Infertility Success Author Chats: Jennifer Tunny

Hey everyone, thank you so much for joining us for this edition of Infertility Success Author Chat. I have with me Jennifer Tooney tonight to share information about her story and her journey and of course her chapter. So she's going to tell us a little bit about, um, well, first of all, welcome Jennifer.

Hello. Thank you for having me. I'm excited.

Thanks for being here. I was getting ahead of myself. Um, I'm so excited for you to share your journey. I was getting ahead of myself. So, um, I wanted you to tell us, I was so excited for you to tell us like why you felt so strongly about, um, telling your story and sharing that in the, um, in the chapter for Infertility Success Stories of Help and Hope for Your Journey.

Sure. So for me, it was a super easy decision. Now, acting on that decision is another story, but I knew I wanted to share because, um, somebody else sharing their story, actually one of the authors, the other authors in the book, Amber, um, she shared her story on social media. And that is the reason that I'm here and able to kind of claim I don't know, success over the infertility that I was experiencing. So knowing how much someone else sharing changed my own life, I mean, it's just a no-brainer. I had to pay that forward and I had to share my own story in hopes that I would also be able to help somebody else because it was, I mean, it just literally, it changed my life. Somebody else sharing their story changed my life, and I can only pray that me sharing mine will do the same for somebody else.

Oh my gosh, I got chills when you said that. Um, that's amazing. So you saw Amber's Facebook post and you reached out to her and you talked to her about what she had done, um, and how she had gotten success on her infertility journey, and that led you down your path. So tell us about what that looked like. How long had you been trying to conceive, and what kind of problem— what kind of issues or problems were you facing?

Yeah, so for me, my, I guess, start to infertility really began way before I connected with Amber's Facebook post and kind of got on my path to eventually finding a solution. Uh, for me, I have to back up. I mean, I don't know, I would say that we went through infertility for almost 6 years, um, and majority of that time was before I saw that post that changed my life. Way, I don't know, my husband and I were married for about 2 years before we started kind of actively trying to conceive. And I didn't think anything of it for honestly quite a while, simply because we have a different lifestyle or we had a different lifestyle then. I wasn't able to go into a lot of detail on that other lifestyle in my chapter, because, you know, we have to limit the words there. But my husband did a lot of work on the road. And so we spent a lot of time apart in the, I mean, most of our marriage we've spent apart from each other for the better half of the year. So for the first several years of us trying to conceive, I didn't really give too much thought to it because we weren't always able to, you know, try every month, and there was just a lot of time spent apart. So I don't know, maybe about, I don't know, 2 or 3 years into our journey, I started kind of questioning things and talking to my mainstream doctor about it, and I just wasn't getting a whole lot of answers from them. And I didn't, at the time, I really didn't know what the issue could be. So I was kind of just— I just kind of went along with the flow, you know. I, yeah, I didn't really pursue too much because I didn't know what to pursue. And, you know, my husband's gone a lot of the time, so maybe it just wasn't— the timing wasn't right yet. So I just kind of floating along this river of not really knowing what was going on or if I really needed to pursue other options. Um, kind of dismissed it.

And it sounds like your doctor maybe wasn't too concerned either at that point, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, as a Catholic, you know, there's a lot of things or a lot of treatments that I didn't really feel comfortable pursuing that my mainstream doctor— that was really the only thing that they were able to offer me. And since he knew that it's not something I really wanted to pursue, he was just like, I'm sorry, I don't really have anything else to offer you. And so I just I don't know, I just felt kind of stuck for the longest time and I just thought, well, you know, maybe, maybe our timing is not right. Maybe God is not ready for us to start a family yet. You know, we have all this other stuff going on. Maybe we need to wait. But as the years went on, I started to kind of question things a little bit more. I got involved like as a health and fitness Coach and I kind of dove internally a lot and started to really focus on my health and kind of started to pinpoint a few things that seemed maybe like they were off to me. You know, I started to kind of recognize that, hey, my cycles, what, they may be regular, but are other people really like needing to call in sick to work because they can't, you know, function for a couple of days of the month? Like, is this normal? You know, this may be TMI, but I'm just like, is the amount of like clotting and things going on, is this really normal? Because maybe this Maybe this isn't normal. I just started to kind of get more in tune and in touch with my own body and started questioning things a little bit more. I was still kind of brushed off by my mainstream doctor. When I had mentioned the possibility of endometriosis to him, he's just like, eh, you don't have X, Y, or Z symptoms, so I don't think that's it. He did a couple random tests that all came back normal. And so here I was left thinking, hmm, there's nothing wrong with me. Maybe I'm just not supposed to have kids. You know, maybe that's not in mine and my husband's cards, but there's just this tug at me that said there had to be something else. There had to be more to this. You know, I wasn't really willing to accept an, um, unexplained infertility diagnosis. To me, you know, through, through those years of learning more about my body, everything has a root cause. We just have to figure it out.

