God also brought me to my life’s purpose through infertility, which is to help others going through it.
Intro
Whoever thought making a baby could be so hard? Luckily, the fertility journey isn’t meant to be traveled alone. Eloise Drane has helped hundreds of people build and grow their families over the last 15 years. And she’s ready to share insider knowledge and expertise with you. So grab a seat and let’s talk fertility and alternative family building in the fertility cafe.
Eloise Drane
Hello, and thank you for joining me today on Fertility Café. I’m your host Eloise Drane. Our guest Anna Flores Locke struggled for years with infertility in isolation and heartbreak, not knowing where to turn. As a Latina woman, she shares her infertility story in the hope that she found along the way. Her experience with embryo donation is eye-opening, and one that isn’t usually talked about in this way, how we helped shift her perspective helps others make the right decision for them. Since her experience thankfully, many changes have been made to provide women with counseling and support to assist them in the process of fertility treatment and embryo donation in particular.
We hope this conversation provides education, emotional support, and a sense of community for the women who are walking in her shoes and are feeling alone on their fertility journey. Dr. Anna Flores Locke is an international award-winning author and educator who has worked in the mental health profession for more than 15 years. She holds a doctorate in counseling and is a licensed professional counselor in New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and Puerto Rico. She currently owns Shalonda counseling services, a virtual infertility Counseling Center and is an assistant professor at Nyack College.
Dr. Anna is an active leader in the American Counseling Association and the author of body betrayal, understanding and living with infertility, and introduction to 21st century counseling a multi-cultural and social justice perspective. From her personal and clinical experience with infertility, she created the fertility clarity approach to infertility counseling. She is a Latina twin mom from Chicago who currently lives in New Jersey and enjoys dancing and going to the beach. Thank you for joining us today. Although I shared a bit about your bio like to start off by having you share a bit about yourself.
Anna Flores Locke
Sure, well, I am a twin mom, boy-girl twins. Their names are Charles and Alejandra and they were conceived through IVF. About nine years ago, they’re gonna be nine soon. And I am a small business owner of a group private practice and mental health counseling and infertility counseling in New Jersey, and we offer online and in-person counseling services. And the name of that practice is a combination of my son and daughter’s names. So I call it Charlandra counseling services. And I’m also an assistant professor at Nyack College in New York City. And I love going to the beach and line dancing.
Eloise Drane
Line dancing? That’s totally different. We’ll have to talk about that offline. Okay. Well, so a lot to unpack here. First, you know, as you say, infertility is isolating, discouraging, and agonizing. Can you share what it’s really like to go down the rabbit hole of infertility? Like, really that rabbit hole?
Anna Flores Locke
Well, my rabbit hole began when I got married, which is now I think, 12 years ago, and my husband and I, we were older when we got married, got married in the Roman Catholic Church. My dream wedding, family, friends, everyone there witnessing I, you know, gave flowers to the Virgin Mary, praying for that fertility, praying for the baby to come as soon as possible. Right away, we’re trying to have a baby, right after we got married. And we tried for like three years and there was no baby. So month after month, it was that disappointment when my period came. We’re not pregnant this month, no, not this month. And my husband would say, we’ll keep trying, it’ll happen just be patient.
And I, of course, was not patient after months and months of trying and became very frustrated and very ashamed. I think it’s a shame that I was not getting pregnant. And it was supposed to be happening, right. Like I did everything right. In my viewpoint, especially as a Latina daughter of a family. It was get married in the Catholic Church, and then have children and I did that progression and it wasn’t happening. So that’s where my rabbit hole began was right after getting married and not being able to get pregnant.
Eloise Drane
So did you after three years, and why did you wait three years?
