On episode 57, we have Barb sharing her pregnancy journey at 57. She lives in New England, and she’s been there almost all her life. She was a scholarship runner at BU in the eighties and ran for Nike for several years. She has been a competitive runner, teacher, coach, mom, and now she’s a CrossFit athlete. She is also a survivor of some pretty tragic things: losing two children in very different circumstances. Barb has four children, two live in heaven, and two are here with her. Barb never planned to have children. She had a pretty rough childhood, so, she wanted to end the cycle of abuse in her family. She didn’t need to be a mother, instead she would be the cool auntie.
Shortly after she was with her husband, she found out she was pregnant. She was on the pill, so she wasn’t expecting to get pregnant. Baby Gordy had a very bad heart defect and only lived for 25 weeks in her belly. Since she didn’t know she was pregnant until 14 weeks, she really only knew him for nine weeks. What came from this tragedy, was she loved being pregnant and knew she wanted to be a mother.
Afterwards, she and her husband refocused and decided to get healthy. A year later, in August of 2000, she was pregnant with Gracie, who was born April 2001. Two years later, Molly was born in April of 2003, and Barb turned 40 in July. She had her husband, her house, her white picket fence and two beautiful girls; She thought she had everything she needed. Her husband has three children from his first marriage that were about 10 years older than Gracie and Molly. When Molly was 13 and Barb was 52, Molly had a very brief two or three months of really bad headaches and throwing up. They took her to the hospital over and over again, only to be sent back home. They were sent home with pamphlets on meditation. The doctor told her she needed to gain weight and drink more water. She could kick herself now for not being more assertive with questions. On May 1, 2016, Molly was vomiting over and over with a headache. They called 911 and sat in the ER for sixteen hours. Molly was unconscious most of the time. They gave her medication for pain, but she never woke up. She just kept slipping deeper and deeper away. Barb kept insisting that they do a CAT scan, but they wouldn’t. They told her they don’t do those on kids. Barb was an athletic coach, and they do CAT scans on kids all the time. Molly was transferred to the pediatric wing, and the nurse knew right away that something was wrong. The nurse ordered a scan and while they were preparing for the scan, a tumor ruptured in her head and killed her. She watched her daughter’s skin turn funny colors and her body lose movement. They didn’t know at the time that she had died in those moments. They got her heart beating again and did an MRI and rushed her to a larger hospital. They removed the tumor, but really, she had died right there at the hospital after being there all day. The next week Molly was on life support and is actually one of the best weeks of Barb’s life in that setting. For that week in the hospital while Molly was on life support, everyone she knew and loved was able to come and say goodbye to her. She knows many parents who lose children do not have that opportunity. People asked why Barb was letting all these people come. She told them that she had the rest of her life to be by herself with this. Barb wanted to talk about Molly. She wanted people to say goodbye and have closure. It was an incredible week, but then she came home and the incredible stopped.
It wasn’t long after that Barb started having dreams that she should have a baby. She’s had dreams that Molly had come to visit her, but these were different. It was one of those dreams where she didn’t know if she was awake or asleep. She thought she was grieving and thought this was the way she was dealing with everything. All that summer, she got up every day and tried her best to be alive and take care of her daughter Gracie and her husband, Kenny. The dream was persistent. She went to her OB and told her about the dream and she wanted to have a baby. The doctor bit her head off like she was insane, and Barb just sat there a bit dumbfounded. She just had doctors yelling at her that nothing was wrong with Molly and she should stop asking for CAT scans. She left the OB’s office really upset. She called another OB that had worked at her OB when Molly was born and told him her dreams. He told her that the hospital aged out at 49, but wanted to start with bloodwork and go from there. He said her safest bet was to go through IVF because at her age, it’s the only way she will be approved if she could find a clinic that takes women over 50. She was still having cycles before she lost her daughter Molly, so she hadn’t gone through menopause. After Molly died, her cycles stopped. The doctor told her she was in trauma induced menopause. Her bloodwork didn’t show she was super menopausal, but she hadn’t had a period. Molly, Gracie and Barb were all on their cycles the week Molly was on life support. Barb’s friend connected her with an OB in Boston who referred her to a clinic that accepted women over 50.
The inside of your body doesn’t match your age, so I have no worries about this.
At the end 2016, she went to the clinic who was immediately on board with helping her get pregnant. There were lot of prep before she was approved to go to the next step: she had to see a therapist, get an EKG, a hysteroscopy, a mammogram, colonoscopy and a few others. The doctor reviewed the results of the tests and told her the inside of her body didn’t match her age. She had no worries about this. This was in January 2017, only six months after Molly’s death, and they were in the middle of a lawsuit with the hospital. She wasn’t prepared for the cost and said no thank you for now. The dreams changed and stopped. All of 2017 and 2018 she was consumed with the lawsuit which she calls a full-time nightmare. It gave Barb a chance to channel her grief and energy, but the lawsuit was settled in June 2018. Two weeks later the baby dream were back. She had been drinking heavily and was on many prescription drugs. She has a nerve condition called trigeminal neuralgia which is treated with anti-seizure medication, so she was on three of those. She was also on Xanax, Lamictal, Lorazepam, alprazolam, and ones to help her sleep and others to help her wake up. In 2018, Barb was 55, The doctor told her she had to get off all of the medication and run a few more tests for a second time.
Barb and Dr. Laura sat down with a calendar and a big list of her 13 drugs. The doctor charted out a plan where she would wean off some, cut down on others and leave some the same, then cut those down. It took them an hour to put the plan together. She now has such a profound respect for addicts that come clean because coming off all of those drugs was as hard as dealing with the loss of Molly. From August 15 to December 1, she felt like she heard the ocean in her head, her hands and feet were asleep most of the time. When she spoke, she felt like it would echo. Her body was trying so hard to come back to normal. She desperately wanted to come out of the black hole she had been living in. She hired a spiritual mentor at this time and joined the spiritual mentoring group. Her CrossFit gym had one of those pay $500 if you lose 30 pounds in eight weeks, you get your money back. She did it! A lot of her weight was the medication. She had stopped eating anything healthy for a long time. She got through that process in December, and what she noticed was her face was in agonizing pain. Barb describes the trigeminal nerve is right behind your ear and your brain and the nerve becomes irritated. Trauma can sometimes trigger the nerve center but the nerve center fires and never stops. It constantly feels like you have pain. For Barb, it felt like a toothache. She had three teeth pulled because they hurt so much, but there was nothing wrong with those teeth. When she went off the medication, her face pain was unmanageable, and she knew she couldn’t handle it for ninth months. She wasn’t going to be approved to have a baby.
At first Barb was going to have a baby by herself. She and her husband had been struggling in their marriage, so she didn’t say anything to anyone. When she met Dr. Cardone and knew pregnancy was a possibility, he asked if she had a partner to do this with. The doctor suggested it would be a better experience to do it with a partner. Barb talked to her husband about the dreams she was having. Her husband jumped on board. Barb and her husband were in a horrible place after the loss of their child together. Barb stopped talking about a baby when they went through the lawsuit. One morning after the baby dreams came back, she had coffee while she waited for him to come down stairs. She asked him if he could guess what dream she had last night. He grinned and guessed a baby dream. He was all in.
Another friend of hers recommended Barb to a doctor in New York, Dr. Eskandar, from Turkey. The nurse couldn’t believe the doctor said yes because they weren’t taking new patients. She got the MRI the doctor required and they found three brain tumors in her head which had nothing to do with her face pain. Her husband, Kenny was on kidney dialysis and needed a kidney transplant. He was extremely sick and just getting sicker. This was all happening during Gracie’s senior year of high school. The one healthy person in her daughter’s life was Barb, but she had brain tumors. The tumors had to come out. One of them was sitting in the intersection of her eye and ear, but her carotid artery was being compressed. Dr. Eskandar’s concern was that she would have a stroke because the artery was being compressed. She thought maybe this is why she was supposed to have the baby. It was to save her life and now she can stop trying. She felt like she was just a passenger on a speeding train. She had one tumor removed and the other two radiated. From January to April, she had two craniotomies and radiation to take care of the brain tumors in her face. In the meantime, her husband Kenny was getting sicker and sicker.
Barb had her head cut open April 10th and April 24th the family went to Disney. When Kenny had dialysis, he and Barb would just stay home and everyone else would go to the park. Kenny was lying on a lawn chair trying not to throw up. Barb was bald and her head was hurting. She was miserable. She saw online that a friend of Molly’s and Gracie’s from dance was on life support at the same hospital Molly had been at. She messaged the mom and her daughter, Rachel who was 20 at the time. Rachel had gone to a restaurant where she ate peanut paste in an egg roll that wasn’t on the menu. She went into anaphylaxis. A whole series of missteps and she ended up being on life support but not surviving. When she got home from Florida, she jumped into action for this family. Rachel’s family had helped them with Molly. Rachel even danced at Molly’s memorial service. Barb had a big show for Molly’s memorial service. It was at a theater, and Rachel was in the opening number. In the process of removing Rachel from life support, her mother asked if Barb had donated Molly’s organs. Barb couldn’t because she didn’t know if Molly’s tumor was cancerous. It frustrates her now, knowing they weren’t cancerous. Kenny could have had Molly’s kidney. Rachel’s mom was surprised her husband needed a kidney and asked her what his blood type was. A few weeks later Rachel’s mom called Barb to offer Rachel’s Kidney to her Kenny. Barb loves to know the kidney that survives in Molly’s dad danced in Molly’s funeral.
That doesn’t have anything to do with Barb’s baby journey, but everything was a part of her getting healthy. That summer Barb was approved for IVF. She had an IVF transfer in August of 2019. The nurse called and asked if she was pregnant. She’s peed on a stick every day: there was no line, no line, no line. She wasn’t surprised by the news. She was 56 and thought her journey was over because their cutoff was 55. She asked the nurse what to do now. The nurse said to keep taking the estrogen and to keep the appointment with her doctor. She suspected the doctor might have a plan. Now that Kenny had a new kidney, they wanted to get a new sperm sample from him. Because of her age and a couple of different things she tried, she’s not open if she used an egg donor for the second transfer. The first transfer, she used donor eggs. Her doctor said it wasn’t her fault and she asked if she could try again. They tried a handful of things on Barb that she doesn’t think have been tested before. The doctor said she could share as much as she could but be as vague as possible. If Barb were to do this again, she would adopt an embryo.
She was scheduled to have her second transfer in March of 2020, but it was canceled. She continued the medication. Barb loved having her period. For her, it was proof of the possibility. It’s proof of the fact that she can grow a baby. Her friends couldn’t understand. July of 2020 was her final shots in the rear and patches. On July 26, 2020, she had her second transfer and only 3 days later had her 57th birthday. August 5th was the day she got the positive test and the day she conceived Gracie all those years ago. She didn’t tell anyone. She was wicked excited she says. She didn’t know it yet, but this was her best pregnancy. She again peed on a stick every day. When she took the blood tests, she knew she was pregnant. She was hoping for twins. She wanted twins because the baby’s other siblings are in their late thirties. She was a little disappointed there was just one baby. She didn’t say anything for the first 12 weeks. She had become really fit. At that time, she weighed just under 140 at the time. She was working out every day. She continued the hormones the first 12 weeks and then stopped. She thought she would wean off the hormones. She had this utter panic that the pregnancy would just end there. When she felt the life in her, it became all about the baby. She stayed healthy and continued working out right up until the week her baby was born. She got to the 13th week and wanted to finally tell people. The doctor insisted she not tell anyone until she was 22 weeks. She just looked at him in horror. He put her through every test there was because the judgment that she is going to receive when people found out she’s pregnant was going to be huge. She was irritated by this at first because she excited and wanted everyone to know. She told her CrossFit coaches because she was working out, and they needed to know why her belly was growing. Little by little, people knew. Every insurance claim that her OB submitted was rejected because ‘diagnosis inconsistent with age of patient.’ She had to call, but the insurance company couldn’t prevent the kickback letters. Because of her age, a lot of the paperwork had to be entered manually because the age didn’t go that high in the software she shares, through a laugh.
