Stork'd

Mia is 39 and pregnant with her first child after becoming diagnosed with PCOS and having a few miscarriages along her fertility journey. She joins Julia on this episode of Stork'd to speak on the challenges of being divorced in her mid-thirties and not letting her biological clock stop her from making her dreams of becoming a mother a reality. Mia describes the transformation she has undergone in...

Raven and her wife are expecting their first child, due any day now!  In this episode,we follow Raven through her fertility journey, including the decision to try for a baby, creative ways of finding and choosing a sperm donor, and how she and her wife, Brittany, decided at home-insemination was right for them. Raven shares the anxieties they experienced as well as how Brittany was able to be phys...

Maureen and her husband experienced unexplained infertility as they were trying to conceive their first born. With fewer support groups and products on the Internet to ease their experience, they felt extremely frustrated and isolated. They created a product, the Mosie syringe, to add a low risk, low intervention option to the market for people experiencing the same thing. Their first child was th...

Ashon Avent's family building journey started at the age of 16. Now, at 41, with five children, he is the Owner of Main Event Sports & Apparel, as well as I 2 Can Be Healthy LLC, where he helps people who have diabetes and obesity make healthy choices.  In this episode, Ashon shares the story of his journey from a high school athlete and dad to businessman and family man. Detailing monumental mome...

Are you ready to get clear on your vision? Keren Eldad is here to help us get over our mental roadblocks.  Keren Eldad encourages us to let go of the template,  stop thinking that your life needs to look a certain way, and accept the many different varieties in which families come. A family may look one way to you, or you may think it should look one way, but everyone has a different path. Keren i...

David Vendetti has learned to be resilient and reflective through transitions, having been adopted, married twice, and the owner of a yoga studio that recently closed its doors due to COVID-19. As an adopted child, David lacked a sense of belonging. While he has always felt loved and supported by his adoptive family, this missing piece resulted in a strong desire to create relationships and commun...

After Brooke's father's death, she realized that no one knew how to speak to her about grief. Most people are uncomfortable with the topic, which is why she started The Grief Coach Podcast. Grief, love, and pain can be hard to talk about and articulate in words with family members. With this loss, Brooke had to reformulate her own expectations around what a family life looked like.  Luckily, her f...

Suman and his wife's family building journey started in 2012 and they're finally expecting twins! Having gone through 8 years of trying to conceive, including experiencing three IVF processes, his wife's fibroid surgery, and deep consideration around adoption, Suman rode waves of hope and a rollercoaster of emotions. Suman wrestles with the disappointment of not hitting the milestones expected of...

Jamie and Christian are a polyamorous couple. Together, they share what polyamory means to them and confront common misconceptions about their relationship. They discuss defining their rules according to what makes them happy as a couple, rather than conforming to cultural norms.  And, they describe ways in which polyamorous relationships require the same core elements of communication, respect, a...

Arden O'Connor learned early on in her adult life that she wasn't going to be taking a traditional path towards having children. In her twenties, Arden had leukemia, which left her unable to conceive a baby naturally. Now 42 and single, she is putting the puzzle pieces together with a sperm donor, an egg donor and a surrogate. In this episode, Arden answers the big questions for herself about how...

This episode is about shaping and reshaping our families. Sometimes the paths that we forge result from external constraints. For Cristin Marona, that constraint was posed by the global COVID 19 Pandemic.  As a result of the pandemic, Cristin's first major decision as a new mom was to move to the United States, leaving her husband in Africa for an undefined period. As a public health professional,...

After having two kids with her first husband, Molly realized she wasn't in a fulfilling relationship. In this episode, we discuss the process of self-reflection that led her to this realization, how she stepped away from her first marriage and met her current husband, and the dynamics of their large, six child blended family. She discusses dealing with the guilt around the impacts of divorce on he...

Julia has been exploring new ways of building a family since her last relationship ended when she was 34. Grieving the loss of a relationship and the loss of the path she expected for herself drove her into a period of healing and self-discovery. She started asking anyone and everyone about how they came to make the decisions they did regarding family life and she reflected on whether that resonat...

Julia Karol Introduces Season 1 of Stork'd: What is family?