Dear Baby

Dear Baby,

I have thought and thought about what I wanted to say to you for months, but truth be told, I was too scared to write it down - as if writing down your story would make it not real. It seems absolutely unfathomable to me that in just a few weeks I will be holding you in my arms, and not just seeing you move across my abdomen like a trapped alien. You have been a spark in our dreams for so so so long, and despite the fact that you have been doing a headstand on my bladder for weeks, I still don’t quite believe that I am pregnant at all. 

Baby Girl, it’s important to me that you know your story. Every person walking this beautiful earth is a miracle - but you, my dear, have shattered glass ceilings from the womb. 

Baby, my body doesn’t generally work the way we expect it to. Things that happen automatically for most people - breathing, heart rate, digestion, and yes, reproduction, don’t happen automatically for me. By the time you’re old enough to read this, I’m sure this will be obvious to you, when we can’t share most foods and you’ve had to tag along to nine zillion appointments with your Mama.

If I had a dollar for every time I was told it would be clinically impossible for me to have a child, my bank account would look very different. But Baby Girl, I always believed in you. Even when it seemed foolish - in fact, especially when it seemed foolish. I don’t take well to being told what MY body can and cannot do, I just had no idea what it would take to make it happen. 

Baby Girl, you are a miracle over four years in the making. 

I have been kicked out of three different fertility clinics in Virginia - some stringing me along for 6-9 months before deciding that they wouldn’t accept me. I had endless MRIs and blood tests and ultrasounds and hormones. I was sent to perinatologists, cardiologists, endocrinologists and several other “ologists” for approval, only to be told it wasn’t enough. Some blamed my heart, others my stomach, others had truly no rationale at all, and just flat out said no. One group refused to see me for a consult in the first place. One doctor went so far as to say that my chances of getting pregnant were about as likely as the Virgin Mary. 

(To which I’d like to point out that the BVM did, in fact, have a child. Kind of an important one, too. Just saying.)

There are certainly multiple avenues to having a family, and your dad and I considered every last one. We would have walked to the end of the earth and back, but on many levels that wasn’t enough. Possessing not one, but two, genetic mutations with unknown ramifications for life expectancy didn’t exactly sell me as Mother of the Year in the world of adoption and surrogacy. 

I was running out of options, and quickly.

I started contacting larger university hospitals in the area, in hopes that their size and research potential would make me a more desirable patient. Two turned me down from the very first phone call.

As a last ditch effort, I called Johns Hopkins. 

When the administrative assistant asked me to come in for a consult, it was my turn to refuse. My heart couldn’t handle another disappointment. I needed something to grasp onto before I dragged myself down another likely dead-end. So I asked that before I come in for a consult, the doctors know that I had a pacemaker, gastroparesis, extensive neuromuscular obstacles and a non-functioning autonomic nervous system. She took the message and I expected, like always, to receive a “thanks but no thanks” a few days later.

By this point, I had learned that most fertility centers are outpatient centers - meaning they aren’t attached to a hospital, and typically function as their own little community. This is great for 99% of the population. Baby, I’m sure you’ll quickly learn that your mother doesn’t often fit into the mainstream. These centers don’t so much have an EKG machine, let alone the ability to handle a pacemaker. Most, I was told, don’t even have a pulse oximeter on hand. Penelope the Pacemaker and I were just too much to handle.

The next day, I got a return call - I didn’t even hold my breath or get nervous. I knew how this went.

Hopkins also has an outpatient fertility center.

Hopkins Fertility is miles from the main hospital.

But Hopkins Fertility shares that outpatient center with the ophthalmology clinic.

Yes, my dear. You’ve probably already figured it out.

There are FAR more patients with pacemakers having their cataracts done, than there are trying to have babies.

THAT side of the outpatient center had just about every cardiac machine known to man.

Most importantly of all? They were willing to share.

Shout out to every last 80-year-old human with a pacemaker having their cataracts removed. I’d like to personally hug you, make you brownies, and invite you to a heart-healthy dinner for existing. The brightest of gold stars, my friends.

Now this ability to share equipment wasn’t a guarantee - my case had to be brought before the entire department to review and approve. I had to interview with the maternal fetal medicine team. I had to have letters of approval from my cardiologist and endocrinologist. I had to be willing to live close to the hospital if I got pregnant. Above all, I had to understand that unlike The Hunger Games, the odds were most definitely NOT, in my favor.

I did. I knew the odds. But I had to try.

For nearly two years, in a complete veil of secrecy, I drove to Baltimore 4-5 days a week. In 2017 I put 11,590 miles on my car, solely for medical purposes. I gave myself endless shots in my abdomen, took pills, wore patches, and bent over the sink with a grimace while your dad aimed giant needles at the bullseye drawn by the nurses on my hind-end.

My genetic material, along with your dad’s and your grandparents’ was taken to make a protocol to test our embryos. They didn’t have a test kit for my mutations, because no one else exists that has them. We had a 1:8 chance.

After two rounds of egg retrievals, months of hormones, genetic testing and what felt like a direct siphoning of our bank account, we came up with absolutely nothing. Not one genetically clear embryo. Not. A. One.

I did three more rounds of egg retrievals, battled blood clots and ovarian hyper-stimulation syndrome, and retained 15 pounds of fluid in my abdomen, which sounded like a fish bowl when I walked. We sent the embryos off, and we waited.

Throughout these entire four years, your father and I told next to no one about this process. The odds were so small and the stakes so very high. Many nights found me huddled in a dark corner of a parking lot giving myself shots between clients and praying no one walked by the car at that moment. There were endless comments about my weight gain from well-intentioned friends and family who assumed my 15 pounds of jiggly fish bowl meant my stomach was healed and I was eating more. In actuality, that couldn’t have been further from the truth.

For months, I opened every email with trepidation and flinched when the phone rang. I found out after 2 months of waiting that the lab took a summer break for a few weeks, and hadn’t even processed our embryos yet. I avoided hospitalization over the last round of egg retrievals by the slimmest of margins, and my doctors were clear that my body may be waving the white flag.

The stakes could not have been higher.

The odds were 1:8.

We sent FAR more than eight. Enough to have many, many genetically clear embryos.

The call finally came in.

There was one.

That one, baby girl, was you.

After over four years, four fertility clinics, five rounds of anesthesia, hundreds of needles, endless complications, a brand new genetic testing protocol, and a whole lot of hope, we had one. And if it didn’t take, we had none.

By all accounts and research, you are statistically impossible.

But Baby Girl, you took the word impossible, and said I’M POSSIBLE.

You shattered glass ceilings far before you were 5 cells big.

I couldn’t be more proud.

Baby, I wish I could tell you that I will be able to guard your heart and your mind every day of your life. I want to say that you will want for nothing and never feel a moment of self-doubt or sadness, but I know that’s not how this both brutal and beautiful life works. In fact, you will someday learn that we NEED those moments to grow and learn and become the most authentic version of ourselves.

So Baby, I hope you will tuck this letter away somewhere safe, and read it often. I hope that in those moments of loneliness or waning confidence, you will remember just how hard you worked to be here. 

It’s important to me that you know this story - YOUR story. Tomorrow I’ll be 37 weeks pregnant, which means that you, my little miracle, are a full-term baby and I’m pretty sure my heart may just explode with wonder. Your dad and I wrote the prologue, but now the story is yours to write, and I cannot wait to read it.

Come what may, you are WANTED, you are LOVED, and I will ALWAYS believe in you.

All my love,

Your Mom

Using Passion to Find Your Purpose

Dear Readers,

In February of 2011, my world was rocked forever by an unexpected diagnosis. Now I know it was only the tip of the iceberg, and 7 years later I want to honor this anniversary with a rarely-told story of how my business, Hatch Health and Happiness came to be. Included below is an excerpt from this month's newsletter, which can also be read here.

May you never stop looking for your passion, my friends. 

Lydia 

In February, we are surrounded by images of passion and thoughts of love – bright red hearts, cupid balloons and chocolate roses are practically overflowing out of every aisle at the grocery store. But the truth is, passion can come in many forms, and in this month’s special edition of the Hatch Health and Happiness newsletter, we are talking about the power of pursuing your passion. In sticking with this theme, I’ve decided to walk you into a more personal and vulnerable chapter of my world that I have rarely spoken about, and how it fueled my personal passion for helping others to heal.

In 2011, I was diagnosed with gastroparesis (among many other things). I was handed a single-sided, over-photocopied piece of paper telling me to eat exclusively chicken broth, Ensure, Carnation Instant Breakfast, and mashed potatoes. That’s it. I remember sitting in the car after the appointment and just staring at this piece of paper that had come from a very reputable doctor whom I respect very much. This is going to be my life? Forever?

It’s hard to believe now, but I did what so many do, and what I am guessing many of my readers can relate to – as ridiculous as it seemed, I followed the doctor’s orders. When you are so sick and desperate to get better, you’ll do or try nearly anything – even when it seems preposterous – because maybe, just maybe, it will work.

