Babes in Bookland
A podcast celebrating women's memoirs, one story at a time!
Babes in Bookland
AUTHOR CHAT: Amy Gallo Ryan on Her Memoir "You May Feel a Bit of Pressure"
A crowded waiting room where no one speaks.
That image frames my conversation with author Amy Gallo Ryan, whose memoir You May Feel a Bit of Pressure captures the invisible weight of infertility. Its medical routines, social silences, and the way hope can both carry and cut. We dig into why she wrote the book she couldn’t find, how ten years of drafting and revising turned chaos into story, and what it means to share the truth when the truth isn’t tidy.
Amy walks us through the physical and emotional toll of treatment (which includes Clomid, IUI, and IVF) and the quieter ruptures few people see: friendships painfully pushed away, a life controlled by injection routines and months of hope lost to blood work results, and a body that starts to feel separate from the self. We talk about identity, shame, and the primal pull to parent that defies tidy logic. We also pull back the curtain on publishing: querying too early, near‑misses, parting with an agent, and ultimately finding the right indie press.
If this conversation moved you, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs to feel seen, and leave a review telling us what moment stayed with you. It helps others find the stories that help them feel less alone.
Buy Amy's memoir (Releases October 21st!)
Transcripts are available through apple’s podcast app—they may not be perfect, but relying on them allows me to dedicate more time to the show! If you’re interested in being a transcript angel, let me know.
This episode is produced, recorded, and edited by me.
Theme song by Devin Kennedy
Special thanks to my new friend, Amy. Your book is beautiful and so are you!
Xx, Alex
Hello, welcome to Babes in Bookland, your women's memoir podcast. I'm your host, Alex Franca. I have a treat for y'all today. Author Amy Gallo Ryan is here to chat about her beautiful memoir, You May Feel a Bit of Pressure. Observations from Infertility's Heart Wrenching Ride. Hi. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm so happy to be here chatting with you. Your book is coming out next week, October 21st.
SPEAKER_00:So congratulations. Thank you. How are you feeling about that? It is so surreal. I have been working on this for 10 years. So it just spans such an enormous stretch of my life. And it's actually very strange to be releasing my like grip on it and like sharing it. Infertility like really changed my whole life. And I think even when I like concluded treatment, I haven't known how to let it go. And so now at this moment, I'm sort of like grappling with this prospect of like, as I release this book, does it mean I have to let this experience go? And what does that look like? And um, I'm just such a different person than I was when it all started. It's honestly, it gives me all of these like pangs of I don't know, comp it's just a complex thing. It's been a long haul here. So I'm like thrilled to share the book and for people like you to read it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. This is not an easy feat. And I definitely want to get into the process before we get into the meat of the memoir. But before we do, I just wanted to say thank you for writing this memoir. I think that this memoir is truly, truly a gift. I really mean that, not only for the people who are on their infertility or fertility journeys, but for the people who love and support them. Because when you're going through something like that, you don't always have the availability to express how you're feeling. As we learned in your memoir, you're processing, you're building the plane as it's flying, you're up and down. And I think that this is just a beautiful gift that you've given the world.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. Yes. When I was going through infertility, I never quite found the book that I wished was out there. And I was always struck by how crowded the waiting room was at the fertility clinic. And yet nobody was talking to each other. Like we sort of even averted our eyes. I don't know. It was just all of these people, but all experiencing it in isolation. Yeah. And that just felt so um sad to me. And I felt it was just the loneliest time of my life. And I I always felt like, you know, all of these women, our diagnoses may not be the same. Various aspects of our treatment are certainly not the same, but like the emotions are surely what we're that's the common ground. We're all experiencing hope and shame and disappointment and uncertainty. And it just felt like if we can't say those things out loud and kind of reflect them back to each other, we're missing out on this opportunity for connection. And we're all feeling so lonely unnecessarily, maybe.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And it's interesting how the theme of not being able to find the book you need. So you write it yourself. Yeah. It comes up quite a bit in these memoirs. Like I've read almost 50 women's memoirs at this point. And let me tell you, we're all just looking to feel connected. We really are. Yeah. So you said that you've been writing this book for 10 years. Talk to me about that moment when you realized I have to write this, either for myself or for this community of people.
SPEAKER_00:So after I concluded treatment, I had quit my job in the process of after our first round of IVF failed, I quit my job and really like kind of completely immersed myself in this world. And then once I concluded treatment, I was like, okay, I guess, you know, it's time to go back to life. So I took a like a full-time freelance job. I was a women's magazine writer and editor. And I, so I went back. And very quickly it became clear that I couldn't, like I was just a different person. The experience had changed me. And there really was no going back to the life that I had been living before all of this. I didn't care about the same things. I wanted to put my time and energy into something that really meant something to me. And that was this topic. For a minute, I was like, I started looking at um graduate school programs for social work. I thought about, oh, like, would I want to work with clinically work with people that are going through infertility? But ultimately, I'm a writer and that's how I process things. I was like, I think this book should exist. I really felt strongly that it's a book that should exist and that didn't exist. And um maybe I could be the one to write it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, of course, of course. I mean, you lay it all out. It's very intimate, very vulnerable, very raw. You don't hold back on difficult moments in lots of your relationships with yourself, with your husband. Were you just giving yourself permission to not edit and say, you know what? I need to get all of this out for myself. And then maybe I can go back with an editor or with the people that I trust and really like pick and choose what I wanna, what I want to put out in the world or not.
