I’m so excited that season 4 of Period Story podcast is here! For the first episode of the season, I’m so excited to have Alice Rose on the show, just in time for Fertility Awareness Week here in the UK. Alice is a fertility advocate, speaker and consultant and shared her own experience of fertility treatment. We had a wonderful, open discussion about her fertility journey, including a PCOS and fibroid diagnosis, the support she needed during this time, having a baby during lockdown and of course, the story of her first period.
Alice says she was really excited to get her first period and when it arrived, she was confused and a bit embarrassed but her mum was very supportive. She says that the embarrassment around her period continued because her menstrual cycles were very erratic and she felt different to her friends.
Her fertility journey started when she came off the pill and her irregular cycles returned. This made Alice take a really proactive approach to try figure out what was happening to her. Listen to hear what Alice did next, including how she managed her PCOS and fibroid diagnosis.
We had a really frank conversation about the physical and emotional toll fertility assistance can take on both women and men. Alice shares the different tools she used to support herself, as well as advice for anyone going through something similar.
Alice says that it’s so important to find the support you need and take things day by day, so that you move away from living in the future. Thank you so much, Alice!
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ALICE’S BIO
Alice is a fertility advocate, speaker and consultant.
After her own experience of 11 rounds of fertility treatment to conceive a daughter and one round of treatment for a baby boy, born in February this year, Alice supports and empowers others through her Instagram community; the Fertility Life Raft podcast and live events with business partner Cat (catandalice.com).
Alice has consulted for several brands and companies including the BBC and was behind BBC Radio 2’s Fertility Week 2019. She also runs a campaign called ‘Think! what not to say’ to try and encourage better fertility conversations in the wider society. She is a big fan of coffee, music and cinnamon buns!
Get in touch with Alice:
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Le’Nise: Welcome to the show, Alice. I’m so excited to have you here.
Alice: Thank you so much. I am so thrilled to be here. I’m really excited to have this chat.
Le’Nise: So let’s just get in to the first question that I always ask, which is tell me the story of your very first period. Can you remember it?
Alice: I can remember it. So I was 13 and I had wanted to have my period for a while because my friends had started getting their periods. And I was like, oh, I really want it. I want to be a woman, you know? And then finally, one day it happened. But I mean, the the actual memory is quite hazy, but the things that are really clear to me is how I felt about it. And I remember feeling quite excited, but also quite embarrassed, like I was quite, and it’s funny, isn’t it? Because actually, I’m one of four girls, so I’ve got two older sisters and a younger one, and I’ve got a good relationship with my mum. And, you know, she’s the kind of mum who’s really open and she’ll be very, you know, she’s quite, a little bit eccentric, maybe even. And yet when it came to things like periods, we still didn’t really have open conversations about it. So I felt quite like I didn’t know how to bring up with my mum, but I felt like I needed to tell her because I needed some period products.
So I just remember writing this really awkward little note and leaving it on her bed. Oh, I think I’ve got my period, Mummy, something like that. And then she wrote me one back and left on my bed with some pads that she dug out from somewhere. I really remember her saying, “Oh, I know it is bit difficult”, because because I was brought up in the country, it wasn’t that we could pop down to the corner shop like, you know, I would do. Now I live in a city.
So she was I like finally. I know. I don’t know why she didn’t just ask my sisters. And in fact, she must have had loads of stuff lying around at that point because this was a long time ago now.
So it just baffles me when I think what were we doing even sending each of these notes? Like, why didn’t she just come and knock on my door and have a conversation? It’s really funny.
And it just makes you think, gosh, maybe, you know, we weren’t as as kind of open as I thought we were. Maybe maybe we actually weren’t, because I do think there was this kind of, bit of shame around it. And I did. I felt embarrassed and I felt, you know, and and the actual period that I got was a little bit like it wasn’t, it didn’t feel like a proper one. So I almost was like, oh, is this it or is it not it? I wasn’t really quite sure. So I didn’t, it was all very, it was a little bit confusing and a bit embarrassing. That was that was my memory of my first period.
Le’Nise: It’s quite sweet that that you you passed notes to each other. I know that you say what what we were doing, but it’s kind of a sweet memory that your mum, she kind of met your energy with the same energy. And that’s kind of a sweet thing to do.
Alice: Very sweet. Looking back, you know, and that kind of sums her up a lot, actually. And she is she she does do that. And she obviously realised that that’s how I felt comfortable, you know, talking about it. So. So she was like, okay, we’ll do notes.
