Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by Prime Videos incredible
Speaker 1: new film Thirteen Lives, based on the gripping true story
Speaker 1: of the twenty eighteen tai Cave rescue. If you've been
Speaker 1: listening for a while, you'll know of this story from
Speaker 1: my all time favorite episode with doctor Richard Harris in
Speaker 1: episode one oh two, and now you can watch it
Speaker 1: unravel from August fifth.
Speaker 2: Be realistic, but also have your dreams and your aspirations,
Speaker 2: and you know you also need to be able to
Speaker 2: afford to look after yourself in this world. So it's
Speaker 2: a balance between the two things. I think take some
Speaker 2: things personally when it's right to do so, and other
Speaker 2: times just accept that it wasn't your time and it's
Speaker 2: not a reason to give up and to stop.
Speaker 3: What is hard an.
Speaker 2: Inverted commas for me is going to be very different
Speaker 2: to what it's hard for someone. But it's all relative
Speaker 2: and it's all hard, and I think in any situation
Speaker 2: there's always light at the end of the tunnel.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the cs the YA Podcast. Busy and happy
Speaker 1: are not the same thing. We too rarely question what
Speaker 1: makes the heart seeing. We work, then we rest, but
Speaker 1: rarely we play and often don't realize there's more than
Speaker 1: one way. So this is a platform to hear and
Speaker 1: explore the stories of those who found lives They adore,
Speaker 1: the good, bad and ugly, the best and worst day
Speaker 1: will bear all the facets of seizing your Yeay. I'm
Speaker 1: Sarah Davidson or a spoonful of Sarah, a lawyer turned
Speaker 1: funentrepreneur who swapped the suits and heels to co found
Speaker 1: matcha Maiden and matcha Milk Bark. Caesa is a series
Speaker 1: of conversations on finding a life you love and exploring
Speaker 1: the self doubt, challenge, joy.
Speaker 3: And fulfillment along the way.
Speaker 4: Hello, lovely aighborhood.
Speaker 1: Today's guest is special for so many different reasons, not
Speaker 1: least because we were born just three days apart and
Speaker 1: have so much else in common. You'll hear me say,
Speaker 1: I think we'd be dear friends if we lived in
Speaker 1: the same city. And I've admired this amazing woman for
Speaker 1: many years from Afar. Like many of our guests, you
Speaker 1: may have heard about Aaron Holland in one context that
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily represent the entirety of who she is. You
Speaker 1: might have first encountered her as Miss World Australia twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1: But there is so much more depth than detailed to
Speaker 1: her path yay that somehow flies under the radar. For example,
Speaker 1: she not only has an incredible voice, she's actually a
Speaker 1: classically trained soprano singer, graduated with a Bachelor of Classical
Speaker 1: Voice from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Is also qualified
Speaker 1: in clarinet music, theater, jazz and tap, and initially dreamt
Speaker 1: of being on Broadway. Also, like many of our guests,
Speaker 1: Aaron hasn't ended up exactly where she might have planned,
Speaker 1: but is seizing all her yeay nonetheless in presenting TV work,
Speaker 1: ambassadorships and the coolest role ever with the gigantic Pakistan
Speaker 1: Sluper League as a cricket presenter. Her experience working with
Speaker 1: the PSL in such a different culture deserves a whole
Speaker 1: separate episode, which I actually think we'll try and do
Speaker 1: next time she's over there. We spoke about it a
Speaker 1: little bit offline, and if anyone is interested let us
Speaker 1: know we can do a different chat about that. But
Speaker 1: as promised in the anonymous Q and A episode, it's
Speaker 1: Erin's journey with Fatilla and IVF that we're mainly here
Speaker 1: to chat about today. This is one of the only
Speaker 1: podcasts Aaron has done on the topic since first opening
Speaker 1: up a little earlier this year about her challenges with
Speaker 1: conceiving and the IVF process, and I'm so so honored
Speaker 1: that she agreed to come on the show and shares
Speaker 1: so openly and honestly about what it has involved physically, mentally,
Speaker 1: and emotionally.
Speaker 3: For her so far.
Speaker 1: I'll let you hear the rest from Erin directly, but
Speaker 1: I really hope you all learn as much as I did,
Speaker 1: enjoy her beautiful energy as much as I did, and
Speaker 1: particularly if anyone is going through anything similar, that this
Speaker 1: might have helped you, even in some small way, feel
Speaker 1: a little bit less alone. Lovely Eron, Welcome to CZA.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm so excited. I've said a couple of times
Speaker 1: now this We've had a few false starts, but I
Speaker 1: also said before we started recording that you're one of
Speaker 1: those people who I haven't had the pleasure of spending
Speaker 1: much time with in real life. But I just feel
Speaker 1: like if we lived close to each other, I would
Speaker 1: be in your pocket.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. I think you should come here. I should get
Speaker 3: down to Welburn way more often than I do. I think, yeah,
Speaker 3: we'd definitely be great mates. But I'm so happy to
Speaker 3: be chatting to you, and I feel like I know
Speaker 3: you anyway. It's it's fine, I know me too, oh
Speaker 3: my gosh.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's just been amazing to watch so many
Speaker 1: different parts of your journey from a far You've been
Speaker 1: such an inspiration and role model, and particularly in the
Speaker 1: last couple of months and maybe year. I think we
Speaker 1: got married around the same time, and then we didn't
Speaker 1: get our honeymoons at the same time, and then we
Speaker 1: had our replacement honeymoons at the same time.