SPEAKER_00:No, it was hard. And I had to be encouraged. I at first, um, an editor I used to work with in magazines, I had her look at some of my essays and she was the first one to say, I feel like you're saying a lot, but you're there's you're reaching a point, and then you're not saying there's more. Okay. And so it took some nudging to say all of the things. Every time I wrote an essay, I would give it to my husband to read, not as like a um Are you okay with this? Yes, exactly. Because at that point, I was like, Who knows if anybody this could be just a Word document on my computer? And who knows if anybody is ever gonna read this besides you? So and he never objected to anything. And then once I knew it was gonna be published and it was all in its like basically its current form, I was like, Why don't you read this just one more time, like start to finish to make sure you and I kept waiting for him to be like, uh, I don't really feel comfortable, or could you maybe not? And he did not, he was like, Yes. And I I was so like touched by that. I don't know. I just it's you know, my own personal truth. Yeah. But he's obviously heavily involved in the story as well. So yeah. And then again, once I knew it was going to be published, I gave it to my sister and my parents and a couple of friends that are mentioned more significantly. And that was such a vulnerable feeling to put that in those people's hands. This was not this past summer, the summer before I gave it to um a handful of people in my life to read. And I kind of held my breath for the for the duration of it. You're handing them your diary, basically. And you know what's interesting too? It's like these are all people that obviously knew me through that this time and almost across the board, they all came back and said, We had no idea. You know, it gave me a new perspective on how much I held in and and lived alone.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. You were just trying to survive in your life. That's right. You did it. So as you were speaking, it reminded me there's this quote, and I'm I should look up who did it. I want to say it's Hemingway, but who knows? A very prolific, very talented writer once said, Writing is easy. You just sit down at your typewriter and you bleed. And Amy, I really feel like that's what you did with this memoir. You just sat down and you bled and you had people in your life validate you and support you the best they could during that time in your life. But then now, what an amazing feeling to have these people that you love so much show up and say, Yes, this was your experience. You have to share this with the world.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. It was very touching. Anybody that I shared it with because they're in it, nobody said, Oh, please take this out. Not one person, everybody just said, We're so proud of you.
SPEAKER_02:That's awesome. What was it like to kind of put that last period at that last sentence before you gave it to all your friends? And you just realized, oh my gosh, I just finished the first draft of my memoir.
SPEAKER_00:When I finished writing it, I was a long way from selling it. So I I I did want to not make the celebration of it dependent on having a publisher say, we want to make this book. I felt like to write it was an accomplishment unto itself. Because even when I was setting out to to put it all down, I was like, I think there, I think there's a book here. But until you kind of start putting words on the page, are you sure if it works, if there's enough pages worth of material to justify an entire book? Um, you know, maybe it's a couple of essays and and and that's that. Like uh so to go through the actual experience of the like butt in the chair writing of it, which I largely did during the pandemic, it it did, it felt like a hugely, you know, gratifying moment. And I think as I was living infertility, it was so painful and difficult. But the actual like the writing of it did not feel I think people like assumed that sitting down and sort of like living in this world of infertility, reliving it as I as I was writing it would be so such a terrible place to be. And I actually found it very comforting. Like it was, it was terrible to live it, but then in the writing of it, I felt like everything that was like messy and complicated and amorphous about it, I was able to sort of give shape and wrap my arms around and get a handle on what happened in a way that as I was living it, I couldn't.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, because you were inundated with so much. I was actually a little surprised by your answer because I was moved to tears quite a few times while reading your book. And so I mean, that's beautiful that you're able to sit down and I I would imagine that that would have been a very difficult experience if you're kind of like breaking down as you as you wrote it. There are some memoirs that I read where I don't think the author has been removed from the situation as long as maybe they needed to really process and heal. And that's a very different memoir, and it doesn't feel as completed sometimes or grounded as yours really does. Good for you for just taking your time and understanding who you are and where you needed to be in the process of actually doing this so that it was the healthiest way for you to re-experience this.
SPEAKER_00:It's so interesting to hear that perspective as a reader. And I also think one of the most challenging aspects of infertility was the lack of control. And I think like writing for me, I felt in control rather than being sort of this. I felt that infertility sort of like dragged me along. And once I started writing it, like I was in the driver's seat and I was in charge of my story, and it was a like a reclaiming of power in a way. And and I needed that. It was so like incredibly vulnerable, cathartic. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_02:That's such a beautiful thing to think about. I mean, not all of us feel like we have a thing to write a memoir about, or we even feel comfortable, like, oh, we're writers. But man, reclaiming your narrative, getting your story down the way that you see it and you feel about it. I think that's why people like to write in their diaries. I've never been very good about keeping that up, but there is something to that, right? Because you reclaim it as your own. Right. Take control. I love that. Did you have any rituals when you wrote? You said you did it during the pandemic, or no, it just kind of came.
SPEAKER_00:No, but the one main thing, because I I know some writers are are so dedicated in in the sense of like morning pages, or they have these rituals that are they're very consistent with it. And I am not like that. I'm either writing obsessively or not at all. When I am writing, when I'm in that sort of producing um pages, I always have to be reading a book and a book within the genre. So I read a ton of memoirs as I was working on this. Like there's something in my brain, like an input-output equation almost that like if there is a need for like creative output, I also need to be sort of like feeding myself in that way.
SPEAKER_02:You want to shout out to any memoirs that you really felt inspired to do?
SPEAKER_00:Well, the so one of my favorite books, and I read it in the early, early stages of writing this, was The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jameson. Okay. Which is not a memoir. It's a collection of essays. It's not a memoir, but it there is a lot of her own. She's very involved in each of the essays. And I just think she's unbelievably brilliant. And I felt like it was such an insightful and like moving book. Did you reach out to her?