Anna Flores Locke
We were just fighting my husband and I. And our fighting kept us from seeking out the resources. And I didn’t know I had infertility. I didn’t know even what that was. So it was just kind of this experiencing the disappointment in silence. And then what ended up happening with that anger was it, we turned it, I turned it in, I turned it on to my husband. So I called it called, like, the blame game in the bedroom. So my husband and I, kept blaming my husband, my husband didn’t blame me, but I had to blame someone, I have to find some kind of answer to what was happening. So I would blame him. And I will tell him, he’s drinking too much diet soda, he’s not exercising, and, you know, anything that would try to change our situation. And I think, because we were just fighting so much, we were not in a place of acceptance, that there was a problem. And so we just never saw that treatment.
I don’t remember. I guess somewhere along the line, my OB-GYN referred this to an infertility clinic, she did, I think, maybe a year or two into it. But even at that point, it was still in a denial place. And I first kind of tried, like, natural, holistic ways of getting pregnant. And I wanted to, for me, that was more aligned with my Catholic viewpoints, which was, you know, God will bless us when it’s time and we’ll do natural ways. That didn’t work. That was my first kind of fertility clinic. And then the second one we went to, I ended up not succeeding through the IUI is that we were scheduled to go we didn’t even do it, because my husband couldn’t provide the sample. So and the doctor just was like, Well, I probably wouldn’t have worked anyway. Which made me cry. Exactly. So I was like, Okay, I don’t like you, you made me cry. This is not okay.
Eloise Drane
So why would they offer to do IUI if they thought that it was not going to work anyway?
Anna Flores Locke
Well, I think from now, what I know now, you know, this is now you know, 11 years into kind of the fertility experience and field, I understand that insurance benefits mandate doing IUIs first. So I think they were following that protocol. And so that was the second clinic. And then the third. So I ended up firing that doctor basically and saying, No, I do not feel any emotional connection with you, this is not going to work for me. And I went to my third Doctor, Dr. Barron, with who we are still friends with and collaborate together to help other patients. I see that the fertility Institute of New Jersey in New York and with her, I felt the connection. And that’s when I did really go fully committed into my fertility experience to conceive through medical means.
Eloise Drane
So did you have to complete more than one round of IVF? Or did you just do one?
Anna Flores Locke
So we were very blessed that the first time we did IVF, we got pregnant with the twins.
Eloise Drane
So was it on purpose to transfer two embryos?
Anna Flores Locke
Yeah, so at the time, nine years ago, when my doctor called me and said, You are strong embryos, we could put in one or we could put in two, it’s up to you. And I was like, I’m okay with twins. Go for two. And it was also I think, very meant to be that way. Because I believe in visualization and vision boards, I had a vision board at the time to keep me focused on the process. That was a long one to keep my stamina up when we were going through all the procedures. And on the vision board happened to be a picture of two babies. So there was an image of twins already in my future. I remember as well The Game of Life when I would play that as a kid, I would land on the little you know, you spin and you move your little car and I will land on you have twins. I was meant to be a twin mom. And so I was okay with the twins. Yeah. And they put in the two embryos and I got pregnant.
Eloise Drane
So did they ever figure out what your diagnosis was?
Anna Flores Locke
So yes, so after they delivered the twins through C section. That’s when my OB-GYN saw that I had endometriosis.
Eloise Drane
Oh, but so it was never detected beforehand.
Anna Flores Locke
Never detected beforehand. No.
Eloise Drane
Did you have any symptoms?
Anna Flores Locke
No, I didn’t have any symptoms of endometriosis.
Eloise Drane
Wow, well, can we touch on the cultural factors that underpin and contribute to the silence and shame around Latinx infertility? Just, you know, I know you mentioned, you waited around for three years. And obviously, you were with family kind of you already have this process this, this projection of how your life was going to be. And I know that it’s a big shoot. Then I’ve mentioned this many times, when I went to go and become an egg donor, I was told that black women didn’t have fertility issues. And I think there’s definitely the same stigma in the Latin community. So what do you think is, what do you think your perspective there?