After Baby Gordy, she wanted zero surprises. She also knew that gender was going to play a big role in how she coped with what this baby would be like. A part of her hoped for a girl just because all she knew was girls. The baby boy she had, she never got to know. She also didn’t want it to feel like she was replacing Molly. When she went to her 22 week appointment and saw she was having a boy, it made her anxious. She wasn’t sure what do to. As the pregnancy went on she felt better and better about it. He does replace some sadness but he can’t replace Molly. He has nothing to do with Molly, but everything to do with Molly. She believes if it was a girl, it might have been a little harder on Gracie, too. A little brother is perfect for Gracie.
She had to have ultrasounds all the time and blood work and urine tests once a week. Everything was fine. The final test was a fetal echocardiogram and that brought her right back to Baby Gordy, at the same hospital that she was at 21 years prior. She was anxious about the place that brought her so much heartbreak. She told the tech about Gordy, the heart defect and how triggered the experience was for her. The cardiologist came in, but she just wanted to hear that everything was fine. She did tell her everything was fine, but she had some questions. She asked about Baby Gordy and what was the heart defect. Barb told the cardiologist what it was and the cardiologist got quiet. The cardiologist told her she was involved with the autopsy of Baby Gordy. She had retired from NICU work because she couldn’t do sick babies anymore. The only reason she was there was because they were short staffed and nobody was around to cover. She was going to say no, but saw her age and assumed it was a mistake. The cardiologist went on to tell her that it was so helpful to see the little heart, and it helped get ahead of this and learn to repair the heart so more babies can be born. It turned out to be an amazing experience. Barb and her husband didn’t talk the whole way home.
Her daughter Gracie was not happy about the pregnancy. It really threw her for a loop. Barb explained that if they hadn’t been trying to have a baby, they wouldn’t have found the brain tumors. Gracie’s response was, “Good, now you don’t have to have a baby. Mom, I’m still here. You don’t have to replace me with another baby.” It was all about her. She’s a teenager that lost her sister and tried to make some sense of this life. When they began the IVF process, Barb chose not to tell her daughter anything about it. Barb didn’t think it would work. When she found out she was pregnant, she thought….we’ll wait until after she’s sure she’s not going to lose it and then she’ll tell her. Then her daughter overheard her on the phone and asked her why she was talking to a baby doctor? She told her she needed one and her daughter was furious. When she told her about her thought process as to why, her daughter could step out of her anger and understood it. She was still angry. Barb gave her the freedom to hate her as much as she needed. She couldn’t tell her how to feel. The pregnancy wasn’t easy for her. They rallied around and had a rule where they have to hit the pause button. They can be angry, but when they sit down to eat or say goodnight or when someone is leaving, they say ‘pause button’ and they hug and kiss and say ‘I love you’ and ‘goodbye.’ The family started that after Molly died, because it was easy for them to get lost in the devastation.
I just got put into a body that does well in the baby department.
Her pregnancy continued on just fine. Now she was starting to show and had permission to tell people. She started telling others, but no one knew what to say. She continued working out and as her belly got bigger and bigger. They prepared at home for baby’s arrival. She had all easy pregnancies before and easy deliveries—all eight hours start to finish. Her most difficult delivery was baby Gordy at fifteen hours. At 34 weeks her legs swelled up huge, she had preeclampsia. All her other babies were born in April, and she got really hung up this baby should be born in April, too. Her due date was April 13th , but it was only St. Patrick’s Day. Her doctor was going on vacation, which she was disappointed he was going to miss it. She fought and fought, but he gave her a steroid injection, magnesium and sent her home. She went back the next day which was Friday, March 19th. Her blood pressure was 195/105. Apparently, that’s not good even though she felt fine. They didn’t want her to go back home, but she promised she’d be back in an half hour. On the way home, she called her friend to come over and take some belly pictures. Barb packed her daughter up and sent her to Rachels parents’ house. She also did an interview for the local newspaper. Her husband begged her to stop running. She went back and checked herself in the hospital. Her daughter didn’t want any part of the delivery. The doctor’s wanted to induce Barb. They gave her magnesium and stripped her membranes. While the doctor was examining her, she joked that she felt like Offred, from the Handmaid’s Tale, and all the young LNA’s and nursing assistants start laughing. The obstetrician laughed, but said she felt like the bad guy. She liked it was an all-women team helping her. The only males were her husband and the baby. The next morning, Barb woke up, ordered breakfast, drank coffee and put the news on. Her belly felt warm, but not bad. The OB came in and asked how she was feeling. Barb was confused, but wasn’t confident she was having a baby that day. The OB told her she went into labor all by herself at 2 am. She didn’t feel a thing. That was the heat in her belly. She called Kenny to tell him she was going to have the baby today. They broke her water and that’s when she felt it. Contractions were two minutes apart. She called her husband again to come as quickly as he could to the hospital. At about 11:30 am she was in a lot of pain and really felt the contractions. She began pushing even thought she didn’t feel ready. She made a half-hearted push, and the baby’s head was crowning. The next contraction, she pushed again and out he came. Her son, Jack was born at 12:30 pm with one hour of labor. And then her lunch came.
She didn’t have the rush of milk that she had with Gracie and Molly. She had to drink a lot more water and supplemented with breast milk donated from Human Milk for Human Babies. Jackie was the first one she met. (Her name isn’t lost on her) Jackie was moving and had 200 bags of breast milk. Barb stashed them in her freezer and all of her neighbors’ freezers. The nurses wanted her to use supplemented formula because he was so little. She breastfed both of her girls and wanted to do the same with Jack. She always had someone to supply her with human milk. Another friend had a baby a few months after Jack was born. She would come over with a cooler full of milk. Her other children would decorate the bags. Jack gained weight very slowing the first two weeks. He didn’t like formula and would throw it up. Once she started supplementing with the breast milk, he couldn’t get enough. When the boob was insufficient, he drank fine from the bottle.
Barb had a bit of postpartum depression with Jack. She got a little panic stricken. She wanted to spend time alone. She didn’t want company at the house. For about eight weeks, she was pretty much a basket case. She was very fortunate to have a supportive family. She didn’t need medication but reached out to friends that also struggled a little bit with it. Physically, she was fine. Once the preeclampsia weight went away, she was back to within 10 pounds of her starting weight almost immediately. She didn’t work out for all of April and May. Jack was born March 20th, and she was back to the gym in June. She did a two-day CrossFit competition that August. She had to climb a rope, walk on her hands and several other physically challenging things. She had a great recovery.
After his birth, Barb received lots of press coverage. After her friend covered her story before and after the birth, she got several more local networks interested. She was also on a commercial. On their way home from Disney they drove through New York to see herself on a 32-story building. She says it was so surreal. When they finally arrived to 8th avenue where the building was, a cop told them she couldn’t park there. She pointed to the building but he didn’t get it. Then she point to herself and Jack, and then he got it. He said his wife loved her and took a few selfies together. It was all a huge honor for her.
I want my birth to be permission for women to put their foot down and say: just because my age is this number, doesn’t mean I don’t get chance to try this. It’s my body, my life and I want to try this.
Jack is two and half, and Barb is still nursing. When he’s ready to stop, she’ll stop. Barb says life is relatively normal, but she does get overwhelmed when she thinks about when Jack is ten, she’ll be 67. Then she remembers some of her girlfriends are raising their grandchildren, and she doesn’t feel alone. She’s looking forward to the kindergarten drop-off, mostly because she can stand with all of the grammies. She feels incredibly lucky and knows she’s not the norm at all. Her doctor is begging her to have another baby. She feels like a grandmother sometimes because she just gets to enjoy it.
Resources:
Over 40 Fabulous and Pregnant on Instagram
Barb’s Podcast: A Thousand Tiny Steps
Barb’s Book: Motherland
Transcript of Episode 57:
Jamie: Barb, thank you so much for coming on the show. Welcome.
Barb: Thank you for having me. Thank you. Thank you. It’s nice to be here.
Jamie: So lovely to have you. Barb was pregnant at 57. She will be sharing that story. But first, Barb, will you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Barb: I am Barb and I am a survivor of some pretty tragic things in my life, one of which is losing a child, actually losing two children, very different circumstances, and the mother of a baby at 57, which is not something I ever thought I would say was gonna happen in my life.
Jamie: So let’s go back to your story about getting pregnant in conceiving. Do you wanna touch on your other children that you lost also?
Barb: Yeah. I’ll quickly touch on them. Okay. I have four children, two of whom live in heaven, two of whom are here with me. Actually was never going to have children at all. It just wasn’t something, I had a pretty rough childhood, so I thought, you know what? The buck stops here. I’m gonna end the cycle of abuse in my family. I don’t need to be a mom. I’ll be the cool auntie. Shortly after I was with Kenny, we found out we were pregnant and didn’t know I was on the pill and wasn’t expecting to be pregnant. And it was a big surprise.
And that was the process of losing my first baby. He had a very bad heart defect. His name was Gordy after his uncle and his grandfather. And we ended up he ended up only living for 25 weeks in my belly. And since I didn’t know I was pregnant until 14 weeks, I really only knew him for nine weeks. It was just he I found out about him in the end of June and we delivered him August 21st. And so that wasn’t a long time to even know him. During that time, what I did find out was that I desperately loved being pregnant and thought I should be a mom. And so after, his birth and death. Kenny and I refocused like parents who lose children do and thought, okay, let’s get healthy and everything.
And a year later, in August of 2000 got pregnant with Gracie. So Gracie was born in April of 2001 and two years later, Molly was born in April of 2003. And there it is. I have my husband, I have my house. I actually have a picket fence, it’s white. And these two beautiful girls. And I thought, this is it, right?
I have everything I need. I have my little family. Kenny has three children from his first marriage who were about 10 years older than Gracie and Molly. So they were a part of their life, but not a day-to-day part of it. When Molly was 13, she had a very brief two or three months of really bad headaches and throwing up and all these things, and we took her to the hospital over and over again to the doctors, to the er, and we really just got kept getting sent back home.
I feel that she was overlooked because she was a skinny 13-year-old girl. And I feel that had she been a. 13-year-old boy, they would’ve thought she hit her head. Maybe she just never was given imaging, was sent home with pamphlets on meditation. You need to gain weight, drink more water. It was unbelievably frustrating.
At the same time, I really cared for my pediatrician’s office and the, and I had faith in my hospital at the time, and so I just went with what they said. And as a mom, I kick myself now for not being more aggressive with questions.
So what happened was, on May 1st, 2016, she had the worst night ever with vomiting, headaches. We called 9 1 1, took her to the er, and in she sat in that ER for 16 hours. Unconscious most of the time. They gave her some medicine for pain and she just never woke up. She just kept slipping deeper and deeper. And I kept insisting they do a CAT scan and they kept saying, no, we don’t do CAT scans on kids. Which I, I’m an athletic coach, we do CAT scans on kids all the time. And so we got transferred up to the pediatric wing and the nurse up there right away thought, okay, this isn’t right. And they ordered a scan and while they were preparing her for the CAT scan, finally a tumor ruptured in her head and killed her.
So she actually, I watched all of this in front of me. Oh gosh. Her skin turned funny colors and her body lose movement and we didn’t know at the time that she had died. They got her heart beating again. They took an MRI, they rushed her to a bigger hospital. They removed the tumor. But really she had died right there in, late at night at, in the hospital after being there all day.
