The Baby Making Business

This week David and Lauren reflect on the arrival of baby Cashel. Everyone has a (birth)plan until they get punched in the face, and we certainly did on this occasion. We reflect on the road that took us here and how it would have been nice to have a drama free delivery after our tumultuous journey. The universe had other plans though. T/W - This week we talk about childbirth. Also - apologies for...

Lauren goes in for a routine scan and is kept in. The Baby is coming. It's D-Day.

This week, we’re talking about trust, transformation and two very different approaches to nesting. But drive each other bonkers in the process. We start with the deeply troubling stories emerging from fertility clinics in northern Cyprus, where families say DNA testing has revealed that the sperm or egg donors they carefully selected may not have been the donors used to conceive their children. It...

Today is a balance of silly buggers and “Getting deep Deborahs.” Lauren reveals that she used to have the bladder of a camel but now in her third trimester it’s the size of a teeny, tiny…well Camel. Lauren expands on what other physical deficiencies she now has in her third trimester; including regularly getting stuck on the floor. We talk about the eternal balance of feeling grateful that we are...

To mark IVF day, we celebrate Jean Purdy, perhaps the greatest unsung hero of IVF. In doing so, we discover Rabbits were also trailblazers in the science of IVF. The racist guy over the road interrupts our recording, David raps and we speculate whether or not our baby will inherit his hip-hop stylings. Lauren adds potential gestational diabetes, pelvic girdle pain and an ectropion cervix to her pr...

We are (kind of) away on our babymoon - but we’ve trashed the joint.  This week we talk about how navigating grief recently has made us reflect on our IVF journey. This throws up lots of questions: when and how do you process all of this; especially if you are still navigating it, how has IVF impacted our relationship and how will it impact us as parents? We visit Slough and discuss Boomer Dad’s l...

WE. ARE. BACK BABIES! We loop our listeners in on where the hell we have been. Spoiler…some good…some horrendous. We discuss navigating grief, but specifically whilst expecting, and all the complicated emotions that come with that. The Nursery is getting done up and obviously David helped but we did have to send out the bat-signal to the father-in-law to do anything harder than painting.  It’s too...

This week we are going back to the beginning. With it being opening night for David, and Lauren being sick, we thought now was the perfect time to reintroduce ourselves for those of you that are new here. Listen to this weeks episode to find out who we are, what we are about, and what made us start the baby making business. We will be back with tonnes of sweet sweet content soon!

This week we talk gender scans and the fact that Lauren slipped up and told the guy that runs our local Italian restaurant before she told her own Mother. David has a sore botty from work, Lauren gets addicted to Vinted baby clothes, and we decide that we already have a difficult child.  We tentatively discuss prepping the house and are visited by a camera crew where we have to try and act normal...

David struggles with work/life balance and Lauren wallows for a week, but she’s also doing it looking super-cute as she’s now got maternity dungarees. We ponder on why it seems to be Scotland and Northern Ireland who seem to be trailblazing when it comes to Women’s reproductive reform and IVF. We discuss how to avoid raising a mini Norman Bates and how to navigate meeting rubbish babies.  We have...

Catherine Tracey is one half of the amazing podcast “IVF BFF” alongside her BFF Sian Morgan.  However Sian is on maternity leave (hooray!), so in her stead we are joined also by Catherine's husband Carl. The four of us discuss scan PTSD  at what can often feel like backstreet scan facilities.  We compare notes on the eternal  tempering of hope and excitement especially when you feel like it co...

David's got some news news news, we go on a holiday that ISN'T a babymoon, Lauren overdoses on cheese and David needs to re take his driving test. We talk about riding out the 1st trimester, but before it’s done we of course take yet another visit to A&E. It’s here we decide that absolutely no one should say “congratulations” ever. We meet the David Brent of obstetrics and Lauren toys...

We get double saucy with our first night-time recording. Lauren brags about her feminine charms and pulls hair out of David’s ears live on air. We talk about navigating Mother’s Day through the lens of an IVF pregnancy, and all the complications that brings - and we are surprised by some very complicated feelings on the matter. We give updates on our 9 week scan and some new blood test results. Al...