Anna Flores Locke
Yeah, I agree with you so that it’s so stigmatized in our communities. First of all, the topic of sexuality is not talked about. So you’re not talking about sex, you’re not gonna talk about fertility, right. And like you said, the stereotype is that we are hypersexual, or we are hyper fertile. And, that’s kind of like what the Latina woman is known for, in a way, right, being sexual and being pregnant. So there was that sense of inadequacy and my own identity as a Latina, that I wasn’t those things for though or hypersexual, and there was also the pressure of the obligation to my family to have the baby. You know, I have a Ph.D., I own a business, I own a home. I have many accomplishments, but none of that mattered to my parents, especially after I got married. What mattered was, where’re the grandkids? Where’s my kid? Mike, they call their kids, right? Where are the grandkids? And so it really put me into a depression of like, worthlessness. Because if my only definition of what a real worthy Latina woman meant was to have children, and I wasn’t meeting that goal, then what was I?
Eloise Drane
Huh? Huh? Hmm. Yeah. Yeah,
Anna Flores Locke
It felt like I was nothing, I was worthless, I was not meeting my obligations as a wife either. So it was so intense that pressure, that cultural obligation, and then on top of it, that layer of it being a taboo topic, or something stigmatized, or something that doesn’t exist in our cultures. So then how can I even open up and talk to anyone about it? Especially when in our culture is we keep our problems in the family? Yes, we don’t go outside the house. We write. We don’t air our dirty laundry. So I got some dirty laundry, and I can’t hear it outside nor inside.
Eloise Drane
So what are you gonna do?
Anna Flores Locke
So what happened, I went in words, which led to my depression, and sense of isolation. And for me that look like anxiety and anger, and the target was my husband and our marriage. So kind of interesting factor with my story as well is that my husband is white American. So there’s the cultural factor of him being white, and me being Latina. And so for him, in the white culture, he didn’t have the experience of his family, putting pressure or demand on him about having a child. And also, I mean, it allowed me access to medical care, because we live in a white affluent suburb now. And he has good medical insurance, and I was able to get the doctors to help me.
But along with the doctors and their access, my cultural identity of being Latina was not addressed either in those areas. So that was an interesting piece, as I reflect on my experience like, the Latina part of me wasn’t really talked about even when I did enter into reproductive medicine. And that’s something now that I’m very committed to because, again, it’s like, without talking about culture, and identity, you’re missing out on the totality of a person. So and then you really can’t help them in the way that they truly need to be helped and supported within their cultural world.
Eloise Drane
How did your family respond when you if you that you had to do IVF and you know, you had to go down that road? Because I know for myself, I didn’t have infertility. But when I decided to be an egg donor and a surrogate, my mom is Catholic and trying to explain to her, that was not the easiest conversation.
Anna Flores Locke
No. Well, I was lucky because I live in New Jersey and all my family’s in Chicago. So it was a good and bad a good one that I could easily hide. A bad and that I was isolated from my family. So to your question, I never had to tell them, and they never saw it happening. Because I was in New Jersey doing it all and they just never knew.
Eloise Drane
Oh, well, I’m sure they know now.
Anna Flores Locke
They know now it’s in the book. So it was so when I was writing my book, I was more afraid of my parents reading it than the public. So being in New Jersey away from my family allowed me to hide, but again, like the cost to me was, I was going to medical appointments by myself, or you know, if my husband can take me, but mostly by myself. And that, again, just contributed to my depression and isolation in the whole thing. And then it was, you know, funny kind of after, or while I was writing my story, I was remembering Oh, I think my aunt had some infertility thing going on.
This was like, 20 years ago, to me, I guess I was younger, right? I was younger, I guess it would have been 20. I don’t know. It was a while ago. So I vaguely remember it. But when I was going through infertility, I didn’t remember it at the time, either. So if there was one person in my family I could have talked to, would have been this one aunt who did have infertility because of a brain tumor. She wasn’t able to. But I didn’t remember I didn’t think to talk to her even until now, after reading the books. He’s also like, I know, now we connect on that story. But at the time, I didn’t even remember, I didn’t think to contact her.