So that whole week of her on life support. Actually, this is gonna sound odd, one of the best weeks of my life in that setting, because for five days in that hospital, everyone she knew, everyone that we knew and loved was able to come and say goodbye to her. Which a lot of parents who lose children do not have that opportunity.
And there were people like, why are you letting all these people come? I would just be all by myself. And I’m like, I have the rest of my life to be by myself with this. I wanna talk about her. I want people to say goodbye, have closure. And so we had this incredible week and then Molly, then we came home and that was when the incredible stopped.
And so it wasn’t long after Molly’s death that I started having this strange dream that I should have a baby. And, dreams can be different. Like I’ve had Molly come visit me in dreams. Those dreams are very different than a normal dream. Nightmares can be intense, but you wake up and you realize, okay, that was just a bad dream.
And these dreams around the baby were those very real sort of am I awake or asleep? Like you have an awareness that you’re in the dream. Does that make sense? Have you ever had that kind of dream where, you know, something’s going on?
Jamie: Yeah.
Barb: And so I would wake up and just be like, what is going on? So of course, what I thought was, okay, I am grieving and I’m traumatized. And so the psychological way I am dealing with this is to have a dream about having a baby. So all that summer, I just got up every day and tried my best to be alive, to take care of Gracie, to take care of Kenny to make sense of this devastation. And the dream was really persistent.
Jamie: How old were you when this was happening?
Barb: I was 52 when she died, and I turned 53 in July. So 52, 53, my early fifties.
I went to my normal ob and she was an older woman and very close to retiring. And I said, look, I’ve been having this dream. I really would like to see if I could have a baby. And she bit my head off that’s insane, and really yelled at me. And I just sat there a bit dumbfounded. And keep in mind now I’m fresh off of doctors yelling at me that nothing’s wrong with Molly and that I need to stop asking for CAT scans, right? So I went home and I was really upset, like horribly upset.
Jamie: Yeah.
Barb: And so I called this OB who had worked with my OB that I had when Molly was born, years and years ago. And Dr. Ery. And he’s this great guy, he’s of Indian descent, and he’s just a hoot. And he’s get in here. And so I went in and he, how are you?
And I told him my dreams. And so he said we can’t do it at this hospital ’cause we age out at 49, but let’s do some blood work and we’ll see where you’re at. And so we did some blood work and he said probably the safest bet for you is IVF and at your age, probably it’s the only way you’ll be approved if you can find a clinic that does people over 50.
And I said, okay. So I had not even approached menopause at that point, maybe some perimenopause symptoms, but I was still having a period all the time. Then Molly died and they stopped. So I was about six months after. So he said, what you’re in is trauma induced menopause, where your body is so traumatized.
It’s actually very common in women in their fifties that l have a big trauma.
Jamie: Really?
Barb: So my blood work wasn’t super menopausal, but I hadn’t had a period, I had, Molly Gracie and I were all having our periods the week that she was on life support, which was another hard thing. It’s hard, it was just such a connective, your period is like evidence of life, yeah. You’re menstruating ’cause you’re a woman that can make a baby and grow it and here’s my daughter who’s never gonna wake up. These things always connect in my head. So he just said, you’ll need to, look around and find a clinic. And so I have a really good friend, Polly, she’s my friend that, if I’m at a police station, I need to be bailed out.
She’ll come get me no matter what, and I’ll go get her. And we’ve actually done those things. I don’t have the story for another podcast, but so I said to her, she’s has had some medical issues and she connected me with her OB in Boston, who was wonderful. And she called me on the phone and she said, we don’t do it here, but here’s the clinic you need to go to and ask for Dr. Cardi. And so I found this clinic in Stoneham, Massachusetts, which is right outside of Boston. And Vito, he’s retired now. Ugh. I love him. His, he’s just as Italian as you can imagine. He’s this big, 75, 80-year-old Italian man. He walks with a shuffle thick accent. He has one of those faces that’s smiling even when he is not smiling.
And so he sits down and I tell him the story and I tell him where I am. He makes an appointment and he’s let’s make this happen. He was just on board immediately. So this was, still 2016, going into 2017 now. And you do a lot of preparation work.
Before you get approved, we had to see a therapist and I had to have a. My mammogram was up to date, but I had all this testing I had to do. But I did all the basic testing first to see if we would go to step two. And IW and I passed everything. I passed the cardio, the EKG and I passed the psychological, and I passed.
They do a little hysteroscopy where they take all this, they take a, the uterus out, like all of that. And he goes, the inside of your body does not match your age, so I have no worries about this. And of course, then when you get the cost, and I wasn’t back to work yet after Molly’s death, we were still in year one and we were in the throes of a very difficult lawsuit.
So we said thank you, and I said, I don’t have the money right now, and so we’re gonna hold off for a bit. And he said we’re here when you’re ready. And we drove home, and this was in January of, 2017 now. And I just looked up at the sky and said, okay, stop. I can’t do this right now. ‘Cause I didn’t want, the dreams were becoming persistent sometimes. It was just a voice, sometimes it was a long, intense dream about Molly and Gracie and their dance friends and all these moms I knew and how we’d have these conversations that would always steer back to why aren’t you trying to have the baby?
And like it was, they weren’t consistent or the same. They covered every aspect of my life. They went away though. And so all of 17 and 18, we were in the throes of that lawsuit which was a full-time nightmare. However, I’m glad that we did it. I gave me a place to channel my grief and channel my anger and energy into the lawsuit. We settled that in 2018, in June, and about two weeks later, I had the dream again, my first baby dream, and it was like the universe is like, all right, you have the money now.
Jamie: It’s time.
Barb: Yeah. And so I had been really drinking heavily and I was on a gazillion prescription drugs. I don’t know, I don’t know how I’m okay. Quite frankly, when I look at all I was on and the interactions and I can’t imagine. But I I have a nerve condition called trigeminal neuralgia, and they treat that with anti-seizure meds. So I had three of those. Then I was on, the Xanax and the Lamictal and the Lorazepam and the Alprazolam and all of the antidepressants and help you sleep, help you wake up, keep you stable, all of it. And then I was drinking a ton. I really am amazed that I’m okay, but I am. So the first thing we went back to Dr. Cardi, so now it’s 2018 and I’m 55 and. He says, okay, you have to go off all this medicine.
So during this time, have a mammogram. If you, my colonoscopy was fine, thank goodness. Have another EKG have, do all these different things, all the testing, so come back when you’re off all the medicines. So I went to my primary care doctor, God bless her, this woman, Dr. Laura. We sat down with a calendar and a big list of my, like 13 drugs and she looked at them and what they’re for and she charted out a plan where we would wean off of some, cut down some and leave the others the same, and then cut those down. And then cut those down. Like it was this whole, it was a, we, it took us like an hour to put it together. We really laid it out. And I’ll tell you right now, I have such profound respect for addicts that come clean, because that was as hard as dealing with Molly coming off all of those, most of the time in those from August 15th to December 1st, I felt like I could hear the ocean in my head. My hands and feet were asleep most of the time. Like my voice when I talked, I felt like echoey. Like I was just so not okay.
Jamie: Yeah.
Barb: Because my body was just having to, come back to normal. Yeah. But we did it,
Jamie: but you had motivation too, right?
Barb: Yes. Yes. You and I desperately wanted to. Come out of the black hole I’d been living in. I didn’t wanna be feeling drugged up all the time. I wanted, I knew that, I had I hired a spiritual mentor at this time and joined a spiritual mentoring group. I, my CrossFit gym had one of those pay 500 bucks, and if you lose 30 pounds and eight weeks, you get your money back. I signed up for one of those. I was very heavy. I’d gained like 30 pounds. And
Jamie: Did you do it?
Barb: I did, yeah. I was super thin. I’ve never been a heavy person. A lot of the, a lot of my weight was medication. But a lot of it was, I stopped eating anything healthy for a long time. I just, I ate carbs and drank alcohol. That’s really what I did.
Jamie: Yeah.
Barb: All of that was cha, it was like this whole purification process is how I feel. And so I got through that process in December came, and what I noticed with going off all the medication is my face was in agonizing pain. Your trigeminal nerve is right behind your ear in your brain. And so trigeminal neuralgia is when the nerve becomes irritated, it’s close, the nerve center is close to the nerve. So if you have trauma, sometimes it triggers the nerve center. And the nerve center continually fires and it never stops. So you constantly feel like you have pain, which is mine felt like a toothache. I had three teeth pulled thinking I needed them pulled. ’cause they hurt so much. There was nothing wrong with those teeth. It was trigeminal neuralgia.
Jamie: Wow.
Barb: So when I went off all those pills, my face pain was unmanageable and I thought, I can’t go nine months. There’s no way I can do this. And because of my age and all of that, they just, a young woman on epilepsy with epilepsy could absolutely take anti-seizure meds during a pregnancy. It’s a whole different beast, because for her they would be a different medicine. A 53-year-old woman with epilepsy wouldn’t be approved to have a baby. So do you see the conundrum there?
Jamie: Yeah.
Barb: So there’s this amazing doctor in New York City another guy not from America Dr. Eskandar, he’s a from Turkey, Turkish descent. So I have my Italian, my Indian, and my Turk. So he was amazing and he, I emailed him and said, I got your name through a friend of mine and this is my situation. I’m trying to have a baby. Could you help me? And he goes, absolutely have this MRI and then schedule an appointment with my office. And his nurse couldn’t believe that he said yes because they weren’t taking new patients. And afterwards, he just said something about, you told me that I was supposed to help you.
So what happens is I have the MRI with the contrast, and they find three brain tumors in my head. So keep in mind. Now, Molly died of a brain tumor that we didn’t know she had. So the whole time we’re fighting for her. I had three tumors in my head, nothing to do with my face pain. Completely unrelated that.
Jamie: Yeah.
Barb: Yeah. So I’m what now? So Kenny, my husband at the time was still on kidney dialysis. He needed a kidney transplant. He was extremely sick and just getting sicker. And this was all my daughter, Gracie’s, senior year of high school. So I have the, Kenny has the dialysis, Molly has died. Now the one healthy person in Gracie’s life, me, her mother has brain tumors and they have to come out.
One of them was sitting, they, so it went in my eye and ear, like at the junction of those two nerves. But my carotid artery was being compressed. And so Dr. Eskin, his concern was that I would have a stroke because this artery was being compressed. So I would never have gone off my mouth medicine if I wasn’t trying to have this baby.
So I thought, okay, this is why I’m supposed to have the baby to save my life. I could probably stop now. Maybe I’m not supposed to have the baby, but I just let everything unfold. Because I just, at this point, I felt like I was just a passenger on a train. The baby train, right?
Yeah. And it wasn’t really about me and my desire, so I had the tumor removed. Then I had the other two radiated, and then I had the nerve in my, so I have a giant scar here and a scar back here. So from January to April I had two craniotomies and radiation to take care of the brain tumors in my face condition.
Jamie: uhhuh?
Barb: As I said, Kenny’s getting sicker and sicker. These are where some of these weird connections come in. So we were at Disney in April, so I have April 10th, I had my head cut open. April 24th we go to Disney. ’cause smart like that.
So we rented a house and we’re staying with friends. When Kenny had dialysis, he and I would just stay home and everybody else would go to the park. So Kenny was lying on a lawn chair, just like trying not to throw up. And I was bald and my head was hurting and I was just miserable. And I’m online on the computer and I see that a friend of Molly’s and Gracie’s from dance was on life support at the same hospital Molly had been at.
And now we’re at the same time of year now, late April going into May. And I messaged the mom and their daughter, Rachel was 20 at the time, and she had gone to a restaurant and there was peanut paste in an egg roll that she ate, and it wasn’t on the menu that there were peanuts in it. And she went into anaphylaxis.