SPEAKER_02:No. I read Lessons in Chemistry. Have you read Lessons in Chemistry? No, I haven't actually. It's so good. And I loved it so much. And now we have access to people. I DM'd her. I slid into her DMs and I said, Thank you for writing this book. It's amazing. And I wonder, should we do that more? I'm sure you would welcome, right? Someone is so moved by your book or felt so seen by your memoir. Totally. Amy's like, DM me, let me know.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, that's kind of at this point part of it, right? Well, it's funny. It's like the connection that I'm hoping that that my book achieves in whatever ways. Part of it is like, I want to connect with, you know, I want that. I felt like this total absence of connection as I was going through this. And I think in some way I'm still searching for that. Like, where are my people who like, you know, I know all these people are out there and they know so much of what I have put down on paper to be true because they've felt it themselves and I am still longing for that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But you're right. It's like, I think that's one of the most wonderful things about books to me, also, is they bring people together through direct message and also just like, you know, in spirit.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, a thousand percent. You've written the book, your friends have given the sign off. Talk to me about finding that right team to bring your book to the masses and hopefully achieve that connection for you.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I made a million mistakes. Um, I had no idea what I was doing. I went querying too early, and I was I was just like underdeveloped. So there was a real learning curve, I would say. And I'm still the book industry is like a wild um frontier. It really is. It really is. And like it it functions. It functions so sort of like in spite of itself. Sometimes it doesn't function like any other industry I had like that I have witnessed. I went out querying too early, then I pulled it back, then I made a lot of changes. I signed with an agent sort of right before the pandemic. And we went out on submission. We almost sold it. We thought we sold it. We like celebrated like we sold it, and then it kind of fell apart. And then she and I parted ways. And then I did like a pretty significant revise. And after I had revised it, I went out myself to like university presses and indie presses, eventually sold it to an indie press myself. Good for you. I like never gave up on it, which almost and like it surprised me about myself because it's not something that I've ever, I don't know. I wouldn't describe myself as like a stop at nothing kind of gal. Like, I'll stop. Like in many instances in my life, I have stopped. And in this one, I was just like, I believed in this project so deeply. And even when I was like, okay, this is not gonna sell before I got word that it had. I was like, I started applying for like an MFA program where I was like, I'm going to continue to work on this project because I know something is here until I get there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It was very torturous at many points along the way, but I got there.
SPEAKER_02:So yeah, you did. Yes. And it comes out next week. It's available for us all to purchase. Let's get into the memoir. You may feel a bit of pressure. Talk to me about finding the title. Did you come up with it? Did someone else come up with it?
SPEAKER_00:When I was initially out on submission, when I had my agent, um, it had a different title. And then once I revised it, I felt like it had changed enough that I felt like it needed a different title and also just like a different energy. I was texting with my friend, my very brilliant friend, throwing some ideas out for a new title. And she was like, I always loved books that have titles that are phrases. I was told there'd be cake. And so she gave a couple of examples and she was like, is there anything like that that is part of like a medical form that you have to fill out? Or that like the doctor always says, and it just it was like it took her asking the right question. And I just immediately texted her and I was like, you may feel a bit of pressure with like a hundred exclamation points. It just felt like a like a jolt, immediately felt right. But it's funny, it's like that phrase is so familiar, especially to women. And it was it was a line in the book already, which I love. I love when you're reading a book and you're like, yes, the title. So do I, so do I. I love that moment. Um was already a line in the book. But even when I when I was like, oh, this is also the title, because we all know that phrase, but we experience it in the privacy of a little room by ourselves. I just questioned, like, are people gonna get this? Does it land? So seeing people respond to it, which I've like gotten so much positive feedback on it from like women in their 70s to women in their 40s that like me, that it just resonates immediately with women has just been like such a cool thing to see because I did feel a little bit of like uncertainty. Do people get this? And then I was like, yes. Every woman was like, yes, we get this.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, we get this. And it works on so many levels. Obviously, it works on the physical doctor's office level. But really, I don't know, a woman who doesn't feel pressure to like have children and like do it the quote, you know, right way or whatever that means. Just I I applaud you. I love this title. I'm a big title girl myself. I'm writing a screenplay. I I like so many people have that book that I'm, you know, and when I think of the title, it just unlocks things for me. So I think I find it interesting that you had a different title first. Do you what do you want to share?
SPEAKER_00:Of course, it was called Trying. Trying, okay, which was a much more like somber and heavier title. And then when I revised it, one of the suggestions I had gotten was to find more places to add humor and to just sort of like find more moments of levity. And so I felt like the title, the new title should reflect just a different sort of cheeky kind of. It's a little cheeky, like a little bit of a wink. And but you're right. I mean, for your screenplay or your book that it sounds like maybe is also happening in there somewhere. Um, like I think a title is so hard, it needs to accomplish so much. And there are so many books. So it's it's I think it's tricky.
SPEAKER_02:You nailed it. Your friend helped you. Yeah, she did, she sure did. And I'm so glad that you do bring up the levity and the humor because this is obviously a memoir about a very difficult moment in your life, moments, length of time. I did cry, but I cry a lot. I mean, if people listen to this podcast, I cry almost every moment because I I'm like that girl in uh Mean Girls. I just have a lot of feelings. But there is humor and levity, and it's just real. Like at the end of the day, it's just real. And as humans, even when we go through difficult moments, there are times where you look at your partner, your husband, whomever, your best friend, and you're just like, what the fuck? Like we have to laugh or we're just gonna continue crying. I do want to throw that out there. That, you know, people going into this, it's not just this like, woe is me. I had a really difficult infertility journey. No, it's just this beautiful encapsulation of this difficult moment in your life, full of many other moments, too. Okay, the forward. Girl, who is Lauren Smith Brody? Because wow, I think that was one of the most beautiful forwards that I've ever read. Is she your best friend?
SPEAKER_00:She was not one of the women that you mentioned. I have never met her.
SPEAKER_02:I do not know her. Wow.
SPEAKER_00:Kathleen, who you know.
SPEAKER_02:Shout out to Kathleen.
SPEAKER_00:We love her. Shout out to Kathleen, who is a phenomenal book publicist. It was her idea to have somebody write a forward, which was brilliant and something I never would have thought of. I I don't have a huge following. I am not, I do not have a platform. I am just a person. So she was like, I think having somebody to introduce you and introduce your story could be a really powerful addition to your book. And I was like, a trillion percent. That's so smart. And so she knows Lauren Smith Brody and reached out to her and uh she read the book. And when I found out that she had read it and loved it and was willing to do the forward, I'm pretty sure I cried and absolutely celebrated when I read what she actually wrote. I don't know what I had in my mind as like what the a forward would possibly say. Yeah. I was just like, this is so beautiful, this is so powerful. This, um, and also she is somebody that has not experienced infertility. So it was an interesting at first, she was like, Do you want me to do this? Because this is not something I can speak to personally. But I think what she wrote just as a woman, and to your point earlier about like there's a broadness to the female experience. And when we're willing to be honest and to say the true things, we share more than than we might even realize.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I love it. I can't believe she doesn't know you personally, but that just speaks volumes to your memoir.