Eloise Drane
And I think it’s also a disservice that we, as a society do because it’s not just about us, or even our family past, moms or aunts or whatever. But what about our children? Like we, you know, we go through these things in silence, and we don’t share anything, not knowing what our children are going to endure? And why would we want them to go down the same path, the same road? When if we just would begin sharing what we’re going through, and then help them so that they know to begin looking at things much earlier than what we would have ever considered doing? That would make a significant impact in their life
Anna Flores Locke
And it’s interesting, you mentioned the kids because with my kids now that I am a very open book and advocate in the field of fertility, mental health. They know, I mean, they’re only going to be nine. They know to how their developmental understanding of reproduction, they know how they were conceived. And as they get older, I continue explaining to them how they were conceived. But I do work with clients get provide infertility counseling, one client she’s also Latina, and she is pregnant now from a successful IVF. And part of our counseling conversations is surrounding her disclosure to her family about conceiving through IVF.
Because again, of that shame, there’s just a negative feeling connected to I conceived through IVF it’s like this implicit, I was inadequate, there was something wrong with me. I had to have a doctor make our babies and that old old idea of the test tube baby, I think still lingers in our consciousness. Like your baby was conceived in a petri dish, and then they put it in you. Yeah. Like what are you doing right? Especially with conservative Catholic viewpoints. It’s so mysterious to us that it’s like, God should be doing that stuff, not doctors. You’re messing around with stuff that God does kind of thing. And so that’s part of our conversation. And so it’s interesting that you bring up the children because then it’s also a matter of disclosing to your own kids how they were conceived, disclosing to your family how they were conceived. And then getting to your own place of acceptance surrounding that aspect of this story.
As for me, it was like, Well, God works through doctors, and God brought this doctor into my life to conceive the babies. And God also brought me to my life’s purpose through infertility, which is to help others going through it. So I am grateful. And I am blessed for God’s provision upon this aspect of my story. So to me, it’s very connected, it’s not separate, you know, God in medicine and very connected.
Eloise Drane
Yes, and I do think to that, going back to okay, it should be left up to God to, you know, get you pregnant or whatever. But then, if you think about it, the only thing that the fertility not only thing, but thing that the fertility clinic or reproductive endocrinologist did was transfer that embryo into the uterus. They have no more control after that, right? After that, then it’s God or the universe, or whatever people want to call it. But there’s something that is still kept secret that no one would ever know. Right? So I do feel that, although we have the ability, and we have the opportunity, and we have the means to be able to do certain things in this world, right, as human beings, but there are still things that I feel wasn’t released to us will never be released to us.
Because even like I said, when that already transfers that embryo, it’s not up to the artery, whether you’re going to get pregnant or not. It’s not up to you. It’s not up to anybody. No, you know, what, God so it’s just like, you know, and like he says, Faith without works is dead. So you still have to go and do the work in order for him then to take over. So okay, I can go down that rabbit hole. I have a whole lot more we got to talk about specifically about Okay, so you finished having your children and decided that you were done and then and then what?
Anna Flores Locke
Yeah, well, I thought I was done. And I say it that way. Because again, through writing my story, I realized that I was in a very post-traumatic, stressful situation. And, I conceptualize it that way because the process of going through infertility treatments, the process of a high-risk pregnancy, the high risk, or the experience of a C section, all of that was traumatic, for me and for others going through. It’s a very traumatic experience that I think we don’t talk about it in that essence. And so, and being traumatic what that means is your psychic experience overwhelms your ability to psychologically cope. So for me, what ended up happening is I shut down my emotions. So I compartmentalize and I go into that survival mode of a doctor telling me what to do. I do it, I get pregnant I do, you know, I just survive day by day had the babies again, another year or two of just survival because I had to raise twins now and be a mom.