Le’Nise: And you said that there was this level of almost, not discomfort, but, you know, it was maybe shame you didn’t really talk about it openly. So how did you, after you got your first period, how did you then learn what was happening to your body?
Alice: So I think I knew, you know, biologically I understood what was going on. I understood why we got periods because close friends of mine had already got theirs. I actually went to them, like that, that’s where I, I don’t know why I didn’t talk to my older sisters. I mean, we’ve got really good relationships, but still within the family. I don’t know why it just wasn’t really done. And, you know, now we have much more open conversations. Now we’re kind of grown up.
But, yeah, at the time, it was my friends and I really remember, really clearly, actually my, one of my best friends talking me through how to use a tampon. And I was sitting in the loo and she was outside and she literally told me, open the thing, do this, do that. And she just kind of talked me through it and again, and that’s a really, again, quite a sweet, intimate little memory that I’ve got that I remember coming up. We like really quite proud of myself. And, you know, it’s a bonding thing, isn’t it, between girls?
I think when you go through this, it it felt it it just so almost feels like an initiation into this new era of our lives, so, yeah, that was that was quite sweet as well.
Le’Nise: And then when you went into school, were there open conversations with your friends and then with the school about periods that you were getting through, maybe lessons and then schoolyard conversations?
Alice: So they were definitely open conversations within my friendship group. But again, what happened with my period is that I never got regular cycles, which led on to my fertility problems later in life, which of course is what I focus on now. But my periods were always completely erratic. They never followed the kind of textbook things. So again, I kind of felt a little bit awkward and embarrassed about that because we weren’t really taught about that in school. You know, what we were taught was that this is what happens every 28 days. This is what happens to a woman’s body. And my body wasn’t doing that. My body was doing something all of its own. And I sort of, again, felt a little bit embarrassed about talking about what was going on for me within my friendship group because no one else seemed to be having these problems. I’m sure they were underneath it all. You know, there must’ve been someone else within my group who was going through it. But I know my close friends, you know, the ones that I did have open conversations with, were just having periods like like, you know, people do. So, yeah, that was that.
Le’Nise: And so when you realise that the periods you were having were irregular, what did you do? What did you try to do about it?
Alice: I don’t remember ever being terribly active in trying to sort out in terms of getting to the bottom of it. What I remember doing is going on the pill because that’s what everyone was doing. So it was more about regulating my period actually, than anything else. And I think I started on it when I was 16. And then because it regulated my periods, I kind of forgot about the fact that my I never had regular ones before I went on it, you know, and I just sort of it was like putting a plaster over something, isn’t it? You know, you just go, okay, fine. That’s working now. Lovely. So I don’t need to worry about that. But really, I hadn’t actually got to the bottom of why it was so regular and erratic anyway. So I just, I just carried on and just took the pill for years and years and years, as was kind of all of my friends were doing. And there wasn’t even really a question of, it was just kind of I oh, I just go on the pill, you know? And now there’s so much more information about what people sometimes have reactions to different kinds of pills and all the different kinds of contraceptions available. Actually, a friend of mine has a platform called The Low Down. So Ali is actually a friend of my sister’s and she set that up. And I just think it’s brilliant because there was nothing like that before, was there, to kind of help women choose what contraception was correct or that would work for them? That just wasn’t anything like that when we were growing up. So, yeah, just went on the pill. Periods were, you know, regular because of that. They weren’t real periods though, were they? That’s the thing. Pretend ones that don’t really do anything. So yeah, it was not very sensible really.
Le’Nise: Well you did the best with what you knew at the time and when you then decided that it was time to come off of the pill. Talk us through what provoked that change and then what happened with your periods then.
Alice: So I got married and decided to start trying for a baby. So I have been on the pill all of that time up until I was 30, I think, about 30, 31. Such a long time thinking about it taking those drugs. My goodness. Anyway, I came off the pill because I wanted to try for a baby and went to my GP to say, “I’m going to come off the pill now, I didn’t ever have regular periods before I went on the pill, should we maybe investigate what’s going on, like, straight away?” Because I, I sort of have my organised hat on and I was like, “I think I might have problems conceiving actually”. You know, when I’d grown up and realised that it probably wasn’t great that my periods were so erratic and she sent me straight away to have a scan and have a little bit of an investigation, which was really good. And then when I came off the pill, my periods were totally erratic. Again, so very irregular. My hormones went crazy, actually, when I first came off the pill. I had a really bad reaction hormonally, so my skin went crazy. And, yeah, I didn’t, it definitely had affected me way more than I had realised. You know, that little pill that I was taking had had a huge impact on my body’s balance and everything. So, yeah, it was, it was, but it felt it kind of felt quite, now, looking back, it felt good to get rid of it. Go back to the basics and try to actually uncover what was happening in my body and and why and how how I could help it.