So I did. I followed that “diet” with the addition of egg whites and white bread, and shocker, lost 32 pounds in 6 months and was diagnosed as “failure to thrive.” Mere months after receiving that piece of paper, I was lying in a hospital bed following complications from feeding tube surgery. I was blue, freezing, and the new owner of a frontal tail at age 27.

I began the painstaking process of trying to gain weight while eating next to nothing and pumping my body full of cans of grossly processed formula that it rejected with alarming speed. I was supposed to try and eat more, but everything made me sick and nothing at all felt “safe.” Food became a huge source of fear – a stress that only further slowed down my very delayed stomach. I was putting on my pants with safety pins to try to keep them from falling down and was so weak and tired that it was hard to walk up the stairs.

And yet, despite it all, I vividly remember the first time it happened. I was walking down the hall of my school and a parent of a former student greeted me and exclaimed, “WOW! You look fabulous! You should have done this years ago!”

Obviously, she had no idea why I had lost the weight.

Obviously, she NEVER meant to hurt me.

But I was floored. My coworker and I glanced at each other with uneasy smiles.

And the words stuck.

Was this purple-hued, frontal-tailed body what makes me look “fabulous?” 

I knew that I was dangerously underweight. I knew that I was never overweight in the first place. I now knew that “failure to thrive” wasn’t just reserved for babies. But I’m also human. And I had to work hard to swallow that comment down and keep pumping myself with formula, and forcing down food, day in and day out.

And it happened again. And again. And again.

One person went so far as to say that she wished she had gastroparesis so she could lose the weight, too.

I crawled my way back to a healthy weight with daily weigh-ins, food recording, and more feeding tube complications than I can begin to describe (hello exploding feeding tube in the Minnesota airport bathroom…), all the while fighting the demons of the complete loss of my self-confidence and body image. All the while trying to convince myself that food was not “bad” – both for my mind and my body. All the while relearning how and what to eat to maintain my health.

Years later, when I met with a new doctor who was thoroughly flabbergasted by my case, she proclaimed “Well, I guess my best recommendation is to lose 20-30 pounds, so when your muscles continue to weaken you have less to carry around.”

Yep.

Knowing my full medical history, she asked me to lose all of the weight I had worked so hard to gain. And just like that, I was back in the trenches fighting the demons that may always be a part of my story.

I, like many people with allergies, autoimmune disease, and digestive disorders, follow a very regimented diet. In a nutshell, I am a gluten/dairy/soy/legume/mostly grain-free low-residue pescatarian (say THAT five times fast). I follow this plan because it is the lifestyle that I have learned through YEARS of trial and error works best for my body. It isn’t easy to go out to eat and I may never have the luxury of picking up a bite when I’m too tired to cook. I may always be the girl with a lunchbox at bridal showers and birthday parties. I still challenge myself to re-try things every once in a while, to both test the waters and to remind myself that food is meant for nourishment, not harm, and that no matter how sick it makes me feel, that feeling will fade eventually – it’s not forever. I don’t try things because I have to, I try things because I GET to – the choice to heal on my own terms has been, and always will be, mine and mine alone.

My clients will tell you that I adamantly refuse to label something as “good” or “bad” (much to their disappointment). If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard, “Is this food good or bad?” I’d be a very wealthy woman. Categorizing something that has the potential to nourish our bodies and minds as good or bad is detrimental to our psyche, and it fills us with hugely unnecessary guilt and shame. Even in the case of an allergy or Celiac disease, the offending food isn’t good or bad – it’s just not right for you. What makes one client feel full of light and energy can make another one feel sluggish and terrible – diet and lifestyle are hugely bio-individual.

This is why I do what I do. This is why I’m passionate that my clients learn that food is a good and wonderful thing that we NEED to nourish our bodies and our minds. This is why I’m passionate in teaching my clients with alternative diets about new and exciting ways to not just eat, but to ENJOY food again. I have to remind myself every day that food is not something to fight. I have to remind myself every day that the weight I worked SO hard to put on is not a sign of weakness or failure, but rather a sign of strength. When people no longer compliment me on how I look, I have to remember that it’s because I look healthy – normal even. Like all chronic conditions, my gastroparesis symptoms are infinitely less severe when I do everything I can to manage my stress – and that means facing my demons head-on every day. I cannot run and hide if I want to live a life where I thrive – and help others to do the same. I am passionate, because I have walked this road every step of the way myself, and seen firsthand the damage that an extremely restricted diet can cause. I will walk that road the rest of my life and hope to always passionately help others walk their own road. 

See you on the trail, friends.