I'm even more inspired and I was
• 1:28:12
  extremely inspired before and I know people listening are really
• 1:28:17
  moved by you and encouraged and inspired by you.
• 1:28:20
  So thank you. Thank you for being willing to
• 1:28:22
  Share your story. Thank you for having me.
• 1:28:27
  Where can people follow you? You also are so beautifully
• 1:28:30
  sharing aspects of your life. I know you're very busy, but how
• 1:28:32
  can people find you? I'm on Instagram really only and
• 1:28:37
  I don't have a TikTok but growing goodings.
• 1:28:40
  That's it. I hang out over there.
• 1:28:45
  That's it. Like I have a YouTube, but I
• 1:28:47
  don't do YouTube. It's too much work for me with
• 1:28:49
  eight kids. So yeah, Instagram, growing
• 1:28:53
  goodings, that's where you can find me.
• 1:28:56
  Thank you, Alex. Thank you, Lila.
• 1:28:57
  You're the best. Thank you so much.
• 1:28:59
  What a blessing. Thank you, Chloe.
• 1:29:02
  You're the best. She's like, yeah, not.
• 1:29:05
  She's just like. Let's go.
• 1:29:06
  Bye. Bye.
• 1:29:08
  Love you so much. Thank you both so much.
• 1:29:10
  Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to
• 1:29:12
  this episode of the Lila Rose Show.
• 1:29:14
  I cried. I'm I'm guessing many of you did
• 1:29:16
  too. Let me know what you all think
• 1:29:18
  and share some love for Alex in the comment section here.
• 1:29:20
  You can also find her over on Instagram, Growing Goodings.
• 1:29:24
  You can follow her story there also.
• 1:29:26
  Thank you so much to everybody who is subscribing to the show.
• 1:29:29
  It's helping the show grow by leaps and bounds.
• 1:29:31
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• 1:29:34
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• 1:29:38
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• 1:29:40
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• 1:29:44
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• 1:29:47
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