I mean, I could carry on talking here, Le’Nise, but I’m going to stop because I feel like I should it, because I really could just. Yeah. There’s so much to say about this.
Le’Nise: When you say that you when you wanted to go back to the basics, talk about what those basics were.
Alice: I suppose what I mean by that, what what I meant by that was that I wanted to work out what was really going on. I wanted to work out why was my body not doing what I was taught in the textbooks at school that it should do. And when I say erratic, I really do mean, you know, they they were wild. They were like up to one hundred days. I wouldn’t have anything or you know, even when I started on fertility treatment, I started taking the ovulation drug Clomid. And the first time I took it, I did have a textbook 28 day cycle. And I thought. Amazing. You know, this has fixed me. I’ll be pregnant in no time. Brilliant. But then I didn’t get pregnant that month. I had ovulated, but I didn’t get pregnant. And then the next time I took it. Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing happened. I didn’t ovulate. I didn’t get a period. And I was so confused. And I went back to the gynae[cologist] who had put me on it in the first place. I was like, “I haven’t I haven’t had a period. You know, it’s been days and days now. What’s going on?” So she scanned me and had a look at what was going on internally in my follicles and everything. And she was like, “yeah, it doesn’t look like you’ve responded at all to to the treatment. You haven’t ovulated. I think you’re going to need IVF.”
And that was like a bombshell, you know, because I was like, huh, what? I thought I just needed to take this little drug here and then my periods would regulate and then I would get pregnant. That was what I thought was going to happen and it just didn’t. So I seem to have a very. Yeah. And again, it was it was that feeling of like, my body isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do, even when I’m taking these drugs. It still wasn’t doing it. And that continued all the way through my fertility treatment. I was really, sometimes I would respond, sometimes I wouldn’t respond. And it was just the most frustrating thing in the world and so difficult, you know, especially when you’re trying to, you know, move on, move on, move on. And you constantly feel so stuck because your body is just not doing what it’s supposed to do. And you do, you feel a bit broken. You feel like a failure because you’re just thinking, what? Why is this, you know, so easy for everyone else? They just buy this little ovulation kit thing, you get the smiley face, you’ve ovulated. Great. Now go and have sex. But I couldn’t even get to that point. You know, it just wasn’t, it just wasn’t happening. So the periods were. Yeah. Just just very confusing to me.
Le’Nise: Did they ever try to get to the root cause of the irregular cycles might be?
Alice: So that’s what happened after I’d been told by that gynae that I should have IVF. I felt like that was a really big leap from what I was doing. And exactly as you said, I was like, yeah, but what’s going on? Like, I, I need more information. I don’t feel like jumping straight to that, that is the correct thing to do. So I went and had a second opinion and that was brilliant because she sat me down. She said, “I think you might have that you got polycystic ovary syndrome. You aren’t a typical, you don’t present in a typical PCOS manner, but I think you’ve got enough of the symptoms to suggest that that’s what’s going on.” So then she talked me through lifestyle factors and changes that I could make. She explained to me about insulin resistance that can happen with PCOS and talked me through diet and nutrition and all of these different things. So I left that appointment feeling really kind of excited that I was going to be able to impact what was happening to my body and understanding so much more. And it felt really, really empowering and quite yeah, I was quite motivated after that, so I and I had quite a quite good girl. Like, I like to stick to the rules. If someone told me something that’s going to work, I go, right, okay, here’s my template, my little recipe.