Speaker 2: That was weird, wasn't it, Like pretty much the exact
Speaker 2: same time. Very different places we went to, but pretty
Speaker 2: much the exact same time. I know, Oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: I feel your pain. Girlfriend, We've really had the same
Speaker 2: kind of journey. I can't but so happy that we
Speaker 2: got it done. It's done, finally a year and a
Speaker 2: half later, and honeymoon's done.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy both of us did one anyway as well,
Speaker 1: because I feel like you could have totally just left
Speaker 1: that experience as like, oh we didn't get to do it.
Speaker 1: Then we'll never do it. But it's like, you deserve
Speaker 1: to have that beautiful little love bubble again, you.
Speaker 2: Know, I think so, And there was something quite magic
Speaker 2: about doing it later you kind of reconnect and find
Speaker 2: that again. If you'd done straight after the wedding, well
Speaker 2: of course you're in that love bubble, but to sort
Speaker 2: of try and create another one all that time later
Speaker 2: was actually really nice. I think moment an opportunity to
Speaker 2: reconnect in a world that's been well, let's face it,
Speaker 2: really had dick since we did get married. We thought
Speaker 2: we were through the worst of it, and we really weren't.
Speaker 2: Little did we know, Little did we know twenty twenty
Speaker 2: one was no better than twenty twenty But really glad that, Yeah,
Speaker 2: we got the weddings in there when we did, for sure.
Speaker 1: Oh thank goodness. I just yeah, I didn't realize how
Speaker 1: close it actually was until looking back, and I was like.
Speaker 2: Wow, Yeah, I think the wedding gods were looking down
Speaker 2: on us just for that tiny little window before or
Speaker 2: help recluse for the second half of twenty twenty one
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, as you may know, you may not know.
Speaker 1: I love to kick off every episode with a little
Speaker 1: icebreaker before we jump into your story, and particularly for
Speaker 1: people like yourself who are not only incredibly stunning, hugely successful,
Speaker 1: and who often people have walked into your life through
Speaker 1: a chapter like Miss Universe or a big TV career,
Speaker 1: It's easy to forget that you're just a human who
Speaker 1: has many relatable, down to earth sides to you. So
Speaker 1: what would you say, or what would Cutsy say is
Speaker 1: the most normal relatable thing about you?
Speaker 2: I mean, deep down, I'm just a little boging kid
Speaker 2: that grew up in far North Queensland, Like I'm from
Speaker 2: cans and I say that word Bogan with love, like
Speaker 2: we're you know, so relaxed, so down to earth. Just
Speaker 2: you know, my childhood was amazing growing up there, and
Speaker 2: whilst it had none of the industry, none of the
Speaker 2: life that I live these days, it had so many
Speaker 2: wonderful things that I think have just made me a
Speaker 2: more relatable person now that I'm doing what I'm doing
Speaker 2: in Sydney, and Okay, I just think at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, my brother always called me the Bogan Princess.
Speaker 2: He's like, because you look like you know I put
Speaker 2: together on the outside of deep down, we know you're
Speaker 2: an absolute mess and I think that's so true. Like
Speaker 2: it's you know, I'm being a performer. I'm used to
Speaker 2: putting on a costume or putting on a face of
Speaker 2: makeup and fronting up for whatever my job is that day.
Speaker 2: But at the end of it, I'd really just rather
Speaker 2: be in my truckie sitting on the couch, want be
Speaker 2: eating a bag of all teasers, and yeah, just just
Speaker 2: being really relaxed. And I think growing up in Cans
Speaker 2: and growing up with the very very basic, very easy
Speaker 2: going lifestyle that I had has set me in goodstead
Speaker 2: for you know, what's been a really crazy Yeah, I
Speaker 2: suppose eight nine years of living this career and this.
Speaker 3: Life that I have.
Speaker 2: So yeah, just a normal, normal, little bogan princess from Cans.
Speaker 4: That's what my brother would call me.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I love that. So it's really interesting
Speaker 1: that you mentioned your childhood as well, because I think,
Speaker 1: as you know, the reason I spend so much of
Speaker 1: this show on going right back to the beginning. The
Speaker 1: Wayta is the first section where we trace back all
Speaker 1: the chapters before the one that people often meet you in,
Speaker 1: and it's because there's, you know, so much of your
Speaker 1: life that people do know about, but there's so much
Speaker 1: from before that that I don't think many people really
Speaker 1: ever find out about because it's maybe not the sexy
Speaker 1: part of your life or the famous part of your life.
Speaker 1: But I loved reading that you know your musical flare.
