Adam & Katina Hess-Walker Team Baby Tortoise

Talking about infertility is weird. It basically means opening up about your sex life and all the messy things that happen when making a baby is harder than it sounds.

Please be kind and secular in your comments if you are wanting to share support.


So, I guess I should start by saying there is a BIG, I mean HUGE, part of me that really doesn’t want to talk or share about this. I spend my workday supporting women and couples who are struggling with infertility, I’ve seen both sides of the argument when it comes to “Should we tell people or not?” and the thing is, it can be great and it can be a total soul suck. At the end of it all, I know how helpful it can be to practice transparency and decrease stigma for others going through the journey, so here we are. Letting you all know what’s up in the land of baby making, or lack thereof...

Adam and I have talked about kiddos for years, we’ve had a lot of opinions, goals, and agreements about if it’s right for us and what it would mean for either path. We agreed to begin trying in December 2018. We scheduled a meeting with each other, negotiated through the options, and fully accepted that it would most likely be a struggle bus of a journey to conceive. Those of you that know me well, know my long history of infertility land mines and the mental/emotional gymnastics trying to make a baby would be.

This is also a large part of what fueled my desire to begin specializing in infertility and postpartum issues within my practice. Because, ya know… why not jump right into the advocacy part asap. (You can all groan and roll your eyes at the ridiculousness of it all. I know we have) 

Late June 2019, Adam and I went through initial testing to determine if things were looking ok or if we needed to start looking at scheduling with a fertility specialist. We received positive results and were told, “Everything looks great. Don’t stress. Take these initial steps while you keep trying. See you at the 1 year mark if it hasn’t worked.” This is my least favorite OB response in the history of stupid shit OB’s say to couples who are trying to conceive (TTC), but alas, we were good bunnies and did what we were told.

We had talked a lot about letting folks know then and being more open about it. A few weeks later, The Mother passed away and it totally rocked our world. If I’m being honest, I feel super sad that I didn’t get a chance to tell The Mother and it makes me feel guilty talking about it now with other people. The Mother and I had a close and complicated relationship, but she was always my teammate in life. It feels bizarre going through this without her input and support.

As the months have passed, we’ve continued on our TTC journey, tracking all the things, following the rules of timing, taking the ovulation tests (OPKs) and doing our best to be kind to each other, and ourselves, in the process.

The results have been the same each cycle, “well that was fun, let the tracking/timing/trying begin again.” We’ve passed the 1 year mark and finally agreed to schedule with the fertility specialist in March. I have mixed feelings about it all, TTCing and grief are funny things and it totally blows doing both at the same time. I’m hoping for answers and direction, but I know enough to know it’s not a reasonable expectation right away.

I’m not sure when we will decide to share this site with others, but at least it’s started and depending on where the journey takes us from here, there’s a place to share it.

This is the main place we will be posting updates, so if you are interested enjoy. If not, that’s totally cool too. We just didn’t want to have the same conversation a million times, blowup social media feeds, and/or trigger others who maybe going through something similar when they see a post about it.

Love y’all bunches!