Ep.12/ When You Need To Choose You In The Midst of Infertility: Depression, Mental Health and Healing with Dr. Vanessa Goodbar Part 1
EP.12/ When You Need To Choose You In The Midst of Infertility: Depression, Mental Health and Healing with Dr. Vanessa Goodbar Part 1
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Note: This transcription has been created with a help of an AI thus errors and mistranscriptions may be present.
[00:00:00] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Hello? Maternal Health 911? What's your emergency?
[00:00:14] Dr. Jill Baker: Hi, I'm Dr. Joe Baker. I'm a wife, a mother, a community health scholar, an executive director, and a fertility coach. More than 12 years ago, I was on my own infertility journey. Since then, I've made it my personal mission to help anyone who is on their own journey. To become a parent as well as shed light on infertility and maternal health experiences of BIPOC women and couples Now let's begin this week's episode of maternal health 9 1 1
[00:00:54] Dr. Jill Baker: Hello maternal health 9 1 1 family. This is your host. Dr. Jill baker. Who do I have today? Dr. Vanessa Gooder who is now A cultural community self care specialist at Reclaim Self Care in Chicago. Shout out to Chicago. Shout out to Chi Town. And she's a community psychologist. And, and she's an adjunct professor at National Lewis University.
[00:01:23] Dr. Jill Baker: And she's teaching in her, right, and she'll correct me if I'm wrong, but she's teaching cross cultural community dynamics in context. At National Lewis University, and she's also a veteran Chicago public school special education teacher for 15 years. And she's a cultural community self care practitioner.
[00:01:47] Dr. Jill Baker: Dr. Gooder founded a black women's community self care lab and consultancy called Reclaim Self Care Chicago in 2020. To facilitate hybrid self care capacity workshops with communities and individuals and using photographic storytelling methods centering helping and healing professional women who identify with characteristics of the strong Black woman archetype, Dr.
[00:02:16] Dr. Jill Baker: Gooder's research highlighted potential barriers to Black women's radical self care, such as the mommy, missus, and me role imbalance, intracultural judgment perception, income, marital status, and self criticism. This project took place during the COVID 19 pandemic and helped Dr. Gooder to heal from her own personal battles with secondary infertility and demetriosis.
[00:02:47] Dr. Jill Baker: Involuntary hysterectomy, depression, and divorce. These adverse and protective life experiences led Dr. Goodhart through a transformational journey of self discovery through the lens of black community vulnerability, participatory action research. That's another area we have in common and photography and Dr.
[00:03:08] Dr. Jill Baker: Goodhart hopes to expand her regional programming and low, no cost, radical. Community self care education that will expand engagement in nature, culture, intergenerational community prevention, health promotion, and wellness. So, without further ado, Maternal Health 911, let's welcome Dr. Goodhart to the show.
[00:03:34] Dr. Jill Baker: Hello, hello. First time to, you know, you're not a first time to being, you know, working with me and being on the show together, but first time to the new show. So, thank you so much for coming on today. And this will be the first time. I'm hoping
[00:03:55] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: of many. I hope so. Thanks for having me, Dr. Jill. I am so happy to be here.
[00:04:00] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Hello to your Maternal Health 911 audience. Thank you for having me.
[00:04:07] Dr. Jill Baker: So, let's just start, let's get right into it. So, this is something new that I'm doing with this show. I'm starting this show with asking everyone the first same question. So my question for you with all your hats and all of your expertise, why is maternal health an emergency in this country?
[00:04:35] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: So maternal health is an emergency in this country because maternal health is under attack. And I think that black women continue to bear the brunt black and brown women continue to carry the brunt of the punishment that comes with The price of having a uterus. So we can see with the attack on abortion rights and the fact that it's easier to get a gun than it is to get reproductive assistance and financial assistance when it comes to infertility treatment.
[00:05:08] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: I think that This time more than ever is a time to be loud about the discrepancies that black women have experienced when it comes to building their families. I love that
[00:05:19] Dr. Jill Baker: about, the way that you put it about it being easier to get a gun than it is to get reproductive health preventive services at this point in time.
[00:05:32] Dr. Jill Baker: Did you think that we would ever be here? Cause I, I know like with the overturned over. Roe v. Wade. I don't want to say it's naivety. Maybe,
[00:05:41] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: maybe. I never expected there to be a turnover of Roe v. Wade. Like, I never expected to see that in my lifetime. I remember my grandmother talking about the burning of the bras on campuses and just that wave of women.
[00:06:00] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Right. Just woman power. Women's empowerment movement. We move from the kitchen to the workplace. Like I never expected, you know, this attack on reproductive rights and just saying that, Oh, you going to have some babies. You don't want kids. Oh, you going to have some babies. And figuring out. You have women who, like myself, want to have more children and produce more children, if you will.
[00:06:25] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: But I need support financially and. There's not a lot of resources for that, or we're clamoring and fighting for the same resources. And
[00:06:37] Dr. Jill Baker: there are not enough resources.