I’m going to just do exactly as they tell me and then that will work. So I followed it to the letter and she was like, right, no sugar, this, that and the other. You know, she gave me this kind of plan at first. I just like, cried my eyes out. I thought, well, I can’t get pregnant and now I can’t have a piece of cake like, that sucks. What the hell? And I felt really I felt really angry about it and I felt really frustrated. And it was just felt really rubbish. And I just felt quite hungry, actually. I just, I didn’t understand, I didn’t understand how to eat in the way that she was telling me might have an impact on my cycles. So I actually had a nutritionist consultation because I thought, I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, I need somebody to help me. And that was brilliant. Like, I, I thought that was really, if I may say so, quite a smart move because it helped me to, you know, reaching out and getting that support and going to somebody who did really understand who’d made their livelihood understanding was actually really helpful. And she sort of gave me these recipes. And then I started to get, again, quite excited about it. I was like, okay, there’s like all these different ways I can embrace what’s happening to me instead of fighting it. So that’s what I started to do. And it did have an impact. It had an impact on me as a whole person. The periods, again, I mean, it’s hard to say what was going on, because once I started to make all these diet and lifestyle changes, I was also doing a lot of mental health wellbeing, kind of self coaching stuff. I was also having fertility treatments as well. So it was a kind of like, you know, I was coming at it from all angles and to try and holistically get my body to do what I needed it to do. And while it started to respond in terms of, you know, I was having then began to have periods. I still wasn’t getting pregnant. So I did end up having IVF even after 10 rounds of of treatment. And then I did. And then I had success with IVF. But yeah, with, with periods after I had my first baby. And I’m going to make a leap here, if that’s okay with you.
Le’Nise: Yeah. Yeah.
Alice: So I had Matilda and then I breastfed her for 10 months. And when I stopped, my periods arrived and just started happening like they’re supposed to. And I was like, oh, is this this is this what people were just experiencing all of those years when I was trying everything under the sun to get my body to do this and then it just started doing it and I was amazed that I didn’t have to, you know, eat a special diet and take pills and do supplements and have acupuncture and everything under the sun. I was trying to just get my body to have a period. It just was doing it by itself. It was amazing.
Le’Nise: So just go back a little bit to the eleven rounds, sorry, 10 rounds. Is it 10 or 11?
Alice: Ten unsuccessful, one, one successful round of IVF.
Le’Nise: So that that will take quite a physical and emotional toll on your body. So for listeners who might be going through the same thing right now, who are going through IVF or thinking about it, can you talk a little bit about the support that you were able to put together to get you through this process and also talk about how long this process was for you?
Alice: Sure. So in terms of the actual time period, because I was really proactive and impatient, it it sort of started straightaway and I went into fertility treatment itself, really about, you know, just literally the month that I wanted to start trying because I went to the GP straightaway. I then had oh, there it was, they also found a fibroid. So anyone listening, that’s a growth in the uterus. So they found that and they said to me that might get in the way when you were trying to conceive, do you want to get rid of it? And I was like, “well, yeah, if it’s going to get in the way, let’s get rid of it.” So we had had an operation to remove that first. So it really was kind of straight in. Most people will be trying for quite a while before they get to that point. But because I was presenting with symptoms immediately, I just I just went straight there. So all in all, that whole experience was 11 rounds was two years and two months, which actually is not that long when it comes to infertility journey, most most people will have a longer experience. But the intensity of what was happening was really a lot to do.
And emotionally, you know, it took its toll. And I really I really believe that the way I got through that was to reframe what was happening to me. And I did that through, I like to say self coaching because I feel like that’s what happened in the end. And the route into that, the gateway into being able to self coach myself was by doing something called The Artist’s Way, which was then it’s a course, but it’s just in a book. So I had somebody who had given me this book and it sat on my shelf this whole time. And while I was going through all of these failed rounds of treatment and feeling so frustrated and upset and alone and left behind and stuck and I mean, it’s horrendous. I felt like I needed to do something. It’s taken me out of that experience. I started to do this this course. And it’s, it’s a course in rediscovering your creative self or something like that. And I was, I was at the time, I was an actor. And so it was all, it really appealed to me, this ability to reconnect to who I was. So I started doing that. And it had a huge, huge impact on my mental health, my wellbeing, my motivation. Everything changed. My outlook changed. And at the same time as that, as I said, I was kind of coming at this from all angles.
So I was seeing an acupuncturist and originally that was to help with my fertility. But what I now see in hindsight was that it was just this huge support. It was like going to therapy and it was, you know, blissful going to see her because it took me out of my body for a moment and someone else was holding me and taking care of me. And that was so important as well. I was also referred to a fertility counsellor through my NHS clinic, which was absolutely amazing. So I really advocate seeking support for anybody going through this as well.
If you can just, you know, find find that support and find specialist support because it was really helpful to sit there. And she knew exactly what I was talking about when I was talking about Clomid or these feelings that I was going through. You know, she really did understand. And I later found out she understood on a personal level as well, because she was actually going through it herself, you know, while I was seeing her, she was also experiencing it. So those are, those are the things that it’s the self coaching. It was the support that I had, but it was also the lifestyle changes that I made because, you know, the nutritional stuff and the and the the healthy lifestyle that I was leading to try to get my body to help me, ended up having a really positive effect on my mental wellbeing as well, because my moods were a bit more balanced.
