Amy Klein, THE TRYING GAME
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[1:55]Amy Klein is the author of the trying game, get through fertility treatment and get pregnant
[1:59]without losing your mind.
[2:01]Amy wrote the fertility diary column for the New York Times motherload blog for three years.
[2:05]She writes frequently about health and fertility for publications such as Newsweek,
[2:09]Slate, The Washington Post, and others. She currently lives in New York.
[2:13]Hi, how are you?
[2:14]All right, good. I love your background.
[2:16]But look, they're warm and homey.
[2:18]Oh, thank you.
[2:19]You know, we actually bought this house furnished, so I didn't really do much, but yeah,
[2:23]they even had eyes like when we came inside, they had like all these like trinkets out and
[2:27]places. I'm like, leave the trinkets like don't move anything because I wouldn't know how to do
[2:32]it that way.
[2:34]That they like my white background over here. It's good for zoom background.
[2:38]I like it. I like it.
[2:41]Well, thanks for coming on. The name of your I have it right here.
[2:45]Oh, fertility diary column you had in the New York Times where you shared all of your
[2:49]experiences, which culminated in your daughter, Lily, I guess, who's probably five-ish?
[2:54]Four and a half.
[2:55]One half.
[2:55]Okay, I have a five-year-old too.
[2:58]So I know you started writing your book as like a memoir that was your first go at it.
[3:02]And it became more of a prescriptive book. But I want to hear your thoughts,
[3:06]particularly now what's going on with everybody who might be going through this now.
[3:10]I mean, my heart is like going out for everybody. And I don't know.
[3:13]Tell me, just talk about everything.
[3:15]It's such a hard time right now. I mean, I didn't think my fertility journey could get any
[3:21]harder, but this is a hundred times harder because basically, most clinics have closed and
[3:27]they're not letting people get pregnant. You know, and I know everybody's talking about,
[3:31]oh, a baby boom, oh, a baby boom. But if you're going through fertility treatment,
[3:34]even if you can do, you know, an egg freezing or an embryo freezing,
[3:39]they don't want to transfer. They don't want you to get pregnant because if you're going to have
[3:42]complications or if you're going to just have, you know, all the things that you know,
[3:46]infertility treatment, pregnancy is only the first step. You still have to go through a lot
[3:49]of testing. You still have to go through a lot of doctors appointments and they don't want that.
[3:54]I have a very good friend right now who just had an eye-y before quarantine and she can't get
[3:59]her blood test. She's just going to have to wing it and hope it works.
[4:04]So my heart really goes out for anyone who's trying right now because you can't only get
[4:10]pregnant and then you have to be online watching everybody either talk about this baby boom
[4:14]that's not going to be for them or just people complaining about being home with their kids.
[4:20]And you know, like one person said to me, I was doing a story on it and she said,
[4:24]you know, I just had a miscarriage. I would do anything to be stuck at home with my baby right now.
[4:28]So that's really sad. And I complain, even though I used to say I would never complain,
[4:34]obviously I complain about being stuck at home with a four-year-old and trying to homeschool.
[4:38]So I have to, you know, keep that in mind that I'm lucky to be home with a four-year-old
[4:43]right now and we're all lucky. And obviously, you know, just complaining about, you know,
[4:47]old children in China were starving. That's what these to tell us when we didn't want to eat
[4:51]our food when we were little. So that doesn't help. It's just nice, you know, it's just to keep
[4:56]in mind that there are women on the fertility boards who are saying that they, you know, are just
[5:01]not happy right now and they would give anything to be stuck at home with their kids.
[5:06]So obviously we're going to complain about our kids. Just keep in mind that, you know,
[5:10]not everybody has the family situation that they want. And if you're 39 or 41 and you have a
[5:16]six-month hiatus, I mean, that's freaking out time. You know, I have another friend who was freezing
[5:22]her eggs and she was planning to, she's 41 and she was planning to do, you know, three and she's
[5:28]stopped and she's like, this might be the end of my journey. So no matter what I, you know,
[5:34]what I thought I went through, you know, I went through four years and four miscarriages with 10
[5:40]doctors and three countries. That was really hard. But I can't imagine having to stop right now
[5:46]the middle of everything. I think that's a good reminder too. I mean, I remember before I had kids,
[5:51]I, you know, I would look at people. I could barely like walk down the street after a while. It's
[5:55]like all these people pushing strollers and all of this. And now it's been, you know, my oldest kids
[6:00]are almost 13. So I've been in it for so long that I forget. And I don't forget because I
[6:06]remember it very clearly. But, you know, in my current like, oh, what was me? I'm trying to homeschool
[6:11]four kids like blah, blah, you know, that's hard too though. You can have that, they can have an
[6:15]aunt and not a but, you know, that's hard too. And that's also hard. I know, but it's true. I mean,
[6:23]before I had kids that, that feeling of uncertainty was so much worse because you just didn't know,
[6:29]if I had just been able, everybody keeps saying like, if I had just been able to go back and
[6:32]know, right? I had known that like life would take this crazy path and I would end up somehow
[6:37]with four kids when I wasn't sure I ended up with any kids like, right. But you can't know that.