SPEAKER_00:So there you go. I I hope to meet her. Um, we've like since connected on social media and she's just like so supportive. And just to have somebody that has hard-earned success and that she's willing to like put her name next to mine and try to help me find my readership and support me in that way. I'm a complete stranger to her. Like she's like a fairy godmother.
SPEAKER_02:We love women who lift up other women.
SPEAKER_00:Oh my gosh. It's not that hard. Right. It's like precisely what you're doing here. Amplifying the voices of women. And you know what's crazy? Can I just say this is neither here nor there? Even as I've tried to get essays placed before I had a publisher and since, finding outlets that are willing to share stories of womanhood like this is much more challenging than it should be. That there aren't more people out there who are trying to do what you are doing with this podcast. Like it's, I don't know, anyway.
SPEAKER_02:Well, thank you. I got into this because I have a daughter and I was like, what am I doing to make the world better for her? You know, I was I've been in Hollywood for many years. And so it's like, make silly, cheesy horror movie, also fun, but you know, do something with a little bit more weight. And uh, it's been beautiful. Like, I highly recommend reading women's memoirs. You don't have to talk about them with your friends if you don't want to. I highly recommend that too. I mean, and and Kathleen's given me such a gift by introducing you to my show and you wanting to be on and me being, I can't believe this is my life. I'm literally talking to an author right now who wrote an incredible memoir. Like, this is insane.
SPEAKER_00:I bought one of the shirts that say you're reading a women's memoirs. And I'm like, who can I get this for for Christmas? Amy, I love you. Oh my god, I'm like so excited about it. And I know that the second I wear it out in the world, like we're yeah, it's so good.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you. Thank you. I did have fun designing that. Okay, I'm I've been kind of running up to this point, but um, God, I'm gonna cry. I had this moment when I was reading your memoir where I just had to put the book down and I just balled because I didn't suffer infertility. I um have two wonderful children, but I did have a miscarriage in between my first and my second. My first day got pregnant really easy, and I lost my second child about five or six weeks. It was very similar to your story where like the HCG was going up, but it wasn't a viable situation, and that it just like really fucks with you. And it I went in the day before my birthday, I did the blood work on my birthday, and I found out the day after my birthday that it wasn't a viable pregnancy. So, like that sucked. But I have always felt like I didn't really have the place to grieve that child because found out early that it wasn't viable. I got pregnant with my son two months after. And your book just gave me permission to really do that. So thank you. I seriously, I I read that part and I just put the book down and I cried, and I was like, I don't think I ever cried like this for this child. I mean my heart. She was a child, she was a she. She was it was five weeks along, who knows? And so thank you for that personally. You talk about how the nurse tells you you're five weeks and four days pregnant, and she writes, due September 6th. And that was the first time you had ever had a due date, right? On your chart. And then you have surgery to remove it's an ectopic pregnancy, and those words haunt you. You write, Who would he have been? I wondered. This tiny person I felt sure was a little boy. I could only imagine his face, his laugh, his gifts. And you write about telling people the story, but you leave out the one little detail, quote, the fact that come September I was supposed to have a baby. Only there was no funeral to attend, no familiar ritual to help me make sense of my grief, no other mourners to share the weight of my sorrow. I share the weight of your sorrow, Amy. And I thank you for sharing the weight of mine. My daughter, who knows, would have been born in June. And every June, I think. And of course, I wouldn't have my son, like, you know, it of course you do the thing, you do the thing, right? Where you downplay because ultimately you do feel lucky. But man, I didn't know that I needed that moment. So thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00:That's really incredible. When I wrote that, I am imagining that someone else understands that feeling, but I don't know for sure. Yeah. So even just hearing that, that is a shared um, and I'm sure far the ripple far beyond the two of us sitting here. Yeah. I think that's absolutely incredible and so powerful. Um, and thank you for sharing that. Right. It's like you you move on in that moment and you keep going and you're you try again. And but right, there's no place to put that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And and what are we to supposed to do with that?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It happened.
SPEAKER_02:Right, right. And I appreciate like I feel like your memoir, like you said earlier, it isn't just for women going through this. I mean, I your infertility experience was heinous. Like, let's be real. It was it was long, it was heinous. We're about to dive even deeper. But do we give ourselves permission ever as women to like feel all the things that we deserve to feel? No matter like we're always comparing our joys and our sorrows to other people, right? And at a certain point, it's like, well, I'm only human. If I keep pushing down what I feel because I don't feel that these feelings are worthy or valid, I mean, it's gonna come out eventually in some way or another, right? And I just feel like your memoir gave us, gives everyone permission to feel all the things that they need to feel at whatever various stage they feel them, you know? Yes.
SPEAKER_00:So and like I think that's so true. It's like you're even you in in that same breath, you're like, and I'm so lucky because, and and that that is certainly true. And yet you felt those things, experienced that experience, and you are allowed to feel how you feel about it in that moment and however many years later it is now. Like, I I think that I think that's what's hard. It's hard for us to like hold the complexity of like, I struggled with that so much. Like infertility sort of like absolutely leveled me. And and I was like questioning that in myself. Why can't I just be happy for what I have?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. You do mention privilege a lot in your book. I mean, your husband fortunately was in a job where you guys had, I guess, the most amazing insurance ever to ever exist. Yes. And so you were able to keep doing these treatments. So let's back up a little bit. You right at the very beginning of your book, your introduction, you were you say, I call it this, but really, I mean, you went through different variations and then ultimately IVF, right? But there's like all these things that we do as women, just hormonal shots. I mean, and I've had friends go through the shots or the IUI, I guess.
SPEAKER_00:IUI, yeah, introducing insemination.
SPEAKER_02:Right. And then egg retrieval. Gosh, the things that we're that we're doing. What were all the the things that you did?
SPEAKER_00:When I went off birth control, my period just gradually started becoming irregular for the first time in my life. I was 31. A doctor wouldn't even take my appointment to see if there was something wrong because you have to be trying for a certain amount of time. Under 35, it was 12 months. Wow. Even that, it's like you're just kicking the can down the road, not taken seriously at all because I was so young.