[00:06:39] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: It's not enough because there's only a few different programs that I know of, at least from, you know, my perspective, that are available.
[00:06:48] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: When you become so obsessed with trying to have this family, that idea, the ideology that you're supposed to, you know, be a good girl. And then you go to college and then you graduate, you get a good job, you meet the guy, right? You check all those boxes. You are anticipating family, you know, the baby carriage to come and follow all of those accolades and achievements.
[00:07:12] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: And when they don't go that way, many times women who look like us don't have the resources to continue to carry that marathon forward. And it's a marathon. Oh, it's definitely not a quick race. I thought it was. I was very naive. And thought that my journey would be a short race and it was a marathon and it was a marathon that I didn't win, but I did win because I claim reclaim myself in that journey.
[00:07:41] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: So I did get that win, but I really wanted to continue my family building. But I saw other ways and here we are, but it was quite a traumatic event to not be able to continue my family. You know, reproductively, mentally, psychologically, emotionally, financially, quite an ordeal.
[00:08:05] Dr. Jill Baker: Right. And you and I have talked about this book, you and I have talked about this before, and now you're at another different place in your life, a different chapter in your life, and I would imagine that it maybe make your, look at your infertility journey and maybe with another different kind of set of eyes.
[00:08:30] Dr. Jill Baker: So, but for the audience who kind of, you know, doesn't know your story, I would say let's just, you know, kind of take a walk through your journey. And the other part of it for you was that you were already a mother and the secondary infertility is very common. Yeah. Very
[00:08:52] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: common. It's common and I had no idea.
[00:08:55] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: I wish I had known how common it was. Yeah. But so just to go back, I graduated from college at age 25 and I was really trying to fit into that frame of being the good girl. I had finished my degree and I was Really trying to be Puff Daddy when I was out there. I was, I really thought I was coming to New York with y'all and I was going to use my fashion merchandising degree, business degree, and I thought I was finding all the talent.
[00:09:26] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Okay. But the way it actually went, what actually happened was I don't think I knew that part. Yeah. I thought I was going to be Puff Daddy with my music business degree and my fashion merchandising degree, I really. I really had dreams, but I came home after the summer after I graduated, and I don't know, I guess I thought I was still on campus, and this really cute guy who had green eyes approached me on my way to my internship, and we started talking, and we hooked up, and I had a baby, and That whole process in itself was very tumultuous because he wasn't very present.
[00:10:04] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: So I have a great very female heavy family and you know, they, I come from a long line of single moms. Not a lot of marriage in my family. Very much strong, beautiful, very ambitious black women in my family who raised their girls and made sure we were good. But, and I, I just, you know, kind of fell into that role really quickly.
[00:10:29] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Like, okay, I did graduate from college. At least I graduated from college before I became a mother, but I was very. Very much equipped and very much prepared to be a single mom, you know, and follow that statistical kind of norm. So I started, you know, my journey as a mom at age 26, my daughter is six days before my 26th birthday.
[00:10:53] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: She came. So Trinity Tiara, happy birthday. She was your happy birthday. Yes, she was. And I had a happy birthday drink as soon as she was there. I was like, no breastfeeding for me. Sorry. I love all my breastfeeding moms out there, but I was young and when she came, I wanted... Look, there's no judgment. Okay.
[00:11:12] Dr. Jill Baker: Okay.
[00:11:13] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Breastfeeding is hard, period. And I wanted a job that was conducive to being present. So, my cousin who's A lawyer in DC. She's a Delta from Howard. My dear cousin, my, actually my my matron of honor in my wedding, I am with me, I'll say now, she sent me a an ad for a job position as a teacher, the special education teacher.
[00:11:41] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: So as a young mom who was trying to get into fashion and working at. AJ Wright at the time, busting my butt, working 12 hour days, thinking that I could make it in the fashion industry, working from retail. I decided to do something more practical and I became a teacher. That's how you became a teacher?
[00:11:59] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: That's how I became a teacher. I said, I want to be president. It was either nursing or teaching. So I decided on teaching because our schedules would be the same. And I figured, you know, maybe at some point we can... Go to the same school and that will be even more convenient. It only lasted one year. Don't get excited.
[00:12:18] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: That one year, it was like, nah, we need our own space. Thank you. Thank you so much. That is hilarious. I became a teacher and that's when I started. Cause Trinity was one year old. And I started teaching in 2008 and almost in tandem, I started to have reproductive issues all through high school, not high school.
[00:12:43] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: My apologies. In college, I used birth control pills. I had a boyfriend that was back home and I use birth control. And most of us did. Yes. I was like, this is the way that you don't get pregnant. Pregnant right now. I wasn't really doing much. Like I didn't really get a lot of action to be honest. But the action that I did have, I didn't want to get caught up.