Speaker 1: Most people, I don't think even knew that you could
Speaker 1: sing until you started doing more singing videos, and that
Speaker 1: you started at three years old, and that your whole
Speaker 1: first life was even studying at the conservatorium. Like, it's
Speaker 1: just so cool. So can you take us back to
Speaker 1: your younger self and what you were like as a child,
Speaker 1: how you got into music then, and then figuring out
Speaker 1: that that was what you love to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, music is the biggest part of my life, and
Speaker 2: it still kind of weirds me out that people don't
Speaker 2: know that I sing. But like you said, what I'm
Speaker 2: sort of known for in the industry these days, it's
Speaker 2: being a presenter and coming from a beauty queen background.
Speaker 2: But I've been singing and playing music and reading music
Speaker 2: since I was three years old. My dad would sit
Speaker 2: down with me. He'd loved music himself. He couldn't afford
Speaker 2: an instrument when he was a child, so he was
Speaker 2: very gifted musically and had the air for it, but
Speaker 2: he didn't have the means to pursue even just playing
Speaker 2: in school. So it was something that it kind of went,
Speaker 2: I'm going to throw it on my children as early
Speaker 2: as I can. If it sticks, great, If it doesn't,
Speaker 2: at least I've given them the opportunity. And being the firstborn,
Speaker 2: you know, it was sitting down playing the recorder, tinkling
Speaker 2: around listening to music I've got such a good education
Speaker 2: of sort of like eighties, nineties noughties rock. Thanks Dad,
Speaker 2: as he loved it, like, you know, to the point
Speaker 2: wh I remember. I think I was around seven years
Speaker 2: old and I wanted an Aqua turn Back time.
Speaker 3: I think it was his second song after Barbie get Oh.
Speaker 2: I really wanted that CD, and he was like, how
Speaker 2: about Time after Time? I greened and I'm like, ah, oh,
Speaker 2: like thanks Dad for this two AM Matchbox twenty CD.
Speaker 4: Not what I wanted, but sure we'll give it a go.
Speaker 4: And yeah, I just I just love it.
Speaker 2: He just sort of pushed his taste of music of me,
Speaker 2: and I absorbed so much of it, like even down
Speaker 2: to apparently when I was a child, I was completely
Speaker 2: nocturnal and I would sleep all day and then I'd
Speaker 2: rage all night, so Dad would sit up and watch
Speaker 2: Rage on TV for hours and hours in the early
Speaker 2: hours of the morning with me, and I swear I've
Speaker 2: just absorbed that.
Speaker 3: And even to this day, I hear music from yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Guess eighty nine and ninety when we'd been super young,
Speaker 2: and I know the music and I know the words,
Speaker 2: and I don't really know why, but I reckon it's
Speaker 2: because I've just sat there like a little blob and
Speaker 2: by osmosis have absorbed all of this music from such
Speaker 2: a young age. But you know, I started playing the
Speaker 2: clarinet when I was.
Speaker 3: Eight years old. I was actually a very good clarinetist.
Speaker 2: So I got all of my examinations up to an AMOS,
Speaker 2: which if you're into music, you'll know that it's a
Speaker 2: DO GRADEES one to eight, and then there's other qualifyss
Speaker 2: after that, so music theory, vocal exams, clarinet exams.
Speaker 3: I think I did music in grade twelve.
Speaker 2: I didn't even sing for that, which I ended up
Speaker 2: doing at the conservatorium, but I played clarinet and I
Speaker 2: kind of total the idea of being a professional instrumentalist
Speaker 2: post school at university, and I sort of figured out
Speaker 2: when I was around fourteen years old, when I was
Speaker 2: also dancing at the same time that I wanted to
Speaker 2: be on the stage in the musical, not underneath it
Speaker 2: in the orchestra.
Speaker 3: I was too much of a chef pony. I wanted
Speaker 3: to be right and center.
Speaker 2: I was like, I want to be like sitting underneath
Speaker 2: playing for the people on stage.
Speaker 3: I want to be on stage. And Mom's like, of
Speaker 3: course you do.
Speaker 1: No surprises to us, Darling, no surprises to us.
Speaker 2: And growing up in Cans, you know, playing music wasn't cool.
Speaker 2: If you're a sporty that was cool. If you're you know,
Speaker 2: someone who wores gate shoes and hang out with the
Speaker 2: stoners in the backyard, that was cool. It certainly wasn't
Speaker 2: cool to play the clarinet. But luckily I just I
Speaker 2: always had this feeling of I get me wrong. I
Speaker 2: hated not being cool. Everyone wants to be cool when
Speaker 2: they're in school, and I really wasn't. I was so tall,
Speaker 2: so awkward, played a clarinet, big buck teeth, just wanted
Speaker 2: to be friends with everyone.
Speaker 4: Really wasn't.
Speaker 2: But I always knew, like, I'm good at this and
Speaker 2: this is my place, and I found my people and
Speaker 2: I never ever went straight away from not wanting to
Speaker 2: do what I was doing with music and pushing myself
Speaker 2: as much.
Speaker 3: As I did because I knew I was good at it.
Speaker 2: And I think for so many kids, you just want
Speaker 2: to find something that you're good at and a place
Speaker 2: where you belong, and for me.
Speaker 3: That was music.
