IVF, Miscarriage, and emergency surgery after egg retrieval w/ Tori Halford

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I've actually never talked about this before. I love the church and I love the gospel and I never want to come on as I'm against it, but I've had a really hard time with it. It tries so hard and you're putting your body through so much and you're also spending money each time in front to fail again. It kind of puts you at a place like, can we even do this anymore? - Today on Unplanned, we sat down with Tori Halford, a mom and contact creator who is currently going through IVF and documenting her whole journey online. While her first transfer was successful, she has since been met with miscarriage and two failed embryo transfers. We talk about everything from why she called up her wedding after her bishop encouraged her to the true cost of IVF and what her and her husband plan to do with her left over embryos all on today's episode. Also, quick disclaimer, Abby will be sitting this episode out. We just decided given the nature of the topic as well as everything going on in our life and it should be best for her to sit it out. So, appreciate you guys understanding. And again, thank you so much for everyone's kindness, love, prayers, thoughts, everything. It's been meaning the world to us and we just really appreciate you all. So, enjoy the episode. Tori Halford, welcome to Unplanned. - Thank you, thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here. - I gotta ask, feel like this is a typical question. We always ask anybody on our show, but how did you and Tander meet? What's your love story? I gotta get the deep. So, I wanna set the scene in, you Todd's very normal for people to meet and date for three months and get married. - That has to be like really scary actually. - A lot of times they kind of describe it as like, it's gonna be your Prince Charming and it's gonna be this big epic love story and you're gonna marry and you're gonna be happily ever after. Where for me, it was, I mean, I'm happily ever after now, but that process of dating was a very like a crucible in my life. It was kind of the moment where I broke free from what I thought my life was gonna be like and kind of decided who I wanted to be as a person. So, Tander and I met at Utah Valley University and we, the first time we met, he was kind of hanging around with some guys that I already kind of knew that I was like, we call him the Provo All Stars in Utah, but they're basically like the Jim Bros and the dudes, like the Frapp boys kind of, he came and approached me. He, I had my soccer friend with me, a soccer teammate and we were kind of chatting. He asked for both of our numbers and as soon as he did that, I was like, that's weird. He's just trying to get like all these girls numbers. - Did you ever get an explanation as to why he didn't just ask for your number alone? - Yes, he said he was trying to be nice. So he didn't want, he didn't want to make the other girl feel bad. So after that, he texted and he was like, hey, let's go hike Mount Tipinogus at midnight. I'm like, I'm just now meeting you for the first time and you wanna go at midnight to go hike 12 hours. I'm like, I have no idea who you even are besides the one time that we met. - Because the thing is you like, watch the sunrise together, right? - Yeah, that's what they want to do is watch the sunrise. It was very romantic. - Yes. - But in my head it was like, he's gonna be a serial killer and kill me up there. - Okay. - So I said, no, I have soccer practice in the morning, so I'll have to catch you a different time. Now, fast forward to 14 more times over a span of six months. He asked me out and I said, no, every single time. - That's hilarious. Why did you never block his number? - I think I was trying to be nice too. I was trying to let him down softly and tell him no each time. And maybe there's a reason why I didn't because now obviously we're married and I'm very, very cool for it. But there was like a couple of things in there. Like I tore my ACL my sophomore year of college just a couple of months after we met and I actually knew his older brother. We were in college together. We were in college sports kind of together at the same apartment village and he was going to drop a basket off at my house but we had not hung out or talked since basically the last time he had asked me out. And then we haven't like seen each other since. So I was like, that's really creepy that you're like trying to drop this nice basket off at my house like, I don't know who you are. How do you know where I live? But funny story, he actually texted the girl who he got the number from who was my soccer teammate and asked her for my address. So it all comes first full circle, you know? - That's hilarious. - Anyway, it's fast forward. We go on our first date, he asked me out one more time and he's like, look, I'm gonna pick you up. We're gonna go do a basketball date and I will have you home in two hours and if you don't wanna go out with me ever again, then I will stop bothering you. And I responded, I'm such a brat, but I responded fine. It's funny because when I opened the door for our first date, it was like, this was not the boy that I thought I was talking to. It was like, love it first sight. A little bit for me, that's the feeling that I would describe it because I was like, he is so handsome. I can't believe that this was the boy that's been texting you 14 times. Like, this can't be possible. And then we went on our first date and hung out every single day since. - That's awesome. - Except. - Except what's the caveat here? - So we ended up, that was, we went on our first date in February and then we got engaged to that December. So almost about a year, we'd been dating and we had our wedding scheduled for March of that next year. - Okay. - And we broke off our engagement. - Holy cow. - Yeah, broke off our engagement. - What made you decide to call it off? - I think we both were feeling like it just wasn't working, like it wasn't right. Things weren't like falling into place. We had some outside pressure from families and things like that. - Was there like a certain family member that was like, hey, I don't know about this guy. We broke up a few times here and there, even while we were dating. And I think my family was just like, look, you can never figure it out with him. Let's move on a little bit. - Yeah. - It's hard because in our religion, it's one of the advice that you use is like, if your family does not agree with who you marry, then maybe you should consider someone else. - Okay. - And that was kind of like the spite that I was having with myself, you know? And I kind of had to decide on my own, like what is the decision that I'm gonna make? This is gonna be who I spend the rest of my life with. - Yeah. - And that summer where we were split apart for those nine months was like a very life changing summer. For me, I had moved away from any friends and family. I was kind of all by myself. The people I was living with, I didn't even know. And I kind of had to figure out like, do I want me to be happy? Or do I want to be a people pleaser my whole life? And just do things the way that other people want me to do. - In a podcast I was listening to, you mentioned something about like meeting with a bishop, which I don't know very much about. Like that's something that I've like, I've never experienced that. It's like, why was that? - Yeah, so obviously one of the things that the church