[00:13:01] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: But soon as I graduated, I lost my health insurance. And so that's how my little baby bundled. Wow. See that? It was like instantly, I stopped with the insurance and with the BC in May. And I was pregnant by December of 2006. So my baby was born August of 2007, and I started teaching in April, I started my program in August of 2008, I started teaching.
[00:13:32] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: But instantly I, I knew that something was wrong my first day of school. So a sidebar story, I took a trip with my good girlfriends to the Bayou Classic in Louisiana. From Chicago, we drove straight to Mississippi with no stars. Why we came back and we drove the same way back about two weeks later, I started feeling this horrible pain in my chest and I went to the local hospital, which in Chicago, it was Michael Reese at the time and I was complaining and screaming and just excruciating pain.
[00:14:11] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: And I think they thought I was nuts. And they told me, you know, it's, it's probably pneumonia, go home, call, we'll come back in the morning if you're still not feeling well. I, I couldn't really sit well with that opinion. So I went to the University of Chicago and they asked me have you traveled in the last two weeks?
[00:14:30] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: And I said, well, I actually, I just came back from Louisiana. We took a trip, a road trip, and they asked me, like, did I take breaks? Did I stop? Did I walk around? And I said, no. And so they did the blue dye test and I had a blood clot in my lung. Oh my goodness. I have pulmonary embolism and I really think that it was because of the birth control.
[00:14:54] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Right before that I was having, I had always had issues with my period. I had started my period at age eight and yeah, that I'm learning now that I'm a psychologist that comes from early onset trauma. And, you know, young women who experience CSA may have a menses early. So I was one of those girls who had early menses and by the time I was 12, that thing was kicking my butt every month.
[00:15:23] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: And I think it was endometriosis. But, you know, my grandmother raised me, my mother was really, you know, I was raised by teenage parents, so their parents were really more like my parents, my parents were more like
[00:15:37] Dr. Jill Baker: my siblings. Did you know, were your, were your mother's parents like?
[00:15:42] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Yes. My mother had an early hysterectomy.
[00:15:44] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Okay. She had four children, but she did have a hysterectomy. Her mother did. My mother on my dad's side also did. Okay. They all had, my grandmother, aunties, all of them had hysterectomies in their 30s. Okay. All of them did. So it's a deep family. Yes, absolutely. That we didn't talk about that. I had no idea about right till it was my turn.
[00:16:09] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Right. Depending that. So I'm at university and they caught this blood clot in my lung. And I was a first year second grade teacher. My principal at the time, assistant principal at the time had almost no empathy for me in that situation. I found a way to come to work the first day of school. I had to teach from my seat.
[00:16:31] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: After being in the hospital for a couple weeks. And I wasn't well and if I had known being what I know now would have probably took some months off to get myself together and I still don't actually have full capacity use of my lungs since that incident. But I really was ill with a pulmonary embolism and I had had some bleeding problems and was hospitalized for excessive blood clotting.
[00:16:56] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: I think I was about, it was right after I had my daughter, all of the reproductive stuff didn't really start causing issues until after Trinity came. Then I have problems with my period with the blood clots and then eventually the pulmonary embolism. That's a lot. It was a lot, it really was, but it was really a challenging time because I, I really was It's under the impression that I was expected to show up and do my job as a hard part of being a teacher.
[00:17:27] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Yeah. I wanted to do that job. I was excited to become a teacher and have a means to take care of my daughter. This was the most money I had ever made, probably 40, 000 or something, but it was the most money at the time I ever made, especially right out of college. So I was ready to do the job, but physically I shouldn't have done the job.
[00:17:46] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Right. Yeah. So I then that first year was rough. I got fired. The what the cool thing about teaching, you know, and being a Chicago person, it's not what you know, it's who you know. I talked with a friend and she connected me with another school who needed a special education teacher. I started teaching special education my second year.
[00:18:08] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: And I started to feel better, but reproductively, I started the IUD thing. I said, no more pills. I'm going to move to the IUD. So you did, you had an IUD. And everything was fine with the IUD because I wasn't actively trying to get pregnant. Right. From 2008 to 2012 was my IUD period and things were fine.
[00:18:29] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Did
[00:18:29] Dr. Jill Baker: you have a hormonal one or non
[00:18:32] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: hormonal? I think I had Marina. Okay, so I had the Marina. I know I had Marina. And so she was in there and doing her thing and everything was fine. I had Okay,
[00:18:43] Dr. Jill Baker: because I had a friend who had really bad side effects. With IUD
[00:18:50] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: side effects, my, my period, I was grateful to have a shorter, like lower
[00:18:54] Dr. Jill Baker: sex drive
[00:18:56] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: pain.
[00:18:57] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: I didn't think about that. Yeah. Yeah. No pain for me, but I don't recall having a major libido at that time, but I can't think of any like significant Side effects that I had with my marina, but the side effects and the challenges came after I took her out. So
[00:19:18] Dr. Jill Baker: okay. So what, like, so how old? Okay, so how old are you?
