The Waiting Walk
The Waiting Walk — This podcast is about opening the pages of real fertility journeys — raw, honest, and hopeful. Each episode feels like a diary read out loud, where we walk gently together through the waiting season.
Plus, you’ll hear the voices of other women, opening up about their own waiting walks.
Until next time-breathe, walk gently, and hold onto hope. 💛
The Waiting Walk
Special Edition: Jen's Diary-Part 1
Today’s diary comes from Jen. Her walk begins with years of debilitating fibroids, two surgeries, and four failed IUIs. What she thought were ‘next steps’ turned into roadblocks again and again, until IVF became the only path forward. This is Jen’s story.
Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:Hi, I'm Jen Oliver. I'm 42 and I'm so grateful to be sharing my story here on The Waiting Block. How I Know Jocelyn is kind of a funny story. She is one of my husband, Ryan's high school friends. And we met over 10 years ago at a local bar where their mutual friends were all hanging out. I remember meeting her that night and immediately thinking, Oh my gosh, I love her. She's gonna be my friend now. Like, I was just claiming her on the spot. Since then, we've only met in person once. I was in her city for a work trip, and I asked if she wanted to grab lunch. She showed me around, and of course, I had my corporate credit card ready. It was a work trip after all. But she flat out refused to let me pay. She bought me lunch anyway. I mean, who does that? Only Jocelyn. That's her. Kind, generous, and genuinely one of the sweetest people I know. So when she confided in me about her own struggles and asked if I'd share my fertility journey here, I didn't even have to think about it. Because this walk can feel really, really lonely. And it shouldn't. My journey started with fibroids, lots of them. And not the kind you read about in pamphlets. These were debilitating, periods so heavy I could bleed through my clothes in an hour and a half. I missed work, and I just felt like I was sitting out on life. But I thought it was normal. My OB said, oh, lots of women have fibroids. will be fine. Spoiler, I was not fine. Before we even got to fertility treatments, my OB had suggested hysteroscopies. So that's basically when they shove a camera up your vagina to look inside your uterus. And if they see fibroids, they cut them out. Sounds fun, right? So the first one was in 2018. I was 35. Tried again for a few months to nothing fibroids came back so i did another hysteroscopy in 2019 two surgeries down and still no pregnancy at that point i was frustrated like how many times am i going to let someone go in there with a camera before we admit this isn't working then i met dr patrick ryan teefe dry, sarcastic, and very blunt. My husband's name is Ryan Patrick, so it felt like fate. He looked at my chart and said, honestly, if I were your doctor, I wouldn't have prescribed the hysteroscopies. Even if you do get pregnant, you'll likely miscarry. You need an open myomectomy. Finally, someone telling me the truth. I told him, you're hired. And also, what's an open myomectomy? I had the surgery, which is akin to having a C-section scar during May of 2020, so peak COVID. It was medically necessary and it worked, kind of. It cleared the fibroids, but it left scar tissue. which meant that a spontaneous pregnancy, basically a pipe dream. Q-I-U-I, four rounds, four failures,$1,500 each. And only after the fourth did they finally do an HSG. So that's a test where they run dye through your fallopian tubes to see if anything's blocked. And guess what? One of my tubes was blocked, which meant IUIs were never going to work. So yeah, six grand down the drain for nothing. That was the moment I thought, okay, enough. IVF it is.