Hi, Tara. Thanks for joining us.
Tara Lipinski: Thank you.
Dr. Aimee: You’ve touched so many people’s lives by talking about your journey. You and Todd are so adorable. It’s just so much fun listening to all of the episodes so far. What made you decide now to share your story?
Tara Lipinski: It’s been five years since we started this journey. I think it was too hard; it was too hard to be in the midst of so much failure and then publicly talk about it. I think I was afraid that I’d hear different opinions or other comments that might scare me more than I already was.
It’s funny; it’s been many years since I competitively figure skated, and I always fall back into athlete mode. It just felt comforting and right for me to put on my blinders and just say “This is like competition, I have to train, I have to make this small circle, I can’t have any distractions.” It got pretty rough over the last year. I think at that point I had just so many disappointments and so many points where I felt like, “I don’t think I can get back up”, that I almost stopped caring about if I’m sharing or not.
Todd and I privately last year started this podcast because I wasn’t quite ready to publicly do it, but in our home we did this together and it was a place to intimately talk about it. We would have to stop when things were not great at that moment and we weren’t really prepared to continue talking about it.
Now I’m able to release it because we are in a more hopeful situation and spot. But, as anyone who struggles with infertility or has been through this process knows, you’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop. There’s so much PTSD, so much trauma that goes along with that, so I’m just day to day getting by.
Dr. Aimee: I don’t want to spoil the podcast for people who haven’t listened, but who is Mila Storm?
Tara Lipinski: It’s Todd’s favorite story just because four years ago I just started researching everything. That’s how I found so many different accounts. I came across your account. I would be writing down what supplements Dr. Aimee is saying I should do, let me go back and look at that. It’s a beautiful community. Worst club, best members, as we know. There are so many women, so many stories out there that I connected to and I felt less alone, and I also gained a ton of information by snooping on my fake Mila Storm account.
There is a funny story in the podcast, I think it was Episode 2 where Todd gives me a lot of grief about that.
Dr. Aimee: I love what you say on the podcast. You say, “Our path may be different, but it doesn’t mean we are lost.”
Tara Lipinski: Everyone has different roads, different journeys, I’ve realized so much through this process. I think if someone wants to do one idea and then say, “This was too much. I don’t want to go through with that. I’d rather seek another avenue,” that’s what they should do. If someone wants to do it 15 times, that’s what they should do. To each their own.
I think in all of those different avenues what really touched Todd and I with that saying is that, yes, it may seem difficult, it may seem impossible at times, but we’re not lost. There is always an avenue that you can take. There’s always something that you can do, whether it’s adoption, donor eggs, surrogacy, or maybe it’s also just this isn’t a process that I want to continue with my partner, and we are going to figure out a life that maybe doesn’t include children, and we are going to be happy, and we are going to have joy in our life because we became stronger through this process.
There are just so many different avenues that I thought that saying kind of encapsulated all of them.
Dr. Aimee: What kind of reaction have you had from people now that you’re starting to reveal to us what you’ve been through?
Tara Lipinski: It is by far one of the most meaningful things I’ve done in my life, I feel like, for myself. Just getting these messages. As an athlete and a broadcaster, you get so many messages. You’re like, “Oh, that’s nice. They love my skating, or they love this broadcast,” but it’s sort of like what does that really mean?
I feel like this is meaningful. They’re telling me their stories. They’re opening up and telling me, “I haven’t even told my family yet. It’s just between me and my partner. This is what happened to me.”
I feel like it just is opening a conversation. There’s so much shame around infertility, even though there shouldn’t be. I just feel like it is so heartwarming. I have gotten so many DMs. My husband is like, “Tara, you have to stop,” at night. I’m like, “But this woman’s story. Do you know what she’s been through? I have to talk to her.” I don’t know how to keep up, but that’s how incredible the response from the podcast has been.
Dr. Aimee: You invite people to actually DM you.
Tara Lipinski: Yes. I’m trying to keep up. If I haven’t gotten to you, I’m getting to you.
Dr. Aimee: I always talk about IVF “Is Very F’d” up, it’s not always fabulous or fun. There are at least five things that can happen along the way that suck. You guys have almost every single one of them from no blast, to not genetically normal, to bad sperm, to getting really sick, getting COVID, and you guys do it with humor. I imagine it wasn’t as funny when it was happening.
Tara Lipinski: Right.
Dr. Aimee: What would you say to people who are on this journey who are also dealing with those setbacks? What did you do to overcome the emotional part of hearing these bad things that you can share with others? This is what I learned that helped me dealing with these awful things?
Tara Lipinski: First off, I just want to say you’re so right, there are so many different obstacles in IVF, but also in fertility. Even if you’re not going through IVF and you’re seeing a negative pregnancy test every month, that’s heartbreaking as well. It’s how do you cope with these disappointments when in your mind you look around and you think, “I thought I was just going to get pregnant,” or, “I see my friends just getting pregnant and they weren’t even trying, and here I am, I can’t get a win.”
I think it taught me patience. I think each obstacle, for me at least, I would get down in the dumps. I don’t know if this is great advice, because everyone should do what they need to do. If they want to stay positive, stay positive. For me, I wasn’t. Right when I would get bad news, I would go negative, I would feel pity, I would feel shame, I would let the tears run, I would sink into my couch. I was like this is it, I’m never doing it again, it’s over, and I let that kind of get annoying. Then one day I woke up and I was like, “No, that’s not how I feel.”
I think it’s always a choice, though. Maybe I didn’t want to go on. But, I did. I just would be like I have that urge back, and that urge meant that I needed to get back in the ring.
Dr. Aimee: Right. Did you ever have trolls say mean things to you about why you would continue this process when you’ve been through so much before, and how would you react to them or what advice do you have for dealing with trolls?
Tara Lipinski: I think there was someone maybe at the clinic who was going to the clinic, because I had been private throughout this journey, but I would get some messages that were pretty harsh sometimes. Obviously, you feel a little hurt. For me, I think the good thing about my career is I’m used to a lot of people with a lot of opinions. A lot of positive, but also a lot of negative opinions. I just block it. I don’t read it. I say I don’t even need to look at that, and laugh it off.
But when it came to this, even friends. You have amazing friends and close family, but these things that happen in infertility and IVF, they’re hard, they’re delicate, they’re sensitive, and sometimes people don’t always know unless they’ve experienced it. When you are confronted with loss and you feel like you’re not getting the support from the people you want it from, that is also difficult.
This whole world, there are so many different aspects of it, of what you’re personally going through, and I think that’s why you feel so alone and isolated.
Dr. Aimee: Talking about support, and listening to the podcast, it sounds like you’ve surrounded yourself with this great village. You talk about different practitioners that you’ve worked with. Can you describe some of the support that you’ve received for people that are listening? I always say build your fertility team, build it upfront. Tell us about the members of your team.
Tara Lipinski: I remember coming across one of your posts where you say you can’t ask too many questions. When you’re wanting to find an answer, you can’t ask too many questions. Don’t feel afraid of asking your doctor a million questions.
I think that’s what I eventually really felt more confident in. I would really try to do my research. I would come into the office, Dr. Beck at California Fertility Partners is my doctor, and halfway through the process, I’m so lucky that he was like, “Let me hear this out,” because I had this list of questions. Can you explain this? Could we do this? I also had endometriosis. I had seen Dr. Orbuch, who is an amazing surgeon in Los Angeles. I’ve seen Dr. Nezhat in San Francisco or San Jose. Life changing. Even talking to you. It’s a team.
It’s a team of people that surround you and lift you up. I just think that you need that. You need that with your friends, you need that with your family, and then the team of doctors that you have is so important. I am grateful to the clinic that I’ve been at for the care that I’ve received when I’ve really needed it, when I’ve needed a surgery, when I’ve needed to be in touch with a specialist that deals exactly with this issue. There was a part of me, too, going through this process in the podcast, of how many women are maybe being referred to OBs that are doing endo surgeries, that are not doing excision surgeries, and how they could still be left in pain.
So, I think building a team is really important.
Dr. Aimee: You have a great team. Your husband Todd and you are adorable. I just love the back and forth and your sense of humor through it all. Was it always like that?
Tara Lipinski: I deal with things in life like that, just the sarcastic humor, because we say if not, at some point you’re just crying all of the time and that’s no fun.
Dr. Aimee: Right.
Tara Lipinski: I think that for Todd and I there were a lot of learning curves here and there that we had to figure out together how to support each other in this process. I am very Type A, I had a schedule, I wanted to go all in. Todd is a little more laid back. So, we had to figure out how to merge those styles where we still both felt supported.
Dr. Aimee: What advice do you have for other people who want to share their story, how do they start?
Tara Lipinski: I think a lot about this because, yes, I’m sharing my story, but like I said, I’m in a slightly different place now where I feel emotionally ready and able to do that. I’m in a phase where I am not deep in the trenches of disappointment and failure, and that makes a huge difference.
I think, again, to each their own. I don’t think there should be any pressure for women to share their story because I realize how hard it was to share my story, and I didn’t for five years. I realize how hard it is now, we’re filming episodes now that you’ll see later, but I can’t talk about those yet because I’m still so in this anxiety-ridden place.
I feel like whenever someone feels ready to talk about it, they should. But I do think when you get to that place, if you want to, and you don’t have to, sharing will only open up this conversation in a bigger and broader way where I think it will help women feel less shame. That’s how I feel. I feel like as much as we know, miscarriage, loss, failure, infertility or IVF is not your fault, but there is something I felt that at the end of the day, I didn’t feel comfortable just blaring it to the world. I hope that feeling can change, because it is common.
Dr. Aimee: Five years ago, let’s go backward five years, starting your journey, and let’s imagine that you’re giving this advice to someone who is basically you. What is the one piece of advice you have for them to carry them through the five years with the strength and resilience that you always had? What advice would you give them so they can keep going?
Tara Lipinski: I think it’s the same advice I had to people that were starting off in sports or skating. I always wrote on my little autograph, “Always dream.” I think there was something inside of me that I’m a realist, I am very much where I’m not always the most optimistic. If we’re going into a cycle, I’m thinking of all the possible things that could go wrong. But at the end of the day, there is a huge part of me that is that dreamer and believes if I want to continue this process, I have the ability to see where it takes me. I want to keep dreaming. I want to keep hoping.
Yes, if one day I lost that and didn’t want that, maybe that would have sent us in a different direction. I think staying in the game, if you still feel that urge. You could speak to this, but it’s crazy to me after doing it for five years. You could do one cycle, and I sent out 7 embryos and got zero. Then three months later, you do another cycle, and you could get many embryos. It’s just this awful gambling game, but one bad result doesn’t mean that it’s over.
Dr. Aimee: Thank you for that. Lots of great words of wisdom. Do you have time for just a little bit more? We have so many comments.
Tara Lipinski: Sure.
Dr. Aimee: Okay. Here we go. Would you ever perform your Spice Girls act from a few years ago on your TV series? What is that all about?
Tara Lipinski: After I won the Olympics, there was a Spice Girls routine that I did. No, I would never do that. That was a bad moment.
Dr. Aimee: I think I might Google that now. Everyone is saying, “Isn’t Tara beautiful?” Someone is saying, “You’re my role model.” There are some really sweet comments here.
Tara Lipinski: While you’re looking, I need to also shout out to you, Dr. Aimee. I have been watching your shows and I have been scouring your posts for years. Again, how I feel now wanting to be able to give back in any way that I can. I can’t imagine the crazy days you have with all of your patients and then what you do to try to spread information and to talk to these women and answer their questions. You are a unicorn shining star.
Dr. Aimee: It takes one to know one. Some fun ice skating questions. How old were you when you started skating? What made you become a figure skater? I think those are kind of fun.
Tara Lipinski: I started roller skating. It was the ‘80s and roller skating was big back then. My mom and her friend took me and my friend at the time, who was also 3-years-old, to a roller rink because there was an ad in the newspaper, you went and you’d get a free Carebear, and Carebears were huge in the ‘80s. We wanted a free Carebear. In fine print, it said “after 12 lessons.” Of course, we had to go through with those lessons, and that’s how we got the Carebear. My mom has it and it says Carebear from Hell, because it really threw our life upside down.
We started skating that way and they were like, “You’re not too bad at it. You should try competing.” End of story.
Dr. Aimee: That’s adorable. A few cute comments here.
“I had my first IVF appointment yesterday. Tara’s podcast has been my security blanket.”
“Your skating got me through the chicken pox when I was a kid. I loved watching you.”
“Do you have a favorite 1990s song of all time?”