asks of you is to be pure with your partner. And there were things that we were doing that obviously didn't go with that. And so we had to actually push off our marriage for a year. And we had to meet with our bishops and kind of confess what we had done. - Yeah. - And going to the bishop, that's really hard to be like, look, I made a mistake. And then for them to be like, you can't get married. You have to wait a year or you need to get civilly married, which wasn't, we didn't think that was really an option for us. - Okay. - And that was, that was a really hard, like for my testimony in the church, that was a really hard process of. And I know, I've actually never talked about this before, like in a public forum. But it was something where I felt like. - You're good, take your time. - No, I know, the hard part is I want, I love the church. And I love the gospel. And I never want to come off as, I'm against it, I guess. But I think that's where I have this really hard time of, you know, this is like the first time I've really like messed up or, you know, confessed a sin that was more serious than, you know, little white lies or things like that. And I had a really hard time with it. It was something that, you know, affected my mental health a lot. And it was something that I kind of had to go through by myself to figure out, you know, if this was something that I wanted to be a part of and if it was something that was important to me. - Yeah, I always find it interesting, especially when it comes to like purity, culture, across like all faith backgrounds, because so many people like find themselves, especially young people that are just figuring stuff out or like, what's wrong with me? Why do I like, why do I feel like this attraction to my girlfriend of nine months or whatever. And it's like, I don't know, maybe it's because you love them. - Yeah, because it's normal to feel that way, you know? That was one thing we had a bishop who was like, you know what, yes, is this hard for you guys to go through, but out of all the problems that you could have, this is the best problem you could have. - And I don't want to like, you know, ask too much, but like, is that also part of the reason that you guys were like breaking up and stuff? - Yeah, for sure, and that was more of me. - Okay. I feel like every time there would be some type of mess up, I'd be like, 'cause they basically say, you need to hold yourself pure. And if I wasn't holding myself pure, then obviously this isn't the right person to be with. But that's backwards thinking. It's like, no, you do it because you love this person. And it's a very normal feeling to have. And I think that's why when I was met with kind of like disappointment and shame, I'm like, why? Because I'm trying to do the right thing. I'm trying to do what you guys have taught me to do. - Yeah. - And why, I'm not saying it needs to be celebrated, but at the same time, it could be respected. - And so calling off the wedding was essentially because of the bishop telling you guys you had to, or both of your bishops telling you as you had to-- - Yes, both of our bishops told us we had to push off the wedding. - Gotcha. And so announcing that to your community, did people know why? Or was it more of just you didn't say? - Our parents knew why. We sat down with both sides of our parents and told them what had happened and what we had to do. But it wasn't like we went and announced it to, you know, everyone in the community. At this time, it wasn't like, I wasn't even really doing social media, it was like you'd post, you know, fun things. Like I was soccer player, so I'd post soccer things or when I got engaged, but yeah, it was definitely something that people talked about and probably guessed, but never, it was never like said by us. - And so calling off the wedding, that like, that must have driven, probably both of you guys to a pretty dark place. - Yeah, it was really heartened. The hard part about it was I think we both had agreed. It wasn't like one party over the other. It was kind of like we, he had a phone call because he was selling in a different state at the time when we actually broke it off. And it just was like a phone call of this just isn't working. Why is this becoming so hard? You know, we were congruent with each other. I don't know. Like looking back, I think I blame myself. I don't really feel like it was Tanner. - Well, why do you blame yourself? Because I was the one that wasn't committed. Like I was the one that was half in half out at all times. Like it was never, like I was always like, well maybe like-- - What are you saying? What are you saying you're blaming yourself for? Like for the purity issues or for calling off the wedding? - For calling off the wedding. I think if I would have been 100% from the very get-go and kind of was like, no, this is the decision I'm gonna make. Like you can either get on board or get off board. I think it would have made it a lot smoother of a transition, but at that time I was like trying to play the mediator and be like, oh, sorry. - No, you're good. - And it was just, it was a really, it was like I was in a rocket a hard place, you know? I couldn't, I felt like I couldn't make either side happy and I think that was another thing that kind of weighed on my mental health a little bit because I got to a very dark place at this time and yeah, it was just, it was hard. It was really, really hard. What did you learn from that experience? 'Cause I think like whenever something bad happens in life, so almost like you have to choose either to just let it, I don't know, just, my dad always had the saying he was obvious, like you can choose to be bitter or better. Like I have a feeling that you probably ended up like creating meaning out of this really tough time. Like what was that? - I think I'd go back to soccer. Like it's, as an athlete, you have a lot of failures, but you either get over with them and work harder or you let it derail you and you quit. And I've just never been someone that quits. I've always been someone that tries their best. Like even when I was playing soccer, I had three years with a coach that didn't really believe in me. But yet the whole time I was trying to prove myself to him and I'd work harder and I'd pass every fitness test and I would try to be the first one to finish something. And I think it's just a testament of like I, when the going gets tough, I fight harder. And that's how I feel about my Nutanus relationship out of everything that I've done in my life. That relationship is what I've fought for the most, which means it's the most valuable to me. And that's the meaning that I get from it. It's just how much I love him and how much I love our relationship. And knowing that this is my life and it's my decision and it doesn't really matter what other people think. Which I think has now seg weighed into social media. Where you get a lot of hate comments here and there. But if I know who I am as a person, then it doesn't really matter what anyone else thinks about me. Fast forward, you guys are not getting back together. You get married in the temple. You are married for multiple years, just doing your thing, life's great. And then you go to start having children. And what happens? So I always thought that I would, there was always a thought in the back of my mind that I would have trouble with having children. I think it's because as an athlete, I was running a lot. I was always super active. So my cycle wasn't very regular. And