[00:19:21] Dr. Jill Baker: You take it out, the i u d out. So how old I was
[00:19:24] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: think you're now, so I met my ex-husband when my daughter was three years old, so that was 2010. Okay. Then we got married in 2012. And as soon as I got married, I took the IUD out thinking that it's time, this is what this is for. You're supposed to use it until you're ready to have children.
[00:19:45] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: And then you take it out and then you're ready. But unlike when I was on the birth control appeals, I started having major issues with regulating my cycle. I started having very long extended periods, like two and three weeks of bleeding. I started to develop anemia. I developed that. And we could not get pregnant.
[00:20:09] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: And it turns out that my ex husband actually, He had the issues first. We tested his ejaculates, you know, scientific word is that, and it was very little to no living sperm. So how long
[00:20:25] Dr. Jill Baker: was it before you guys? You know, went to a doctor and
[00:20:30] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: well, being that I had my daughter, we didn't expect to have any issues, right?
[00:20:36] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: It was about six months in where I was like, can you get checked out? Because we know I can have Children because I have a child. But with you, we don't know. And he didn't have any previous Children. So we tested him first under the assumption that it was only this issue. It was an issue. And he had a corrective procedure called the T.
[00:20:56] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: C. And it was like a, some kind of testicular procedure where his, you know, the sack was about as big as a grapefruit and they went in and they opened up some ventricles and vesicles and all of that and basically increased the flow there. And right. He went from zero to. A hundred increases for account.
[00:21:16] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Yes, and it did. It did work. And so we thought we were in the clear and that was about 2013 2014 because I had started at my new school that I'm actually still at. It's no longer new because I've been there 10 years. Wow. That was 10 years ago when we started that it was about 2013 that we started for real looking at my fertility because after he had his procedure done, we still weren't getting pregnant.
[00:21:42] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: And I was like, what's going on? Right. So we started with A fertility fertility centers of Illinois is where we started. Not sure if I could say that, but that's who I started with. And I was really excited. I thought it would be very simple being that I had already had a daughter. I thought that it would be just a matter of coordination of my ovulation, if you will, and just kind of making sure we have the right rhythm.
[00:22:06] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Maybe we weren't working with the right rhythm, but...
[00:22:09] Dr. Jill Baker: How did you... And how did you, how did you or you two together end up selecting that
[00:22:15] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: place? Well, I Googled and they were the first to come up, I called and they took my appointment. I didn't have any friends who had any experience in that area.
[00:22:30] Dr. Jill Baker: You'd always have somebody to call to say, well,
[00:22:32] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: where did you go for
[00:22:34] Dr. Jill Baker: you know, that's an issue for BIPOC women and couples.
[00:22:41] Dr. Jill Baker: That's not as much of an issue for white women and couples. It's
[00:22:44] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: not. And we, that's something that we gotta change. Absolutely. I had no idea where to start, nor did I have the... The gall and audacity to ask like my mother who had four children and you know all my aunts who have children of their own, at least two children, I just didn't really feel comfortable having that conversation with my family and getting that, well, what's wrong with you?
[00:23:08] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: You know, kind of conversation. You can't get pregnant. Or the, you don't need no more kids. Look at what you working. You don't need no more. Like for that. Telling me what I should be doing with my uterus. So, right. I googled because Google is private. So at least to me, so I found FCI and my ex husband at the time was really, he was, all right, let's try it.
[00:23:30] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: So we, we start the process of, we didn't do what, I wish I had known then. Was why there's not enough collaboration between the OB GYN and the, and the reproductive endocrinologist. Right. Right. They just went right into, let's see if your ovaries are open. They tested everything was, the flow was there.
[00:23:54] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: So then they immediately put me on fertility drugs to start building up my my follicle counts and my follicles was all different sizes. Yeah. And that thing was horrible, like going through the meds, the rounds of, we did one round of IVF and I thought that it would be the only round that I did.
[00:24:15] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: And it just wasn't that way. That whole process went completely left.
[00:24:21] Dr. Jill Baker: Right. And then, so they had you on medication and they had you on, and they had you
[00:24:26] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: do IVF, right? So they had me on the, you know, the drugs that you use to build up the follicles. Right. So I was on those drugs. And that was really hard going to work.
[00:24:39] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: To prepare, yeah, for your body too. And I missed a lot of I missed a lot of teaching time at the school I was at because of these appointments. They were only during the day. That's right, yes. And so my principal at the time actually wrote me up and I had to get my union rep to come in and defend me to keep her from putting it on my permanent record and saying that I was a attendance issue.
[00:25:03] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Even though she knew I was, I was very clear that I was in fertility treatment. So I couldn't get my stress levels down, like to. I couldn't even begin to get my stress levels down. So they, they told me that that was a factor in the quality of my eggs and the quality of my follicles. So only had about three good follicles from my first round and they were able to get two embryos from that.