This week we come to realise that no matter what we do, this pregnancy will always be viewed through the filter of IVF. We talk about the struggles that may bring , but also staying true to our mission statement -  which is to normalise conversation around IVF.  Lauren has a wobble which ends up with us going for an extra “reassurance scan” where we almost misgender our unborn baby. Whilst there L...

This week we talk about Jim Carrey’s clone and a near death experience in a Ryanair toilet. David’s grumpy and moans about everything. We talk about the horrors of soft play and David meets his mortal enemy. Lauren also tells David he’s the poor man’s Rafe Spall. In a totally non-gratuitous way we also talk about trying to find intimacy again after the cold, clinical process of IVF. We do a deep-d...

This week we spiral into new depths of paranoia; as we try to navigate early pregnancy after multiple failed attempts. We now don’t trust anything; symptoms, tests, Doctors, or each other. We get a little closer to finding out if we are actually massively co-dependent or not, as at the moment David s**ts himself every time Lauren leaves the room. We realise that the Algorithm has never been more s...

T/W this week we talk about positive and negative results as well as loss.  This week we discuss testing positive after multiple failed rounds and the constant anxiety that comes with it - also the feeling that a lot of those happy milestone moments are dulled or reduced by previous experiences.  Lauren’s brain has become 100% jellyfish and she can barely remember her own name. We talk about how w...

We are bang-smack in the emotional hellscape that is the two-week-wait. We deep-dive into Lauren’s medical protocol and how it has left her physically, emotionally, mentally and financially drained, yet somehow -  funnier.  We talk injections in public and in our specific case this week, in the accessible toilet at a theatre, which nearly leads to a criminal record and David getting cancelled.  Da...

We are back in Athens for our next transfer. We have picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves off, had a quick check of the credit card limit…and we’ve gone again!  It’s our 6th transfer now and we are sad/poor/old pros by this point. We don’t help ourselves by accidentally picking a hotel that had lovely pictures but is ghetto adjacent. This week we talk about the different approaches to pain manage...

This week we sat down with the amazing Lucy Edwards. We chatted about her book “Blind not Broken” and how she navigated the darkest period of her life after losing her sight.  Lucy joins us on the IVF train and we discuss how she navigates the process as a visually impaired person. We talk about the fears of going under General Anesthetic, how the system could be improved in terms of accessibility...

This week we apologise for releasing visual clips online and go into a pit of self-loathing as it’s part of making a podcast. Lauren talks about her obsession with murder and true crime and David insists ghosts aren’t real. David is told that he is a Karen and fights his corner.  We do a deep dive into the more holistic approaches to IVF and discuss all things Reiki, reflexology and acupuncture. ...

T/W This week we cover loss, miscarriage and positive results.  This week we sat down with the incredible Dr. Lucky Sekhon, who is fast becoming one of the most prominent voices in the world of IVF.  In the lead up to the launch of her book “The Lucky Egg” we discuss what made her want to publish. We discuss knowledge gaps in the world of fertility and IVF. We get into some mythbusting of suppleme...

This week we are full of existential dread about where our IVF Quest might take us next.  We chat about how we navigated the holidays through the lens of a recent loss and where we were able to sneak small moments of joy. We chat about Irish Christmas chips, not putting up Christmas trees and the struggle with being around children at Christmas (not cos we hate them , but cos we’re trying to blood...

AN UNEXPECTED UPDATE - EPISODE 18  T/W In this episode we talk about loss and miscarriage. A difficult week for us and our IVF quest. We talk about it, we feel it out and we go again.  Thank you for sticking with us. x

This week Lauren discovers that she can get David to bring her anything in the half hour after taking her pessaries as she has to lie down. More chaos as we have to go to A & E on the day of the Doctor’s strike. For some reason there is also a parade of sickly children, who seemed to have been sent by the IVF goblin to make us both cry. None of it is helped by the fact that the Nurse didn’t se...