Yeah.

And just working to figure that out was honestly what took so long because I didn't have a whole lot of guidance and nobody else that I knew had ever been through this. Like, nobody I knew had gone through infertility, or if they had, they certainly weren't talking about it.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I kind of just felt like I was, you know, on this dark lonely road by myself. Not— I mean, my husband was always supportive of us, but you know, he's away, he's focused on working 7 days a week, 12 hours a day, you know, like that's not on the forefront of his mind, right? And there's nobody else like for me to talk to because nobody else is talking about it.

Why am I going to talk about it?

So just really just going through all those years of unexplained or just not having any answers and not knowing where to turn. It was kind of just, honestly, I leaned a lot into my faith and just my faith in God to lead me through and to find the direction that He was wanting me to go because I didn't know where to go. I didn't know where to turn or even what answers to look for until something resonated with me with Amber's post that she shared on Facebook.

Kind of a light bulb moment, right?

Absolutely. Here, you know, like, she's really the first person that I had heard talk about, you know, struggling to get pregnant. And here I also knew that she was pregnant with her first baby, so I knew that she had to have found something that worked for her. We shared the same faith, so I knew that it could most likely maybe work for me.

Yeah, be compatible. Absolutely.

So that kind of led me down the path to finding some doctors that weren't necessarily mainstream, but that were willing to work with me to kind of dive into those root causes. And that ultimately led me to getting the answers that I needed. And we were, praise God, finally able to conceive our miracle baby.

That's awesome. Yeah, the whole endometriosis. Did you get— did you finally get a diagnosis of endometriosis?

I did.

I did.

I, I, I had no idea because, I mean, the only way to know if you have endometriosis is to actually have the surgery.

Right.

So it's kind of like a— it's a big question mark, you know, like I was talking to my specialized surgeon and naming off all these symptoms that I had, like, and getting his perspective. And he's like, Yeah, it does sound like it's a likely cause, but he goes, you know, I don't really know for sure until I can get in there and see what's going on.

Yeah. And the thing that I want the people watching, ladies, if you have these symptoms and you are suspect of this, your doctor actually cannot tell you without surgery. They are prohibited from telling you that that is the diagnosis or charting it that way without having exploratory surgery or excision surgery, which I recommend doing all in one shot personally. Find a good surgeon and one time, like, you don't, you know, you want to, you don't want to go through two laparoscopic procedures, you know, to get it done. So, but I think that it's, it confused me for a long time because he would dance around, my OB-GYN would dance around the topic and I'm like, Why can't he tell me? Why can he only say, well, maybe, or we suspect, or it could be, right? Why can't I get a diagnosis? And then I, I learned that they're, they can't do it because there's no definitive, um, there's nothing definitive. So this is where talking about your story and sharing this kind of information is so valuable because we're helping women, who are suffering, you know, with these unknown causes find, at least some sanity and, and go ahead, some courage too, to go ahead with the surgery. Right. That was the other thing, like everyone is terrified of the surgery. Oh my gosh, I'm, I have unexplained infertility, but they wanna cut me open and like scrape all this stuff outta my uterus. Isn't that gonna cause me not to be able to have a baby? Like, You know, um, and one of the things that you said earlier, it was on the tip of my tongue and now it's gone away. Oh goodness. Um, it'll come back to me in just a second, but, um, so you ended up, so we, we found some practitioners that would get to the bottom of how your body was, um, what the dysfunction was in your body. You got healthy, you got pregnant. Tell us where you are. Now?