Speaker 2: That was hanging out with my music friends, and you know,
Speaker 2: we weren't cool, but we didn't care, and we were
Speaker 2: so busy with everything that we did. So even though
Speaker 2: I grew up in cans which is obviously, you know,
Speaker 2: quite regional, very far away from our next major city,
Speaker 2: which is Brisbane two hours and a plane away, we
Speaker 2: still had a lot of amazing teachers and quality education
Speaker 2: and competitions in that area. So I really did hone
Speaker 2: a skill set which obviously I had ability for and
Speaker 2: a talent for, but I did actually have access to
Speaker 2: the teachers that helped me get to a level where
Speaker 2: I am good enough to go to Sydney and study
Speaker 2: singing at the Sydney Conservatorium. And I was the only
Speaker 2: girl in my major stream of music voice performance in
Speaker 2: the entirety of Australia myself and there were two guys so.
Speaker 3: To be a little kid from Cans who was good enough.
Speaker 2: And mind you like, you know, my parents were very supportive,
Speaker 2: but they're also really realistic.
Speaker 3: They're both school teachers.
Speaker 2: I actually remember Mum flying me down to Sydney during schoolies.
Speaker 2: There was no chance I was going to schoolies. Forget
Speaker 2: about it, because the teachers they know what you're actually
Speaker 2: doing when you say you go into a friend's house,
Speaker 2: so there was none of that.
Speaker 3: We flew down to Sydney and had a lesson with
Speaker 3: the head of Voice at Sydney conn and.
Speaker 2: She literally sat there and was like, is she any
Speaker 2: good because we can't afford to do this if it's
Speaker 2: not even a remote chance that she's ever going to
Speaker 2: be good.
Speaker 3: Enough one day.
Speaker 2: And it's a lot to take on as a child,
Speaker 2: but it was also really important, like be realist, stick
Speaker 2: but also have your dreams and your aspirations and you
Speaker 2: know we'll get behind you and support you one hundred
Speaker 2: percent of the way. But you know you also need
Speaker 2: to be able to afford to look after yourself.
Speaker 3: In this world.
Speaker 2: So it's a balance between the two things. I think
Speaker 2: when you come from you know, these small towns where
Speaker 2: there aren't a lot of opportunity. It's all well and
Speaker 2: good to have these wonderful, you know, big dreams, and
Speaker 2: I certainly had the biggest of dreams. But I also
Speaker 2: came from a background where it was okay, but you know,
Speaker 2: can you support yourself and you do well in school,
Speaker 2: are you really sure this is what you want to do?
Speaker 2: Because you can go on study medicine, you can go
Speaker 2: and study law.
Speaker 3: You're sure you really.
Speaker 4: Want to sing?
Speaker 3: And I was like, yeah, all I want to do
Speaker 3: is be on stage beyond Broadway. And Mom's like, okay,
Speaker 3: all right, your friend, no worries.
Speaker 2: But you know, I think it's that growing up and
Speaker 2: being supported in pursuing my passions, but having that realistic
Speaker 2: background of you know, my parents always sort of keeping
Speaker 2: it real with me as well. My mum was never
Speaker 2: a show mum. If I killed off stage and it
Speaker 2: wasn't a great performance, she'd tell me it wasn't and
Speaker 2: I go, yeah, you're right, I'm going to go practice,
Speaker 2: try harder, and come back next time. But I think
Speaker 2: that was really good for me, and that's what's made
Speaker 2: me quite resilient in surviving in this industry that you know,
Speaker 2: you and I both a part of is I've been
Speaker 2: competing and getting an adjudication on my performance since I
Speaker 2: was seven eight years old when I did my first
Speaker 2: step for Black and White.
Speaker 3: This is how you went? Are you any good?
Speaker 2: Are you not? So I'm kind of used to the
Speaker 2: setbacks of what happens in this industry because I'm so
Speaker 2: used to having a really honest representation on how I'm
Speaker 2: going and where I'm at. And I do think that
Speaker 2: that's what's helped me kind of stick it out for
Speaker 2: I suppose as long as I have and this well,
Speaker 2: because it is really hard and being your freelancer is
Speaker 2: really hard. But you know, if it didn't work out
Speaker 2: doing what I was doing, I would have been back
Speaker 2: home in cans and doing something where I could.
Speaker 3: Afford to live. I've always had that, you know, You've
Speaker 3: got to provide for yourself.
Speaker 2: You've got to you've got to make this a real thing,
Speaker 2: because there's no one there to pick up the pieces
Speaker 2: if it doesn't work out in Sydney. My parents are
Speaker 2: there for me back in cans for sure, but if
Speaker 2: I wanted to stay here, I needed to really dig
Speaker 2: deep and make something of it. So I'm so proud
Speaker 2: that after I think this is my fifteenth year in Sydney.
Speaker 3: I'm still here.
Speaker 4: She's still here, She's surmised, and that.