I think in the back of my mind, I was always like, I think it's going to be tough for me, but who knows? Who knows? And so I think we got married in 2018. We started trying in 2020. And I've tried for the first couple of months and we weren't getting pregnant. And I have a lot of sisters in laws who had kids at the time. And they were like, why don't you take an ovulation test and see if you're ovulating? So I was like, oh perfect, and then started taking the tests and was never getting a positive test. And so I'm like, what does this mean? Like, I'm never ovulating. Like, my body's not working, like, what's going on? And so that's when I booked my first appointment with fertility specialist, which I'm very grateful for, because a lot of the times with infertility, you have to try for at least a year before you can even get into a fertility specialist. That's kind of the standard that they give you. But because I knew that I wasn't ovulating, they let me in, which I'm so grateful for, because now it's like, I'm not delayed another year. - Yeah. - So went into my fertility specialist. They put me on some medications that got me to ovulate, but we still weren't having kids. Some of the medications were really tough to be on. There was one time where I was surfing on the back of a boat. It was a family vacation and fainted while I was surfing, fell into the water. Everyone's freaking out, Tanner jumps into the water, tries, is trying to save me. He doesn't have his life jacket on. My father-in-law is turning the boat around while he's doing that. Another one of my brother-in-law is falling off the boat. - Wait, sorry, did you say you didn't have a life jacket on? - I did, but Tanner didn't, when he jumped in, 'cause he was so worried and he jumped in after me, because they knew that something was wrong. And then it was the next hour I was just limp and they were trying to get me out of the water, 'cause we were at Bear Lake, and there's not a major hospital there. And so trying to figure out where they could take me and figure out what was going on was really hard. Anyways, it ended up being the fertility medication that I was on. - Okay. - So it's just like, vertilities very hard on our bodies as women, like the hormones that you're taking. It just makes you feel a little bit crazy at the same time, and all the hormones that you already have as a woman are like heightened to the max. - Yeah. - And so, went through that summer, didn't get pregnant. Finally, we got to a point where they're like, "Okay, your next thing is IEY, or you move on to IVF." And we were like, "You know what? "We're just want results." Like at this point, 'cause there's a lot of unexplained things. Like, "Okay, you're ovulating. "We don't really know why you're getting pregnant. "We don't know why. "We don't know why. "We don't know why." And physically, wrong with me that they could diagnose me with either. So then we were like, "Let's just get answers." We went to IVF, started that whole process. That took like a year just to get in to get seen by an IVF specialist as well, because they're so backed up. And finally, got in, how to retrieve, well, how to transfer, and got pregnant. My first time, which was amazing for us. It was such a blessing and such a miracle that we were able to get pregnant. - This must be expensive. Like, what does insurance cover this? - No. How much are we talking to do IVF? What does that cost? - So, each thing is a different cost. I think total in the whole round of doing an egg retrieval and doing a transfer for us, it was around like 15 to 20 K the first time. - And there's no insurance covers it. I know, yeah, there's no insurance does not cover IVF. - Never, like it never covers IVF. - No, never covers it. Obviously, we're still struggling now with IVF and getting pregnant again. So, we had Rad, he's been our blessing in our marital needs, he's just our whole world. And finally, we decided that we wanted to try again, and we had, so when you do an egg retrieval, they give you like, you do a bunch of eggs, and then you fertilize all those eggs, and then you can get multiple embryos. So, we had five, and Rad was one of the five that we had. So, we had four more embryos that we could still transfer. You don't have to do a whole another egg retrieval. You just have to do another transfer. - Yes. We tried our first transfer last, I think January, did all the medications, and at this point, we thought, you know, IVF was our, the thing that was gonna work for us, because we got pregnant the first time, and so, we never had any doubt that it wasn't gonna work. I think we were a little naive to think that, and did the transfer, and sadly, the embryo did not take, which is funny because next week is actually my due date for that embryo that we transferred. - I'm so sorry. It's okay. So, we kind of bounced right back afterwards, because we really wanted to be pregnant again. And so, I think in March, we did another transfer, and got the results back pregnant. And we were so excited. So excited. We like filmed the whole experience, and I took a pregnancy test every single day, because kind of with IVF, it's like, you're not supposed to take a pregnancy test, but you can, like five days after your transfer, and when I did it with Rod, it was positive, and I surprised Tanner, and it's always this fun thing that we do, and this time, I took a pregnancy test every single day, and then when you have a blood test, that will basically tell you, yes, it worked or no, it didn't. So, we were getting positive pregnancy tests every single day, and the call day comes, and we're so excited, and we're filming it all, and we can't wait to celebrate with friends and family, and as soon as she answered the call, And like the way she said hello because you work with your nurse coordinators a lot throughout this whole process because there's a lot of appointments a lot of medications that you have to be taking every day. As soon as she answered the phone, I was like, "Something's wrong." Like she's not like, "Oh my gosh, congratulations." Like she kind of was like, "Okay, like we got to talk about a couple of things." And she's like, "Your results showed that you're pregnant, but your levels are really low for you to be pregnant right now." So she's like, "But I've seen it where your levels double and you have successful pregnancies, but I've also seen it where they just keep going down and you're not pregnant anymore." And you miscarry. And so we had to do another blood test and it was like a Saturday and we were actually leaving. It was Tanner's birthday the next week and we always do this big trip to Green River and it's really exciting and we do every year and it's something that's really fun for our family. And we had to go in that Saturday to like a different clinic because a lot of clinics are closed on Saturday and got the results back then. Next Monday, we're in Green River, we're about to celebrate like with all our friends and family. It was like the perfect place to announce that we were pregnant too because all of our friends and family were going to be there. And it was also Tanner's birthday. We get our results and we kind of had them in our email the whole day and we were delaying it, delaying it, delaying it, delaying it. And finally we're like, "It's either we do it today and we kind of have a day to like get over it before everyone starts showing up or we have to wait the whole week." And I was like, "I'm not waiting the whole week." And at