You know, I had more energy. I just felt really good. And that’s not something you hear very much when you when you hear people talking about going through infertility. And I really want to caveat that by saying it was still really, really hard. You know, I still felt the pain and the grief every time my cycle didn’t work. I still wanted to be a mum more than anything else. But in between those those periods of of mourning, really, and grief, every time something didn’t work, I felt good. I felt good about myself. I felt good about my life. And I’m talking you know, I’m talking really passionately about this because this really is it’s my raison d’être, really, Le’Nise, like I really want to try and help others find that. I want to help others find that sort of reframe. And the idea that you can actually experience joy and and some success and peace in your life, even while you also go through that pain.
So, yeah, in a nutshell, but that’s what happened to me.
Le’Nise: Listening to your story and I’ve heard and stories that I’ve heard from other women, either clients or women that I’ve spoken to, what always strikes me is how much they go through, how much you, you’ve gone through to have a baby, and it’s just this journey. And so this something that you want so badly that you always get the sense that the other woman I’ve spoken to that you would do anything to make that happen.
And I often think about what happens after the baby. You get the baby and then you have the whole everything physically and emotionally that you’re dealing with postpartum, plus caring for a brand new tiny little baby, but then also dealing with some of the trauma of having all, had all of this done to your body.
Can you just talk a little bit about that?
Alice: Yes, such a good point. And so, so important. And I feel that it is absolutely imperative that emotional well-being and mindset work is actually up, that as the highest priority when you’re going through fertility stuff.
And the thing is that, yes, you all are so desperate and you just want to do anything. And that was absolutely me. You know, I was I just wanted to get to the end result. I just wanted to have a baby. And I didn’t really I didn’t want to slow down and work on my mindset. I didn’t want to slow down and do gratitude practice.
I just wanted to have a blimmin baby like everyone else was doing.
But what I learnt through this whole process was that actually, you know, once once you do get to that stage and you do get pregnant and you do have the baby, your emotional and mental health is just so, so important.
And the more in touch with who you are and what you need on any given day, the better able you’re going to be to be able to manage that period and to be able to manage that trauma that is with you. You know, and lots of people who are in my community have also been through loss. They’ve been through incredibly traumatic experiences or they might have had a traumatic birth, which really does stay with you as well. My first birth was quite traumatic and I recently had some birth trauma counselling before I had my second baby this year in February. So trauma is a really important part of all of this to process and to recognise, as you rightly say. And I think that validation is just so huge for anyone experiencing a difficult road to parenthood, you know, to validate how incredibly hard it is and that you do you try everything. I mean, you literally would go out in the garden and do a dance under the full moon holding 10 crystals in your hand, if someone told you that was going to work, you would do it. You don’t even care. You don’t care what you look like, don’t care what people think. You’re like this going to work. I’m going to do it. I need, I’ve got to have my baby. And it’s some it’s all, it’s all consuming and, you know, it’s very and it impacts every area of life. So and the trauma, as you say, on the body, yoru physicality. I think women just kind of go, well, this is what needs to happen. So I’m just gonna put myself through. And me and my body are just going to have to cope. And actually, we really need to take care of ourselves. We need to take care of all of our bodies and our hearts and our souls and our minds holistically to be able to manage the intensity of what you actually go through to have that baby.
Le’Nise: So having gone through all of that and then having a positive outcome in the form of your daughter, you then went on to have a second baby earlier on this year. Can you talk about what you did differently that time around then, when you think about what you did the first time?