SPEAKER_02:Even though you knew, you knew.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, I I it felt wrong to me. But but also I, you know, to use like the phrase of the day, I felt like I was gaslit. I felt like I it was like pat on the head, like, you know, you're just making something out of nothing. You like, like sit tight, sweetie, and come back in however many months. So I was, I, you know, read a book. I started going to acupuncture, I started taking my temperature to determine when I was ovulating. And all the ovulation tests were basically saying, you're not ovulating. So after a year, when I was finally assessed, they determined that I wasn't really ovulating as I suspected. And so I started a drug called Clomid to like strengthen the quality of my eggs and to regulate the frequency, you know, to make me ovulate once a month as I was supposed to. So we did that for like maybe four months, it didn't work. We went to IUI. I think we did three rounds of IUI. That didn't work. And eventually we got to IVF. And I think I was 32. I think I turned 33 over the course of our first round of IVF.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:And And I even I felt like the people in my life were sort of like thought I was still overreacting, like that it was still, and maybe that's my own misinterpretation. But I was so young that I didn't know anybody who had who had had this sort of trouble.
SPEAKER_02:Well, because we we don't really talk about it, right? We suffer in silence. So maybe you did. Maybe you were crossing women in their 20s.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yes. And then I wound up doing many, it felt like many six rounds of IBF.
SPEAKER_02:It's a lot. That is a lot. And we'll get into the weight of all of that. You talk about the moment that you wanted to start your family after the death of your grandfather, who was 87 years old and still commuting into New York five days a week. I mean, kind of incredible. Your grandfather sounded like such an amazing human being, by the way.
SPEAKER_00:And I'll tell you what, I did not do him justice. He he was the most special person. And actually, when my dad read the book, I was like, oh God, you know, my dad's reading this. And um he like texted me after he finished it and he was like, Gramps would be so proud of you. And that like really got Yes.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, I bet. I bet. What was that like for you? That that decision, you know, I feel like it's such a personal thing for all of us when we turn to our partner or we look inward. I mean, some women do this on their own and they're like, I'm ready to have a baby. I'm ready to create this next generation and pour the love that's been poured into me into something else.
SPEAKER_00:Totally. He died three months before Tim and I got married. And I was 30 years old. And this idea that the part of my life with him in it, that that part of my life was over, just felt so inconceivable. And the only sort of like hopeful thought I could have was that there's this future part of my life with these other people in it. And that's gonna be so beautiful. And maybe because of the way it aligned timing-wise with getting married, but it did feel like I can't believe I'm saying goodbye to this chapter of my life.
SPEAKER_02:It's time to start a new chapter. I'm ready to go. There's a new chapter.
SPEAKER_00:And the idea that these people that I didn't know yet, um, but that were going to be as big a part of my life as he was, that it was exciting. And I was sort of like, oh, I can't wait to meet those people. Like, who are they?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And there was this really heartbreaking moment when you realize that this effervescent, bubbly young girl that your grandfather loved and called you the light, you called him the light. I love that moment. She was gone. And you write, as the losses piled up, the loss of my work, the loss of my friends, as they started families around me, the loss of my sense of self, the woman my grandfather spoke of was swallowed up, the various losses eclipsing each other, becoming so numerous that there wasn't time to grieve. Instead, the lines between each individual wound began to blur until I felt as if I was walking around with a huge, gaping hole that couldn't be filled or fixed, but that I simply had to live with. And you also write this: Setting out to create a life, attempting to unleash the sort of infinitesimal spark capable of crackling and blazing into a human being. Beautiful sentence, by the way. Is perhaps the purest thing any of us can do. But pure is not the same as easy. The endeavor arduous or effortless, we don't get to choose. Let's talk about your resilience. How did you do that, Amy? How did you walk around with this huge hole that you couldn't fill?
SPEAKER_00:The hope and strength of my belief that it was going to work was fuel and what kept me going. I just believed, it's like earlier we uh when I was saying like, I just believed that this was going to be a book and that it should be a book. I just believed that we were gonna get there. And um it was such a powerful force. My doctor was very confident and he he felt like it's a matter of time. This is gonna work for you. We're gonna get there. Um your second doctor. That's right. Right. My first doctor, like didn't even know I was his patient. So yeah. And in the book, the essay, the chapter on hope, when my hope ultimately was extinguished, I knew that that was the end because it my hope was so irrational at times, and but it was so powerful that that belief of just like just keep going, just keep going. I always knew what was next. I could always see the next step, the thing that was gonna get me there. And so taking it sort of step by step by step by step felt so I just I felt such conviction in that. And then when our fifth round of IVF failed and really my hope was extinguished, that's when it became clear that I just could without the hope, I couldn't keep going.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I thought it was interesting this idea of unlimited tries that your husband's insurance allowed. Do you think that played into it at all? This idea, like, well, I can keep going when so many women only can afford one try or, you know, not even can afford a try. Did that play into it all, do you think?
SPEAKER_00:Yes. And and to even be in the position of being able to decide. And because I was so young, I was like, it's not going to be age that cuts me off here. It was the best insurance policy I've had in my life that I happen to have during this window of time. So if it wasn't a financial endpoint and if it wasn't an age endpoint, that absolutely it just removed these barriers that I think are incredibly common and um the norm. And so I had this, I was in this strange sort of the strange, incredibly privileged place of being able to keep going.
SPEAKER_02:But it also just felt like because I would have put that pressure on myself too. What's like I have to keep doing this, even if it's driving me crazy, even if it's ruining my relationships, even if I'm struggling every single day because so many women can't. Yes. I I just that that just feels like an enormous burden of like the burden of privilege. That is a weird phrase for sure. Yes.
SPEAKER_00:But you did have a burden of privilege here. We I mean, I feel like we have to call it what it is. I think I felt like if and when I walk away, I need to be able to do so without regret. Like I don't want to look back on this and say, what if we tried just one more time? We still have these frozen embryos somewhere. And what if, what if, what if? Yeah. So I felt like I will exhaust every avenue. I will do everything I can conceivably imagine, homeopathic measures, you know, the scientific measures, everything.