Speaker 1: I think is something that again, like people often would
Speaker 1: meet you as a former Miss World and think, oh,
Speaker 1: she just had, you know, had it all handed to
Speaker 1: her on a silver platter because look she's beautiful and
Speaker 1: she's a Sydney girl, and not know that you had
Speaker 1: been through all this to actually get there. And I think,
Speaker 1: what's so fascinating hearing you speak about that fine line
Speaker 1: in you know, finding a joy or what I call
Speaker 1: Caesarjolla that as a child, a lot of us start
Speaker 1: in an artistic like a ballet or a music, but
Speaker 1: so many people let go of it at the end
Speaker 1: of high school or even the end of primary school
Speaker 1: because of that realism, because it's an incredibly competitive industry,
Speaker 1: because often your parents are worried about that. You know,
Speaker 1: need to build a life and be able to pay
Speaker 1: for yourself, and it's a really difficult thing. It's one
Speaker 1: thing to say, find your joy and stick with it,
Speaker 1: but then you've got to make a life out of it,
Speaker 1: and parents let alone for the person themselves to balance
Speaker 1: those two like, I want my passion, but am I
Speaker 1: good enough for it. You want to follow your dreams,
Speaker 1: but you don't want to have them crushed.
Speaker 2: You know, And they just want what's best for you.
Speaker 2: They want you to be able to support yourself into
Speaker 2: able to function.
Speaker 3: As a fully fledged adult.
Speaker 2: And for me, I don't know if it was stubbornness
Speaker 2: or stupidity, but I was such a one track.
Speaker 3: Mind was it will work, it has to work. This
Speaker 3: is all I want to do. And I've pivoted a
Speaker 3: little bit.
Speaker 2: I'm not performing on stage in musical theater, but presenting
Speaker 2: and being on camera and being an MC and you know,
Speaker 2: shooting in.
Speaker 3: A campaign or whatever it is.
Speaker 2: You are on stage, you have an audience, and I've
Speaker 2: just sort of used the skills that I learned through
Speaker 2: through music and through performing on stage and put it
Speaker 2: into this.
Speaker 3: World that I'm in now. So it was none of
Speaker 3: it was And I still want to sing more.
Speaker 2: I still need to get back to singing more because
Speaker 2: it was my first love and I absolutely adore, adore it,
Speaker 2: and I do I do miss having it as more
Speaker 2: a part of my life. But I think doing what
Speaker 2: I've done and trying to grow a brand and a
Speaker 2: presence in this world does inevitably allow you to do
Speaker 2: more of the things that you love to do as well.
Speaker 2: Like in any job, you start at the bottom, you
Speaker 2: work your way up, and the opportunities and things that
Speaker 2: you become exposed to and sort of you know, get
Speaker 2: become allowed to do in a way, it grows as
Speaker 2: maybe you know you and your business grows. So I
Speaker 2: am looking for opportunities to sing more and it is
Speaker 2: something that does set me apart. I suppose when clients
Speaker 2: are looking for an ambassador for that race day or
Speaker 2: you know that airline always that I work with, it's
Speaker 2: you know, you can offer a performance singing the national
Speaker 2: anthem and performing a sess during that big event.
Speaker 4: Singing charity events.
Speaker 2: I love getting up and singing it to it a
Speaker 2: cure for jeans or I'm putting my hand up for
Speaker 2: everything that i can because it's such a gift, and
Speaker 2: I wish I got to use a gift more than
Speaker 2: I do. But I'm so happy that I've had the
Speaker 2: path that I've had, and that's the way to survive
Speaker 2: in this industry too. I think it's pivoting. It's that
Speaker 2: lovely p word of being and.
Speaker 3: Yeah and doing what needs to be done.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I guess to survive in this world, and
Speaker 2: you know, when you don't come from a big city,
Speaker 2: and perhaps there isn't that backing to just keep at
Speaker 2: it no matter what for years and years and years.
Speaker 2: You sort of end up drawing on whatever you can
Speaker 2: and being a kind of a jack of a few
Speaker 2: trades has actually served me well and allowed me to
Speaker 2: survive in this industry. Well.
Speaker 1: I do think you are maybe our first graduate of
Speaker 1: an actual music degree who did continue on and didn't
Speaker 1: let go of it at high school and then did
Speaker 1: go on to study. But you have, as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: been able to pivot to use that in so many
Speaker 1: different ways. You are working with incredible brands like Kataria,
Speaker 1: ways you're working with the PSL like that is extraordinary.
Speaker 1: You've got such a breadth that's not just singing, but
Speaker 1: you've been able to build this brand that is so multifaceted.
Speaker 1: And I know that you know the Misworld adventure and
Speaker 1: all the steps sort of around that chapter of your
Speaker 1: life have been covered a lot elsewhere, and I really
Speaker 1: want to use most of this episode for a topic
Speaker 1: that is more recent and perhaps a little bit less covered,
Speaker 1: but just to quickly get us there for anyone else
Speaker 1: who is has a musical background perhaps or just has
Speaker 1: a specific background but wants to expand. How did you
Speaker 1: make those pivots? How did you start to position yourself
Speaker 1: so broadly to move from one thing to now using it?