Alice: So when I, when we decided to try for another baby, I really, truly, genuinely was in the mindset of thinking, if I never have another baby, I am actually absolutely okay with that. I felt very at peace and accepting of our position. I felt incredibly grateful that we had Matilda. And I just thought, you know, if this happens again, what a huge bonus. How lucky would we be? So I didn’t feel that sense of of desperation that I had with my first child. I felt that I went I went into trying with a very open mindset. So we tried naturally for about 10 months because my periods had regulated and we never discovered another reason why we weren’t conceiving. So we thought, well, it’s always possible. And everyone tells you, oh, once you’ve had one, you’ll probably get pregnant easily the next time. So we were like, well, look, it didn’t happen for us. So we decided to rather than just keep trying. After about 10 months, we were like, well, we’ve got some frozen embryos. Again, very fortunately, we had some frozen embryos. So I just called up my doctor. We had gone privately in the end because with the NHS clinic here in the UK, after I’ve been through all of those failed rounds of treatment, and then I told them I wanted to move to IVF. They then said, well, that’s a different waiting list. We’ll need to wait probably for about a year. And at that point, having already gone through 10 failed rounds, I thought, I can’t wait a year to start IVF. So I basically remortgaged my house. I just did whatever I could to go privately and have that round of IVF. So anyway, to come back to where we were, with the second baby, I just I just called up my doctor. I said, “I think I’m gonna have a frozen embryo transfer. What’s the protocol? And and then and then we went through it and it was really straightforward. And I want to say that with a very you know, again, we were so very lucky with that that it didn’t need a lot of medication because my body had started to do what it was supposed to do anyway. So all I needed to do at that point was to track my ovulation, which worked because I was having periods, tell him when I’d ovulated and we scheduled in the transfer. And unbelievably, it worked again.
So it almost was like having a baby naturally for me. So compared to the first time, which was just so, so hard. The second time was was very different, even though it was an IVF transfer, an IVF baby. It was a completely different experience, mindset as well as everything else.
Le’Nise: You had your baby in February this year, and then we went in the UK, we went into lockdown in March. Can you talk a little bit about the experience of having a newborn in lockdown while also caring for yourselves and healing from birth?
Alice: You know, I’m almost welling up, Le’Nise, because this is the first time someone’s actually asked me about how how that was. And I have to say, it was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever been through. Gosh. It was just so challenging because, you know, it was so, so unexpected. It was so unknown. It was so scary. And, you know, after I’d had Matilda, which, as I said, it was a little bit of a traumatic birth. You know, it didn’t really go to plan. And I lost a lot of blood. And, you know, I physically I needed to go to the surgery after I had her, you know, an hour after I’d had her, I had to go to surgery for two hours without her and be repaired because I’d had such a damaging birth experience. So when I was pregnant with Reggie, I was really I was I really didn’t know what to do about the birth. And in the end, after a lot of conversations with my midwife team and everything, we decided on a planned C-section. And I, as I said, had birth trauma counselling to help me to sort of come to terms with all of that. So I had the C-section. And so when I’d had Reggie, I was recovering from major surgery. But, you know, I was postpartum anyway, which was is very, very overwhelming time. And but what I had put in place because of my experience with Matilda, which I had found really overwhelming. Becoming a mum after all of that, you know, I said to everyone around me, I said to my family, I said to my friends. I am not leaving my bed for three weeks. You guys can come and help me. I’m going to lie here. I’m going to really try to just, you know, take this as easy. I’m gonna get all of the help I need and I want and all of that. I kind of had a real, I felt really, really lucky that was gonna get another go at kind of that newborn era and that I was just gonna try and be really accepting of the broken sleep and I was gonna just sink into it.
So it was kind of, you know, I was ready.
And that first five weeks after he was born, as challenging as they were, because having a baby is hard, I was also in quite a good headspace. And I was, I had lots of help and my sisters were coming round. My mum was there and my mother in law came and I felt quite held. And then all of a sudden, lockdown happened. And I actually remember being over at my neighbour’s house because our kids went to nursery, Matilda and her little boy went to nursery together and they were playing after nursery. And we were watching the news and they said they were going to close the nursery and that, you know, there was no mixing with other households. And I I just thought, how am I going to manage this? You know, Reggie was not sleeping.
He was a very refluxy newborn. He was being sick all the time. He had the loudest cry you’ve ever heard in your life. I mean, people literally commented on it in the hospital. The second he came out, he screamed the place down. Everyone in the theatre said, wow. Good luck with that. Literally, that’s what they said to us. And we were like, oh, thanks. And so he was he was not he was not a relaxed little thing.
He was he was a challenging, challenging newborn. And we were not sleeping. You know, we really were not sleeping. We were getting a few hours sleep every night. And then and then all of a sudden, Matilda was there all day, every day. Simon was still supposed to be working at that point for the first six weeks. He was still working, trying to. And I had to look after Reggie and Matilda, 24/7 with no help. And it was, yeah, one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to get through. So when he was far, when Simon was furloughed, that was just the biggest relief ever because I had some help, you know, and I could at least take a little bit of a rest here and there. But still, you know, as everyone had, it was it’s been one of the most difficult years in living memory. We’ve all had our own, you know, mountains to climb and battles to fight. So that was mine.