SPEAKER_02:Did your husband light a candle one time too in the Catholic Church? You pushed your mental and emotional self to its limit, way farther than I think I would have had the capacity to do. And gosh, when you're saying what if the two most beautiful and the two most deadly words to ever pair together. Because it is hope. Hope is a thing with feathers, but hope is also a very dangerous thing. As the reader, you know, we don't know how your story ends. I didn't know if you had children or not going into this. As the reader, when you finally, I was like, enough, Amy, enough. You you are enough. Whether this ends up happening the way that you want it to or not. Um, I took a breath with you when that happened, you know? Because we grow to love you and adore you. And like I said, we don't know how your story ends. Maybe people do going into this if they Google you or not. I actually normally spoil myself when I told myself, don't do it. Don't do it for us. I love to know the endings of scary movies. Yeah. I'm like, who dies? Who do I need to like not be emotionally invested in? I do. Um okay, so before we get to all that, let's talk about your relationships. You write that infertility took a toll on your friendships, your marriage, yourself, your ability to live your life. You're right about how isolating it felt felt, and you've spoken about that today. Talk to me really quickly, the hormones, the physical toll. I don't think men don't really understand, but I don't, I don't think a lot of women out there really understand what you're physically putting your body through when you do something like this.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. I insisted on kind of doing the all of these, as I just said, like homeopathic things as well in tandem with the medical. I I think I was trying to like cover all your bases. Yes, cover all my bases, but also like all of the all of the medication that you wind up injecting into yourself. It's so invasive. You're like, what is this even? Um, and I was trying, I think I was trying to like counteract that with like the most what's the opposite of toxic. Like, you know, I would have loved to be able to like do this naturally. And I think it went against every everything that I wanted to even get to the point of doing all this. Yeah, the hormonal toll is outrageous. And I think really though, like in addition to what actually happens like physically inside, one of the effects of all of this was I became disjointed from my body the way I saw myself. And my body became this like other thing that that I was sort of carrying around and that was interfering with my ability to do what I wanted to do. Um, so I just it was, it was almost like if my whole life was spent with my body and myself as like one entity in this process, they sort of broke into two. I resented my body, but I think in in this weird way, this like disassociation sort of. I was like, okay, I'm gonna inject this thing with hormones because I don't know. I sort of like separated myself from it, which I don't know if that's a healthy coping mechanism, but it had that effect.
SPEAKER_02:It feels like the thing couldn't be wrong with you. It was wrong with your body. And you were gonna fix your body so that it was right. Yeah. And not only that, but you talk about like having to plan trips or like outings with friends around being back, making sure you got that shot in at the right moment. People just think, oh, IVF, yeah, you're just gonna go and they're gonna put a baby inside you, like friends, right? And then you're gonna be pregnant with triplets and it's gonna be great. No, no, no, no, no. It's a lot leading up to that. Totally.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and also when you think about like all of the women out there that are doing whatever and then showing up at work and going about their day and taking care of the people in their lives. And you know, it's really these things that I think so many of us have lived or understand on some level, and then to just think like we're all disisting in the world, sort of denying these this enormous, I don't know, that it just it it was my whole life. Yeah. And nobody wanted to ask me about it because it was uncomfortable and strange and the answers were never good. So, like, but that was the only thing I had going on. And the only I think that's very, very tricky.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. How do you continue to find joy or just continue going in moments of fear and despair? How do you continue to try to find the hope? I think we can all relate to that, whether it's your infertility journey or just existing in today's world currently, right now. But tears streamed again in the moment when you went to your husband and you basically, without saying, tried to give him permission to leave you so that he could find a woman who would. Amy, that was so beautiful and real. And I was just like, oh my God, how much she loves him. And then how much he was like, no, honey, it's you, it's you all the way. I thought that that was just a really beautiful moment. How what was that like putting that down on the page? I also loved your email exchange. Oh, and I thought, what a really cool way to be able to sit down, articulate, read, like think out, okay, this is how I'm feeling. Because when we try to do that in the moment, sometimes words get jumbled. You say things you don't mean. I thought that was a really cool way that you showed how you guys were finding the right way to support and communicate with each other.
SPEAKER_00:I feel like I can better articulate in the written word than the spoken word, given space to sort of like collect your thoughts, know what you want to say. And then it just felt to me like I could be more clear that way. Well, and what's funny about the moment where I kind of said to him, This is after our fifth round of IVF failed, and because we used genetically tested embryos that round. So we knew that they could become babies. Um, that was the first time we did that. And so when I wasn't pregnant, the takeaway for me was that my body was the problem. And that was a huge, deeply painful learning. And it had also just been like we believed so deeply that that round was gonna work.
SPEAKER_02:It almost felt like everyone thought it was a slam dunk. And then for it not to, the rug must have just been completely pulled out from underneath you.
SPEAKER_00:That was the moment that really changed. It everything changed. And I just felt this like tremendous guilt to realize that this might not happen for us and that it was me. And that was, you know, we got a dog. Um yeah, that was one of the most it was one of those conversations that I'll just like never forget where you really aren't even sure you you're gonna be able to get the words out.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Let's talk about your friendships. You write about pulling away from your friends, how difficult it was for you to see them start families and be pregnant. Obviously, you were also like happy for them because you loved them, but it was unfair. It felt very unfair. And it is, it is unfair.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, it's true. When I think about it, I'm like, right, I was like 31 and 32 and 33. Like those are those years are beginnings, beginnings, exactly. And that's I really felt that. I remember saying that many times. Like it felt like everybody was moving forward and we were just standing still. Yeah. You show up for everybody in the ways that they're moving forward, but you also have to like protect yourself.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And then you talk about existential shame and guilt. Who is a woman if she can't have babies? What is her worth and value? What is her purpose? Talk to me about you moving through that because that that's big.
SPEAKER_00:It's like an existential reckoning. There is this biological primal piece, and that is a formidable thing to be coming up against. I felt it. There was a primal thing inside of me. An urge almost. Yes, an urge, truly. And and so in that case, in like with that, it's like you can't necessarily apply logic to that. You can't necessarily massage your way through. Like it, I felt it. I felt it deeply, and it was a driving force in my being in a way that like I couldn't have anticipated. I never, I never went about my life thinking, I just can't wait to have children. I just, that's really what I want to do. Like I thought I wanted kids and and I just assumed it would all sort of work out when the time was right. And then as this situation with my fertility kind of unfolded, it just everything just ratcheted up at every step. But I do think when it, when because of that like biological or primal whatever piece, there's some of it that was just beyond me, beyond my, I'm a feminist, I am a progressive thinker, I but you wanted to have some babies, damn it. I just fucking wanted to, like, I don't know, you know. I yeah. In a way that almost I can't explain, but it it it was real.