So all my emotions were never there were numbed out. And because that happens, emotions don’t go away over time. They remain. And then we experience triggers sometimes. And so my trigger was, you know, going back to like the open house for my fertility clinic, they had a grand opening in the new office, and I went there to so my support, and I was triggered from the equipment, the medical equipment, that all brought me back to the traumatic experience of the examinations, the probing, the ultrasounds, the pap smears, the blood work, all of those invasive interventions that I never emotionally felt when I was going through them came back.
And so because I was so emotionally distraught from just that visit to the office, and my doctor even said, Well, yeah, you know, you can have another one because I had frozen embryos at this point, I think, like six of them, and the babies were like three or so at the time. So the doctor was like, yeah, go let’s try for another one. And I was just like, No way. Again, only the traumatic emotions I was experiencing, led me to that answer, not an actual objective process for me. So that’s why I said, I thought, you know, I thought I was done.
And, part of me now after writing my story and reflecting on my experience and realizing like, Okay, I ended up making a quick decision from an emotional place, because of the trauma to donate my embryos to other parents who want to want to have babies, that I was not ready to make that decision at the time. I sat with a lot of regrets for a long time. Because a couple of years later, or even, yeah, I kept having this feeling of wanting to have a third and fantasizing oh, maybe we will get pregnant, maybe somehow, I will get pregnant, naturally. And that never happened. And so I did have the regret of like, I wish I had my embryos because then I would probably try again.
Eloise Drane
So you had your remaining embryos? Yeah. And then you decided after that, that you were going to donate your embryos. And so did you donate it to the clinic, or through the clinic rather?
Anna Flores Locke
Yeah. So at the time, they no longer do this, but at the time, they had an anonymous donor program. So I signed off my rights, legal rights to my embryos, which meant that I was not able to get any, I’m not able to get any information about the outcome of the embryos. So my husband and I signed the form, mailed it in. And then they did what they do with the embryos, I don’t even know what happened to him.
Eloise Drane
And then, and then a couple of years later, is that when you started thinking about maybe I want to have another child, did you? So when you did that, did they have you go through any counseling? Did you speak to anybody? Did anybody kind of explain that whole process to you of what is going to be like when you donate your embryos?
Anna Flores Locke
No, there was nothing, unfortunately. And also I didn’t know what to ask, either. I just was given three options at the time, because you don’t remember what they were. Yeah. So they were just discarded them, donate them to science, or donate them to other parents, or other people wanting to conceive. So for me, all three were not good options. But the one that seemed the best one was to donate them to give the embryos a chance at living at becoming a baby. So that’s what we ended up deciding. But, you know, I, it was twofold. It was the clinic, at the time, didn’t offer counseling or support.
And then I didn’t know to ask, either, because I know if I did ask, they would have slowed it down, they would have provided me with resources, but I just didn’t even ask, I just was like, what are the options, and they told me, and then I just kind of decided it was just very quick. I didn’t give myself that time to process and take time to do it. And now actually, after, you know, talking with you, at the conference about this experience, and knowing now that there is counselors who you can talk to there is legal aspects regarding donating. I did go back to Dr. Mayer, and I was just like, Well, I’m just curious, like, is there a way I can know any information about what happened to the embryos? And they said, No, you can’t. And I said, Okay, just reflecting from my experience, I just wanted to encourage people who are in my position to donate embryos are provided with the resource to have counseling because it is an emotional decision.
They had banded up saying at this point, they no longer do the donor program. So they only, I guess, do the discard or donate to science. But they also said that they are very aware of if there’s a financial burden for people to maintain the fee to freeze the embryos that they don’t force people to make a decision, they’ll like, keep the embryos frozen until you’re ready to decide what to do with them, regardless of if you could pay for that. So you know, they’re very patient-centered, and they’re very caring, and I was appreciative of that. And at the same time, we had a conversation about that additional level of counseling support for people deciding what to do with embryos.
Eloise Drane
Yeah. I know right now that embryo disposition is a huge issue now, because, if you think about it for years and years and years, people have been creating embryos, and they may have completed their family building, but he had these embryos sit. And similar to you, they don’t want to discard them, they don’t want to donate them to science, but thinking about, okay, potentially, there could be somebody else out there with me now it’s not just my genetics, it could my children’s genetics like my children can have full siblings out there somewhere.