this point, I was still like, "It's pregnant. Like there's no way it's not." And then we open our letter and we find out we miscarried. I'm so sorry. I mean, I'm so sorry. I feel like it's really hard and you guys are going through the same experience right now and my heart goes out to you. Thank you. But yeah, it's something that you try so hard and you're putting your body through so much to put that much effort into it and not be pregnant at the end and spend. And you're also spending money each time like every single time we do a transfer, it's like eight grand. So you're spending so much money and you're putting all this effort in for it to fail again. It kind of puts you at a place like, "Well, can we even do this anymore? Like is this something we want to continue or is like another route we have to take?" And I kind of blame myself because I'm like, "It's not like somewhere, it's something with me where I can't figure it out." And we have no explanation for why we're going through this. So it's been hard and we had a meeting with our doctor afterwards and she kind of had to be real honest with us. And she's like, "I got tested for endometriosis, for PCOS, for everything." And she's like, "Oh, everything's coming out clear. Like nothing, we can't figure out anything that's basically wrong with you." And she's like, "Look, I think we need to do another retrieval and try to get a grade A, which with the embryos that you get, we had five. Rad was a grade A embryo, which is like the best embryo you can get and then it goes BCD. And we had transferred both bees that had failed." And so she's like, "I think we try one more time and we try to get as many A embryos as we can." And if this transfer though doesn't work for you guys, then I think it's time to consider a surrogacy. And like hearing that word for me was like, "What? Like you're telling me I'm not going to be able to carry any more babies of mine?" And this was this conversation that you had with the doctor, how recent was that? This was probably in June. This is okay in June. So very reset. And so we kind of had to make some decisions on what we were on to do next and we're like, "We're going to try it one more time. We're going to do it. We're young enough. We can do this. I want to carry another baby." So we dove right in again to do another egg retrieval, which I just finished probably around a month ago. And that was really scary for me too because the first time I did an egg retrieval, I got OHS, which is, it's like hyper ovarian stimulation or something like that. And basically it's like, when you take out the eggs, your body fills up with fluid and my body wasn't absorbing the fluid fast enough. And so I was, looked five months pregnant, I was so bloated and I was in so much pain, probably the most amount of pain I've ever been in my entire life. And this was the day after the egg retrieval? It progressively got worse, so it's five days after now. And I was calling the fertility clinic every single day like, what's going on? Like I pride myself on having a high pain tolerance, but like something's wrong, something's wrong. They're like, "Just wait, we'll get better. We'll get better." And finally day five, I'm like curled up in the bathroom, I'm fainting, I'm passing out, I'm throwing up, I have nothing else left to throw up. And I'm calling Tanner, trying not to pass out. Like you have to come get me right now and you need to take me to the fertility clinic because I'm not okay. Yeah. So call the fertility clinic, they're like, "Yeah, we'll see you, but you have to come to this different location," which was like 45 minutes from our house now, which usually is like only 15, so we had to drive all the way there. As soon as they seem, they're like, "Yeah, something's wrong, you need to be sent to the other clinic, which is the one buyer house." So they sent us back up to the house, or sorry, to the other clinic, and I had to have emergency surgery. I had a drain and I had two liters come out, and as soon as that happened, I felt so much better. But this is the first time. That's rare though, right? Like that does not happen. That's why when you called initially, they're like, "Oh, this is normal, you're not going to feel that great afterwards," because everyone, correct me if I'm wrong, but everyone that goes through an egg retrieval has some fluid go there. Yeah. But you just had so much. I have too much, yeah. And when I went in, they were like, "This is so rare. We do thousands and thousands of egg retrieval, and we probably only have one to two a year that this ever even happens to. Wow, okay. And so I was like, "Wow, just my luck. This is what happened." So that was my first one. So then we had to go into my second one, and preparing for that, I was like, "I have to prepare to go through that again." Yeah. And at least I knew what I was looking for this time, and I was better prepared, but it was like, I told Tanner before we were having all this infertility, I told him I was like, "I'm never doing an egg retrieval again. That's never going to happen to me again." And then this is where we are, and I had to kind of make a decision like, "You're either doing it or you're not." And he's really been my support of the whole time, saying, "You know, you can do this. This is something you can do." So we went ahead, did the egg retrieval, and I happily would like to report that I did not get OHSS. Let's go. And at the very, very easy recovery. Wow. So if you're scared of OHSS, just know the next time is probably better. That is really good to hear. Yeah. You guys, I mean, it's you especially have been through the ringer. Oh my goodness. This year, especially, there's just been so much going on this year. And a lot of life changes, a lot of infertility, and I've been battling the emotions with infertility and the medications that I'm taking while doing major business things and opening up businesses. It was a very big year for me, and I turned 30, just barely. 30 years old is a very big year, but we got our results back for our embryos, and we ended up getting 11 healthy embryos. Six of those being double A's, which is the best you can get. So we had a very successful retrieval. So six were double A's with the initial egg retrieval. How many did you have that was? Just one, and that was rad. No way. So that's really promising. Yes, very promising my doctor called, and she's like, "It's not normal for your second retrieval to be even better than your first." Because they younger you are, the better. Yeah. And so she's like, "This is amazing. This is the most amazing results you could ever get." Did they put you on any sort of medication to boost egg numbers before the retrieval? Yeah, you're on up. I would say the medication for egg retrieval are way harder than the medicines you get for transfers. Okay. You're just like, you're basically getting double the estrogen, double everything, and your eggs are all expanding at once. So normally when you have a cycle, I think you only mature one or two eggs. Okay. And this time you're, I got 50 eggs from the retrieval. The second one too? Yes, from the second one. Was it the first, 46 in the second one? The first one. What was everything? The first one was 50. The second one was 49. Okay. But both around 50. When I see videos about people going through IVF, I always see like our friends down in Bella who have been through it. Yeah. Like you're constantly like stabbing yourself with a needle and injecting something in your body. Is