Show Notes
Two Kids, One Heart Condition, and No Regrets A brief note: this episode mentions a miscarriage between Kristina's two pregnancies. She shares it with grace and without distress, but we wanted you to know it's there.
Kristina spent her 30s doing what she loved — living in different countries, working big marketing jobs, going out, seeing things. Children were always in the plan. A partner never quite materialised. And then her mum — a retired GP who had spent her career delivering babies — started dropping not-so-subtle hints every time she saw her. By 38, Kristina made the appointment. What followed was a journey that looked nothing like she imagined, partly because of the pandemic that landed in the middle of it, and partly because of the heart condition she had been managing for years — including an implanted defibrillator — that meant nobody quite knew how her body would handle a pregnancy. The answer, it turned out, was better than out of it. Kristina conceived on her first IVF transfer at City Fertility, in Melbourne, just as the borders closed. Her whole pregnancy was in lockdown. She worked from home, mostly unseen, growing a baby in an Art Deco apartment in Prahran while the world tried to work out what was happening. Otis arrived via planned caesarean at Epworth in June 2020 — small, at 2.1 kilos, and with talipes (clubfoot) that hadn't been picked up on any scan. What followed was five months of weekly leg casts, a small operation to release tendons, then months in boots and a bar — a mini snowboard contraption that kept his feet overcorrected while the bones formed. It was hard. He was, as Kristina puts it, a miserable baby. She moved her parents in and went on road trips whenever the lockdowns allowed. She went back for a second child when Otis was 20 months old. There was a miscarriage between them — the numbers weren't going up, and then suddenly they were, and then there was no heartbeat. She managed it medically and ended up in hospital. It was awful. Then she went back, transferred the next embryo, and got pregnant straight away. Seven months into that pregnancy, she packed up the apartment, flew to New Zealand with her mum and Otis, and had Ari via planned C-section at Nelson Public Hospital. This time, everything was fine. He slept. She called the midwife crying, convinced something was wrong. Otis is five. Ari is two and a half. Kristina is about to launch her own fashion brand from Nelson. She rides bikes and scooters to school with her boys every morning. She doesn't regret a single thing. In this episode:
Growing up the eldest of four — always knowing she wanted to be a mother, even when she was busy living her best life in her 30s
Her mum — a retired GP — planting the seed with increasing persistence, and why she's grateful for it
The heart condition and implanted defibrillator that made her wonder whether her body could handle pregnancy — and why it turned out to be the wrong thing to worry about
Deciding to keep her IUI cycles secret from almost everyone — and why she told everyone when she moved to IVF
IVF at 38-39 at City Fertility: 8 eggs, 4 embryos, pregnant on the first transfer
Getting the positive the day the COVID borders closed — her mum, her Canadian friend, and their bags packed
A COVID pregnancy — working from home, nobody watching the bump grow, quietly grateful for the rest
Otis arriving at 2.1 kilos with undetected talipes — the shock, the five months of weekly casts, the minor surgery, and the boots and bar he wore until he was four
What it was really like — the misery, the pacing, the jiggling, the shushing, and the road trips in between lockdowns
The miscarriage between her two pregnancies — what happened physically, the hospital trip that followed, and how she feels about it now
Going back, transferring the next embryo, and getting pregnant straight away
Moving to New Zealand at 7 months pregnant — what she'd do differently, and what she'd tell
More from No need for Prince Charming
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She always knew Sam walked into a fertility clinic at 24 with her friend as her fake partner, because she assumed single women weren't allowed to do this alone. When the counsellor handed her a booklet with a section on solo mums, she had a quiet revelation: she didn't need to pretend anything. She went on the donor waitlist that day. Then she waited three years. Sam is an emergency department nurse in Canterbury, New Zealand, who grew up in a family with a cycle of difficult relationships and decided early that the best thing she could do for herself — and for a future child — was to do it differently. When she realised donor conception meant she could have a baby without any of that cycle attached to it, she felt, as she describes it, delighted. She was 28 when she finally got the call that a donor was available. She was 29 when she fell pregnant — on her first frozen transfer, the one she called the Easter transfer, the favourite egg that ever existed. She named him Dandy Lion while he was still in her uterus, because dandelions are resilient and they symbolise the sun, moon, and stars. She did her injection in the back of an ambulance. She showed everyone at work a weekly ultrasound. She threw herself a gender reveal party in the emergency department with blue lollies and a balloon pop. She found out she was pregnant on Mother's Day. Her son is now eight months old. Sam recently got back from Fiji — terrible weather, little shacks in the middle of nowhere, best memories she's ever made. She’s found a beautiful Canterbury solo mum community from a Facebook post. She goes to the Solo Mum Society book club at one in the morning NZ time. She's one and only, by choice, and completely at peace with it. This is one of the most joyful episodes I've recorded in five seasons. In this episode:
Every woman going through donor conception at a fertility clinic in Australia is required to attend implications counselling. And almost every one of them turns up expecting to be assessed, judged, and told whether they're worthy enough to be a mum. Narelle Dickinson has been working in this space for 30 years. She finds that deeply sad. Narelle is a reproductive psychologist, fertility counsellor, and the director of Lotus Health and Psychology in Brisbane. She specialises in the prenatal and perinatal field, works in the surrogacy space, supports families through birth trauma and pregnancy loss, and has spent 25 years doing donor conception counselling — watching the landscape shift from almost exclusively heterosexual couples to a community that now includes far more single women choosing this path as a first option, not a last resort. In this episode she explains what implications counselling actually is, what it's actually for, and how to get the most out of it rather than treating it as a tick-box exercise. She talks about what changes when you're using a known or recruited donor rather than a clinic donor. She explains why people who are using an unregulated recruited donor without going through a clinic should consider seeing a counsellor anyway — and what a donor who refuses to sit in a counselling room should tell you. She talks about the unexpected emotional waves that can come after a positive test, after the baby arrives, and years later when your child starts asking harder questions. And she closes with something worth carrying: the goal of donor conception counselling isn't getting you pregnant. It's helping you build a family. Those are very different things. Narelle and her team offer telehealth across Australia. If you're looking for an implications counsellor, make sure you're using an ANZICA-accredited practitioner — the Australia and New Zealand Infertility Counselors Association — whose reports will be accepted by any clinic. Find Narelle at: Website - lotushp.com.au. Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/lotushealthandpsychology/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/LotusHealthPsychology/
The Plan Always Had a Next Step Claire always knew she'd be a mum. She told her mum at 18 that if she didn't find someone, she'd do it on her own. Her mum said she wouldn't need to. Claire filed that away and thought: well, if I do, I'm fine with it. At 30 she decided she was financially ready, had ticked off enough of her travel list, and started. She didn't make a big announcement. When she eventually told people, nobody was surprised. What followed was not the quick journey she'd hoped for. A pre-existing endometriosis diagnosis from 19 sent her straight to IVF with her doctor at Monash IVF Bondi Junction — no IUI, no mucking around. But what nobody had picked up was that Claire had a thin endometrial lining — a four or five, when the transfer window needs a seven to ten. Medicated cycles were cancelled last minute. PRP (platelet-rich plasma) treatment was tried repeatedly. There was no clear reason why. The Mirena she'd had in was the best guess. The first IVF cycle itself went beautifully — 12 eggs, 12 fertilised, five AA-grade embryos. And then none of them worked. She went through all five. Two of the transfers resulted in early losses at five weeks. She didn't know yet that she'd got COVID during her injections cycle. She still wonders. Second cycle. New protocol. PGTA testing this time. Four embryos. And then — right as she was preparing for her next transfer — she was caught in the NSW donor audit. Her overseas donor had been over-allocated to NSW beyond the state's family limit. The clinic emailed: we don't know if you'll be able to use this donor anymore. Possibly ever. She had just had a miscarriage. She had no next step for the first time in the entire journey. It was, she says, almost as hard as the losses. A solo mum she'd never met found everyone affected, organised them, told them who to email and what to say, and kept going until the clinic made an exemption. Claire had two vials of sperm left and was permitted to continue. On the 22nd of October, she transferred. Augie arrived nine months later. He is nine weeks old, already looks entirely like his donor, and has Claire's blood type — and that, apparently, is it. At 36 weeks Claire moved from Sydney to Orange to live with her parents for the year — her mum is a midwife, lactation consultant, and child and family health nurse, which turned out to matter enormously in the first weeks of breastfeeding. She'll move into her own place in January, set up a home daycare, and take Augie to Bali in between. She's the first to say she's more capable than she thought she'd be. In this episode: