Hope for Healing: Stephanie Russick

Good morning or good afternoon or good evening, whenever you're watching this. It's morning time for Stephanie and I. Thanks for joining us for Hope for Healing. Um, this is a story of, uh, Stephanie's infertility success. Stephanie Russig is the mom of 4, like myself, and a set of twins that are 7 months old. And I wanted to have her on because her story is so amazing. And I really just hope that it gives you, uh, some hope on your journey. Stephanie, thank you so much for being with us this morning. Tell us a little bit about your infertility journey. What, what was kind of like the starting point where you knew getting pregnant was going to be a problem?

Yeah. So Erica, thank you for having me on here. It's a pleasure. Um, so I knew infertility was going to be an issue at a very young age, probably end of middle school, beginning of high school. Um, I was diagnosed with PCOS all the way back then. Um, I was having irregular periods. My mom brought me to a pediatric endocrinologist, um, and I very distinctly remember being in the room, her telling me that I may never have children of my own. Um, and that stuck with me for a very long time. When my husband and I got married, I had come off birth control, and I met with a PCOS specialty— a specialist where we were living, and I thought he was going to be like my saving grace. He, I feel like, used me as a science experiment for about a year. We were constant up and downs, up and downs, month after month. And obviously we never got pregnant with him. Then we decided to move to North Carolina. I don't know why. And I feel like it was fate that we were put in the hands of the number 3 fertility doctor in the country. So I put all my eggs in his basket, literally, and started IVF pretty much right away. He basically told me, you don't have any other option but IVF, and that would be my best bet. Um, we ended up with 6 embryos, and the first transfer we transferred 2 and none of them took, so that was extremely disheartening. And then we did another transfer, we— one took, so that was my first daughter Reagan. She's gonna be 6 this year. Um, and then about a year afterwards we moved back up to Pennsylvania, but I still had 2 embryos in North Carolina. Um, And I was like, let's do it. So I drove back and forth to North Carolina from Pennsylvania and we transferred 2 more and we got one. And that was Sadie and she's going to be 4. And then we were out of embryos and we moved back to Pennsylvania. I started up with a new doctor and we had, oh gosh, I think 9 embryos. We ended up with first 2 transfers. We did 2. None of them took. And then I got into anesthesia school. The pandemic hit. We decided to transfer 2 more. And there we go. We got the twins.

Wow.

Yeah. And we still have 3 more embryos left.

That's an incredible story. Kudos. I have to back up to the beginning of your story. So kudos to your mom, first of all, for taking that kind of action and taking you to a pediatric specialist. But at 13, like, did you really— how did you feel when that was spoken over you? Did you really internalize it? Did you think, like, there's a big gap between 13 and when you got married, so like during that time, did you— was it a part of you, like, I'm just— even, you know, talking to your husband when you guys are dating, like, I'm never going to be able to have kids, I've got this thing, like Tell me a little bit about that for yourself.

Yeah, I definitely internalized it for sure. Um, I remember hearing that, and I do remember feeling very upset about it because, like, even at a young age, I knew I always wanted to be a mom. But once I was devastated, even at 13, um, and then I think throughout the years, like, through high school and everything, I kind of was like I don't know if I came to terms with it or if I just buried it down. Yeah, until I, until I did meet my husband, and then it was like, oh God, like, now I have to actually face this. Um, but I definitely don't remember, um, talking about it or anything like that, and, uh, definitely pushing it down for sure.

Yeah. Um, I always hate to hear— you're not the only person that I've heard, um, those kind of diagnosis or prognosis spoken over at a very young age. And it's, um, it's kind of heartbreaking to think about now, like in hindsight for you, right? To think about your 13-year-old self having to kind of cope with that on your own. I, I don't know, you know, if your family helped you or not. Um, But yeah, it's a really hard thing to think about a 13-year-old going through that.

Yeah, we definitely didn't talk about it. I think in my family, that was still so young. You know what I mean? It's still 13 years old. Who's talking about having kids?

Right.

Nobody.

So, right.

It's like a thing that my mom or anybody was like, don't worry, you'll still be able to have children one day. We never talked about.

Yeah. Yeah. A little bit different times then too. So, um, so fast forward again. So, um, let's talk about the doctor. Uh, you touched on that you lost a year or two where you, where you considered yourself a science experiment. What I want people to know and what we talk a lot about on here is advocacy and asking questions and taking responsibility for your own care as much as possible, being as informed, let's say that, being as informed about your care as possible. What do you wish in hindsight you had? What conversation do you wish you had had with that doctor? Or what else do you feel like? Maybe there's nothing, but do you feel like there was something else that you could have done to not be victimized like that?

Yeah, absolutely. I think I definitely could have asked more questions. Um, I just went into it thinking, oh my gosh, like, he is gonna help me, right? I'm like, he's a PCOS specialist, like, he knows everything. He knows more than I do for sure. Um, but I think in hindsight, I would have asked to see reports. I would have, you know, explored more options and be like Listen, this isn't every month. This isn't happening. What else can we do and what else should we be doing? I definitely would have— the one thing I wish I asked for was the report of— they did that study and fluoroscopy where they look at your tube. I wish I asked for that report because he lied to me about it. He told me my tubes were fine. So we just kept doing the things every month. When I ended up going to North Carolina, the doctor there, the very first meeting, he was like, what did the doctor tell you about your tubes? And I was like, oh, he told me they were fine. Like, you know, we didn't have a problem. And he was like, no, they're completely blocked. I was like, okay, great.