that, what is that? That's the medications. Okay. That's like before an egg retrieval to boost, to boost up everything. To like help your mature, your eggs all mature, to help your uterus, to like literally to help everything be the most successful that I can. And so that is, how long is that process before your treatment? It's around like three weeks. Oh, okay. Like four to three weeks. But like even before then, for me, since I have such irregular periods, I have to be on birth control and a birth control pill for the month before that. Okay. I'm confused by that. Why is the birth control involved in the IVF process? Okay. So with IVF. I don't get it. Yeah. That's so confusing. So with IVF, it's all timed to like the tea. And you have to get like even before the retrieval, I was getting blood work done every day because it all has a timing. So the reason why they put you on birth control is because let's say you start your period, they want to freeze you exactly where you are and that's what birth control does. It will freeze exactly where you are in your cycle. Oh, okay. Yeah. So then because you have to be ovulating and then like it's all very timed. Yeah. Like even when we did my retrieval, it was like I was progressing too fast that they're like we would plan my retrieval for Monday and I had to go in on Sunday because that's just where my body was progressing. Okay. Back to the cost thing because I'm like a numbers guy. Yeah. I'm like a math nerd. I just like to know financial information. Like what do you guys know how much you've spent on this? Like if you could like sum it all up out of pocket, what that cost? So the first round was like 20ish. The two transfers were 16. Okay. Then the retrieval was probably another 16 grand each or eight grand. transfer. Yeah. And then we lost the two. So 20 plus 16 plus the retrieval now, which well, let's just say another 20 because we'll do a transfer. So 2016 and 20. I'm not good with math. Okay. So what is that? That's 56. Yeah. That's a lot of money. A lot of money. And the crazy part is people do it for free. That's the crazy part. We can have kids for free. Oh, yeah. You know? Yeah. And you are spending 56 grand for just for us to be able to have kids too. With going through this. And I'm like, I'm so happy that the eggs retrieval went really well. Like, how does it make you feel as someone who's going through this? If someone just like Willie Nilly says something without much thought, like, oh, why don't you just adopt? Like, how does that how does that make you feel as someone going through this? Yeah. There's a lot of comments that you get. Like, I posted something the other day about seeing pregnancy announcements and how it's not that you're not happy for them, but it's just you're going through something and you want it so badly and so seeing it over and over and there's like a pregnancy season. And I feel like it's right now. Yeah. And seeing, you know, five announcements in a day, it gets harder and harder each time. And I had a couple of comments on it that was like, you should be grateful. You already have one kid and then why don't you just go adopt then? And your adoption is wonderful. And I'm so grateful for it. I'm so grateful for surrogacy. If we want to have kids, we have options. And I'm so grateful for those. But there's nothing like having your own child to and your own genes and your own genetics. And I think some people misinterpret that a little bit. And I it's like a sensitive situation because adoption is such a wonderful thing. And so grateful. But having your own child is something that you always dreamed about too. Totally. And I don't feel like that's lesser than like wanting that is less than wanting to have an adoption. You know what was going through your head when when you found out you miscarried because my wife and I are currently going through that like we're currently grieving through that. And I feel like I'm learning I just went to therapy yesterday to talk through that with my therapist because I'm still like, I don't know. Sometimes I like I numb out and I just don't want to think about the heavy stuff because it's just it's scary. And I have a really I don't cry much. But when I do cry, like it's really embarrassing. Like it's a pretty like loud like like like it's bad. It's really bad. Like talk to me about what was going through your head. Yeah, finding out that you miscarried. I think there's a lot of emotions that you process. I think as women because we carry the baby, we blame ourselves a lot, which I don't think is fair. Not fair. Yeah. But I think not having an explanation for why or maybe being like, because with the transfer, you have princess days where you're not supposed to do anything. You're not supposed to work out or raise your blood pressure because you're really trying to make that embryo stick. And so I honestly the first thing I thought about was everything that I did. And I was like, what did I do that miscarried? Because we got pregnant. So it was like, what did I do that ruined it? You know, that basically killed my baby is how I felt. And we can't think like that because we have no idea what happened or you know, what was going to happen. But honestly, it's very and it's you have your husband and you're so grateful for them. But it is very much like a grieving lonely process because you are the one going to all the appointments and doing the medications and and kind of just feeling like you're on your own because it's your fault. It's like how I the best way to describe it. And I remember in the video that we posted, I actually cut this part out, I believe, but I had said like, what did I do wrong? Like, what did I do? And Tanner had such grace, great advice in that video, you know, he said, everything happens in God's plan. And I know a lot of people hate hearing that, but standing where I am today, I can look back and be like, there was so many opportunities, so many doors that opened for me, even though that door closed and I want it so bad, there's so many more opportunities that I was also blessed with during this process that I'm so grateful for as well. There was things, there's other things I got to focus on. I got to spend more time with rad. There's you know, things that I didn't get to miss out on. Yeah. And that's really all the things that I can like hope for is that God has a plan for me. And there's a reason why we're going through this. And if I can just help as many people out there as I can going through this process again, then maybe it won't feel so lonely for people. There was a lady that reached out to my wife recently, and this woman has had two miscarriages. One was a bit earlier and then one was like upwards of 30 weeks pregnant. And so she just, you know, went on, went on a walk with Abby and they just talks and they got to like, you know, creeps together and mourn together, but then also just like share in the reality of them being in this dumb club, this miscarriage club, which I'd never even heard of that being a club until we were at the hospital last week and a nurse who had been through that like just she was like, welcome to the dumb club. And I'm like, what like, so I, where am I going with this? Well, someone said the same thing to me. It said, it's the worst club with the best numbers. Yeah. It's true. It's like the only people you can really connect to on this are the people that have gone through as well. Yeah. And you can really lean on because they do understand what you're going