And so a whole series of missteps, and she ended up being on life support and not surviving. So we went, when we got home from Florida, we just jumped into action for this family because why wouldn’t we? They had, everyone had helped us with Molly and Rachel had danced in Molly’s memorial service. We had a big show for Molly’s memorial service. It was at a theater. And so Rachel was in the opening number. So in the whole process of helping this family say goodbye to their daughter and just everything that had been done for us. My tattoo here, it says, hashtag heart, Molly, be the miracle we made. Be the miracle shirts for Rachel, because that was something she always said.
So we just took care of that family like we had been taken care of. So in the process of setting up for Rachel’s removal from life support, her mother asked if we had donated Molly’s organs and we weren’t allowed to because we didn’t know if Molly’s cancer was too, Molly’s tumor was cancerous, which it was not.
And I said it wasn’t. And that’s frustrating ’cause Kenny could have had her kidney. So Jen looks at me and she says, Kenny needs a kidney. And I said, yes he does. What’s his blood type? And I said, oh, positive. And she went, so May 7th was Rachel’s 21st birthday. And so they unplugged her the next day.
So she’s at the hospital having a 21st birthday party. Molly, we’re at the cemetery because May 7th is Molly’s unplugged day. So we’re sending lanterns into the sky to say goodbye to Molly. And Rachel’s mother calls and says, we’d like to give Kenny one of Rachel’s kidneys. I can’t tell this story. So the kidney that lives in Molly’s dad danced in Molly’s funeral.
That’s an intense like. So again, that might not have anything to do with my baby journey, but everything was a part of, right now, me getting healthy, getting Kenny healthy, how can we be healthy? It was your parents and so May 9th. Yes. And so May 9th Kenny gets a new kidney. Oh. So that summer we get approved for IVFI, I’ve had enough time now and and so we went ahead and had an IVF transfer in August of 2019.
So it didn’t work and I was bummed out about it, but not overly and this is where I have to be very careful. So if you’re a mom listening to my story. I know how lucky I am to have a failed to transfer and not be devastated by it. That’s not lost on me because I know most women that go into this journey are desperate for a pregnancy to take and develop and grow.
So I do not take my lack of grief about this lightly. It wasn’t that I didn’t grieve that the pregnancy didn’t work, but for me it wasn’t, it was only a part of the whole story. Like Jack’s arrival, was a part of the brain tumors and the kidney transplant. Does that make sense? Oh, totally. I just, I don’t ever wanna come off as glib, or uncaring, because the women I met, some of them were like we wish we were you.
And I’m like, I’m sure that you do. And I’m gonna honor that as best I can. When I was on the phone with a nurse, I was, in my little swimming pool outside and I said, I didn’t think so. I could tell. Plus, you’re not supposed to take pregnancy tests, right? I peed on a stick every day.
Jamie: Of course, yes.
Barb: Gimme a break. Like now don’t pee on a stick. Okay. And there was no line. So I wasn’t surprised by this news, but I thought that was it. Okay. My journey’s over, I’m 56 now. So I thought, their cutoff was 55. That’s what they said. So I said to my nurse should I just, what should I do now? Am I just done? And she goes, keep taking the estrace. Just keep taking it. And your follow-up appointment with Dr. Cardis in two weeks, and let’s just see what he says. So I hung up with tammy, our nurse. And I looked at Kenny and I’m like, I think Dr. God has a plan. So we go back and we sit down and he goes, first of all, this was not you. This was absolutely the quality of the embryo. It was not your fault, it was his fault.
So I am honest with Kenny being the sperm donor. So Kenny’s first round of sperm. Now he’s had a vasectomy, so they had to suck it out with a needle, right? It wasn’t like he could just, have a moment of pleasure and share a sperm. It wasn’t like that at all. He said, you’re gonna go back. You’ve have, you have a new kidney. We’re gonna, we’re gonna, you’re gonna try again, and we’re gonna get some healthy sperm. So we thank Rachel all the time. Thanks, Rachel. Yeah, because and and a lot of Jack’s feisty behavior has Rachel written all over it. So it makes me laugh sometimes.
Jamie: Now Barbara, we have a lot of women wondering if you used an egg donor or your own eggs.
Barb: Yes. And because of my age and because of a couple of different things we tried, i’m not I’m not as open about that. The first time around I used a frozen egg. I went through a, binders of egg donors. That’s another thing. I met amazing women in these binders, right? You read what they look like and why they’re donating and the woman I chose for this procedure, belonged to the LDS Church. Mormon Church and having children is really big in that religion. You show your love for God by creating more children of God that will grow up to be good Mormons, I think.
And so she couldn’t have babies and so she had helped her sister and she realized she could help a lot of people. And so she did this which just struck me. My daughter Gracie’s first name is Ember. And I named her after a girl that I used to coach on my cross country team, Ember Smith, who was a Mormon.
And so it all just seemed connected to me. But that didn’t work. And Dr. Cardi, so when we went back and he said, it wasn’t your fault, you know his fault. And he goes, I wanna try. And I said, so can we try again? And he goes, twist my arm. And I said, only if I have to. And he pulls out a clipboard and he goes, I have a list.
And so we tried a handful of things on me that. I don’t think I tried. There are still things that are like being tested and such. And because I have, because I wasn’t like, I have to have a baby, I think he felt a bit more free to, let’s see if this might work and, and let’s try this.
So I don’t share a lot of that because I honor his wishes that I not Okay. So he said, share as much as you can, but be as vague as you can. Does that make sense?
Jamie: Sure.
Barb: Yeah. And what I’m hoping is all of the things that work so well with me will one day help even more women have babies.
Yeah. Yeah. But that, I will say right now that, I don’t believe that women can just be an oven for a baby and not have a huge piece of them in that baby. Because for nine months every bit of your DNA goes through that baby. All your blood goes through that baby. You grow the baby hears your heartbeat and your voice.
All of those things.
Jamie: Yeah.
Barb: I have a couple of friends who are surrogates and what’s amazing to me is how much the babies they had for other people embodies so much of them,
Jamie: i’m sure.
Barb: Yeah. So I know a lot of women who look at egg donation and I felt this way at first and with my process and all the different ways we tried to create healthy embryos. It opened my eyes to it. I, it made me really realize that that DNA is a huge piece, but not the most important piece of,
Jamie: it’s not the only piece. Yeah.
Barb: Correct. Correct. And once you can walk through all this and really come around and see all the different sides of it, if I were to do this again, I think what I might do is just adopt an embryo. These women have frozen embryos that they know they’re not gonna use. So I think of all these little potential babies and freezers,
Jamie: I wanna do the same thing.
Barb: If I could find a IVF clinic, over, over 60, I would and that’s another story, but I would do it and I would adopt an embryo. I actually have a neurologist who has some frozen embryos and she’s you can have one of mine. And I have a friend at a CrossFit gym that said the same thing. I have frozen embryos. If you wanna do it again, you’re welcome. It just, I don’t know. Motherland, right? Yep. Motherhood isn’t just one little narrow thing, it’s all of it.
So thank you for asking and I’m sorry I’m not willing to share more someday. I can’t wait to share it all. That’s okay. And I also, yeah, and I like to honor Jack as well, but I will also say that as mothers going through this process, there’s no wrong way to feel about these things.
No one should say, you shouldn’t feel that way. Don’t tell me how I should or shouldn’t feel. I’m gonna feel the way I feel. It’s part of my journey. So now we’re getting into 2020 and COVID hits. So my transfer was supposed to occur in March. And then COVID hit and everything gets put on hold.
So I’m like, okay, back to just keeping the estrace and all that kind of stuff. What I loved though, I loved having my period, and people are like, what? But when you get older, to me it’s proof of potential. It’s proof of the fact that I can grow a baby, yes. I’m having my period and all my friends are like, you’re happy about that?
I am, I don’t know, call me crazy. I am crazy. That’s just a part of it. So June of 2020 rolls around and the IVF clinic had, they of course kept continuing to treat the women who were thick into it that couldn’t not be seen. But Dr. Car Cardoni called me and he goes, get in here.
I want you to, he was retiring, which I didn’t know at the time, july, June into July of 2020 was my final shots in the butt and patches and, all the craziness. So on July 26th, I had my transfer. I turned 57 on July 29th, and I had my positive pregnancy test on August 5th.
August 5th is the day that I conceived Gracie. Oh, neat. All those years ago. So that was fun. So we didn’t tell anyone. Of course you don’t tell anyone early on anyway. I was wicked excited. I knew, of course I peed on the stick every day. Same thing. So when I went down for that, blood test and everything I knew, I just knew I could feel it as well.
And we were hoping for twins. And the reason for that was that, we’re older, Gracie’s 22, Jack’s, other siblings are in their late thirties, like he doesn’t have anyone his age. So we’re a bit disappointed when it was just one baby, but actually now I’m okay with that. One baby’s fine. So we said nothing the whole pre the first 12 weeks were your standard 12 weeks. And, I was I’d become really fit at the time. I weighed just under one 40 at the time. I was working out every day at CrossFit. I called my ob he was actually in the delivery room with my stepdaughter delivering her baby.
So Jack has some nephews that are his age, nieces and nephews that are right around his age.
Jamie: So Cool.
Barb: Yeah. Yeah. So we didn’t tell anyone. And then the 12 week mark comes and of course that’s an excruciating 12 to 13 to 14 weeks because you stop with the hormones and the. Patches. At least that’s how it was for me. You continue with all those hormones the first 12 weeks, I thought you would wean off them. I think that’s what I thought. Like you would go every other day with the hormones and not change the… no, you just stop. And so I had this utter panic at that time that the pregnancy would end there.
And this is when I think, when I felt the life in me is when it became all about the baby. Like I stopped being like, oh, I’m just on a journey now. It was okay. I have this baby in my belly. Nothing can go wrong. Logically speaking, I stayed healthy. I continued working out. I worked up all the way, I worked out, I lifted weights and all of it right up until the week Jack was born.
Like I never,
Jamie: wow.
Barb: I’m obviously modified. I have some great video clips of me lifting weights with my big belly up over my head and stuff.
Jamie: Oh, I love that.
Barb: Yeah, they’re fun. Got to the 13 week mark, and I said, okay, I can finally tell people. And Dr. Ery, God bless him, he said, you know what, no, you can’t tell anyone until you’re at week 22. And I just looked at him like, what? And he said, there I’m gonna put, I’m gonna put you through every test there is because the judgment you’re going to receive when people find out you’re pregnant will be huge. How about we wait until the baby’s healthy and born and then you make it public news, then you make it big. So at first I was irritated by this ’cause I just wanted everyone to know.
Jamie: Yeah, you were excited.
Barb: But I, but as I, yeah. But as I went along, I’m like, huh. So I told my CrossFit coaches because I’m working out and they need to know that my expanding belly isn’t gas or a tummy tumor. You know that? Yeah.
There’s a baby in there. So little by little people knew. So I, but I had. I had every test. Two things were fun for me in the testing. One was every insurance claim that my OB submitted was rejected because diagnosis inconsistent with age of patient. That’s why my insurance would get kicked back. So of course I’d call and they’d say, we can’t prevent the kickback letter.
We’re covering everything. Don’t worry about it. It was just funny.
Jamie: Yeah.
Barb: Okay. We’re not gonna cover the ultrasound because you’re too old to be pregnant. Okay. But I had the ultrasound, there’s a baby in there, it was that. And then the other one was a lot of the computer software couldn’t generate the required answers because it didn’t go up to 57. It stopped at 49, or it stopped at 50. Like it didn’t, it couldn’t accommodate me. So a lot of the testing had to be sorted through manually,
Jamie: wow.