Le’Nise: What I find so interesting about you is you have this incredibly heart, heartrending story and you’ve been through so much.
But then when you, when you look at your Instagram, which is how we connected, you never get the sense of everything that you’re going through or you’ve gone through, because the work that you do is about supporting other woman and being there and offering them guidance through their fertility journey.
Talk about how you are able to separate but and why you decided to make that separation.
Alice: That’s such a good question. So I made that decision, I started my Instagram knowing exactly what I wanted to share and being very, very clear about what I would, what my mission was on that account. So it was never a kind of personal account that kind of documented my journey and then changed into something else. It began as a support account and it always was going to be. So I always knew that I would never really be sharing, like, you know, the intimate detail of what was happening personally for me on a day-to-day level. But, you know, I, I, I do try and share my life because I believe that that’s is how we connect, isn’t it?
That’s how we get to know people. And I want people to know me as a person to understand that, you know, I’m offering the support through my lived experience. And, you know, they’re going to they’re going to respond to me or not respond to me, judging on, you know, how we can love us as people. But when I really started to go, okay, I’m going to start not really talking about my life as a mum here, because I just don’t think it’s serving the people that I want to help. And my mission really is to is to find the people who are really, really struggling and to bring them in and to really guide them into a place of peace and acceptance and joy and positivity, as well as acceptance of the difficult feelings that they’re also going to be having. So that actually, by the time they finished working with me and I actually just launched my new six week course, that’s really what that does, is to try to get people into a place where seeing, you know, people living in life as parents isn’t going to be as damaging and triggering for them because they’ve come into a much better, more healthy headspace. But I just felt that, you know, sharing the ins and outs of how hard my life was on that page just just wasn’t really appropriate. And I didn’t feel comfortable doing it, which is why I then set up my other page, which is my mum account. So I’ve got my Alice Rose, the mama, where I’m very real and I’m very open. And actually I got so much support myself through sharing that side during lockdown. And that was, that was an amazing thing for me to have, you know, while I was going through that sleepless, difficult time, just sharing on my other page and going. I’m really struggling today and just having messages from other, other women and other moms saying, we’re here with you. You know, solidarity, we can do this was just amazing. So it’s kind of nice because I’ve got my one where I support people. But then I also I’m also filling my own cup up, you know, with the other one. And that is so important.
Le’Nise: So talk a little bit more about the work you do. So if listeners are if a listener sharing this, and thinking, I need that support. I’m going through a lot right now. I need, I need that support. How how can I get in touch with you? What support have you been able to access that you think would be worth the listeners who are going through the same journey accessing?
Alice: So I am a huge advocate of finding the support that you need. And I think that, you know, there’s loads of different options in terms of support. If you’re looking for a counsellor or a coach, the counsellor specifically, you would go to BICA, the British International Counselling Association, or you would go to Fertility Network UK or you would go to Instagram and you would, you would you type in the hashtags #fertilitycoach, #fertilitycounsellor. And people will will come up. They will. You’ll be able to find if that’s what you want, if you want one-to-one support, then that’s where I would recommend that you go. If you’re looking for immediate kind of online support, that’s where I can help, because what I wanted myself when I was going through this kind of stuff was just kind of things that I could action personally, you know, without having to wait for an appointment or pay a lot of money for an appointment or make time in my in my day, you know, for that. What I wanted was just to be able to take ownership of what was happening.
So that’s what I’ve created for people that I’ve got my, you know, online mini mindset course, which is just a 10 day £20 option. I’ve got a five day course for £10. I got my little mini meditations, so for £5 again. I’ve got my end self compassion for pregnancy announcement meditation, for example. So I’ve tried to make them really specific because it’s those moments of just being knocked sideways when, you know, a friend of yours announces a pregnancy or a family member or, you know, someone in your life announces something and you feel absolutely on the floor, you feel devastated you feel. I actually put the post together with the words that people sent in to me about how it made me feel. And someone was saying it’s like being punched in the throat. It’s, you know, and it’s the physical, visceral and incredibly dark feeling. And then you layer on top the guilt because you’re supposed to be happy.
And not only are you supposed to be happy, you’re supposed to be happy immediately that someone tells you. So it’s a really, really tough one.