through. Yeah. And I think that really is like the truest thing. Like the people that have reached out to me because of this experience, like, have helped so much and their advice and the way that they grieve and telling me resources and things that I can do, it just helps a ton. And I feel like people share so much when they go through it. And I'm so grateful for everyone that has reached out. And I'm sure Abby is so grateful for everyone that has reached out to her because it is it is really hard to go through. Yeah. What did you learn about how you grieve and how Tanner grieves through through all of that? I grieve inward. I think I kind of shut people out a lot and I don't like to let people in. And I don't think it's because I mean to I think it's more because the more I talk about it, the the sadder I get, where I think Tanner embraces people and he him, he kind of embraces the story and he likes to be surrounded by people who genuinely love him and care for him. And honestly though, we grieve, we grieve really well together. Like we were able to Tanner Tanner's really good at being like, yes, this is hard and yes, this stinks. But we got to move forward. We can't stay in this darkness. We have to move forward. We have to be productive. We have to do something with this. Was that what you needed to hear? Yeah, I was super grateful for it because it's true. It's like the more you sit and wallow and be just in sadness because I could just sit here and be like, well, you know, I'm never going to do anything again. I'm never going to have kids again. And I can have a terrible attitude about it. Or you can, you know, move forward. You can try. You can uplift others. You can, you know, have, you can share your story so that others feel lonely. Like there's so much benefit that comes from this as well, even though it's such a tough situation. Yeah. And we're, we have this thing in our house that we don't complain and we're not quitters. And that that really did help me and staying busy also helped being able to have other projects to work on helped a ton and to focus my energy on something else. I was curious about that because I know like my, my default is definitely to be like, oh, let's think about the positives. You know, let's think about like all the, all the good. Like for the future, I don't know, like to try to turn something crappy into something good. Yeah. But I also know like for a lot of people that are, that are grieving and a lot of people, they, they need to hear someone just like have empathy. Yeah. And, and I don't know, like sometimes I know it's, it's different with your situation with, with IVF, but a common thing with miscarriages. Oh, just have another one. Like, oh, just, just have another baby. And it's like, no, it's like, I wanted that specific baby. Like that was, that was our baby. That was what, that was the whole plan all along. One thing that made it, I feel like, feel real for us is that we still gave our baby's names because to us, there are babies. That's always how we thought about them. We never thought about them any other way. And I think it's a little different because like, looking back, it's like, oh, we knew we were going to have, you know, four more kids and those were, that was going to be our family. And that, so I, I wear this B around my necklace because both of my babies that we lost were both B names, boon and Blakely. And then I think of them as my angel babies and then I'll see them in heaven someday. Like that's, that's the way that I know that I'm going to still have those babies one day. That's really sweet. Yeah. I, I also know, um, you've, you've mentioned on a podcast that you wanted to have five kids. Mm hmm. Has that, has that changed? Is that something, it has changed? Well, I, I just think it's more of being realistic. Okay. I'm 30. He's 31. And we're getting older. And obviously we don't know what, I think, I think before it was like, oh, we're going to have five kids. It's going to be easy. And we're going to get pregnant each time. And I think now it's much more like, okay, what's realistic for us? And what, we're just grateful. Honestly, we, we say all the time, maybe we only have one. Maybe it's just, it's just rad. Obviously, we want more. But I think we prepare ourselves for the worst a little bit. Yeah. And I think realistically, for us, as many babies as we can get, it will be great. But I don't think we'll make it to five. I mean, maybe, but hopefully, but realistically, I just don't think it's possible. Even is that something that like your doctor has said or you're just trying to like prepare yourself for the worst? I think we're just trying to prove, I mean, by four, do you have a high risk pregnancy? So even if I was to, you know, do a kid, every two years. It's like that would be 40 years old and I would have all my five kids. But that's the next 10 years for me. And is that realistic? I mean, it's now taking us a year where we thought we were going to get pregnant the first time, where we're still not pregnant. And then also we'll have another year before we have another baby because I do get pregnant, you know, nine months. So it's just like the time that we're, I feel like we're running out of time a little bit with having six double A embryos now. Like, is there any sort of idea of, oh, like, do they, in the past, have they implanted one embryo? Or was it multiple? It's funny that you bring this up because we literally just had the meeting with our doctor because we're like, let's do two. Yeah, we, we were like, I was always scared of having twins. I mean, first, because I was a new mom and I was like, oh, twins just sound scary. So let's start with one. And then we were just going to transfer another one and kind of do our kids that way. And now we're to a point where it's like, well, we could do twins. And so we were really excited about it actually. And we were like, let's go talk to our doctor because our coordinator was like, your doctor kind of has to like pass it off. Like they have to approve you that you're ready for it. Gotcha. And so I had the meeting with my doctor and she was like, I don't recommend it. She's like, a lot of the times twins are like a higher risk pregnancy. And you also have a way higher chance. It's like a 50% chance of them splitting and you get triplets or quads. Holy crap. When you put in two embryos, they can split. How does how does that work? I did not. Well, because you're taking all the medications and basically to get yourself the best chance of getting pregnant. So all those hormones are helping those embryos. And they, the hormones also help them split. Like they actually split like while they're in the womb. That's when they do that. Because oh my goodness, that's why I didn't realize that. And so she's like, I don't recommend it for this time. She said, let's go through this one and kind of see what we get. She's like, I'm really happy, especially since you have these high quality embryos. I do think that if you put two in that you're likely going to get three or four. So I have some friends from high school. This is funny that you're explaining this now because I'm like, oh, that actually makes a lot of sense. Some friends has two two girls and two guys. They're quads. Okay. And that's that's like now that you're bringing this up. That's what happened with them. So they have an older brother that was friends with my brother. And then everybody knew the quads in school. They were just like a little pack of them. And