SPEAKER_02:When you can't do the thing that you feel you're supposed to do, you want to do.
SPEAKER_00:Your body's supposed to know how to do. Like that I think that it's like that piece of it of like, you know, there's there's supposed to be this, it's like you feel that if there's a this this sort of like biological desire that is supposed to go hand in hand with a biological ability. Yeah. And and I felt the desire and the ability was not there. Yeah. So I think that sort of like misalignment is confusing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I had two C-section babies. People dare to say that that is like not a natural way to have children. And I'm just like, that's so that is something we can all actively stop doing. However, a baby comes healthily into the world, however, let's just applaud and celebrate that. Like, let's not tell women that there is a right or wrong way, procreate if we want more procreation. Okay, so let's get to this moment of acceptance.
SPEAKER_00:Exhaustion, just a hollowed out succumbing to yeah, left it all on the field.
SPEAKER_02:Left it all on the field. Okay, so you decide that your sixth IVF attempt will be your last, that whatever happens will happen. You write, my soul is ready to be done. Yeah. And it emerged from someplace inaccessible, a place that inhabited every cell in my body that could speak to me, even if I could not speak back, a place of deep personal truth. My soul is ready to be done. I just thought that was beautiful. And talk to me about that moment. Do you look at Tim? Are you both just like enough? This is it. Are we gonna try one more time?
SPEAKER_00:Yes, I think we're both at this point like dead in the eyes. It's just there's nothing left. I think I say this like it was not like a peaceful moment. It was, I was just like in submission. You know what I mean? Like, I think the whole way through, I really felt like for better or worse, I was like, I'm going to do everything right and I'm gonna I'm gonna control this. I'm gonna, I've I'm gonna read the books and I'm gonna make the right choices. And and then there it was just nothing made one bit of difference. I am just, I have no control and I'm exhausted.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Once that fifth round failed, we we both viewed it differently. It just became clear that it was far more complicated than we had appreciated, that our doctors had appreciated. Nobody could explain it, which was part of honestly the it was so, and and I know that like unexplained infertility is like a very common diagnosis, but just as a patient, it's so insane. Like it's so insane to be told. Yeah, I couldn't imagine. On one hand, they're like, we can't tell you what's wrong. So that's great. Because like, you know, they're they're surface level, nothing's wrong.
SPEAKER_02:Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00:Everything is wrong. I think that also that piece of like, they can't really even explain this to me. So it's gotta, it's gotta like we're gonna get there. We're gonna get there, we're gonna get there. And then even my really tremendously powerful hope like had reached its just uh demise.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And I felt it, you know, it almost like took the onus off of me. It was just like, it's oh, it's over, you know. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Okay. And so you write this interlude. Did you think of this? Did someone else?
SPEAKER_00:No, I did not think of this. Another friend that read it suggested it, and she was brilliant. Stopped me.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, literally, it's supposed to stop you, but I was like, wow, that's so great because your memoir isn't about the outcome, it's about the journey. And that's what you wanted to share with women. And I love that you're like, I don't have the answers. I'm just here to sit with you through the questions. That's really, that's really what your story is and how you are in community with your readers. You write, I felt compelled to write an infertility story that was not defined by outcome, a conception story or an adoption story, but by the raw emotion and hardship and absurdity of the plight itself, a book about the experience. The difficult truth is that as we make our way through, none of us know how our infertility story will end. In reflection of that, that core of the story concludes here, suspended in the unknown. So to honor Amy's intentions, I'm going to ask all of our listeners to end the episode here if it serves you to not know more about Amy's journey. I hope you'll pick up Amy's book. It's beautiful, it's messy, it's an encapsulation of an extremely difficult journey. And if you're on that journey, we're sending you love. And I will include in the show notes how you can follow Amy, support her by the book, but we will say goodbye to you all here. Okay, Amy, we're gonna continue. Girl, you had some babies. Talk to me about that. Your sixth round worked. Oh my god. I have to say, I was really happy for you. I really was. I know that's what you wanted. And I was just like, fuck yes, this lady went through so fucking much. And now you have three beautiful children. Did I did I stalk you right? Did I go?
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah. Yes, I have a daughter, Hazel, who's nine. And I started writing actually when I was pregnant, newly pregnant with her. And she was your sixth round. She was our sixth round. Oh, Hazel. Oh, Hazel. And I'll tell you what, our fifth round, we put in two genetically tested embryos and nothing happened. Our sixth round, we put in two genetically tested embryos and we got Hazel. And I was just like, who is this person? Like who, because my body, you know, ultimately I came to realize my body is sort of like rejecting, but this whoever this person was gonna be, the one, the only one who lodged her little self in there and got it done. And she's like, she is that person. Like she just fought to be here and she like lives that. I don't even know how to explain it. She's incredible. And um, I really like am in awe of her. Uh, and then when she was a baby, we knew we wanted to have another baby. She wasn't even one. We went back to our doctor and we're like, what do you think? Like, is this gonna be possible again? And he was like, I will be honest with you, yours was one of the most complicated cases of young infertility I've seen. He was like, I do think you'll be able to get pregnant again. I don't know how long it will take. And so we did a seventh round and we put in two untested embryos. Okay. We got twins. Wow. And it was so insane because it had never made any sense why it wasn't working, and then it never made any sense why it did. Hazel flipped a switch. Hazel turned the lights on, yeah, but even like, you know, that was like three genetically tested embryos that they didn't turn the lights on, she did, but then these two scrappy, like day three, like, you know, vigilantes came in. And so it's like, it's just wild. I'll never understand it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:You know what's really crazy? So many of my friends had babies after stopping. I mean, I don't say that in ho in to get anyone's hopes up because but it it it is nuts when we let go of something, control, and then the world just or the universe or whomever just says, Oh, okay, yeah, here you go. It's wild.