[00:25:32] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: And they I remember when they went in and they. Implanted the embryos and I was so excited. You look at that. It was stay implanted too. And I thought I was going to be two in and two out. And both of those embryos did not result in a pregnancy. And I was very naive and very just dare I say like cocky, like I know I'm pregnant with twins.
[00:25:57] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: I saw them babies go in and your when they, when they call me two weeks later, you know, that two week wait is the worst.
[00:26:05] Dr. Jill Baker: It's the worst,
[00:26:07] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: isn't it? And I'm walking around holding my breath like I'm pregnant.
[00:26:12] Dr. Jill Baker: And you don't know and you're like, well, my boobs
[00:26:14] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: feel a little... Everything felt weird because they put you on these drugs that actually, you know, replicate pregnancies.
[00:26:21] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Right. So you don't know. You don't know until
[00:26:24] Dr. Jill Baker: that to, to you take a test into it.
[00:26:27] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: It's the worst. It was, I have never felt that was the worst let down of my life of my life. And I have a great group of teacher friends who are like sisters. And they cried with me after school because I got the call during school and I had to leave my classroom to ball in the bathroom and then when the bell rang, I came back to my room and they sat in a sister circle with me and we balled some more after that first big fat negative.
[00:26:59] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Oh my gosh. Ex husband was very, very hurt. Because we both were excited. Like, we had already future casted that and started to plan and think about where we want to have the kids and all of these things. It just did not come to pass. And,
[00:27:15] Dr. Jill Baker: so one question, I think we talked about this before, but did they do the the HSG procedure, the histocell PING program where they put the...
[00:27:27] Dr. Jill Baker: Basically put insert blue dye into your fallopian tubes. So they can see whether there's any blockage or not. So... Before they do, before anything is done, that should have been the
[00:27:42] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: first thing. Okay, so, clarification, that was done. Okay. It wasn't, it wasn't a blue dye, it was a saline. They use like a saline solution, and they shot a quick shot of saline solution to see if it flowed through my fallopian tubes.
[00:27:58] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: And they told me I was good to go. Okay.
[00:28:02] Dr. Jill Baker: So that was fine. Yes. And was that
[00:28:05] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: painful for you? Yeah. Okay. Cause it was definitely, I won't say like very painful, very uncomfortable for me, for
[00:28:12] Dr. Jill Baker: sure. It was very painful for me and nobody's well, they tried it. No, they said it would be, but. It was painful. They, I don't, I don't feel like they really explained enough that it was going to be
[00:28:27] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: no, yeah.
[00:28:28] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: So for me that, that,
[00:28:30] Dr. Jill Baker: so you guys, so you guys did a one round of, I, so did you all do another one, another
[00:28:36] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: round of IBM? So we waited about three months. I think it's trying to suck. I have to remember what I have. Departmentalized. Right. But I think we waited a few months and then the way my personality is set up, it was like, Oh, you're not going to beat me.
[00:28:55] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Like, I'm going to try this again and I'm going to be successful. That's the things that I go after I get. And right. I was ambitious. You
[00:29:03] Dr. Jill Baker: have to be strong and you have to be resilient. You have
[00:29:08] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: to be resilient. Yes, my resilience definitely kicked in and I tried a second round. But you're gonna get knocked down.
[00:29:15] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: That's a part of the black experience. Well, right.
[00:29:19] Dr. Jill Baker: But then
[00:29:19] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: we gotta get up. And we, also a part of the black experience. And fight. Yeah. And I was ready and prepared to do that. My ex husband was prepared to do that for the second round, so. We got in there again. I did get some support the second time.
[00:29:36] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Yeah, I was going to
[00:29:36] Dr. Jill Baker: ask, did you have any support?
[00:29:38] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Oh yeah, I had to. Friends, family? Not necessarily friends and family, but I found a support group called Fertility for Colored Girls, and they had a chapter right here in Chicago in my neighborhood even, in the Morgan Park community, and I was very excited.
[00:29:55] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Shout out to them, because I found... A tribe that was going through a similar trial. And it was amazing to not feel alone for once, to not feel like I was dealing with this as an individual and something was just wrong with me. Right? So it also got really it's so lonely. It's very lonely. And I met with them once a month and they even gave me great tips on like how to navigate insurance and how to get funding.
[00:30:23] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: It was women at all different stages of their fertility journey. Some, oh my gosh, like me hadn't got there. Positive. Some were working with surrogates and just other kind of innovative ways of bringing their family to what they want to be. And I was, I was feeling good about the second round.
[00:30:44] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: So we did the second round, spent, you know, a good thousand dollars on meds. And it's are expensive. Definitely expensive. And then you got to keep them cold. You got to keep them a certain temperature. Some are dry. Some are not. Specific time. Specific times. You, you gotta be on it. Like, it was very good.
[00:31:05] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Another job. So it was another big fat negative. And that second round, I was like, it, it really hurt. It hurt just as much as the first one, if not more, because I was, I thought that I was on the right track. Right. And so after this round, then they start to say, oh, well, you're overweight. And that's probably why it's not taken.