what's funny is they ended up having even another siblings. I guess their parents started having struggles with fertility. And so they had the quads and they thought they were done. They thought they couldn't get pregnant. Then they had another one. And they ended up with six kids. Oh my gosh. So now I'm so curious. I'm like, is this are your embryos going to split? Like what's good? How would you how would you feel if you had quads? Oh, your life would completely change. I'd be like, you know, I mean, it would be such a blessing, but it would just your life would be very, very different. That's scary, though, where you like, you're kind of having this. You have to gear up for, okay, maybe one of the embryos doesn't make it. So let's put two in so we can at least skip like one baby. And then you could very well have quads. And that's something like even just without IVF, like even the fertility medications that I was taking beforehand, same thing. They're like, you have a higher chance of having twins, triplets, just because your body is producing extra of the hormones that you need. And that's just how they split. And you've you've mentioned before medications like Clomid. Clomid was the one that that it's very possible for you to get twins or triplets very easily with Clomid. So I want to say that you said before like before you did IVF, you were on Clomid. Yep. Then the other one is like for Mara. Yep. And so are you back on those? Like what? Like do you do people go on those again after implantation? No. Oh, they don't. Okay. So Clomid, they're both just medications to help you ovulate. So Clomid was actually the medication that I was on when I was talking about fainting in the water. That was on Clomid. Okay. And then after that experience, I went to for Mara. And the thing is like all my blood tests said, yes, you're getting you're ovulating like you should be getting pregnant, but it just wasn't happening for us. Yeah. So those are just medications to help you ovulate where IVF is more like specific to growing your embryos and being able to like retrieve them all at once. Or sorry, your eggs. Got it. Got it. Wow. This is like. And that's the thing. It's like I'm sitting here. I'm like, it's very complicated. And I feel like every single time I do I learn something new about IVF. And most of the time you're just hanging on for your life because there's so much information that they're giving you. And there's so many medications. And you literally have a calendar. And it tells you when to start something and when to stop something. And it has times like this, you're supposed to take this before 10 a.m. And this one you have to take it night. And like it's just a very complicated process. And I think you're just kind of thrown into it. I'm like, I hopefully I'm explaining this the best way that I know how, but there's just a lot that goes into it. What does the timeline look like now? Like when when will you guys do all of the rest of the stuff, you know? Yes. So we got our embryos back, which is great. So now we can go and do a transfer. Now normally with the past due transfers, I've like brought everyone along with that process and told them, you know, when they were and I would film the transfer day and things like that. And I think we both kind of decided with this one, we wanted to keep it more personal and more not a secret. But just for right now, we're going to keep it just to ourselves and not share that. Just because I think it will be more of a personal journey, especially with knowing this might be our last time being able to do it. Because I think after this, I'm I'm pretty like if this one doesn't work out, I just need a break. This past year has been a lot on me and my body. And we just decided that this was kind of going to be our last chance. Yeah. And so I just wanted to give myself like the time and space to process everything before going to the public about it. But I would say the transfer will probably be in the next couple of months. Yeah, that's that's a lot. That's really, that has to be stressful. Like constantly thinking about, oh man, I hope this works. I hope this works. Like just just mowing over those details in your head. You know, even even just like in the in the past, you know, week of like my first experience of like going through this with my wife, it's so sad to see like some of the like, I guess lies that like she almost like believed about, oh, this is my fault or did I do something wrong? And just like I feel like that must be the biggest mind F to have as a woman when you're like trying to trying to just have have a baby. Like you're like, my body should be able to do this. This is like, this is what I was made for. Exactly. That's kind of what you think about it. And especially when you like grew up seeing all these big families and like families such a big part of Utah culture, it's such a big part of LDS culture. Like that, I completely respect your decision on like not sharing that right away and just keeping keeping that for yourself because that must be really hard to put yourself out there to open up your heart for everyone to see. Right. Like well, even when we were in Green River, we didn't have service, which I was very grateful for at that time because it kind of let me be able to process it within that week. But you know, then I get online afterwards and there's like videos of people being like, I just can't wait until Tory announces, I can't wait, I can't wait. And then it was like kind of reliving it all over again because I'm like, oh, I'm going to have to tell them that it didn't work, you know, and that we miscarried. And that was really heavy. And I knew that that video would be very heavy. And it's kind of like you want to give people the best news. Like you're excited to do that. And when you have bad news again, like it was like, they followed our first journey. And now it's our second journey. And it's like, oh, this would be the best comeback story if we got pregnant. And then again, it's like a negative. That was that was really hard to go through. And I think having people ask you because you find out if you're pregnant five days after the transfer, five fish days. And then you for sure know at 10 days. So I think people are constantly like, are you pregnant? Are you pregnant? Are you pregnant? And being seeing those comments and knowing that you're not is is hard. Yeah. So I think this time, that's why we made the decision like, we're just going to kind of do it ourselves and see what we get and have the time to process it before we have to come out to the public. I'm so curious because you you did the first egg retrieval. You did a second egg retrieval. What do you do? Like when you have all these all these eggs, like what do you what do you do when you decide to stop having children? So you know what? This is something that we had just we just talked about it. We never really thought about it that much because when we first got it, we had our five and we're like, we're going to have all five. Yeah. We we never really had to think about what we would we what we would do if we didn't have them. And actually coming home from Utah, we kind of had to have a conversation about it because I had gotten like, you know how there's a search bar on TikTok? Yes. I had posted something with IVF and the search bar was like, why if IVF is immoral? And I kind of that was like the first time I ever was like, why would it be immoral? And I posted like a picture of the search bar on