Yeah, so now I have— well, she just turned 2 in December, so she's just this most beautiful, active, healthy, beautiful little baby girl. Uh, her name's Gabriella Grace, and she has just been seriously the best thing that's ever happened to us. Like, she is just the light of our lives, and The funny thing is we conceived her my very first cycle after the laparoscopic surgery where I had the endometriosis removed. So it's just, she's truly been a miracle. Like she was the answer to our prayers after we found the solution to the problem. It's just, it couldn't, I don't know, it's definitely divine in my mind. There's absolutely, It's all divine.

Yeah. Couldn't have worked out any other way, right? No. That's amazing. Um, what I was gonna ask you, you know, what I was gonna comment on is that you were saying how alone that you felt earlier. And I know that I felt really alone in the process too. And especially before I got pregnant the first time. And to be honest, like social media just wasn't that big of a thing back then.

Right.

You know, my, I have a 13-year-old now. And so I didn't have a lot of the Facebook groups and the community and things like that that you potentially could, you know, connect with others. Um, and so I know that I myself, I know that a lot of the other authors have said this too, but I think that you touched on this too, is that even if it helped one person sharing your story, even if it helps one person who hears this interview and look, you know, looks your story up, buys the book, you know, um, and reads the rest of your story. We all wrote this just for one person, just to help one person. If that was the only outcome of this, is that one person was helped, all 20 of us would have contributed our stories and, and poured out our hearts into these chapters.

Absolutely.

Yeah. So, um, you, uh, can connect with Jennifer also. There's a QR code at the back of each of chap— each of the chapters, and you can connect with her, um, via video and reach out to her, um, and ask any questions. I'm sure she's available to you. Um, what would you tell someone still in the trenches, Jennifer, still going through infertility, um, just confused? And maybe they haven't— uh, maybe they're also a person of faith and they have unexplained infertility and they just feel completely hopeless to do anything outside of traditional Western medicine, what would you, what would you say to encourage them?

So I think the biggest thing I would say is just to not give up, to keep kind of fighting for those answers. And my husband and I went through 6 years. I know there's people who've gone a lot longer, um, but To think that if I would have given up throughout that process and not have my beautiful baby girl, like, that is heart-wrenching to me. Like, you just can't give up. You have to be your own biggest advocate. And if somebody tells you no or gives you an answer that you don't like, go somewhere else. These doctors work for you. So if— I mean, they— you just have to fight for yourself and be your own biggest advocate and not give up until I mean, until it feels right to you, just keep, keep going. Never give up.

I agree 100%. You know, we say a lot, just because a doctor tells you that they can't help you does not mean that you can't get pregnant. So many of these stories, so many of these stories, right, came after those kind of prognosis or those kind of diagnosis. And these ladies found a way. We, we We found a way to get to the bottom of our, um, what was going on in our bodies, right? Yes. Yeah.

And there's so many other options out there other than mainstream doctors. I think it's the biggest thing. Like for so many years of our journey, I didn't realize that. So I, you asked me what that should be, the thing that I recommend, like don't settle for mainstream. If mainstream doesn't work for you, look elsewhere. There's so many other options.

Yeah. And if you haven't heard my story, maybe you don't remember this, Jennifer, but I was told I couldn't do IVF. I didn't have enough eggs. They couldn't— I couldn't have done IVF if we had the money, which we did not. But that was my backup plan. And I think that that's a lot of people's backup plans. Well, I'll do this. I'll go this far with it, but I'm going to go to IVF. Well, when IVF is not an option for you anymore, you really have to, to dig deep to find out like what your body's trying to tell you. Right.

Absolutely.

Well, thank you so much for being here. Again, if you want a copy— thanks, Jennifer, for being here tonight.

Yeah. Thank you for having me and for putting all this together, Erica. It's truly been a blessing. You've been a blessing to so many people.

Oh, that— it's very— it's been very humbling and it's humbling to hear you say that. Um, from your lips to God's ears, right? We want this to be a blessing for everybody. So, um, if you'd like to read the rest of Jennifer's story, if you'd like to read my story and the other authors, you can pick up a copy of Infertility Success: Help and Hope for Your Journey— Stories of Help and Hope for Your Journey— on Amazon via paperback or, and Kindle. And, uh, thank you again, Jennifer, so much. Health and blessings to you.

Same to you, Erica Hoke.

Thank you. Okay.