Building your family

Oprah’s film pick, Eggs Over Easy, was directed by this week's guest, Chiquita Lockely, who is a ray of sunshine and hope.  She has created a platform for fertility treatment for women of color and has been a leader in advocacy and support in her community.  In this episode, Chiquita dove into big issues like inequality for people of color, why black men are reluctant to donate their sperm, cultur...

I hope you enjoyed part one of this two-part series on surrogacy. If you have not yet seen part one, I urge you to watch it. It is full of useful information to help you have the best relationship with your surrogate. This is important for you, and for your surrogate, but it's also important to be able to have a beautiful journey that you can document for your future child to treasure forever.  Fo...

For two consecutive weeks, I will be talking about surrogacy.  This first episode will cover some ways to optimize your relationship with your gestational carrier. This is incredibly important.  It is important for all involved to have a meaningful journey, and those positive experiences can be documented and used as part of your child’s narrative (for more information see My Lifebook https://fami...

Nicole Gomez Fisher is the writer, director and producer of the feature film “Sleeping with the Fishes” and “The Good Egg” which was inspired by her fertility journey and decision to use donor eggs to build her family.  Her films have been featured on HBO and are available on Amazon Prime Video. Nicole has also acted and worked on many other films and television shows, but her favorite role, by fa...

Chloe Melas is a reporter for the Today Show, an author, and an advocate.  In this episode you will hear about all of her incredible pursuits and most of all, her infertility journey, which led to her two beautiful boys.  After much heartache, Chloe decided to open up about her experiences to People magazine, CNN and now to us.   Chloe recounts her treatment failures, marital struggles and battle...

The gold medalist joins us on the show to share her difficulties through her five year journey to have a baby, including all of the losses and treatments she endured.  Tara reflects on how the attributes that made her an international superstar also made fertility treatment more difficult, how she and her husband Todd, struggled with their different perspectives and through their hurts, developed...

Most of us know that if you used a third party to help you build your family, or if you are adopting, it is essential to share this with your child. We also know that "early and often" works best for the children and the parents.  Talking to your child early and often helps your child integrate their sense of who they are from the beginning.  It has also been shown to help children have better rel...

Peter Boni was donor conceived long before 23 and Me was even an idea.  So you can imagine how difficult it was, especially when there was even more shame around donor conception, to come to terms with it and then search for genetic relatives.  As with most people, there were other issues in his life that made making peace with being donor conceived even more difficult. Peter has written a book ab...

If you have been up and down the fertility roller-coaster, you have spent a great deal of time, effort and money trying to have a baby, but have likely had little time to think about the pregnancy. Or, if you are like me, you may feel too nervous to think about the pregnancy for fear of jinxing it or setting yourself up for possible disappointment.  However, at some point, you need to turn your th...

I hope you were able to watch or listen to Camille Guaty's interview last week.  She is an American film and television actress, and can currently be seen on the HBO Max series, Duster. In this first part of the interview, we learned about her infertility discovery, the struggle to keep it secret, juggling life and work on the set, suffering inside, and ultimately coming to terms with the idea of...

Camille Guaty-Kaye is an American film and television actress, and can currently be seen on the HBO Max series, Duster. By far, Camille’s favorite role is being a Mom.  Unfortunately, this was the most difficult part for her to get.   In this two-part interview, we explore Camille’s fertility journey, preconceived thoughts about her cultural background, her fears about donor conception, the roller...

Dr. Loree Johnson is a mental health professional, a former fertility patient, and an advocate for visibility, representation and for helping people who want to have a child have an easier journey. After her own experience of fertility treatments, losses, and nearly  deciding to live child free, Loree decided to help others for whom getting and staying pregnant is not easy. As a black woman, she u...

Megan was a fertility nurse who works for an egg donor agency, and...is a donor!   On this podcast, Megan shares her experience as a fertility nurse. She understands, first hand, how painful the process of moving to donor conception can be, and talks about how she doesn't want her recipients to feel any pressure. At the same time, she is keenly aware of the importance of openness and is glad to be...