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously Miss World was part of it, but
Speaker 1: not every Misworld competitor then turns out with the career
Speaker 1: that you have now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at the time I'd finished the Conservatorium, I was
Speaker 2: working a lot of primo work, like seven days a week,
Speaker 2: two or three shifts a day, just to make ends
Speaker 2: meet whilst awaited for my musical theater auditions. And I
Speaker 2: got really close to some this is around the founta
Speaker 2: of the Opera, hairsprayh We got close, but not close
Speaker 2: enough in the end, and it was, you know, having
Speaker 2: those knockbacks and even greater stage now. Even at one
Speaker 2: point my stuff got sent to America for Glinda and
Speaker 2: Wicked as an understudy, and I was getting close to
Speaker 2: some and others out first round, and sometimes there was
Speaker 2: never any rhyme or reason to it. Maybe they were
Speaker 2: only replacing one ensemble character. You never really knew when
Speaker 2: he went in for an audition what they were looking for.
Speaker 2: And I know on my CV, sure it had graduated
Speaker 2: the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, but there was nothing else
Speaker 2: to show on that CV other than where I'd studied.
Speaker 2: And it's a very competitive industry. We have as extraordinary
Speaker 2: talent in this country and not enough shows to go around,
Speaker 2: so it's really hard to break in.
Speaker 3: And I sort of thought, well, what.
Speaker 2: Can I get on this that is going to peak
Speaker 2: some interest and maybe get myself an agent, because it's
Speaker 2: really hard to kind of get.
Speaker 3: Your way in there. At the time.
Speaker 2: You saw your just Center Campbell's, now Franklin's, your Jen Hawkins,
Speaker 2: your Rachel Fincher's, all Queensland girls too, Actually not not Jen,
Speaker 2: but you know a lot of the girls have done well,
Speaker 2: had come through the channel of a pageant. And it
Speaker 2: wasn't that I ever was a model. I never thought
Speaker 2: that I could be a model. I never identify for
Speaker 2: being a model. But I saw the actually very vastly
Speaker 2: different careers, but you know, the careers that these women
Speaker 2: had had off the back of doing something like that,
Speaker 2: and I thought, hey, like maybe it'll help. I'll give
Speaker 2: it a go because as a singer, I thought, well,
Speaker 2: I can sing for my talent which in Miss World
Speaker 2: is basically Miss World is miscongeniality the movie.
Speaker 3: It's about charity.
Speaker 2: So well your peace, You've got your talent section with
Speaker 2: the water glasses, except I say, you've got your interview
Speaker 2: and you've got your fitness.
Speaker 4: So I thought you've got your world peace tick, got
Speaker 4: your on peace.
Speaker 2: So and we you know, Miss World does an incredible
Speaker 2: work with the charities that they partner with, and at
Speaker 2: the time, we did this amazing Aboriginal Indigenous outreach program
Speaker 2: in you know, Central Australia, the little community which is
Speaker 2: hours past Kings Canyon, hours past Ularu, literally in the
Speaker 2: middle of the middle of nowhere. It was an amazing
Speaker 2: initiative and we did some amazing things. So the charity
Speaker 2: component was incredibly important, which I loved it. And again
Speaker 2: so sort of like try to recoec myself, like Eric,
Speaker 2: why are you doing a pageant? Like what?
Speaker 3: And people would say the same thing to me.
Speaker 2: But you know, when you break it down, amazing charity
Speaker 2: work that they're doing, which is incredibly important. There's the
Speaker 2: talent facets, so I can show people that I can sing,
Speaker 2: there's the interview, I can chat to people. I think
Speaker 2: I can be eloquent enough to get through that sure,
Speaker 2: and then you know, all all of these sort of things,
Speaker 2: I thought, well, you know, I feel like I could
Speaker 2: stand out from the crowd at least, because when you
Speaker 2: go into these competitions, you're surrounded by the most lovely, intelligent,
Speaker 2: beautiful women you can never imagine in won bring.
Speaker 3: It's so easy to like go within yourself and think,
Speaker 3: I don't belong here. What do you think you could
Speaker 3: offer that these people can't?
Speaker 2: But I think having that talent portion as something that
Speaker 2: I thought I could championaly stand out from the crowd
Speaker 2: with that would serve me well.
Speaker 3: So in short, I.
Speaker 2: Competed in twenty twelve in Miss World.
Speaker 3: I came top ten. I had no idea what I
Speaker 3: was doing.
Speaker 2: So luck with most jobs, your resss you think, okay,
Speaker 2: where can I improve?
Speaker 3: What did I learn?
Speaker 2: And I come back stronger The next year I did
Speaker 2: Miss Universe and Miss World that year and I ended
Speaker 2: up winning Miss World. So twenty thirteen it kind of
Speaker 2: all changed and I met my manager who I still
Speaker 2: have to this very day. Books amazing, we love you,
Speaker 2: and yeah, we've been together for the last I think
Speaker 2: it was eight years this year, which is really exciting,
Speaker 2: and he took a chance on me and helped me
Speaker 2: build a brand from the bottom up, which was amazing,
Speaker 2: and i've you know, in turn, really we have a
Speaker 2: really great relationship where I don't think of him as
Speaker 2: my employee. I think we are business partners and we
Speaker 2: both work together to build a brand, and he's just
Speaker 2: been been wonderful for me. I feel like you always
Speaker 2: need someone in your corner, and to have someone in
Speaker 2: your corner for such a long time in this world
Speaker 2: has really helped me. So the Miss Australia thing really
Speaker 2: served a purpose and gave me, I feel like, the
Speaker 2: leg up I needed to at least get invited to
Speaker 2: the events and get in front of the right people.