[6:43]And especially now, it's like, I don't know. I feel like, and I don't know about you, but
[6:47]to the women out there, if there are any who are listening to this, who are feeling like,
[6:51]oh, I'm at the age and this is going to be tough and this is going to ruin my whole chances.
[6:55]I don't know. I feel like there's always things happen and there's still hope and not to freak,
[7:00]I feel like the freaking out about it is just going to make it harder. Like, you just don't know,
[7:04]you don't know life is crazy, right? There are some clinics that are still doing treatment,
[7:09]like they're just doing the egg freezing and the embryo freezing. If you're in a place where you
[7:14]could go outside, there are some clinics that are still operating because they're
[7:18]mindful of the time. And you know, I have a whole chapter in my book before we start
[7:23]treatment. I have a whole chapter on the emotional journey. And, you know, I have to address
[7:29]the oops, miracle pregnancies. They're so annoying when you're going through it. Like, oh, my God,
[7:33]that person, oops, accidentally got pregnant. But, you know, there's so many stories like that
[7:38]you never know. You know, you got to be open to just seeing what happens.
[7:43]That's so true. Tell me a little, and can you maybe move back just a smidge, because this
[7:48]is right, writing such a nice long comment, but I can't see your face. So that's better.
[7:52]It says someone's sharing the ridiculous stuff my son is doing, but my sister-in-law is TTC,
[7:56]and I'm trying to be mindful of her and her feelings. So I feel like other people are,
[7:59]you know, going through the same thing. Yes. Hard to read. And yeah, there we go. That's better.
[8:04]Thank you. Yeah, it's hard right now. And it's hard to be mindful because everyone's struggling
[8:08]right now. And whether you're single and you're stuck at home alone or you're living on top,
[8:13]you know, in a tiny New York City apartment like myself, I'm kind of like, go anywhere
[8:17]that's a struggle. Everyone has their own struggles. Yeah. So part of it though, I also feel like
[8:23]once you start saying I shouldn't have the right to feel this, it just feels worse.
[8:27]Yeah, of course. I mean, I said I was never going to complain after I had a kid and that lasted
[8:34]about I said five or six months, because you know, I wasn't sleeping. I was breastfeeding. I was going
[8:39]through all, and I said, well, am I going to let infertility rob me of the one thing that moms
[8:44]everywhere gets to do, which is complaining? I have a way to complain too. Yeah, for sure.
[8:51]Wait, so tell me you tried to write this as a memoir and you said people were not interested
[8:55]and then I said you had this revelation that people didn't care about you. They just wanted to know
[8:59]how what they could do and how it could help them, right? Well, I mean, I was writing, you know,
[9:04]when I first started writing this, I was just dancing in comms in New York Times and she called me
[9:09]our mother load and she said, why don't you make this into a weekly column and then
[9:12]we'll quickly transition in three to six, three to four months, we'll transition into a pregnancy
[9:17]column because we were both super naive and then, you know, I had more than 30 columns spanning
[9:22]30 years because at a certain point we moved it to monthly and then I just went too depressed to
[9:27]even like write anymore until I got pregnant with my daughter. And then I always thought if I did
[9:33]have a baby because I didn't know that I would turn it into a memoir. And interestingly, I know
[9:38]you were talking about on your last session, how you're old, which you're not, but just when I started
[9:43]there was not a lot of information out there on everything and I was, you know, one of the first
[9:48]people to write about it in a public way in a normal accessible way, but in between the time I started
[9:54]doing three minutes, 2012 and writing about it for the times and then
[10:00]After I decided to stop back, I looked and had a baby,
[10:02]like 2016, 2017, the information had exploded.
[10:06]And it went from not enough information out there
[10:09]to, oh my God, there's so much information,
[10:12]I don't know where to begin.
[10:14]And I did write a memoir and I shopped it around
[10:16]and one agent said to me,
[10:19]oh, I'm not so interested in your fertility journey.
[10:21]I'm interested in your bigger story,
[10:23]your longer memoir story, you know,
[10:25]about leaving religion and what it meant.
[10:28]You know, because I grew up religious,
[10:29]modern Orthodox Jewish, and now I'm secular,
[10:32]she was interested in the larger picture with fertility
[10:34]as a point in the book.
[10:36]And then another agent said to me,
[10:38]I need more prescriptive, I need more help.