my Instagram story and I had a bunch of people. They were super sweet. I had no one come in attacking at all, but kind of explain why people feel like it's a little bit immoral because we have we got 11 embryos, right? Yeah. And we're not I mean, most likely we're not going to have 11 kids. That's yeah, that's a lot of kids. And but yet these embryos still have life like if they were put into another woman, they could have life. 100% right? And so before you have an egg retrieval, they act as just big long document and there's like so many situations that you have to read through to pick what you want to do with your leftover embryos. Okay. Either discard them, donate them, donate Thank you. science, things like that. And looking back, I think we both kind of agree that we wish we would have done it a little bit differently and correct me if I'm wrong, babe. I think we, it's hard to know, right? Because it's like, we got 50 eggs, but we don't know how many embers we're gonna get from the 50 eggs. So we want the best chance possible to get as many as we can, because last time we ended up with five, I was like, what if we only end up with two or with three? Okay, explain that too, because yeah, you get 50 eggs, but not all 50 these eggs are going to be fertilized. So does the doctor tell you which eggs are the, like premium, quality eggs to then be fertilized? There's like five different numbers. So the first is how many you retrieved, which retrieved 50. And then it's like how many of those were matured, which is basically like they have to be 14 millimeters or bigger in order to be fertilized. So then they give you a number for how many matured and then they give you a number for how many were fertilized. And then they give you another number for how many, like progressed from the fertilization. - Okay. - So obviously, you're trying to give yourself the best chance to have as many as you can, because we're hoping that we'd get five again. But this time we ended up with 11, and we were kind of looking back like, man, maybe we should have only fertilized half of them, like, 'cause you can tell them like, I only want this number of eggs fertilized. - Well, okay, I see what you're saying now, because I know there's a big, especially in, I know in the pro-life community, there's a big discussion of if certain IUDs, certain intrauterine devices are, I guess, like abortion, because there are certain IUDs that if you get it after being intimate with someone, like it can keep the fertilized egg from like implanting to the uterine wall. - Yeah. - Correct, am I correct about that? Like it prevents it after it kind of happens. - And so I want to say like medically, 'cause I nerd out on this stuff, and I just, I don't know, I'm weird. But like I did this like deep like rabbit hole search and found out like medically doctors don't consider it to be, like a pregnancy until it's like implanted to the uterine wall, but then there's people that would say like, oh no, that's yeah, that's like a life. - Right, which it's true, like the embryos technically, if they could become humans. - Yeah, 100%. - But then you have to think about, well, these are our DNA as well, it's our kids, and it's like if we have our kids out there, do we, do we, do we want this? - Yeah, like if you donate your fertilized eggs, like that, you don't know if your kid ends up in some like not ideal situation that's your DNA, right? - Right, and especially with us that we're having such a hard time having kids, it's like, you know, you want to know your kids no matter who they are or who they're raised by it. It's just, it's very complicated and it's kind of hard for us as well because it's not like you really know what you're gonna get from a retrieval, it's not like you can predict like, okay, I only want five embryos, you can't do that, you know? So it's kind of like you want to give yourself the best chance though, and we wanted a lot of grade A embryos because that's what worked for us the first time. And so we went ahead and fertilized as many as we could. Now looking back, we're like, well, maybe we shouldn't have done that, and that's kind of something that we have to deal with together. - So it sounds like you've still haven't figured out like a definitive idea of what you want to do with fertilized eggs. - Well, I look at it like we don't know what's gonna work and what's not. We don't know if these embryos, like even let's say even a AA, we put it in and it still doesn't work. Well, we try another, you know what we keep trying and we'll we keep trying each of our embryos to see which ones work. That's kind of where we're like, we don't really know. And that's what's hard about it. You know, you go back and forth with yourself on what you should have done or what you could have done. But at the end of the day, you're paying a lot of money and you want to give yourself the best chance to get pregnant. - I feel like we've talked about so much, but I do want to ask, like is there anything else that I haven't asked that you'd like to talk about or anything in particular? - Yeah, I would like to talk about a little bit with like the businesses that we opened this year. - Yes. - Yeah, because I feel like it's something that's really cool and something that's really different especially in like the social media game. - 100%. - So we, so I recently opened a talent management company called Rad Talent Management. - Very cool. - And I have been with talent management before and had a great experience with them, but definitely wanted more of like a connection, more of like a strategy working with other creators. So I opened this Rad Talent Agency with my husband and also my friend and business partner, Aubrey. And what I noticed from it was there was a lot of people that weren't necessarily established content creators, but they wanted to be one and they wanted to know how to do it and how to get brands and how to monetize. And that's when we came out with a company called HerTurn. It's a community of women who are all like minded who want to elevate and uplift each other. You don't have to be a content creator to be in it, but there's a lot of content creation help and a lot of women who want to take content creation seriously. It's like favorite day of the week to be able to connect and talk to these women. I learn from them, they learn from me. And it's just like such a special community. And there's so much uplifting and positive feedback from everyone there. And it's kind of like a support system. I feel like in the content creation world, there's a lot of secrecy. Maybe like I feel like you see these content creators and you know that they're making great money, but you don't know how they're doing it or how they got started in it. And that was one thing that I really wanted to kind of like expose. And I feel like we should be collaborating, not competing with one another because there's a lot of comparison in social media. Totally, totally. And so if we could create something where all these women get together and they can all go and support each other doing and chasing their dreams, then why not? And why not share what I have learned in all my seven years of being able to, you know, provide for my family and monetize my own personal brand, why not share that and help other women do the exact same thing, especially being stay at home moms. Tori, thank you so much for coming on. It was a pleasure speaking with you. - No, thank you. I was so fun to be here and I'm just so grateful.