[00:31:30] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: So if you lose if you lose some weight, you should be able to actually, I take that back. I think I lost the weight before the second round. I did, I joined a gym, actually like a really cool fit family of women with my auntie and we were going to work out. I love it. And I lost 50 pounds, I lost 50 pounds.
[00:31:52] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: And I was like, I should be good. So I get that second round after all that motivation for fertility to lose the weight, but get this, I was still bleeding 20 days after month. So I'm working out and I have anemia and I barely could keep, keep up with the Zumba classes, keep up with the weight loss yeah, because I'm bleeding.
[00:32:16] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Through my clothes, through my tampons, through my super plus tampons. Because I'm, you know, so dysregulated with my, with my cycle. So I actually ended up having two blood transfusions during that time. What? Hospitalized, two blood transfusions. Not to mention the first one I had with the pulmonary embolism.
[00:32:38] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: So it was a, it was quite a journey going through these treatments and so I lost the weight and then I did the second round and I felt confident because of me following the procedure. I do remember more pain with the extraction of the And with of the follicles that time, the second time, the second time was really painful when they went and got those follicles.
[00:33:03] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: And so they got them, they fertilized, they, you know, replanted them and still a big fat negative. And then that's when my ex husband kind of checked out. Like, nah, I'm not going to keep hyping myself up to think that I'm going to be a father. And then. We're not. So you need to get it together. You need to, we need to not we, but you, you need to kind of, you know, do something.
[00:33:28] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: We're not gonna keep doing it. So it was really difficult to, you know, feel that I didn't really have a partner in that. It was right. Just kind of, you go, you go here with your sister circles, you go kind of do your thing and then I'm going to kind of be silent and kind of deal with this in silence. So it was a really tough time.
[00:33:49] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: That second negative was tough. And then after that we did one round of the insemination. We did one round of insemination. I even felt confident about that. Like they timed it and made sure I was ovulating. And they injected me with a sample from him and still a negative, still a negative.
[00:34:09] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: And at that point I felt like less than one. And at that point at that point I had to make a decision of if I was going to continue. I actually planned on doing a third round, had purchased the medication, but I couldn't get into A good place with my ex husband where I really was still wanting to move forward.
[00:34:29] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: He was emotionally in, you know, you know, checked out at that point, he was like, nah, I'm not, I'm not supporting this third round, but I was doing it. I was like, just give me the sample. I'll be good. And I was ready to keep trying, but I couldn't stop bleeding. I was bleeding for those 20 days after month taking the medication and I couldn't get the cycle regulated long enough to even.
[00:34:55] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Grow the follicles, right? Right.
[00:34:57] Dr. Jill Baker: So what did they, so no one said, and so no one said anything about this continuous
[00:35:04] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: bleeding? The, no, no one said anything about the continuous bleeding until I went to the OG OB gyne who, you know, a black woman, four kids of her own from LA who came to Chicago to work.
[00:35:18] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: And she did a test where she went into my uterus with the camera and. . She was like, girl, you are not having no kids with this uterus. This uterus is shot. And I, I'm sorry, nobody told you her bedside manner was horrible. But she was honest. I give her that. She was like, this, this. So how
[00:35:38] Dr. Jill Baker: did, how did you end up finding her and how did you, what made you say, I need to see somebody else at this?
[00:35:48] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: At that point, the financial situation, Jill, I, I had spent. You know, over 15, 000 at that point on fertility treatments. Oh, yeah. So we didn't even talk about how much it costs. Yeah. So, you know, here in Chicago is really interesting because I believe the city of Chicago will pay for a gender transition, like if you're a city employee, which I am they will pay for a gender transition, but if you are family planning, there are zero funds.
[00:36:20] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Or if you want to continue with building your family, so,
[00:36:25] Dr. Jill Baker: so they don't have, you all don't have benefits for
[00:36:27] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: infertility. There are benefits for infertility that only cover so much. Okay. And what was covered still left me with tons of debt and I was, it was just a lot of debt. They paid some, it was more than, it was more than 50%.
[00:36:44] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: I think it was more like 60 or 70, but that 30. It hit my pockets really hard, really, really hard because of how much. How much was left over and it's
[00:36:59] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: coming from insurance They want to kind of double dip where they charge a really Astronomical amount and they get that part that 70 percent of that astronomical comes from insurance And the other 30 or 20 is left with you and it's even though it's 20 percent of something. It's still a lot Huge
[00:37:17] Dr. Jill Baker: amount and then if you're doing ibf or whatever you And most people don't get pregnant, you don't always get pregnant the first
[00:37:27] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: time.
[00:37:29] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: I did not expect this to happen to me. Yeah, with being a secondary infertility you know, Person, I guess it just, I didn't even know that was a thing. Secondary infertility was a thing where people have
[00:37:43] Dr. Jill Baker: problems. We don't talk about infertility by itself.