[10:40]It was interesting,
[10:41]because the agent who needed more help
[10:43]was going through fertility stuff
[10:45]and the agent who wanted a bigger memoir,
[10:48]had three kids and no fertility issues.
[10:49]So that was interesting.
[10:51]But then I just realized, like every week,
[10:53]I was answering either from my Tom's column
[10:56]or my other writing,
[10:57]I was just answering the same questions.
[10:59]And you know, all these Facebook groups started popping up,
[11:03]which I didn't have when I was doing fertility
[11:06]and all these Facebook groups, you know,
[11:07]the science changed, but the emotional journey doesn't change.
[11:10]It was still the same questions.
[11:13]Oh my God, my best friend's pregnant
[11:14]and she wants me to throw her a baby shower and I can't.
[11:17]My mother-in-law won't get off my case.
[11:19]What do I tell my boss?
[11:21]So I realized it's the same, you know, it's the same thing.
[11:24]And my story was important,
[11:26]but my story is only part of it.
[11:28]And I think I decided I wanted to help, you know,
[11:31]I'm a writer and an essayist,
[11:33]and I see myself as a,
[11:34]I never thought I'd be writing a prescriptive book,
[11:37]but it has a lot of my story when it's relevant in there.
[11:39]And I interview, you know, I am a health journalist.
[11:42]So I've interviewed a lot of doctors and a lot of patients
[11:44]because I wanna help people not make the same mistakes I did.
[11:47]I wanna give them answers to the questions.
[11:49]And I wanna also, you know,
[11:50]because there's so much information out there.
[11:52]I wanna help them get through the journey.
[11:55]And even if it's something that they show their mother,
[11:58]you know, oh, read this book or show their best friend,
[12:00]read this chapter on baby envy.
[12:02]This is why I'm having trouble being happy for you.
[12:05]It's not that I'm not happy for you.
[12:07]It's just that I'm not happy right now
[12:08]and I want what you have.
[12:10]So if that could just make people feel less alone,
[12:13]and, you know, I say, like,
[12:15]if you think going to all these events
[12:17]is gonna make you a better person,
[12:18]like going to a breast, you know,
[12:20]when I had a cry myself in the bathroom stall,
[12:23]or if you think going there
[12:24]is gonna make you a better person than go,
[12:26]but if you can, you know,
[12:28]try to take care of yourself.
[12:29]And, you know, I have an article coming out soon about
[12:31]what I learned about infertility
[12:33]is helping me during quarantine.
[12:35]That's interesting.
[12:36]I like that.
[12:37]Because, you know, keep your eye on the big picture.
[12:40]You know, you can't, you know,
[12:42]like if you just thought this was gonna be over April 15th,
[12:45]and now they're saying it's not gonna be over April 15th,
[12:47]and that sends you into his tailspin.
[12:49]And like, you just, like,
[12:51]during my infertility, I was trying to think, okay,
[12:54]it's just, I'm gonna have a baby one day.
[12:56]This is gonna be over at some point.
[12:57]I will have a family soon.
[13:00]I don't know how, and I don't know which way
[13:02]it's gonna take whether it's gonna be a option
[13:04]or don't read or a surrogate.
[13:06]I don't know, but I have to just see my picture on that baby.
[13:10]And, you know, now, I'm just like, okay,
[13:12]I just have to remember this quarantine
[13:15]is gonna be over.
[13:15]I don't know when, and I can't predict the exact date,
[13:18]but I just have to remember that.
[13:20]It will change us in some way,
[13:22]but just remember, like, the end point, you know?
[13:25]Totally.
[13:26]I love that advice.
[13:27]That's really great.
[13:28]Yeah, there's so much applicable.
[13:29]Where's your essay gonna come at?
[13:30]I shouldn't say, I'm just waving at an answer,
[13:32]but I'll say, I'll say I'll send it to you and I'll tell you.
[13:33]Okay, send me the link when it's at.
[13:35]Yeah, that's awesome.
[13:36]Well, thank you, Amy.
[13:37]Thank you for all this advice,
[13:38]and I love having the perspective of people going through
[13:42]the treatments now, and just being able to be thankful
[13:46]for the things that we have in a new way,
[13:48]and maybe what we can do to reach out to people
[13:51]who we know are going through things like this,
[13:52]and how it's happening.
[13:54]No, give them a call.
[13:55]Even if you're drowning under homeschooling,
[13:57]just send them a text or an Amazon talk letter.
[14:00]I'm thinking of you.
[14:02]It's always nice to be thought of.
[14:03]So, the link, that's a good getting principle
[14:05]for everybody about everything.
[14:06]So, yes.
[14:08]Okay, all right, thank you very much for having me.
[14:10]Okay, bye bye.
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