Tara Lipinski: Oh my gosh. The 1990s. Wasn’t that like the Ace of Bass era? That’s really going back.
Dr. Aimee: I kind of like Push It because one day, I dream of singing with Salt ‘N Peppa, Tush It, my own cover version.
Tara Lipinski: I love that.
Dr. Aimee: I’ll just share this comment, “Thanks for sharing your story. Sometimes it feels like you’re the only one who is going through fertility issues, and I think that you make us feel less alone.”
Tara Lipinski: That’s the other thing I hope with the podcast, because it is heavy material of what we’re going through, but we didn’t want it to be a depressing podcast. We wanted it to show the real moments of life. I hope that Todd and I are able to make the audience, those watching or listening, feel hopeful and feel like they’re learning information, and they can laugh with our funny stories and then also feel like they can relate to the harder moments because we all go through them, and you feel, hopefully, less alone.
Dr. Aimee: Right. Very sweet comment here, “It’s surreal that you were my idol when I was a young skater, and now your podcast is helping me through my infertility journey. Thank you.”
Someone is sharing a question about endometriosis. Did you have any symptoms of endo or was it completely silent?
Tara Lipinski: I did have symptoms, but because I don’t think it’s talked about enough, I don’t think sometimes when you go to your OB and explain the pain that it’s always taken as seriously as it can be. I didn’t have the traditional cramps or bad cycles or periods, but I laugh because I had “butt pain,” and I always used to think that it was because I fell too hard on my tailbone from skating all those years.
Sometimes when I would get this stabbing pain, goodness, those triple lutzes really did my body in. Later, we realized there is a correlation there because endometriosis can be in your entire pelvic region. That’s how I started to connect the dots. Then the first scan, the ultrasound, the doctor suspected that I had endo, and then the ball kept rolling.
Dr. Aimee: I see. Someone is asking, “Do you have any tips for recovery after a laparoscopic surgery for endometriosis?” Someone is just sharing that they are having their surgery tomorrow.
Tara Lipinski: One of the worst parts of my endo surgeries was the phrenic nerve that when you would have all the gas from the surgery and then you’d get this horrible shoulder pain for three days. You girls out there with endo, you know what I’m talking about. For me, the second surgery, light walking, but the more that I was able to walk a little bit the first and second day, it really helped that pain.
Dr. Aimee: Got it. Did that butt pain that you just described get better after your surgery?
Tara Lipinski: It did. What’s unfortunate is that I kept doing cycle after cycle, pregnancy after pregnancy, so it keeps coming back. I think I will at some point need a third surgery.
Dr. Aimee: How have you kept in shape throughout all of this?
Tara Lipinski: It’s hard. Obviously, these hormones. Day four, you’re like, “Throw out even the Lululemons!” because those aren’t going on. You put on your little mu-mu dresses and try to feel cute. I obviously take my fitness and nutrition and all of that so seriously from being an athlete, but I always try to remember that I’m doing this for a big reason. There’s this big purpose that I’m doing this, and if my body is going through these changes, then I just keep thinking of that little embryo on ice and be like it’s fine, I can deal with this cute bloat. People may think I’m pregnant, I’m definitely not, but I’ll deal with the bloat.
Dr. Aimee: Right. Kristin McQuaid is lovely; London is her daughter, and London is the Reason. I have a sweatshirt, I have all the merch. She’s on a mission to educate people who have gone through stillbirth.
Tara Lipinski: I messaged with her. I saw her message as I was going through my DMs. It touched me so deeply. I said to her, oh my goodness, she has been through it, and what a warrior she is to have gone through that.
Dr. Aimee: I’m glad you guys have connected. She’s one of my favorite people.
Tara Lipinski: Yes.
Dr. Aimee: Tara, thank you for being on. Tell us where people can find the podcast.
Tara Lipinski: You can find Unexpecting on Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you listen to your podcasts, iHeart, Apple, etcetera. Spotify is great because you can see the video version as well. Then we’re putting up the video version on YouTube.
Dr. Aimee: Everyone needs to subscribe, listen, tune in. Every episode is so entertaining, so fun, heartbreaking, just easy to listen to. You just make the hard stuff a little bit easier to deal with.
Thank you, Tara. Love you.
Tara Lipinski: I love you, Dr. Aimee. You are the best.
Dr. Aimee: You are the best.