Barb: ’cause they couldn’t just plug it in. To the programming. It didn’t work. Yeah, I know. And of course there were a lot of COVID restrictions still. So I had a couple of phone appointments with the high risk, the fetal, the high risk ob. And she’s I can’t, you can’t have a BMI this low. I can’t wrap my head around what you look like. You’re 57. Like I said, I know you’re picturing a polyester pants suit woman in a recliner crocheting, potholders. I get it. But that’s not me. It’s not what I look like, I see, I know what you’re thinking. So when we could finally meet in person we were actually on an iPad, like a Zoom meeting. She’s, you have to stand up. So I stand up. I’m like, okay, here I am. And this was at 22 weeks.
And so all the tests that we had every test, and it brought me back to Baby Gordy and the number of tests we had on him, his little teeny tiny self because of the defect. So we had so many tests, ev ultrasounds all the time and blood work and all urine tests once a week in case I had high protein, like all of it.
And everything was fine. So the final test I had to have was a fetal echocardiogram. And of course that brought me right back to Baby Gordy. We had to go to the same hospital where, you know, 21 years prior we had gone for that one. So we go for that test and I’m anxious because I’m in this place that brought me such heartbreak, 20 years prior 21 years prior.
So the ultrasound tech is talking away and I talk about Molly and we all know Molly. ’cause it was the hospital that, she had, they sent, was sent to for her brain tumor. And then we talked about doc Baby Gorian, Dr. Rocken, Macher this guy with a thick Irish accent and everything we remembered and she just laughed and giggled and we chatted away through the whole thing.
And I told her all about baby Gordy and how. Traumatic this was for me how triggering rather. So the cardiologist comes in and she’s a woman who I’ve never met, and she sits down and she’s acting a bit funny and I’m, I just wanna hear that everything’s fine. And she said, everything’s fine, but I have some questions for you.
And she said, this baby that you lost to a heart defect, what was the heart defect? And I said, oh, it was transposition of the great arteries. It was basically backwards, upside down. I describe it all to her. And she said, you remember that so specifically? And I said,
Jamie: of course.
Barb: It was a very traumatic, yes, I do.
Yeah. She goes, what did you do with that sweet boy? And I said, I donated his body to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. And she gets real quiet. She said, I was involved in the autopsy on that baby. So here’s a woman sitting with me with baby Gordian, my baby jack in my belly, and she had held my little dead baby in her hands.
Jamie: Wow.
Barb: Isn’t that crazy? I smile because I just feel like, so the other piece to this is she said I, she goes I retired from NICU work. I can’t do sick babies anymore. The only reason I’m here today is because we’re short staffed and nobody was no one here to cover. And when I saw that, one of them was this, I was going to say no, but I saw your age and assumed that it was a mistake and that you were having a different kind of ultrasound.
So I came in, I’m like you were supposed to come in. So that’s when I got so much information. She said how helpful it was to see the heart, that little to see it because they can look at how can we get ahead of this and repair it so that these babies can be born? It was pretty amazing. Kenny and I couldn’t talk the whole, we drove home and just came and sat like we, we couldn’t even talk because it was just so profound.
Like the
Jamie: odd It was a con. Yeah, it was a connection. Yeah. Full circle. Yeah. Big time. Big time. Amazing. So it was
Barb: amazing. So my pregnancy continued on just fine. I, now, I’m starting to show, but now I have permission. I can tell people. So I start telling people, and of course that’s the best, the total expressionless response from most people.
Hey, I have some news for you. I’m 22 weeks pregnant with a baby boy.
They don’t know. They just stare at me. What? And so that was fun. So I, trucked a lawn bigger, working out, just living my life, getting everything ready like you do. So I got to 34 weeks and suddenly my legs swelled up. Hum.
Humongous. Just huge. Oh. And I didn’t have any of this. I had all easy pregnancies, Uhhuh, I’m lucky that way as well. I conceived easily and I had easy pregnancies and easy deliveries. Eight hours start to finish. My most difficult delivery, quite honestly, was Baby Gordy. The baby that we delivered at 25 weeks, that took 15 hours.
Jamie: Wow.
Barb: And yeah, so I developed preeclampsia is the problem. So I, I went to my OB and all this. So again I had been so laid back about and so detached, like whatever happens. And I’m like, no, I want this baby In April, Jack’s due date was April 13th. So 13 is a significant number because Molly was 13, Molly was born April 1st, Gracie, April 24th.
I just felt like it was supposed to be April, and now I feel Jack was like, screw that. I want my own month. Yeah. Like I was just hung up on it. And so I got really angry no. You can’t make me have this baby.
Jamie: You know what’s interesting is my birthday is April 13th.
Barb: See?
Jamie: Crazy.
Barb: See,
Jamie: I love it.
Barb: See? I do too. I do too. Oh my goodness. Ah, that, that takes my breath away sometimes.
Jamie: Yeah.
Barb: So I’m, it’s mar it’s St. Patrick’s Day, like the 17th, 18th of March. Dr. Ery, who I wanted to deliver, the baby is going on a quick weekend vacation. I’m like, why are you going away now? He’s because you’re not supposed to have the baby for another two weeks.
And I was getting it out of the he, so he had to miss it, which he was a bit bummed out about. So I fought and fought. So they gave me some steroid injection and they sent me home and, gave me some, take magnesium, it will help your blood pressure and all this. So I go back the next day, which is Friday the 19th.
And my blood pressure was like 1 95 over 1 0 5. Apparently that’s not good. Little fine. That’s what preeclampsia can do. Sometimes you don’t notice that you feel bad, but your body’s not okay.
So they didn’t even wanna let me go home. I live about a mile from the hospital and they didn’t even wanna let me go home. And I’m like, look, I have the only car and I have a bag packed. Please, I’ll be back in a half an hour. So on the way home I called my friend to come take my, I didn’t do any belly pictures ’cause I thought I had another three weeks, right? I wanted to be big. So she comes flying over, we did belly pictures outside, and then I called my friend Tony, who writes for a local news website, you gotta come over and start the interview. I’m gonna have the baby. So I’m running around like crazy. Kenny’s stop running, please stop running. Please stop running. ’cause I have this high blood pressure. So I go back and I check myself in.
So Kenny stayed home. Gracie, let me talk about Gracie for a minute. Let me backpedal a teeny bit. Gracie was not happy at all about this pregnancy. It really threw her for a loop. We confided in her that we were trying to do this after the brain tumors were found because we explained, if I wasn’t trying to do this, I wouldn’t have find the brain tumors.
And she’s, her response was a good, now I don’t have to have a baby. I’m fine. I’m still here, mom, you don’t need to replace me or replace Molly. And she made it very much about her. But you know what, of course she would. Yeah, she’s a teenager that lost her sister and she’s trying to make sense of this life.
And so when we began the process, we just chose, basically, I chose not to tell her ’cause quite honestly, I didn’t think it would work. I really, truly thought it wasn’t about the baby and why involve her in something that’s not gonna end up being anything anyway. And then when I found out I was pregnant, I thought, okay, I’m gonna wait until for sure I’m not gonna lose it and then I’ll tell her. And so she found, I told her at like week 14, she actually overheard me on the phone. And she’s like, why are you talking to a baby doctor? And I just looked at her and I said, because I need a baby doctor right now. So she was furious just blew her away. And her main issue was that we left her out of it.
And so when I explained my thought process as to why, when she could step out of her anger, she understood it. But she was still just angry. And then of course, she’s a freshman in college junior, sophomore in college. The thought of her mother having a baby was like, Ugh. It just grossed her out.
Oh, come on. That’s gross. I absolutely gave her the freedom to hate me as much as she needed to hate me. I can’t tell her how to feel, it was a huge thing for her. So the pregnancy wasn’t easy for her. She rallied around and we have a sort of a rule in our house where we have to hit the pause button so we can all be angry, but when we sit down to eat, or when we say goodnight, or when one of us is leaving to go somewhere we say pause button, and we hit the pause button and we hug and kiss, and I love you and goodbye.
We hit the pause button and we have dinner, and we talk about our day. We have, all right, unpause, go ahead and, slam your door at me. Like so that. You can still continue normal life. And we started that after Molly died because it was so easy for us to all just get lost in the devastation that we had to have times that we could just pause it. Like, all right, let’s make believe it didn’t happen for an hour. Can we just make believe so, so it was hard on her. So she didn’t want any part of the delivery. And when she found out I had to have the baby, we packed her up and sent her to Rachel’s parents’ house. The Rachel who, yeah.
Rachel’s little sister. Allie and Gracie became really close ’cause they both lost sisters and so
Jamie: Sure.
Barb: And of course we became really close with that family. When Jen misses Rachel, she’ll come and rub Kenny’s tummy. Oh hi r know. Say hi to her daughter’s kidney. Oh. So I know it’s an it’s a life.
So I’m at the hospital I go into, they have to induce me. So they give me magnesium. So they had to, strip the membranes, rupture your, the membranes in your uterus. Look at me doing this. I’m not Italian, but I talk with my hands all the time. I’m on my back in the bed. The doctor’s got her arm, all the way up to her shoulder is what it felt like. And I have, I had just finished watching. The Handmaid’s Tale and that’s a pretty devastating TV series.
Jamie: Yeah.
Barb: And there are some very rough scenes. So I said, oh my gosh, I feel like Alfred from The Handmaid’s Tale, and anyone listening that’s watched it will know the horrible scene I’m talking about with a very pregnant Alfred. So all of the young LNAs and nursing assistants start cracking up ’cause they’ve, they’re watching it. The obstetrician’s, like she’s a woman. She goes, I know you’re all laughing, but I feel like I’m the bad guy here. I said, yeah, don’t worry about it. It’s okay. You’re fine. So I had all women, that was another really cool aspect of it.
The only boys at the delivery were Jack and Kenny. And it was, the 18-year-old LNA to the. 42-year-old OB to the on-call OB, who is retired, but works part-time, in every age in between. It was really a cool kind of thing. It was like this bevy of beautiful maidens bringing this baby into the world.
And so I woke up in the morning, I thought I would be up all night and have to have Pitocin and labor and all this. And I woke up in the morning and it’s morning, and I thought that’s weird. I don’t, no one woke me up. So I got up and I called and ordered breakfast and got some coffee and put the news on, and my tummy felt warm, but not overly and so the OB comes in the, and she’s doing her rounds and she goes, how are you feeling? And I’m like, fine. Are we not having a baby today? And she looks at me and she said, you went into labor all by yourself at two o’clock in the morning. You’re like, actively in labor.
And I’m like, okay, I don’t feel a thing. Okay. I believe you. So the heat in my tummy was that, so they broke my water and then I felt it , so I called Kenny at nine. I think we’re gonna have the baby today. Should probably drop Gracie off at her dance competition and come on up and the, and then I call him like a half an hour later, okay, I think I’m gonna have the baby soon. I think you need to come now. And then they break my water and now my contractions are like two minutes apart. And I’m like, okay now. So Kenny comes flying up to the hospital.
And so I had Jack, so I started pushing. So I went into active labor where I was in a lot of pain and really felt the contractions at about. 1130 and Jack was born at 1230. Wow. So one hour basically. And basically they said, all right, it’s time to push. We think you’re ready to push. And I said I don’t feel ready. And they’re like, again just give a push. So I gave a sort of a half-hearted push and the doctor said, his head’s right here, let’s do this. And so I said, okay. And so next contraction I pushed and Audi came. He was like, really? The one push wonder.
Jamie: Wow.
