Infertility Success Author Chats- Cindy Vochatzer-Murillo

Hello, hello. Thank you so much for joining us for Infertility Success: Stories of Help and Hope for Your Journey author chat. Today I have with me Cindy Bochatsar Murillo. Hopefully I said that right. Um, and she is the author. I'm going to read this because her title of her chapter is super important and she's going to tell you why, but it's a little bit long. So Years of Infertility: Anger, SADNESS, DISAPPOINTMENT, MIRACLES, and even a girl named HOPE. So I'm sure that so many of us, Cindy, can identify with those emotions and, um, our, our years of our infertility journey. First of all, thank you so much for being on here with me and, um, sharing your story with the world through your chapter. Tell us a little bit about why you wanted to write this chapter now.

Um, I wanted to make sure I wrote the chapter because I went through my whole journey thinking this was— I was— it was only happening to me and I was all alone. I didn't have a community of people. I didn't— you didn't even really share it with people. It was a very taboo subject of infertility. You're like, you just go through it alone, like you're in this own personal nightmare by yourself. And I was like, it doesn't. It needs to be written about. People need to talk about it. We need to normalize that people have challenges having babies. So I'm saying in our homeschool room, so all the people in the United States and all the people in the whole world can have a community. Like, it really is a small world, so people, we need to connect. Like You need to connect to be like, this is going on with me. Have you ever heard of this? And we all know somebody that could be like, oh no, you need to talk to my friend so-and-so and they'll help you out with this.

Cindy, talk to my friend Cindy, right? Yes.

Talk to me about it. Yes.

Yeah. And it wasn't that long ago that, that you had your daughter. Things have changed still a lot with us being able to connect via social media and establish that community. I know both of us have groups that support different people. I have Infertility Empowered that support people. You also run a support group for people who are— tell us.

Well, I— my group is—

let's—

soon to be changing, but my group is Moms in the Middle. Since I'm an older mom, right, I had aging parents, so it's a hard thing raising your kid and then trying to figure out as your parents get older and all the strangle— struggles and challenges they go through. It's, it really is a mom in the middle, what used to be called the sandwich generation. And it needs support also.

Yeah. And so all that to say, the reason I bring that up is you're able to support your people. I'm supporting people going through infertility. It is changing a little bit that we have more support and more community in the world, but this is a big problem. Infertility is a big problem. It affects 1 in 6 families. And I say families, um, or couples, because it's not just female infertility. A third of all cases are male factor infertility as well. And so, um, there's a lot of us out there. So, um, tell us about your chapter. Um, what was it that you were going through during your— you had a really long infertility journey. So tell us about that period of time in your life.

Yes, um, I— my husband and I got married and we decided not to have a family right away. So right before I turned 30, we decided to stop using birth control and thought it was time to have a family. And I thought that was just how easy it was. I got— grew up, I got married, have a kid, and then you didn't realize that you would have a struggle. And my period stopped, and I was like, well, maybe I'm pregnant, let me go to the doctor and figure it out. And that's when they ran my hormones and found out I had 4 times the amount of testosterone, and I— my progesterone is like obsolete. So they diagnosed me with something called PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome. Other than those numbers on my lab test, I didn't have anything else to go with PCOS. And it was a very new diagnosis back then, or— but then I went into rooms and I was like, they were like, 1 out of 10 people has PCOS. And then I would go into a room of 10 people and 9 out of 10 women had PCOS. So I was like, we either have a challenge here or we're overdiagnosing and labeling something.

Yeah, something's not connecting there, right? So did the doctor offer you any treatment for your PCOS?

Um, she— one of her solutions for balancing my hormones was saying I needed to go back on birth control. It really literally had me scratching my head figuring out how I was going to have a child while I was on birth control. It was very confusing to me, and that's when I began to question everything in the modern medical world. I was like, this makes no sense.

Yeah. Um, that's a story for another day. I think for both of us, um, I also had PCOS, but had none of the typical, like I was an atypical case or whatever. So you're diagnosed with PCS. They want you on birth control. You don't want to go on birth control. So then you just start, then what happens?

