#34: when it feels like things will never change

plus a Perelel promo code & the cutest, tiniest, egg pan 🍳

Two years ago, right around now, we were waiting on results from our second egg retrieval after our first one had failed just a few months earlier. We had switched clinics and doctors. I had taken time off supplements and tracking my cycles. I went to Berlin in the dead of winter and walked for hours, popping into cafes, mostly just wandering in the cold. I got a tattoo in Santa Monica. I finally painted the hallway in our apartment green after years of avoiding paint because I thought it was killing my eggs. I wrote fertile on the wall before painting over it because I didn’t know what else to do except hope loudly. It was a really, really dark season.

Then the year turned. January came, and suddenly we were by the ocean, the sun beating down as yellow flowers dotted the cliffsides. We held our breath, trusted a new doctor, and tried again. It was one of the scariest and bravest things I’ve ever done—to hope again after that same hope had been crushed months earlier. We ended up with two PGT-normal embryos. One of those embryos is now my eight-month-old daughter.

Something I think about a lot with infertility is how many places hold memories. I walk through the world with my baby and keep running into older versions of myself. Coffee shops where I journaled. Streets I walked the dog while waiting for phone calls. Restaurants and stores where I watched other moms and thought, that might never be me.

This week, a friend surprised me with her pregnancy announcement. She held up her ultrasound on FaceTime and I immediately started crying. No one had ever surprised me before, because I was always the friend who needed to be told gently. It was something I didn’t even realize I had lost because of infertility — and in that moment, I felt it come back.

With spring just a few weeks away, I keep thinking about how fast things can shift. I know how empty those words feel when you’re in the middle of infertility and IVF treatments. But I think about the long drive I made twice in late 2023 and early 2024, almost six months apart. The first time was after an email from our clinic saying none of our embryos had made it. I had a panic attack and barely remember driving back to Los Angeles. That was October. By March, I was driving that same stretch of highway when our new clinic called to say we had two healthy embryos. Same drive. Same playlist. My hair only barely longer.

And yet.

If you’re in it right now, I know how heavy the waiting and wondering is. Will it ever change? When will it change? Will I ever recover from this? You don’t need to feel hopeful. You don’t need to stay positive. That’s not what this is about. Rather, it’s about putting one foot in front of the next. That’s all we can really do, I think. Getting through the day is enough. It’s brave and hard, and it’s enough.

But if I can offer you this — an offering to you and for an older version of myself. Know that it can change. The sun does come out. And suddenly it’s spring.

xx Kayti

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🎧 and that’s a wrap!

We’ve officially wrapped season 2 — can you believe it?! ✨ You can catch up on all the episodes on Spotify and Apple. We’ll be back later this spring for season 3, and we have such a beautiful, stacked lineup of guests. We can’t wait for you to listen and share these conversations with us!

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💜 small “j” joys:

• With concerns about data collection and the pull to get off our phones, we are loving this book for tracking our hormones analog-style

• One of our favorite woman-owned brands for prenatals, protein, CoQ-10, and more is offering 15% off for FriedEggs listeners - use code FRIEDEGGSPODCAST15

• this social media trend (can you tell who is who?!)

• an important conversation about men’s fertility that gives us so much hope

• the cutest little egg pan to get our choline 🥹

  weekend mood:

  

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