And you have absolutely no concept of where, who, or any of those details it and I’m sure it’s a very scary thought to think about. So what, what do you How have you processed? And I know, we were talking at the conference, but how do you process through that knowing Okay, I can’t discard them. I don’t want it to be science, but I have to make the decision. But what do you you know, what do you have to go through in your head in order for you to be able to say, Okay, I’m ready?
Anna Flores Locke
Yeah, yeah, that’s a great question. So I mean, my process was, I remember reading a book about adoption, because I was helping another client out with her own adoption story. So I was reading on adoption. And as I was reading it, I almost felt like I was the mother who gave her babies up for adoption. That’s how emotionally you felt for me donating my embryos, because in my mind, and in my heart, each of those embryos were my babies. So I went through a period of grief, in my heart feeling like I gave up my babies for adoption, meaning I donated my embryos. So there was a grieving process. There was talking with my husband about it.
And his viewpoint was very much like if the babies were conceived by other individuals, we gave the gift of life to another family to help them build their family. And that was kind of comforting. After I kind of went through the grieving process. It was comforting to know, okay, well, if God decided that those embryos were meant to live, there’s another family that’s blessed, because of them. And then I’m definitely an open door with my home as well. So I welcome any of those feature any of my children’s siblings out there showing up at any time at my door, and I will love them as if I knew them their whole life. So that would be like a dream to meet one of them in the future, if they were ever born. So but then, so I went through the grieving, it was comforting to know, okay, I’m blessing another family.
But it still felt like I was, my heart still felt that hole of the emptiness of missing my babies. It was the sense of like, again, that sense of, I gave my babies away, I love them. I don’t know anything about them. And there was just that empty feeling. And especially, it’s heightened when I did have that maternal instinct of like, I wanted another one, and I could have had another one, and then I would have had more control and knowledge of what happened to the embryos. So at that point, I would have thawed them I would have transferred one, and then see what happens to the others. And that would have been the end of it basically, for me.
That’s not what happened. And then talking to you and I was saying, Oh, my babies, my babies, and you just told me, You need to stop calling them your babies. Like, she’s right. And when you really got me to think of it differently, to help me detach, right to help me detach from that feeling of me abandoning my babies to a place of saying, I gifted my genetic material to someone else. And when I shifted that perspective, from my baby to genetic material, that helped me heal a lot more because now I was like, okay, genetic material. They’re not my babies because I don’t I didn’t carry them. I birth them. I’m not raising them, right. They belong to someone else now they are someone else’s baby. And, that got me to a place of peace with it.
And I do feel more whole now. And it helped me even commit more to my own two kids. Because I think sometimes when you feel like you’re lacking, you focus on what you’re lacking instead of focusing on what you have. And when I came to that place of am that lacking, I have my family, I’m going to focus on them. This is where it’s at my two little twins. Were those other embryos who became babies and who are here now. And so that has brought me so much peace and harmony to my life. That now yeah, I really do have that sense of, I guess, joy that I hopefully gifted a baby to someone else if the embryos did conceive, and were born. It took many years.
Eloise Drane
It does. I mean, it’s not a walk in the park, this is not a decision that should be taken lightly. And, and I’m glad that as an industry, we’re shifting, and realizing the importance of quite honestly, there’s no such thing as anonymity anymore. Because there, you know, with things like ancestry.com, and 23andme, and all of these other things, careful what you wish for, because somebody just may be knocking on your door. But it’s also another reason why I have always just been upfront and truthful with my family, with my children, because, you know, knowing that I have donor babies out there. I don’t want to have any surprises of you know, somebody knocking on my door. And, I think when we were at the conference I mentioned to you, you know, I have a donor baby that looks just like me. And but you know, I look at her, and I’m looking at a friend’s child.