Then I started, um, taking matters into my own hands by doing my own research and starting to eliminate chemicals in my body. I gave up soft drinks because my stomach during this time, my whole gut and intestines was a hot mess. And I was like, well, maybe if I start working on making this better, something else will happen. And it really did. I just eliminated soft drinks and I was like, look how much my whole health has changed just by getting rid of not just the sugary drinks, but that carbonation is something else.

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting that you say that. Um, it's a few different things we know, right? It's the sugar, but then it's the corn syrup too, but then it's the carbonation. I fooled myself for years with the seltzer water because I, I still was kind of addicted to that. That bubble, that bubbly drink or whatever, but the carbonation still caused me, you know, problems. So I noticed that I felt a lot better when I didn't drink it.

Yes. And there are— and now we have a whole world that drinks just carbonated, unflavored water, and it makes it very funny to me because I was like, you gave up the syrup, but you still have the carbonation, one-third of the problem out there. Yep.

Yep, absolutely. So it was, um, from the, the time that you started this journey, um, just before you were 30 until you got pregnant with your daughter, um, how many years did you experience infertility?

It was almost exactly 7 years because I started in May before I turned 30, and my daughter was born at the end of May 7 years later, so right before I turned 37.

Wow, that's a long time. So you start making diet changes, you start eliminating toxins, and how, how close to those things, how much longer did it take then for you to get pregnant?

I think I did most of those very early on, so I made the changes very early on, so it was probably a good 5 years left in the journey. So much that I— we tried a few more things and I was like, after this, I'm fine not being a mom. If God wants me not to be a mom, then, then I'm going to be fine with that.

Yeah, yeah, it's a hard thing that, um, you know, many of us go through is that crisis. I call it a crisis of faith, a questioning of faith of what is, what is actually going on in our relationship with the Lord, right? So, um, So what is your— what's your life like now? You have— I kind of spilled the beans a minute ago— you have a daughter. She's how old?

Um, on Monday she turns 9.

Wow.

So 9 years. She was baptized 9 years ago on our 12th wedding anniversary. So that officially makes me an— well, back then it made me an older mom. Now people are older than me, but yeah, an older mom of a young child. I could be an empty nester. But I have an 8-year-old now, so I could— I wouldn't ask for anything better. I was meant to be an older mom.

Yeah, I agree. I agree as an older mom myself. So, um, Cindy has an amazing rest of her story. It's included in her chapter in Infertility Success, available on Amazon here. Um, you see it behind me. Um, she's got some good resources in the back of her chapter, as all the authors that contributed to it, uh, do. And, um, Cindy, what would you say to women who are still like in the trenches that are hearing your story, that are like, okay, I made diet and lifestyle changes. I'm, I'm doing these things too, but I don't know how much longer I can I don't know how much longer I can do it, right? What would you say to them, those, those women who are still going through infertility?

I would say don't give up. Get the book and read the book, and then befriend all the authors in the book, because we— if one of us hasn't went through it, somebody else has went through it. And, and think even more out of the box. Like, there's so many good stories about all the different things that we can do, and now there's even more different things. It's just good to have that support because it's— when you get into a dark place, you don't see the light. So stay in the light with all of these other women that have been through it and are going through it, and it makes it so much easier. It does make it— it's a very, very hard thing, but it makes it fun and easier to walk through it in a community like we would have done back in the day. You would have had your circle of girlfriends and be like, oh my gosh, today is just a awful day. I, you know, I can't, I can't stand tracking my cycle one more time. I can't stand taking one more test and it says no with one drop of urine on it. So just find your tribe of women, and lucky for them, we have already found them all, and just connect with all of us.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, um, so much for bringing up that point too, because the, the collaboration is 20 different authors and they're from all different all different methods that they got pregnant in terms of some of them were donor eggs, some of them were IVF, other types of reproductive medicine. Some of them were natural conceptions like Cindy and I. And so there's something in there for everybody. And we all said, right, we all said that if we only helped just one woman who reads this book, we would have done the project again, you know, just if it only helped one person. So I hope that you'll, um, hop over to Amazon and pick that up. Cindy, thank you so much for being on here and most of all for sharing your chapter and sharing your story. And, um, we'll be back another time with author chats for Infertility Success: Stories of Help and Hope for Your Journey. I'm Erica Hoke, fertility coach, and leader of Infertility Empowered on Facebook. Health and blessings to you. Bye-bye.

Bye, everybody.