SPEAKER_00:The amount of stories that uh reflect that same sort of and you would hear those even in the trenches, but I I think you can't force it. And so I would be like, Oh, if I just let go, if I just like it's that easy. I think there's something, it's like you can't fake your way to letting go. You can't artificially let go because you believe that letting go is the the way you reach where you want to go. That tension of like, how do I actually come to that point? You know, you cut it's like you gotta have to get there honestly, sort of.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And that's why I think your interlude is such a gift to your readers because you're not promising them their happy ending. Did your sixth time work after you had accepted that it might not? Yes, and that's crazy. But your memoir isn't about encouraging people to just keep going. Your memoir is you holding their hands saying, I see you, I know what this is like, I share the weight of your sorrow. And the rest is just up to fate.
SPEAKER_00:When you're in it, you truly do not know when all is said and done, how this is gonna shake out. And I think that is so hard. That's hard to live in that uncertainty. Like that's what's so painful ultimately. If you knew that you could get there with X, Y, and Z, it wouldn't be so such a mind fuck, honestly. Like it's that, like you're doing all of this without any guarantee of the outcome. And I I think it's like to honor that, that part of the experience, which is like you really don't get to know.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And then surrogacy, child-free adoption, everyone chooses that next step right for themselves, you know. Would you guys have were you kind of thinking, okay, if this doesn't work out, were you entertaining the surrogacy or adoption path? Or were you just kind of like, I need a breather, I need to like not think about babies for a sec?
SPEAKER_00:For me, I because of the unexplained nature of the infertility, without being able to understand it, like I couldn't, I didn't know how to give up on it without understanding someone needed to make it make sense. And no one had been able to do that. I did, I do think there was like a future chapter out there. I don't know whether it would have been surrogacy or adoption or any number of other possibilities, but I just wanted it to be distinct from this. It needed to end and it needed to like not bleed into whatever we decided to pursue because it was so painful. So I felt like there was another path, but I needed to like remove myself from this before I could even see what that looked like.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. What a healthy way to approach everything. My God, I love you. Be real, Amy. Have you ever pulled the do you know what mommy went through to get you guys your card?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I'll tell you, I think I'm a different person than I was before all of this. So I'm certainly like a different mother than I would have been without this experience.
SPEAKER_02:Sure.
SPEAKER_00:There's so much letting go that parenthood necessitates. I can make choices and I am in charge, but I am not in control necessarily. Like I can't control them. That's a great way of putting it, actually. I am in charge, but I'm not in control. I mean, and it's a daily, it's a daily reminder of that. The letting go that this sort of required. And by no, I am still, I'll tell, I'll tell you what, I'm trying to control whatever I can still control. But like it has allowed me to understand the limits of what I am able to influence or not, which was good practice for having children.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's lovely. Okay. I have kept you for so long. I have a few closing questions, and then I will let you go on your beautiful fall day. Do you have any advice for people who are watching their friends or partners go through this?
SPEAKER_00:Like any uncomfortable topic or tough situation in fertility or any other that you know somebody's going through. I think there's always this sort of uncertainty if like you should bring it up or if that would remind them of it. Or and I find for me, I wanted to be asked about it. I did not want the topic to be avoided. I understood that it maybe made other people uncomfortable because they were pregnant and they felt weird asking me about whatever I was going through. But it was the most important thing in my life. And to not ask about it was painful for me. I'm I'm not gonna say that that's the case for anybody going through this, but um, for me, I wanted to be asked and and I wanted the chance to like express how awful it was.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, you're right. It's gonna be different for every person. After I had my miscarriage, I did want to talk about it, but I also felt like I couldn't or shouldn't. And so when people did ask, I was like, oh, thank you. Yes. Like I want to just acknowledge that this is this has happened, is really kind of what it was, you know.
SPEAKER_00:And I think like that, just like transparency. I'm sure you you find this like with you read so many women's memoirs, but like if we all just were more willing to say the truth, you know, even when it's uncomfortable or painful or it feels ugly, I think there's so much power in just like saying it.
SPEAKER_02:I agree. Yeah. I actually kind of started doing that. I get like deep talk with the women in my life real fast now because I'm just like, yo, are you dealing with some bullshit too? Like, how are you? How are you surviving right now?
SPEAKER_00:Oh my gosh, my friend this morning, I I texted her and I was like, Are you nearby? And she's like, Oh, I'll be home in an hour. And I was like, she's like, What's going on? I was like, I just need to like scream into the void. And she's like, she's like, I'll I'll text you when I'm on my way.
SPEAKER_02:I'm like, that's a good friend. Oh, I love that. I want to leave people with Lauren's forward quote because it was amazing. Readers will find hope in these pages, but not just for the obvious thing that you might imagine, a baby in the arms by the end. It's something deeper. Hope that they will one day look in the mirror and see someone looking back at them who says, You are whole. Absolutely beautiful. Amy, I ask this question to all my authors. How do you stay hopeful today?
SPEAKER_00:I think books keep me hopeful. The opening of my mind and the sharing of stories, I would say I find so much to be hopeful in in reading other people's words.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Reading, connecting. Thank you for adding your own words and your own story to this beautiful community. I really do think the right people are going to find your book and they're going to feel seen and understood. We encourage them to slide into your DMs and let you know just how much they loved your book. That's right. I loved your book. I adored it. It's not just for women who are on their own infertility journeys, truly. It's it's for all women because we can all relate to feeling various ways that you describe feeling in this book. And like I said, it's for people who are who are wanting to understand, get a peek behind the curtain of what a woman is going through in a way that maybe she can't articulate during the process. Thank you just so much, Amy, for writing this memoir. And thank you for coming on Babes in Bookland with me today. I absolutely adored chatting with you.
SPEAKER_00:I would just like to say that your questions were so thoughtful and your read of my book was so comprehensive. And when you sent over the, I was just like, what? Like this is just really thoughtful and generous. And I I'm in the early stages of like encountering people that have actually read it. And and so you're it really meant a lot to me. So thank you.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, I really appreciate that.
SPEAKER_00:I loved our conversation and thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you. Bye.
SPEAKER_00:Bye.