[00:37:47] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Right. It's one in eight, but nobody talks about it when it happens or they tell you things like, Oh, what happened when you least expect it or just keep praying.
[00:37:56] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: You just, when you're not even thinking about it, it's going to happen. It never happened. So what about that? Right. It was, so the O. G. O. B. G. O. G. O. B. Guyney who had like, I think 25, 30 years experience. She was close to retirement. She was just like, let me tell you something, sweetheart. My mother came with me and they were just like, girl, hang it up.
[00:38:19] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: This, you have endometriosis, endometriosis, PCOS, fibroid tumors. So there's nowhere for an embryo to implant because there's so much scarring from the from the IUD, from the the extra tissue from the birth control pills. Like it was so much, that's why I was having so much clotting during those 20 day periods of bleeding because I had so much extra thick uterine lining that it wasn't enough time in a month to slosh it all off.
[00:38:51] Dr. Jill Baker: And so your, your regular OB GYN didn't say, well, maybe you had endometriosis, maybe you had...
[00:38:59] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Nope. I didn't get that until after two rounds of IVF and one round, cause I was kind of using her as a gauge to see if I should keep going. And I wanted that validation from her so bad, Jill. Like, I wanted her to say, they're wrong, and you know, what you feeling is right, and you need to just continue with your fight.
[00:39:19] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: That lady was like, girl, you is wasting your time and your money. Stop right here and think about yourself. Are you going to choose yourself? Basically, now you got to get off the bus. Yeah. And I didn't want to get off that bus, Jill. I was trying so hard to, I felt like that was the consummation of our marriage was to, Bring an air, if you will, right to, you know, forth with this marriage.
[00:39:43] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: I thought that I was creating, I was here to create that blended family between us, but God saw fit to not have it happen that way. And I did not want ob og gynecologist to do anything else. I was real hurt, real butt hurt about the way she told me, and, you know, it was the truth. But I had, she told me that I should consider a hysterectomy.
[00:40:06] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Okay. And I was doing really well with my fitness and wellness journey at the time. And I really was enjoying getting back to myself and connecting with other women on the same journey. Right. And one day. It feels so good when you're doing that. I was feeling good. Right. I was feeling good, looking good.
[00:40:24] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: And I was just like, you know. Something just said, choose yourself, choose you. And so I had talked to some of my sorority sisters who gave a recommendation for Dr. Jessica Shepard, who's actually at I think she's at Baylor right now, but at the time she was at UIC. And I went to go see her. I showed her the pictures that...
[00:40:47] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: OB, OG gyne gave me of my uterus and she was like, right, this is, this is accurate. That it's not likely that a pregnancy will come from, it took two black women doctors. I wish I hadn't known about them before I spent all of that money, but on the back end, I sought out a doctor that looked like me. And I wish that on the front end, I had sought out a doctor that looked like me.
[00:41:10] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: So You know, Dr. Shepard promised me that she would make sure that my surgery was gonna help and I would be, I would have some relief from all of the bleeding and that, you know, she would take my cervix as well to minimize my risk for cancer. And she was like, promise you, you still go feel pleasure.
[00:41:31] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Promise you, you still going to be all the sensitive ending. And I was like, cause I want to feel everything. Okay. So I made sure that, you know, it felt the same, but she took it. She took the uterus. She took the cervix and physically I felt amazing. But psychologically and emotionally, I was, I was in the mud.
[00:41:57] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: I was in the dumps. Yeah. Yeah. And I couldn't pull myself out.
[00:42:02] Dr. Jill Baker: And so how long did you feel that way post your hysterectomy?
[00:42:08] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: So hysterectomy happened in October of 2017. So at that time, it was a five year. And when I, like I said, I had the procedure, I was starting my 10th year of teaching and I was like, this is the year, you know, you, you're refining your practice and you get in your groove
[00:42:27] Dr. Jill Baker: by that point, you haven't pinned down.
[00:42:30] Dr. Jill Baker: You
[00:42:30] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: got other teachers. I'm just like, you know, all that stuff I talked about before, you know, the trash teacher I was in year one. She don't. She, I'm an amazing teacher at this point. I got all the trainees in my class. Okay. And I needed a hysterectomy. And in my mind, I was naive again. I said, Oh, I'm going to have this procedure.
[00:42:49] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: I'll be back in two, three weeks. You know, it'll, it'll be like I never left. And I had that procedure and physically I felt better, but I started to spiral mentally and psychologically. Cause it felt like when it took my uterus, it felt like everything from My whole life trauma wise have been uprooted and taken from me.
[00:43:12] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: And it started with that, the sadness of the finality of my mother, my motherhood, and just. my womb and the way that I bring forth life is no longer with me. And I was in mourning. I was grieving my uterus and there was nothing that I can do to bring her back. It was nothing I can do to bring forth more children who look like me and came from me.