Barb: He just came flying out one teeny tiny jack. And then my lunch came. So I’m like, eat breakfast, have a baby, have lunch. And it was the same person with the tray. And she’s okay, I wasn’t expecting this. ‘Cause there was, she came in I was, I still had the right afterwards. Yeah, it was great. Like you did it on purpose Yeah. Lunch right afterwards. Yeah. Yes, exactly.
Jamie: Wow.
Barb: So that was, so the delivery was super quick and and my milk came in which I was, wondered about that. I didn’t have the rush of milk that I had with Gracie and Molly. I had to drink a pile of a ton of water, way more water. And I also supplemented with breast milk from other moms. So there’s this wonderful group. I probably every state would have it, but in, it’s called Human Milk for Human Babies.
And it’s like the New Hampshire chapter. And so I’ve met two amazing women, this woman Jackie. So her name is not lost on me. She was the first one when I met and they were moving and she was had, her daughter was almost done and she had 200 bags of breast milk and she’s it’s all yours.
And so I had it in my whole neighborhood’s freezers, freezers everywhere. Had milk for Jack. And I would supplement during the day with the bottled ’cause he was little and they were concerned he wouldn’t gain weight fast enough. They wanted me to use formula uhhuh. I am not anti formula in, in generic terms, but I just breastfed both my babies and very much felt like that’s what I wanted to do with Jack.
Jamie: Yeah.
Barb: So I was able to do it. And then a good friend of mine, Kelsey she had a baby like three months after Jack. And she massively produces milk. And so when my Jackie milk ran out, she just, every she’d come every Sunday with a cooler full of milk for me.
Jamie: Wow.
Barb: With 30 bags of milk and her kids would decorate it up to Jack Love. Hated. How cute. Yeah. It was awesome.
Jamie: My sister, she had extra milk too, and she was able to donate it. I’m just like,
Barb: yeah, that’s the best thing. Yeah. Yeah.
Jamie: Why not?
Barb: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And that’s the birth piece. The press coverage was intense. But wonderful. Why would I not wanna share this?
Jamie: How far along were you when you went into labor?
Barb: So I was, I had just finished week 34, and I was into week 35. So he was considered early not prey. Yeah. But he was little and he had the, like his little throat would collapse. Which is not uncommon actually, it immediately opens the minute you exhale. So you swallow or breathe in and it closes, but the minute you exhale, it opens up again. So the, it won’t cause a baby to asphyxiate, but it can interfere with gulping because it gets, it interferes with the rhythm of swallowing. So those babies often take a couple of sips and stop. I always nursed him upright a bit. That it lasted about eight months which is what they said it would last. And it sometimes happens with babies that are born full term uhhuh. It’s just like a weak, it’s like a little weak esophagus.
Yeah. So that was the only real issue. He, and he gained weight very slowly the first two weeks. And once I had the breast milk to supplement, ’cause I would, I supplemented with formula a little bit, but he didn’t like it. He threw it up, he cried after, I’m like, okay, he’s throwing up.
This isn’t helping him. Why? Why? So once I had, I could supplement with the breast milk. Oh my God. Did he drink that milk down? I would nurse each side and then give him a bottle. And so when he got hungry, he would root and look for the boob because I always started there.
And then when he was when the boob was no longer sufficient, he got the bottle and he drank from the bottle just fine. All my babies did though, Gracie and Molly, I pumped milk for them. Because my mother would babysit. And so they were both exclusive breast milk for the first 12 months of their lives. And nothing else but milk. Yeah. And, but most of it, just as much of it was from a bottle as from me, so I’m lucky there too. I don’t take that lightly either. Women can suffer and struggle so much with breastfeeding. It breaks my heart.
Jamie: What about your other births? Were you, were they also vaginal births too? Yep.
Barb: Yep. All vaginal births. Yeah, Gracie and Molly both with, I went into labor at eight at night, and Gracie was born at three in the morning. And with Molly, I went into labor at eight in the morning, and she was born at three in the afternoon.
Jamie: Wow.
Barb: And there and I had a really hard time with the labor part with Gracie. I threw up and threw up and pooped and pooped and threw up. And then when I could finally push, it was such relief.
And with Molly, I’m, I flew through the labor, I was no problem. But it was daytime and so I didn’t poop all day. And so every time I pushed with Molly, I’d poop, which is just funny. Then they had to break her water when they broke her water or the water, there was poop in there was meconium in the water.
So they had to bring in all the heavy artillery and she was fine. She didn’t ingest any of it, but the pushing was hard for Molly. My contraction stopped, she, her big giant head tore me open. They had to gimme Pitocin and the doctor was like, don’t push. And I’m like, okay. You can’t tell. Yeah. A woman in active labor don’t push Uhhuh. Okay. And so she came flying out. But that again, eight hours start to finish. Not difficult. Yeah. For some plenty of breast milk.
Jamie: And now with jack, what do you think made it so easy?
Barb: I just think it’s he was little, first of all. Sure. I, and I just think, I will say the biggest difference in me, other than the 20 year age difference, is that I did CrossFit the whole time.
And I’m doing a lot of research now on, on just the feminine mystique, so to speak, like female bodies. And we are just. Blessed and doomed by our hormones from day one where little babies born hormone rage for teenage hormone rage to adjust into childbearing years. Hormone. Hormone for making babies, having babies, not having babies, and then they all go away.
And here’s menopause. And our bodies are designed for this massive tropical storm of hormone reality is the best way I can describe it. But it’s not without side effects. Hormonal women, we go through all these physical responses that doctors are, oh, you’re just in menopause. Oh okay, no, there’s gotta be ways. So my biggest thing, one of the biggest things that helps women in menopause is weightlifting, lifting heavy weight. Because lifting heavy weight triggers a testosterone response in the body because we have testosterone and the muscle building muscle re relies on that and the testosterone response stimulates estrogen.
So we don’t make new estrogen, but the estrogen just goes to sleep ’cause we don’t need it anymore. So you’re stimulating estrogen. You’re stimulating the estrogen you have in your 65-year-old body or whatever to get into your blood. So when having Jack with Gracie and Molly, I was a competitive distance runner, so I ran but weightlifting was a completely different beast. I maintained mobility. I think one of the factors for my easy delivery was that I was, weightlifting. I did CrossFit. My last CrossFit workout was Wednesday and I had Jack Saturday. Oh my gosh. Thursday and Friday were like the preeclampsia freakout days.
Jamie: Wow.
Barb: Yep. So that would be
Jamie: incredible.
Barb: Yeah. Yeah. Now I, this is me though. The other piece I have to, and I have to say it’s another way that I’m very lucky. I live inside this body. Pregnancy and childbirth was never difficult. It just wasn’t, and if I look at my first contraction to Jack’s birth, it was about the same timeframe, two in the morning to noon.
It was about, it was, no, it was about the same timeframe as Gracie and Molly. Yeah. And with pushing Gracie was like 45 minutes of pushing. Molly was like 90 minutes of pushing, but it’s because the whole thing stopped. But I was never pushing for hours and hours. It was relatively quick.
Jamie: Yeah.
Barb: So I think sometimes it’s the luck of the draw, I just got put into a body that does well in the baby department.
Jamie: Yeah. But you’ve been taking care of it really well.
Barb: Yeah.
Jamie: I have two questions. Yeah. Passed away. One, how did it go talking to your husband about this when you approached having a baby with him?
Barb: So I didn’t say anything to anyone for a long time, and I did a lot of the medical stuff. At first, I was just gonna do it by myself. Kenny and I had been struggling in our marriage. So I didn’t say anything to anyone. And when I finally had met Dr. Cardi and knew that this was a possibility one of Dr. Cardone’s questions was, do you have a partner to do this with? And I said I do. I wasn’t necessarily gonna involve him in it, but we live together and we share a child, and we share a child in heaven. And he said it’s sometimes just a much better experience. So I went home and said, so listen, I’ve been having these dreams. And he was, he just jumped on board. He’s okay. I will say things were so horrible that he would’ve jumped off a cliff if he thought it would make me feel better. We were in such a devastatingly, horrible place.
Jamie: Yeah.
Barb: And then, so then when the dreams went away and we did the lawsuit and we didn’t talk about it when I was sipping my coffee waiting for him to come down. And when I said, Hey, guess what dream I had last night? And he just grinned. He’s baby dream. Yep. So he was all, he is such, he’s the consummate father, for all the flaws that people have and all the shortcomings and all the ways we could be better, Kenny is the best dad. He just knows how to get right into the space of a kid and be there.
One of his grandsons is on the autism spectrum and, little kids with autism are very, tender about who they’re comfortable with, and we don’t understand what goes on. And his grandson has maybe four or five people that he’s comfortable with outside of his mom and dad. And Kenny’s one of them.
He goes right up and goes forehead to forehead with him, touches his face. That’s Papa Smiles at him, that’s Kenny. His affect is just so comfortable and safe. He’s really a good dad. And he and Jack, they’re, go ahead. Go play. They’re, yeah. They have a blast. He has a good time.
Jamie: That’s awesome.
Barb: Yeah. I’m lucky.
Jamie: And my other question was about gender. Did you already know you were having a boy?
Barb: Yes. So after all that went on with Baby Gordy, I knew Gracie and Molly were girls. I didn’t want, I didn’t want any surprises. And so I wanted zero surprises with Jack.
I also knew that gender was going to play a huge piece of. Of how I coped with what having this baby would be like. So part of me hoped it would be a girl, because I only knew girls. The one baby boy I had, I never got to know. But I also felt I don’t wanna feel like I’m replacing Molly. It’s like a new everything went through my head when we went for the 22 week appointment and saw this little naked baby in there with his little winky.
I was, Kenny was just like, yeah, but both of us driving home, I just said I’m anxious. I don’t know what to do with this, because I just, I think either way I would’ve been anxious, I know it has to be a boy or girl, which one’s it gonna be. But as the pregnancy went on, I felt better and better about it.
And now that he’s here, he’s just so unabashedly Jack. That even if I wanted to compare him to Molly or say he fills a void, he doesn’t, yes, he fills a void, the void of sadness. But he doesn’t replace Molly. He has nothing to do with Molly. And I know that sounds impossible because he also has everything to do with Molly, but I think if he wore a girl, it might have been a bit harder on Gracie as well.
I think a little brother is perfect. It just fits. And he is named after a sweet boy. After Molly died, I became very active in these Facebook groups and online groups for parents that had lost children. And I met this sweet, beautiful woman named Brandy, who lives on the other side of the country.
And I finally reached out and said, Hey, I love your little boy Jack. And I have this picture on my fridge, and she had Molly’s picture on her fridge, and we had never shared any of this. She sends me a picture and there’s Molly on her fridge and I’m like, okay, Jack’s on my fridge. Here we are.
So we’re good friends. We actually met last year at Disney. So when I found out that Jack was a boy, I messaged her and said, you can say no but I would be honored if you would let me name him Jack. And so of course she said yes. Oh, so Jack. Jack, yeah.
Jamie: Oh, I love that.
Barb: Yeah. And Jack is a per, it’s just a simple, perfect name. Jack. Yeah. Yeah.
Jamie: Tell us about your recovery. How did it go?
Barb: I had with all of my kids, I had a bit of postpartum depression. I wouldn’t say depression so much as anxiety. I got very panic stricken. Is the best way to describe it. And I had to spend, I just wanted to spend a lot of time by myself with the ba, like never a problem with the baby.
Just stop, already stop. Leave me be no more company. That kind of thing. And that was the same with Jack. I had about eight weeks, I’d say, where I was pretty em, an emotional basket case. However, I. I have a very supportive family. My mom and Kenny and Gracie. When I had postpartum with Gracie, obviously she was a baby, but super support around it.