Again, as I told you, then, what I gave was DNA. That’s what I did. Yes, it’s a part of me. But it is still DNA because I gave it hoping with the intention that it was going to work, but I can’t guarantee that it did or that it will. And yes, you hope that it worked, you know, when you have the six embryos, and hopefully, somebody has been able to use them. And maybe there’s another six Anna’s running around. But it’s still what you provided was that gift of that genetic material for, you know, like you said, that opportunity for somebody else to be a parent.
And I’m curious, though, especially given that you are Latina, had to go through IVF, and then now donated embryos, like, how do you wrap your head around that to even share it within the community, because you already know that the community is not accepting, right of even having to think about having another human get in the middle of what happens in the closed doors in your bedroom. And now you’ve done all of these extra steps.
Anna Flores Locke
Well 11 years into this, I’ve come to a place of owning my story. And I think once you own your story, now I can go out and I can talk freely about it. And so if I’m okay now with me, like my family had, a lot of my family members have bought the book have read the book. And some of my cousins, I have lots of cousins, and they’re getting married older, which is the current trend, right? People are postponing marriage. So I have a cousin of getting married next month. And so I’m kind of already preparing myself at least to be there for her if I do see like her struggling with conceiving or even just broaching the topic with her about, oh, like, after you guys are buried, and you’re having trouble conceiving, I went through that same thing, and I can support you in that.
And so, with the book being out there, my family members reading it with my own courage that I have because I own my story, I can openly talk about it, and which for most of our family members means starting with simple education about what is IVF? What is infertility? And most of the time I can share that information and they are open to hearing it. They’re supportive, you know, and I haven’t really talked to them about the embryos. I mean, again, they’ve read it in the book, but not details as far as, like you mentioned, what it means to maybe there are some other family members out there, you know, and that whole thing is, we haven’t talked about yet. But if we do, then I just explained to them the way it is. And that’s all I can do.
You know, and I think it’s helpful to remember that we can’t control how other people react or perceive information. So once you decide to say, Okay, I’m going to disclose my story. It’s up to them to react and have their questions or comments. And sometimes, yeah, you’re going to face those, I call them you know, reproductive microaggressions.
Which are those little insults and those little comments of like, you know, well, when you’re trying to conceive, what’s you know, what are you doing wrong, and it takes five minutes, just relax, go on vacation, you have a baby, like, you know, all these statements that people will say, that are hurtful, so we are going to have reproductive microaggressions. And that’s part of this journey, unfortunately. But it’s not something that we can’t cope with and handle. And learn skills to react to those comments in a way that doesn’t further emotionally damage us than we already are feeling in this whole process.
Eloise Drane
So you created the fertility, clarity, counseling approach to provide others with the emotional relief and support that you never received? What support have you seen, specifically needed to support women of color and Latinas? And I mean, just really, anybody in general, quite frankly, on the infertility journey?
Anna Flores Locke
Yeah. So what I have seen is just the ongoing support throughout the whole journey, because infertility never ends. So I still face emotional struggles when somebody gets pregnant. So what I have found is, you know, the industry is very good at helping clients, patients who are like in the midst of the journey, right, like deciding what option to do. There is psychological care and support in those moments. However, the ongoing support of like, okay, we did an IVF, and that failed. At that moment, there’s a loss of that dream of having the baby. So there’s grief work that has to happen at that point.
That’s where fertility clarity comes in. When you then decide then you go through grief. And then you’re like, Well, do I want to try again, or not try again, there are so many junctures of decision points that require ongoing counseling support. That’s where fertility clarity helps patients, deciding what am I going to do next, keeping their stamina to keep going, if that’s what they want to do. And sometimes that means taking a pause and saying, I’m going to take a break for a couple months. And in counseling, talk about my grief, my disappointment, my frustration, my sense of isolation, and just come to a place of acceptance of, okay, I have infertility, or I’m having trouble conceiving. That’s part of my story and this is the journey I’m on right now.