[00:43:37] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Have your personality
[00:43:39] Dr. Jill Baker: and
[00:43:39] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: right, you know, genetic traits, like the finality of that really killed me inside. And I couldn't get out of bed. I couldn't, I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. And
[00:43:53] Dr. Jill Baker: so did you know that when it was happening in the moment, did you know that you were
[00:44:01] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: grieving? No, I knew I was sad.
[00:44:04] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: I felt depressed. But you, yeah, but you didn't know it. I didn't know it was grieving. No, I didn't, I didn't treat it like grieving. I treated it like, I let my family down. It's
[00:44:13] Dr. Jill Baker: the loss.
[00:44:15] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: The invalidation, the loss, I'm no, I'm barren now. I'm barren. I'm like the one, the lady in the bible who couldn't have kids.
[00:44:23] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: What? I don't know if it was Sarah. I think it was, I don't know who it was, but one of the ladies from the Bible couldn't have children. It was just like, I felt like less than a woman. I felt like what good am I like how you
[00:44:36] Dr. Jill Baker: felt? I know how I felt. All that time it took me to get pregnant that I felt like I wasn't a woman because I could not
[00:44:46] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: physically get pregnant.
[00:44:48] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: And, you know, you still, it doesn't change that your other friends are still having kids and, you know, popping up with inviting you to baby showers and, you know, show posting newborns and two year old kids. On Facebook. And my daughter was like eight, nine, ten years old. And I was like, she's the only, I wanted her to have siblings.
[00:45:08] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: Right. Yeah. So that, you know,
[00:45:12] Dr. Jill Baker: I feel the infertility and all these experiences of even when you become a mother, how you thought things were going to happen and grieving, allowing yourself to grieve that some things didn't happen the way you thought they were going to happen.
[00:45:32] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: I could not fathom any of that.
[00:45:34] Dr. Vanessa Goodar: It was just like, something's wrong with you. This is a shameful moment and don't leave this house. So it's funny because the way that I realized that I was dealing with depression and PTSD
[00:45:55] Dr. Jill Baker: Thank you for listening to this episode of maternal health 9 1 1. Please follow the show on Instagram Facebook and Twitter Feel free to DM me with your questions and thoughts or to share your infertility Fertility and maternal health story for more information on this podcast and your host Visit www.
[00:46:15] Dr. Jill Baker: drjoebaker. com. Listening to the show on Apple podcast, please rate and review it. It really helps the show and the feedback is welcome.
In this 2 part episode with Dr. Vanessa Goodar, she graciously shared with us her point of view of why Maternal Health in America is an emergency as well as her own fertility journey. She also talked about the role race plays in fertility treatment.
It's clear that your experience with infertility has had a profound psychological impact on you. It's not uncommon for women to feel isolated and alone during this time, which is why it's important to seek out supportive communities. Places like Fertility for Colored Girls provide a safe space for women to share their stories and connect with others who can empathize with their struggles.
When it comes to advocating for yourself during pregnancy, it's important to strike a balance between listening to medical professionals and asserting your own needs. One way to do this is to educate yourself about your options and communicate your preferences clearly. Remember, you are the expert on your own body and should feel empowered to make informed decisions about your care.
If you've undergone a hysterectomy or struggled with infertility, it's important to remember that you are not alone. There are many resources available to help you navigate this challenging time, and it's okay to ask for help when you need it. Remember to be kind to yourself and prioritize your own well-being throughout your journey.
An estimated 15% of couples will have trouble conceiving. (UCLA Health, 2020)
Infertility affects 10% of women between the ages of 15 and 44 in the U.S. (CDC, 2019)
Black women are actually twice as likely as white women to suffer from infertility, according to the most recent data from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), both from primary infertility (an inability to become pregnant) and secondary infertility (an inability to become pregnant after having conceived in the past).
myth of Black hyper-fertility in general society and in the Black community
Guest Bio:
Dr. Vanessa Goodar is an adjunct professor in the Community Psychology PhD program teaching cross-cultural communication dynamics in context at National-Louis University. A veteran Chicago Public Schools special education teacher of 15 years and a cultural-community self-care practitioner, Dr. Goodar founded a Black women’s community self-care lab and consultancy called Reclaim Self Care Chicago in 2020 to facilitate hybrid self care capacity workshops with communities and individuals. Using photographic storytelling methods centering helping and healing professional women who identify with characteristics of the Strong Black Woman archetype, Dr. Goodar’s research highlighted potential barriers to Black women’s radical self-care, such as the Mommy, Mrs. and Me’ role imbalance, intra-cultural judgment perception, income, marital status and self-criticism. This project took place during the COVID-19 pandemic and helped Dr. Goodar to heal from her own personal battles with secondary infertility, endometriosis, involuntary hysterectomy, depression and divorce. Adverse and protective life experiences led Dr. Goodar through a transformational journey of self-discovery through the lens of Black community vulnerability, participatory action research and photography. Dr. Goodar hopes to expand her regional programming and low/no cost radical community self-care education that expand engagement in nature, culture, intergenerational community prevention, health promotion and wellness.
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