So that is a specific little meditation for that. It really helps to just take people out from that place of guilt and darkness and pain and grief and just to validate how they’re feeling and to give them the gentle but powerful refrain to go, you know what? I’m a human being. I’m having a really hard time. And it really soothes and it really takes them out of that. So. So, yeah. So that’s the kind of support that I am working on, I offer, yeah. And the six week course I’ve just launched is a group thing, so we’ll start that soon. As I mentioned, by the time this goes out, that will be deep within it. It will run periodically now throughout the year.
Le’Nise: Anyone who’s interested, all of the links will be in the show notes so you can access the course if you’re interested and go find out more about Alice there.
What about men? Men who are going alongside of this with their partners?
You hear a lot about support for women. What about the men? What, what can men do who maybe they’re suffering in silence or being in the UK, stiff, stiff upper lipping it. Yeah. What can they do?
Alice: So this is such a huge, huge thing and I’m so glad you brought it out because it’s and it’s something that so I work as well with my business partner Cat and we have an events company called Cat and Alice. Well, it’s events and consulting. So we also work with brands and things to try and get patient insights around fertility. We can help people with fertility policies at work and we help them to look at their, you know, how how often that is represented in the media. I’ve worked with the BBC in terms of just sharing different stories and things. And the events that we run, we did run before 2020. And, you know, we we were really mindful of this. And it’s really difficult because the first ever event that we ran, which was a full day event, lifestyle event, we kind of call them. And they’re not medical. We don’t really have doctors and people from clinics there. What we do is bring in life coaches and holistic things and share stories and have panel events and that kind of thing and really make people feel relevant and parts of of society because so much you feel sidelined when you haven’t got kids. You know, or when you’re trying to have a second baby, and that’s not working very easily. So we, our first event, we said it was open to everyone and one man came. So we realised we had a little bit of a problem because we were speaking to a really, you know, a female sort of skewed audience, and that was what was happening with our events. So the second one, we just said it right. This one’s for women. We’re going to do something else for men coming up.
And we just had about 80 women all came to our next one. And then what we then did for our Christmas party last year, we just said this is for everybody. And we had loads of men come to that. And it felt amazing to just see everyone coming together in couples or, you know, it just felt like a really welcoming normal and I’m doing quotation marks, it wasn’t really a fertility event. It was just a you know, it was it was it was a party in a really nice venue in London.
And it was an opportunity for people to come together as people just going through a similar experience. And that was that was really important to us that we recognised that, you know, men are so very much a part of this, too, and they’re just not noticed a lot of the time that they don’t they didn’t even get spoken to directly in appointments sometimes. And, you know, even recently I’ve done [IG] lives with with with clinics and constantly throughout the conversation, I you know, they sing and women there and women that we’ve gone. Yes. And the men, you know. And the men. And the men and the men, because it just is seen as a female issue. And it’s absolutely not. So what can men do? I think it’s this is really hard because they they sort of need to take a little bit of action themselves in order to engage with the support that’s out there. But people all starting to offer more. And there’s there’s James Kemsley. I think his name is, is a is a coach who is really active in trying to promote the support for men. There’s also been quite a lot of new Instagram accounts when it comes to male infertility support. So go and have a look on Instagram, type in, you know, male male support, infertility, whatever it is that you can find with the hashtag. You know, there is a growing Instagram community around that as well. So it’s that it needs a little bit more digging out and more spotlight shone on it. But it is that.
Le’Nise: So everything you said, your story. I, I know that listeners, there is there will be listeners who will really connect with what you’re saying.
If you want to leave them with one thing, one little pearl of wisdom to take away, what would you want that to be?
Alice: I think my go to is to remember to take things day by day, because a lot of the time what we do is live in the future. And we we get so wrapped up in the anxiety and fear and panic that, you know, what, if this never happens or what would I do if that happens? And it’s incredibly stressful. So the more that we can work on being present, the more that we can work on taking things, if it’s hour by hour, even, especially when you’re in a two week wait, which is when you do the time in between ovulation or fertility treatment and finding out whether it’s worked. You know, that’s such a difficult, difficult time for so many people so the more that we can work on prisons, the better. So day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, this is what I would leave you with.
Le’Nise: That’s taking a very yogic approach, being present, being present in what’s happening to you.
Take it minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. I absolutely love that.
Thank you so much, Alice, for sharing your story. Share your openness and honesty. And for listeners who want to connect with you on Instagram, can you just say your handle?
Alice: This is Alice Rose is my Instagram handle, which sounds a bit dramatic, but Alice Rose was taken. This is Alice Rose on my website.
Le’Nise: Thank you so much.
Alice: Thank you so much for having me.