Speaker 2: And then, you know, like with most things in life,
Speaker 2: you can have a door opened, but whether or not
Speaker 2: you walk through it and continue to push open the
Speaker 2: subsequent door, so well, that's what hopefully helps you survive
Speaker 2: in this way. Yeah, so that was the idea and
Speaker 2: how I sort of made peace with the idea of
Speaker 2: doing a pageant which was so completely off brand to
Speaker 2: what I thought I was going to do, which was
Speaker 2: a star on Broadway. It's just it's very strange but
Speaker 2: it worked, and I'm so glad it did.
Speaker 1: And I think it's such an interesting point here that like,
Speaker 1: you can go into something not necessarily thinking you're going
Speaker 1: to do it forever or that it is on brand
Speaker 1: for what you wear you want to end up, but
Speaker 1: you can see things as a launch pad and not
Speaker 1: a waste of time, even if you know you don't
Speaker 1: stick with it and you don't want to be a
Speaker 1: pageant person forever. That was my law degree. I didn't
Speaker 1: necessarily want to be there forever and my law career,
Speaker 1: but I don't regret a minute of it because it
Speaker 1: was such a stepping stone and I think we rush
Speaker 1: to need to get to where we want to be first,
Speaker 1: and it's like, actually there's probably like eighty five steps
Speaker 1: before you get there, and not all of them are
Speaker 1: really on brand all the time. But if you go
Speaker 1: into it with this mentality that it's going to open doors.
Speaker 1: And the other thing I love about you is that
Speaker 1: you know it did open a lot of doors, but
Speaker 1: you didn't get pulled through them. You had to choose
Speaker 1: to walk through those and then use the next eight
Speaker 1: years to actively walk through them, work hard to continue
Speaker 1: that you know a lot of people kind of win
Speaker 1: those competitions and fade off into the distance, but you've
Speaker 1: been able to turn it into this incredible career. Well,
Speaker 1: one thing I want to ask in that area is
Speaker 1: mentioned before, the idea of rejection being given really blunt
Speaker 1: feedback from a young age, that building that thicker skin
Speaker 1: of resilience. And it's hard in an industry that is
Speaker 1: really based on what you appeared to be, like your
Speaker 1: physical appearance or your physical dancing or your physical skill.
Speaker 1: It's quite confronting. And if self doubt and impost syndrome
Speaker 1: is common to everyone, I think is really ramped up
Speaker 1: in this kind of industry. As you were building that
Speaker 1: brand for yourself, how has self doubt and rejection and
Speaker 1: setbacks and imposter syndrome played out for you, and how
Speaker 1: have you learned to manage that and maybe not expected
Speaker 1: ever to go away, but learn how to put it
Speaker 1: aside or cope with it.
Speaker 2: I think it's important to note that it never goes away.
Speaker 2: I always feel it.
Speaker 3: I am actually a really emotional person.
Speaker 2: Like and it does, like I still get really upset
Speaker 2: when things don't go my way, but it's not allowing
Speaker 2: it to overcome you and to derail you. It's compet
Speaker 2: like for most things. Now I'm realizing accept it, feel
Speaker 2: the feels, deal with it, and move on. And I
Speaker 2: know that because it hurts me so much. I know
Speaker 2: that it means that I really care and I really
Speaker 2: want something enough, and I'm always really disappointed if I
Speaker 2: don't give it amazing performance, because it's just like, you know, no,
Speaker 2: you're better than that, and and you know it'll lead
Speaker 2: you up for a day or whatever it is, and
Speaker 2: then you move on. And I've also learned that you
Speaker 2: know to try and compartmentalize a little bit and say, Okay,
Speaker 2: well I wasn't right for that job, but it wasn't
Speaker 2: because I suck or because of how I lolcore, because
Speaker 2: of this and that and everything else. It was probably
Speaker 2: just because of X y Z and they went another
Speaker 2: way for that reason. To try not to take it
Speaker 2: so personally, and it's hard to because when you are
Speaker 2: you as your brand, it is personal. You take every
Speaker 2: step back as why don't you love me, what's reck me?
Speaker 3: What am I doing?
Speaker 4: Why did I fail?
Speaker 3: And getting the right advice from the right people.
Speaker 2: So if it is something that you're that you're maybe
Speaker 2: doing wrongly, you can improve, then that's constructive criticism. But
Speaker 2: if it's just there went another way because that person
Speaker 2: is qualified in that area and they want a presenter,
Speaker 2: that's more you know, down the line of that, rather
Speaker 2: than you or hate you.
Speaker 3: Just this industry takes time.