My book is finally here! After decades of personal and professional experience, I have created a book to help you have an easier journey to parenthood. My hope is that the book will make the path to parenthood easier, provide you with easy to digest medical and genetic information and provide you with helpful tools to talk to your children about their origins and reduce your stress. I wish I had a...

In this episode, you will get a sneak peek into a part of my book that is helpful for everyone, stress reduction.   At the end of my upcoming book, Building Your Family, The Complete Guide to Donor Conception, I share helpful ways to think about stress reduction.  You can pre-order the book here, https://a.co/d/eAWe35c, Family building is often difficult, especially when you need assistance.  Redu...

Kat Curtin is the incoming President for Single Mother's By Choice.  She has big shoes to fill, but she will fill those shoes perfectly because Kat understands the journey personally and professionally. She runs a coaching practice, and has been a member of Single Mother's by Choice for years.  In her own life, she has undergone every kind of treatment you can imagine, including surrogacy and dono...

Amber Gamma is the lead genetic counselor for IVI RMA and the incoming Chair for the Genetics Professional Group of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. She is the perfect person to tell us how to understand genetics when using donor conception to have a child. There is so much to know, and so much you can do to increase the odds of having a healthy child.  Amber walks us through many i...

I have known Dee Svedberg for decades, so I can tell you that she's smart, thoughtful, and truly cares about the well-being of each patient and donor.  She attends industry meetings, even when she doesn't need to go, and always tries to make the donor conception experience better for the donor and recipient while also maintaining FDA and ASRM guidelines and requirements.  Not an easy feat. That is...

Jen Vesbit was a guest on the show previously to discuss Empower with Moxi.  Empower is comprised of a group of three women who have all been embryo donors or have donated embryos themselves. They decided years ago that in addition to their families and current jobs, they wanted to help others build their families with the assistance of embryo donation.    From the time I met them years ago at the...

Another podcast about psychological screening?  Yes. Why? Because I want you to be fully informed.  In a previous episode, we spoke about psychological testing.  We have also met with reproductive endocronologists, and will soon meet with a genetics counselor, so we have covered a lot of donor screening basics.  But since mental health is so important and we have never reviewed the whole psycholog...

This week, Stef Koza, also known as The Donor Conceived Queen, on Instagram, shares her difficult story.  On our podcast we feature a lot of uplifting stories. This is not one of those stories, but it is a good story to tell because Stef shows us how secrets, untruths and the refusal to support a child can lead to significant pain.  Stef has had many traumatic experiences, including sexual assault...

Charlotte Holmes is a yoga instructor, former model, Ms. England, and…. an egg donor!  She donated in the UK, no less, where there is no significant compensation. Donors are compensated for basic expenses only.  But this lovely person has a beautiful story to share. She donated to help a couple or individual have children because she never wanted children of her own.  And that’s not all. Charlotte...

Anna is a lawyer, a bioethicist,  and a donor conceived person.  In this episode, she shares how these different roles and her Jewish identity, and current perspectives are all intertwined in how she perceives her origins as well as how she feels about her family, her donor and her donor siblings.   Anna discusses the bioethics concept of retrospective moral judgment and what it means to her perso...

In this weeks podcast, Dr. Anate Brauer shows us how she helps her patients by having them focus on their end goal, and then working their way backwards.  She understands how difficult the fertility process can be, and how often people become confused or stressed, and may not think through all of their family building goals on their first appointment.  That's why Dr. Brauer helps people by having...

Before you move ahead with your donor conception process, I'd like you to consider the things that I discuss in this solo episode.  I rarely create solo episodes, but when I do, you should know that they are particularly important.  You may think, “I have heard it all”, and maybe you have, but maybe you haven’t, so why not just take a few minutes to listen to my latest podcast and consider some of...