I didn’t need medication for it. But I would reach out often to friends of mine that had babies that had also struggled a little bit with it. But physically, perfectly fine. Once all the puffy preeclampsia weight went away I was back down to within 10 pounds of my starting weight almost immediately.
Jamie: Wow.
Barb: And I didn’t work out for a while. I ga I gave myself time. Jack was born March 20th, and I think I went back into the gym June 1st. So I gave myself all of April and all of May just to but then I did a two day CrossFit competition that August. So Jack was born in March.
I did this CrossFit competition. I had to climb a rope. I had to, it was ridiculous. Walk my hands, like all these crazy things that, so I weighed I actually probably weighed about 150 then. I wasn’t, I was still pretty heavy, but I had great recovery but I had great recovery with Gracie and Molly as well.
I’m, I was athletic to begin with. I, was a scholarship runner at BU in the eighties and ran for Nike for several years. I’ve never not been in really good physical shape, do a lot of hiking and skiing. So I think I, again, I think that’s all part of it. If I were alive 200 years ago, I would’ve been one of those women that gives birth to her baby, in the field, puts the baby on the boob and keeps picking the green beans. I think I would’ve been, that would’ve been me. Yeah. I wouldn’t needed to, have a lot of recovery.
Jamie: Yeah. Now, I think I cut you off earlier about press. How do you think that got out that you had
Barb: So I, my friend who came and interviewed me right before I had Jack and then right after, he is a man that I grew up with, and I just gave him first writes on the story. So he put it on his local, a OL patch website, and that’s all it takes. So then our local newspaper did a story like a week later, and then a friend of mine who’s a dj, interviewed me on the radio station. This was all very local New Hampshire.
And it didn’t take long before suddenly I’m getting emails and phone calls and such for a story. So a lot of it was on Zoom. And some of it was in person, so there was actually two Parenting Magazine and A BC Hearst Television. They have an online sort of channel, I can’t think of the name of it right now. And they came two separate Saturdays and spent the whole Saturday here, and basically the videos they created are about eight minutes, but they’re wonderful.
They go into everything I’ve shared here. They share but they came up and did, video clips and they interview Kenny and they interviewed Gracie and myself. The biggest piece of coverage we got came from the hospital in White Plains. So after my trigeminal neurologist surgery they came up here and did a story on me because I recovered so quickly from the brain surgeries that my neurologist, when I went back for my appointment before. At when I was still balls and everything else, they, the hospital did a whole story on me and they did like a PR series. I was on a billboard, several billboards, and I was on I was in their magazines and all of this, and it was on their website and it just talked about taking the stage, retaking the stage after losing a child and having all this brain tumor surgery.
So when the baby, when I was pregnant, they wanted to come up and do a story while I was pregnant. And then of course Jack came, they were supposed the Sunday that he was born Saturday, and that Sunday was when they were gonna come up and do all this filming. And, sorry. He came. So in the first year of his life, we communicated back and forth. And so Chta TV was hired by Montefiore Medical Center to do a commercial. So they flew us all to Moab, Utah, to this canyon. This beautiful Moab is amazing. And we filmed a TV commercial there. So this commercial played on TV in New York City all last summer for eight months. It was just like the sunrise and I’m sitting on the top of this rock in a canyon and music is playing.
And so they did a whole photo shoot and all these interviews. And so if you go on the Montefiore website, it was amazing. But my picture was on about 50 billboards with Jack on the back. Like it’s me looking out across a canyon with Jack and a backpack on my back. And it says every day is a day to rise.
And it, the whole theme of the commercial was, sun, the song was Sunshine on my Shoulders, and it’s all about, it’s dark, darkest before the dawn, but the sun will come up and there’s always hope. But that picture was on a 33 story building right outside of Madison Square Bar. So it was like 33 stories of Barb. So I was like, oh my gosh. So that was pretty amazing. So that was a pretty intense amount of press coverage, but it what an honor.
Jamie: Yeah. How does it feel to see yourself on a 32 story building?
Barb: So we, we went to look, we picked up Gracie from Disney and we drove home. And so we drove through New York City so we could see it uhhuh. So we’re all sitting in the car and we turn onto eighth Avenue Uhhuh, and it’s 30 blocks up, but it’s 33 stories. So it took us 10 minutes to get there, but we’re just looking at me. I’m like, oh my very surreal unbelievably surreal.
And then so we’re we double park, we have a trailer. This cop comes up, he goes, can’t park here. And I pointed up at the picture, he goes, I know. And I’m like, there’s Jack. And he’s whoa. He’s oh my God, my wife loves you. So we’re doing selfies with the cop. Then it got a little crowd developed because the picture had only been up there a couple of months or maybe a month.
So it was relatively new still. So we did all these selfies. It was fun. And then since then, so another sort of fun piece of that I was coaching at my CrossFit gym and a gentleman came in for a drop in. I’m like, oh, where are you from? He is oh, wan New Jersey. And I said, have you ever seen a billboard with a lady with a baby on her back?
He goes, yeah, Barb, this woman with cancer, do you know her? And I just looked at him and then he’s talking and he is wait, your name is Barb. You are her. It was like the cool, it is just the sweetest thing, so that those little things are fun. That was a huge honor, I’ll tell you right now. Yeah.
It was so now life is, relatively normal. There are times, and I’ll be very honest here, there are times when I’m overwhelmed, like when I think, okay when Jack is 10, I’ll be 67. Okay. And Kenny will be 75. And that’s old for a young kid Now, Kenny’s super youthful and young as well. Like for all of his health issues. If you looked at him, you wouldn’t think he was 68 years old, not in a million years. He doesn’t look at, at all. And he’s active in, still does a million things.
But I’ll look at the reality of it and I, and it makes me anxious sometimes. However, some of my best friends are raising their grandchildren and they’re my age and their grandchildren are Jack’s age. And for all of the reasons that this happens, whether it’s overdose deaths or whatever, whatever reason these people end up parenting their grandchildren.
I’m really not alone as a woman my age with a 2-year-old. Yeah. It’s a far more common than I think people give it credit. So I’m looking forward to the kindergarten drop off line primarily. ’cause I can stand with all the Grammys who are raising their kids. And all the mothers are young enough to be, my child Uhhuh.
When I was going to Dr. Ery, he would say, you’re old enough to be the mother of every pregnant woman right now. He goes, I do the math every time I get a new one. All right. How old are you? Yep. Barb could be your mother. It’s funny. I love that. Yeah. So I went for a checkup and he’s come on, have another one.
I’m like, are you kidding? He goes, why not? You’re healthy. He was just so funny ’cause he was so tender at first about it. Okay, and are you sure? And yeah, he’s funny. He’s I just think you should. I’m like, okay, we’ll see. I don’t know. I go back and forth. I would love to, but my clinic, Dr Cardi has retired and Tammy goes, all of us are sad because we all hoped you would come back, but the new doctors aren’t him
Jamie: yeah.
Barb: So I don’t think, I don’t know that there’s a clinic in, in, in the United States that would take a 60-year-old. I dunno. Yeah. I haven’t really looked so,
Jamie: I know my doctor said the cutoff is 50.
Barb: Yeah. There, there are some over 50. There are clinics over 50. But I think they’re few and far between, or they don’t say it and you make an appointment and you go in and they do a whole assessment and they say, yep, you know what? Yes. Because a lot of them are 52. That was a common, my, the clinic, my clinic is 53, so if you know anyone that’s 50, 51, 52 or 53, send ’em to Stoneham Mass.
Jamie: Yeah.
Barb: Because that’s a class for people, women over 50. Yeah. And once you’re in, you can go over the age limit once you’ve already started the process. I thought once I turned 56, I was done. And he goes no, you’re already here. You’re here you’re in process now. So I was able to continue.
Jamie: Yeah. That’s great. Is there anything else you wanna add about your birth or pregnancy?
Barb: I do wanna acknowledge that I’m incredibly lucky and that I know I’m not the norm at all. So two things I feel that. I want my birth to be permission for women to put their foot down and say, just because my age is this number doesn’t mean I don’t deserve the chance to try this. It’s my body and my life, and I wanna try this.
The other side of it is I want all these women struggling to be mothers to know that I don’t take it lightly, and that I don’t want my ease of this to make them feel that it won’t happen for them. It’s such a tender balance, I am incredibly freaking lucky. I just am, and. I wish I could just shed the luck onto everyone that wants to be a mom and have a baby. I get it. I get it.
I would want anyone listening to know that it’s not lost on me if you’re on your fifth round or you’ve tried Clomid and then you’ve tried IUI, and then you’ve tried IVF and it’s fail after fail, and now you’re looking at other options and considering surrogacy and I just love you and I hug you, and I’m sorry. And it’s not lost on me that I didn’t, that wasn’t my experience. Yeah. But the fact that I could do it means that a lot more women can than I’ve given the chance to. And yeah. Go ahead and use my name, tell him I said Barb did it. I wanna try.
Jamie: Your story gives so much hope to so many women.
Barb: Yes. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. And and I acknowledge too I can climb a rope. I was I can climb a rope 18 feet up. It takes me a bit, but I can do it and I can let myself back down and I’m 60. That in and of itself is I’m lucky in this body, yeah. I know that’s part of it but in terms of growing a baby, it’s what we’re designed to do. And I feel that every woman who wants to be a mom deserves the chance to try it, no matter how old she is.
Jamie: Yeah. Beautiful.
Barb: Yeah. Yeah.
Jamie: What has been your biggest challenge being pregnant at 57?
Barb: I would say my knees, because my knees are every bit my age. Thank you very much. Yeah, I did have a much, I will say physically I had a much harder time getting up and down stairs than I did with Gracie and Molly.
I have to walk around upstairs for a long while in the morning before I could come down because my knees hurt so much. So that was tricky. And I would say some of it was just feeling that I had to justify my actions, I was considered an older mother having babies at 38 and 40, so there were lots and lots of people whose initial response, people were nice to me, to my face but being afraid to tell somebody because I was afraid of judgment. Like one of Kenny’s children was horrible about it, and really was upset and tried to get the whole family against us. And it was just horrible. Horrible. Now, again, I can’t fault her. She’s going to feel what she feels. She had her reasons for being that angry, but it was hard on us, it was just like. Come on. This is a beautiful thing and you might not agree with me, but it’s not, I’m not, you’re not my mom.
My mother was quite vocal initially that she thought it was a poor idea and she didn’t find out until I was 22 weeks long,
Jamie: Uhhuh.
Barb: And she got happy tears and cried and, oh, and Jack loves his nanny. Oh my gosh. She comes over and just plays with him. So Kenny and I can get stuff done around the house and, when she shows up, boy, he just flies out the door. He just, here’s another thing, and this is for maybe women that would like to have another child, or women that haven’t had children yet and are having children older. Either way. When I was 38, I had a mortgage. I was deep in my career. I still cared that my boobs looked good in a small bikini top. I wanted a flat tummy. I wanted to go out and hang out with my friends. Like I was still in the thick of my life, right? So having a child was one more thing to add to 50 other things.
At my age, I could give two hoots what I look like naked. I wanna be healthy, but I don’t care now in a way that I did then.
Jamie: Yeah.
Barb: I’m at a place in my career where I’m self-employed. I’m not beholden to a boss that’s gonna be upset if I have to take time off to go nurse my baby. If I don’t sleep all night, that happens to me anyway. I’m in menopause now. I have company, do I pee when I sneeze? I did anyway.
Do I cry all the time? Still. Do you know what I mean? Do I have a bloated belly? Yeah. This one has a baby in it. But it’s no different than if I didn’t have there were so many aspects of motherhood, of growing the baby, of being a mother that are just easier. I feel like the grandmother sometime, like I just get to enjoy it.