And this is where I’m going to go from here. So that’s really kind of what the fertility clarity program is designed to do is to really give ongoing emotional support throughout the journey. And that may not always mean becoming a parent, there may become a time where you decide I’m going to live childfree, or I’m going to adopt, again, all these decisions are so complex. The way that we need that emotional support from a trained helping professional who can guide you through that. And along with that, not only individually but for the couple.
So this is a couple going through this process, how to maintain their intimacy, how they regain their intimacy, once trying to conceive takes it from them, right? Sex becomes a chore and no longer pleasurable and that impacts the whole relationship in the marriage. So that’s an aspect of fertility clarity, as well as getting the couples to talk to each other about this whole thing.
Eloise Drane
And does it get better after you ended up having your children and you were done and now you’re a mom of exactly what you wanted? Do all of those feelings and issues go away?
Anna Flores Locke
No. No, because like we said earlier, you know, after I got married, it was, oh, I’m going to get pregnant and oh, we’re going to have a baby shower, and oh, I’m gonna walk around with my bump, and, oh, it’s gonna be glorious. And then oh, we’re gonna have another one, you know, this whole fantasy that a lot of girls carrot women carry. And none of that happens for me. So I didn’t have a baby shower, I was in the hospital, most of my pregnancy, I didn’t have the natural birth experience. It was a C section. And I was so drugged out that I fell asleep, I just blacked out. And I didn’t hold my babies after they were born, they were born premature, they were put into the NICU. I didn’t see him till the next day. So this whole fantasy of how I thought it would look like did not happen.
So even though I have my babies, I have my twins now, it’s nine years later, there’s still grief that happens, that is happening because I didn’t have those happy moments, those rituals I didn’t go through. And so now you know, fertility never ends. And I still feel and it’s my own process, something we do infertility clarity is, you know, write a letter to your uterus. And I have to do that because there’s a sense of like, uterus, you betrayed me like you didn’t do what you were supposed to do. And I still feel that month after month of not getting pregnant with my husband. And so that feeling of like, I’m still not a fully functioning woman, in some ways. So that’s an area of healing for me to continue doing. But yeah, now just because you have the babies doesn’t make it all go away.
Eloise Drane
What would you like for women who are considering fertility treatment to know?
Anna Flores Locke
I want them to know that if they are not happy with the connection with their doctor that they can decide to go somewhere else. I think that very good point here is that because I think especially in the Latina, and African American communities, not only is there a sense of mistrust with doctors, but there’s also a sense of, they’re the doctor, so I respect their authority, and I don’t have a voice when I go in that office. And that’s the part that I want people to know that you do have a voice, you do have a choice, to be empowered to fire the doctor, if that’s not who you’re happy with and find another person that you match with.
Because for me, that was my turning point for getting pregnant was having a good connection with my fertility doctor. And that gave me that comfort to undergo all these invasive medical procedures, because I felt like I had a connection with the doctor. And that gave me comfort. And so as a therapist, I believe in that power, have the emotional connection to really be a protective factor in the journey of trying to conceive.
Eloise Drane
Well, Anna, I appreciate your time and your truth, and just you being open and sharing your story. And I definitely will have all of your information in our show notes with how they can get to the book in contact information and all of that other good stuff.
Anna Flores Locke
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I’m just so grateful that I can share my story so our communities know like, hey, there are women out there that look like you that have this experience. And it’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s not your fault. And we are here for one another to support each other. We are a strong community of infertility warriors, which I know you know.
Eloise Drane
Yes, yes, yes, yes. So, well, I appreciate you. And thank you for joining us today.
Anna Flores Locke
You’re welcome.
Eloise Drane
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Outro
Thank you for joining us in the Fertility Café. Whether you’re an intended parent, a woman considering egg donation, thinking of becoming a surrogate yourself, or a friend to a family member of someone dealing with infertility, we’re here to help. Visit our website thefertilitycafe.com for resources on fertility, alternative family building, and making this journey your own.
Listen to this episode here.