So blocked beyond like doing an HSG dye test where it clears it out and They did the H—

that test, the dye where they, like, shoot it in and they see if it spills over. That's the test that they did. The doctor in North Carolina was like, listen, we can do— you have two options. We can either operate on your tubes or we can just do IVF and call it a day, and that's your best bet. And so ended up doing— yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's so frustrating. And, uh, you know, first of all, I want to say in no way am I implying, you know, that any wrongdoing on your part because I know what it's like to get into that state where like, this, this is the person, this person is gonna help me, this person's gonna fix whatever's going on with me. And you just go with it and you kind of just get wrapped up in it, right? You know, so I'm, I don't want, you know, you to feel like anybody else watching, but I'm also, you know, trying to interrupt that pattern for people going through it too, where it's like, okay, pump the brakes a little bit. And start getting really curious about what's going on and why they're telling you these things. And, you know, ask a whole lot more questions. Um, I see women that come to me every day that they say, oh, my doctor tested me for everything. Did they test you for this? And this and this and that? I don't think so. Okay. So they haven't tested you for everything. And there might be a whole gap in your care of things that you really do need tested for. Um, so, uh, so going— so is there anything else during that period of time with the, with that doctor or anything that you would like to say to a woman going through infertility right now that's struggling to find some help or that feels maybe like you did and, um, needs to ask more questions? What would you, what would you say to your previous self? If you could go back?

Um, just ask the questions for sure. And, um, it's gonna be hard, that's for sure. Like, I— going back, going through the whole process, even the most recent one, I didn't realize how hard it was for me. Like, it was an emotional roller coaster, and I didn't even know it at the time. Like, I just thought, oh yeah, like, here we go, we're going to do more shots and here's another hopeful transfer. And it never dawned on me what a toll it was taking on me until completely after the fact when everything was over and I was like, how did I do all of that? And definitely get your support system and don't be discouraged because I remember at the time all my friends were getting pregnant and I was sitting here and I'm like, oh my, it's not happening, not happening, it's not happening. And I was— it was a very strange, um, feeling. I'm sure everybody who's going through infertility has this exact same feeling where you're super happy for your best friend who got pregnant in a month, but at the same time you're angry at them, you're jealous, you're And it's just like all of these emotions all at once, but you also are trying to be so happy for them. And yeah, I completely get it. And I can't— I know everyone goes through that. And that, that was probably the hardest beyond everything else that I went through.

Yeah. And it's not even, it's not even personal. It's not even your best friend or it's not even your office worker or, you know, your coworker, whoever you're not. Necessarily even angry at that person. You're just angry that a person was able to conceive in a month and you're having to like, you know, stand on your head and balance plates.

And, you know, I used to remember dreading holidays on social media because that's when like people would post their pregnancy announcements, like, you know, Easter, we're expecting, like stuff like that. I would dread holidays because I knew someone I knew on social media was going to be posting something and I would just like be in a, like in a ball of tears.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And as we're recording that, this Mother's Day is coming up and this is like probably the hardest weekend ever, um, you know, for people going through infertility. So having your support system in place and having um, having some mental health check-ins, because I think that there's a lot of Type A personalities in the infertility world, and we just kind of want to bootstrap it and like ignore it as we're going through it. And we, you know, we need to process along the way. So let's talk about that for a minute. When, um, because the, the stress And the letdown, the, the grief from the, the failed months and things like that, those come up at different points for people. So sometimes it's when they get pregnant and they realize it's gonna be a viable pregnancy. Sometimes it doesn't happen until after the baby's born. So, um, this, this feeling that you're talking about of like, oh man, I was holding it together and now I feel like the weight of all of it. When did that actually hit for you?

Um, I think it hit for me after I was done in North Carolina, like after my second was born and I had no more embryos left.

Mm-hmm.

Thought we were done, I guess. And so it kind of came full circle for me where I was like, wow, that was a lot. Like the last 5 years or however long it was, like that was a lot of stuff on me. And then I feel like once the twins were born, it hit me again. —like how that process was too. So I think it hit me twice. Yes. Yeah. I didn't even fully recover from the first time. So for it to hit me twice just shows how much of a stress infertility in general is from the start.

Right. Yeah. And the magic fix of infertility stress and trauma is not babies. No. Yes, correct. It is not, uh, it's not birthing a baby. So a lot of, a lot of the PTSD after infertility, you know, um, that might be an episode for another day to talk about that. But as a twin mom, I'm just saying solidarity. I feel you, you know, because, um, anything up until the first year with twins, you're just, I just tell people, you're just trying not to die every day.

I'm just trying to gather every day. Yep.

Just trying to make sure everyone Lives. And that's pretty much all the expectation is. So I appreciate you being on here. That was a little bit of a spoiler, except I told you in the beginning that Stephanie does have, um, 4 kids. So where are you now?

What's going on in your life now? Now, um, obviously the twins turned, they were 7 months yesterday. You might be able to hear them upstairs in their bouncer. Um, we're all fed though. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, right now my oldest, she'll be 6 in November. She's gonna be in kindergarten next year. My second one, Sadie, she'll be 4 in August and she'll start preschool in the fall. The twins are going. Yeah. Uh, one's already crawling. The other one's about to. Oh, bless. I am an ICU nurse, so that's full swing. And, um, I start anesthesia school at the end of the month. So we are—

Goodness, Stephanie. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Busy, busy, busy, busy, busy. Well, um, thank you so much for being on here this morning. I really appreciate you sharing your story. Um, I hope that it gives someone hope on their journey and also, you know, some direction if they need some, uh, you know, you're sharing your story about your PCOS journey. And IVF. I hope that it helps somebody sharing it. We all need to know that we're not alone, right? So—

Oh yeah, you're not alone, that's for sure. You'll find some same situation somewhere. Yeah.

Yeah. So thank you again so much and have a great rest of your day. Thanks for joining me. We are here with Stories of Help and Hope. With Erica Hoke. Health and blessings to you guys. Bye-bye.