’cause I just, like two nights ago it was that full moon. That big moon. Oh my god. Jack was up all night. So he’s still nurses. He’s two and a half and he still nurses quite a bit at night.
Jamie: Incredible.
Barb: I know. I love it. So I don’t wanna stop. He’ll, when he’s ready to stop, I’ll stop. But people are like two and a half and I’m like Molly nursed until she was two and a half. But she was ready to stop by then. He, the first thing he says when I get home, boop calls it boop on a couch, boop on a porch, boop. In a chair. Like where? Whoever, wherever he wants me to be. So a few nights ago we would just up all night, so I just didn’t get up. We just stayed in bed until eight 30 because I can, yeah.
And so I’ve traveled, I’ve gotten drunk and come home and been hung over. I’ve gone out on dates. I’ve gone dancing in my little black dress, like I’ve done it. Like I don’t, I’m not missing anything. Yeah. If I spend five days in a row home with my 2-year-old, yay.
Yeah. Like I’m not, that part has been so much easier because I don’t have the stressors. And if I have a boss that doesn’t like that I’m missing work for Jack, then I can just say, okay, buy, because I’m not counting on that. My mortgage is paid off, it’s just a different beast. And so I encourage women who have career focus suddenly, oh no I’m 45 and I now I wanna have a baby, and what if I can’t? Go for it. Because you’ll be a really relaxed, well-rounded mom when that baby comes out.
Jamie: Even me at 42, I think I’m Oh,
Barb: absolutely.
Jamie: More relaxed now.
Barb: Yes. Oh, no kid. And, so I was 40 when Molly was born, so most of my friends, their kids were 5, 6, 7 years older than mine. And they, so they had them at the end of the twenties, thirties, and they still bemoaned. Oh. Ever since babies. My body’s terrible. Like so 10 years later when I had Molly, I was in my forties, I’m like my body was gonna be terrible anyway, so I’ll just do the best I can. Like you do. You have these yeah. You’re in a different place than you were when you were 32.
Jamie: Definitely. And is there anything you’d recommend that would help prepare someone for pregnancy and birth over 40?
Barb: I would say spend a good amount of time really becoming healthy. Make believe that you’re gonna enter a beauty pageant or, the biggest thing would be overall health. And let me please include. How about how you feel about yourself? Yeah. Like loving yourself, feeling good about who you are and acknowledging that you’re perfect just the way you are. So much of us as women and mothers we we have incredible pressure to be all of it. To look pretty and clean the house and work full time and don’t complain, and all the things that can make us just feel overwhelmed. But I do feel that oftentimes women get pregnant and then think, okay, now I need to get healthy.
Jamie: Yes.
Barb: I would say another really good way to prepare yourself for pregnancy and ha being healthy is to spend at least 30 to 45 minutes a day doing something you love.
Going for a walk, watching that show you love, sitting by a river listening to music. I don’t know. Something that is just something that really is you. For me it was CrossFit and going to the gym. Sometimes I’d already worked out or I’d gone for it, I’d done something different. I just love my gym friends. I would just go hang out down there, because I could. And it just made me feel better about myself. I liked being around those people. Surround yourself with people that. You’re great.
Jamie: I love it.
Barb: Those other people don’t matter.
Jamie: That’s right. What advice would you give yourself when you were pregnant, if you could go back?
Barb: I I guess not to worry so much, but how do you not worry when you’re pregnant at 57? Yeah. I, having, being 57 and really putting a lot of thought into becoming pregnant, I really was mindful about it already. Jack was probably my best pregnancy, ’cause I could just live in it and not worry. I was coaching track and cross country when I was pregnant with Gracie and Molly and I never stopped the coaching. I took them to the track and their little carriers. I nursed both of them in the press box announcing track meets, first call mile, put the mic down, switch boobs.
Okay. First call 800. My, they were a part of a much busier life. Yeah. I don’t know. The advice I would give 38-year-old and 40-year-old Barb, was to slow down and enjoy it and don’t worry about it. You don’t have to please 50 other people, just take care of yourself and the baby. But that’s not the mindset of so many young mothers. It just isn’t. We’re still so caught up in everything else.
But yeah, just enjoy it. I, somebody made a comment the other day oh yeah, I’m gonna have another kid. I’ll have no life. I’m like, what do you mean you’ll have no life? You’ll have an amazing life with two kids. Like one does having a child mean you have no life. And so sometimes just redefining what it means to have a life, you won’t have a sorority house life, but is that the life you want as a mother? Sometimes we’re quick to say, my life ended with children. No, your life starts, it’s a whole different life.
Jamie: That’s right.
Barb: Yeah,
Jamie: I love that. Yeah. And what advice would you give another woman over 40 trying to get pregnant right now?
Barb: To be patient, to be insistent with the doctors and be patient with yourself. Does that make sense?
Jamie: Yeah.
Barb: Put your foot down. Advocate. Advocate. I can do this. This is what I want. What’s the next step? And also to enjoy the next step. What, the other thing that surprised me about IVF was that, especially at my age, if I didn’t pass the colonoscopy, there was no baby. If I didn’t pass the mammogram, there was no baby. If I didn’t pass the blood work, there was no baby. If I didn’t pass, the, every little test had to be a certain way or you didn’t take the next step. So I knew it was safe. So that’s a process that I found a lot of comfort in the process because everything that went well that had nothing to do with conception, just the body. Yeah. Gave me confidence. And so I would say, women over 40, just be confident in your health, but advocate, advocate for yourself firmly. Stand with a fist, you know that. It was a movie and there was a Native American woman, her name was, stands with fist ’cause she was strong. So stand with your fist. But when it comes to you, when you look in the mirror, give yourself a hug, take a big breath, acknowledge that it will be fine. One step at a time and be patient. ’cause all that stress, it’s hard not to stress and worry, but. Sometimes it’s our own worst enemy.
Jamie: It is.
Barb: So enjoy the process, forget the outcome as much as you can, and enjoy every little bit. Enjoy slapping that patch on your butt and enjoy the injections as weird as they were. I just tried to enjoy it all. So that every bit of it was an experience. Again, it was easy for me because I wasn’t clinging to this possibility of the outcome being what I wanted.
Jamie: Yeah.
Barb: So I don’t even know how to address that. Just be good to yourself. Yeah. Just, love yourself and somehow it’ll be okay.
Jamie: Yeah. Now, where can our listeners find you on the internet?
Barb: Tell us a little bit more. So I have, yep. So I have an Instagram page. It’s called Barb 4 4 4. That’s my angel number. I love that number. My Facebook is just Barb Higgins and I live in New Hampshire.
And it’s a public page so you can look at it and you could follow it or you can friend request. And I typically always just accept the friend requests. I have a website, which is a thousand tiny steps.com, and that’s where my podcast is. I do a weekly blog. I also do a weekly email, and I sell nothing on the email. It’s not one of those emails that you read and then you have five paragraphs of stuff you should buy from that person or services. No, I just tell you what’s going on.
Jamie: What’s your podcast about?
Barb: So it’s called A thousand Tiny Steps, and it’s basically about my life. So it started, it’s basically talking about. All the steps that happen before something big happens. When I taught high school health, I would say people don’t wake up and say, huh, I think I’ll get drunk and kill somebody with my car today. But people get drunk and kill people with their cars all the time.
Yeah. That choice started a thousand steps ago. Lots of things happen for that person to wake up on that day to create those circumstances for that event to happen and good things. You don’t just wake up and say, I’m gonna go to the Olympics and win a gold medal and then go and win the medal. No. The training and the planning starts thousands of steps prior to crossing that finish line, right?
Jamie: Yeah.
Barb: So that was my lesson. So for my podcast, my initial starting, it was I was devastated about Molly’s death and just needed to relive my life to see where did it start. What was the first step in the steps that contributed to the circumstances that put us in the place as a family that created the circumstances around which Molly got sick, like all of it.
I know that I didn’t cause the brain tumor, but so many things. There were so many left turns that could have been right turns in her journey, and I just needed to search it. So basically it’s a life story of Barb Higgins, but, and I’ve had quite a life, I’ve been an amazingly talented athlete. I was very asthmatic as a child and went to college for free.
I suffered terrible sexual abuse as a child and was able to come out of that relatively unscathed. So I talk about that. I talk about the brain tumors. I just talk about all of it. I just talk about. Each sort of chunk of episodes is about one thing. I talk about my alcoholism and my struggles with sobriety and drug addiction and drug use.
I had a horrible job loss. I talk about how traumatic that was, and so I just talk about it, but. I story tell it in a way that there’ll be something in it that you could take away from it. It isn’t just about my job loss or my AA experience, or my child loss or my full scholarship, everything touches on things that we can all relate to.
And so my main reason for doing it selfishly was just to feel better. And then more in terms of helping. I just think we don’t talk about the ugly stuff sometimes and why shouldn’t I just share my life? The good, the bad, the ugly? Because somebody will listen and say, oh my God, thank you for sharing.
So that now is a bigger thing for me now on the podcast because I have a book coming out, which is called Motherland. And take a listen and see if you learn anything. And I also, I’m starting now to have guests. Someday I would love to have you as a guest. Let’s let your life unfold and see where you fit in.
Jamie: Yeah, I would love that.
Barb: It’d be wonderful. Yeah.
Jamie: I do you wanna share what Motherland is about?
Barb: Yeah, that’d be wonderful. So Motherland is essentially a memoir that starts with Molly’s death. Starts with the day I come home from that vacation I was on the week before she died, and it ends with the birth of Jack and the first couple years of Jack and finally getting rid of this couch in my living room, the brown couch. So the first chapter is the pink dress, and that’s the dress that Molly’s buried in. And the brown couch was the last piece of furniture she was on before the ambulance came.
And see, this is where having a helper, an author, published author, can create these themes that are amazing. So everything in between is motherland. So losing a child, going through all of that, Kenny and my relationship, and Gracie and how she’s gone through it, the tumors, all of it. And then we talk, we go into having Jack and what it’s like, what that was like, and what it’s like having a baby and how that’s tied into the loss of Molly. And all of the support from mothers that have lost children and any pregnancy loss is a traumatic loss. I will say losing Molly was a lot more traumatic than losing baby Gordy. I never really knew Baby Gordy. At 25 weeks, I lost. The potential. I had a 13 year relationship with Molly. Whole different level of loss. Yeah. Having said that, losing Baby Gordy was devastating. So I talk about all of this in Motherland and we put a whole lot more in there, quite honestly. I talked a lot more about my addiction. I talked a lot more about my struggles with Kenny and all of the chaos leading up to Molly’s death in my personal life. None of that is in the book because it really detracts from the theme of the story, which is Molly and then Jack.
Jamie: Was it scary putting yourself out there at first?
Barb: Yes. Oh, yes. My first website was all there was no photos of me on it. I didn’t want any pictures of me. It was all like graphics and little footprints and my web designer was like, what? And I said, I don’t want me on there. I don’t need to be on there right now. It’s just gonna be a place for my podcast.
So of course now that my face has been on a 33 story building and 50 billboards, I’m a little more comfortable with it now. But yes, and I’m unbelievably anxious about the book. Just because you can’t write a memoir that includes a whole group of people and not offend somebody in there.
Jamie: Sure.
Barb: So I’m anxious about that, but I also know that. That’s just part of it. If somebody is upset about something, I say it’s none of my business. They can be upset. They have permission to be upset. Nothing created with malice in my book, but there are tender stories in there. It’ll be interesting, but I’m excited.
Jamie: You have an incredible story.
Barb: Thank you.
Jamie: Thank you so much for sharing your story with us.
Barb: Thank you. Thank you for being willing to listen. That’s is, that’s just as important as me sharing it, you wanted to hear it, so that makes me feel good inside.