Speaker 2: You got to pay your dues great, Like, there's so
Speaker 2: many reasons for why things don't work out, and I
Speaker 2: think the worst thing you can do is let it
Speaker 2: eat you up and destroy that self confidence. But but
Speaker 2: I also think it's important to care, and caring is
Speaker 2: what makes you want to strive to be better. So
Speaker 2: for me personally, it's it's having a thick skin over
Speaker 2: a really soft jelly coating that feels everything and hate
Speaker 2: you to not be good enough, Like I'm such a
Speaker 2: perfectionism and a people pleaser like I just because I've
Speaker 2: grown up being on stage and being like, love me,
Speaker 2: where's my applause?
Speaker 4: The do a good job? Where's my god star?
Speaker 2: I know? And I was like that I have to
Speaker 2: have straight a's. I hated it if I wasn't if
Speaker 2: I wasn't perfect, And there's so many parts of my
Speaker 2: personality where you know, I wish I wasn't like that.
Speaker 2: Then I also like that for other parts, because it
Speaker 2: means that I just won't give up like you.
Speaker 4: Knock me over it.
Speaker 2: I'll stay down, I'll cry for half a day and
Speaker 2: that I'll get up and I'm back, you know, better
Speaker 2: than ever.
Speaker 3: And I think it's okay.
Speaker 2: I think it's okay to be a people person and
Speaker 2: to want to yeah, to want to impress and do
Speaker 2: the right thing and do a good job. I think
Speaker 2: there's no shame in that as well, and for me
Speaker 2: personally anyway, that that helps me be a better version
Speaker 2: of myself in this world. It's accepting the knock backs,
Speaker 2: it's taking stuff on board, not everything on board, but
Speaker 2: you know, taking advice from the people who you trust
Speaker 2: and respect in this world as well, because because no
Speaker 2: one is perfect, and you know, some jobs it will
Speaker 2: be keep out the right personally well you know, you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think I think that's the thing is it's this
Speaker 2: is awful advice because it changes. But you know, it
Speaker 2: takes some things personally when it's right to do so,
Speaker 2: and other times just accept that it wasn't your time
Speaker 2: and it's not a reason to give up and to stop.
Speaker 3: There's many reasons for why things don't work out, in
Speaker 3: this world.
Speaker 1: So people listening, well, no, this is like you almost
Speaker 1: said exactly the whole theme of this show just now,
Speaker 1: which is that self doubt is not meant to go away.
Speaker 1: It's a great sign that you're stepping out of the
Speaker 1: comfort zone and you're invested in doing a good job.
Speaker 1: And I too, sometimes wish I wasn't like that, but
Speaker 1: then I'm like, that's why I am who I am,
Speaker 1: because I care enough to feel nerves and to feel
Speaker 1: a little bit of imposter syndrome, but not so much
Speaker 1: that it makes you not do the thing anyway. It's
Speaker 1: just that you need to be able to acknowledge it
Speaker 1: and push through and do it regardless.
Speaker 3: And when you're nervous, so.
Speaker 2: I relate it to being on stage or being on camera,
Speaker 2: and a lot of the camera work that I do
Speaker 2: is live broadcast, so you don't get a chance to
Speaker 2: cut and then start again if you stuff up, Like
Speaker 2: if you forget a word on stage, mate, you better
Speaker 2: think of another one really quick.
Speaker 4: And I've done that plenty of times before and it
Speaker 4: can't be fuck well.
Speaker 2: I remember once actually, in a song recital in the conservatorium,
Speaker 2: I had a set of French songs and point I
Speaker 2: completely forgot all of the words and I was just
Speaker 2: singing random vowels, like literally just like whatever came into
Speaker 2: my head and it came off stage afterwards, and my
Speaker 2: singing teacher was like, look, time was great, placement was great,
Speaker 2: blah blah blah blah. Your French started like Swahili.
Speaker 4: But I was happy overall, and I was okay, thank God.
Speaker 4: But you can't stop in that situation.
Speaker 2: And I think the point of you bringing that up
Speaker 2: was is learning to harness nervousness for adrenaline in any facet,
Speaker 2: whether or not it's standing up in front of your
Speaker 2: work colleagues and speaking. If that's something that you find
Speaker 2: nerve wracking. For me, it's being on stage or being
Speaker 2: on camera. It's the nervousness shows that you care. And
Speaker 2: learning how to harness that adrenaline for good rather than
Speaker 2: learning it overcome you in the moment is definitely something
Speaker 2: that my career has taught me. And again it's a
Speaker 2: learning curve because every time you do put yourself out there,
Speaker 2: it feels different. But that's what I love about this
Speaker 2: job is no two days are the same and it's
Speaker 2: done a great job yesterday, but I can still get
Speaker 2: on stage or get on air and completely stuff it
Speaker 2: up in front of everybody, And I love that thrill.
Speaker 2: It doesn't scare me, it excites me. So I think
Speaker 2: I'm in the right line of work for sure.
Speaker 1: And such a healthy attitude towards it as well. I
Speaker 1: think that's something I've learning to harness the self doubt
Speaker 1: rather than be crippled by it is so incredibly important.
Speaker 3: No one cares about you as you do.
Speaker 1: Absolutely no one ever notices as much as you remember that,
Speaker 1: and I think the other thing as well is harnessing
Speaker 1: the perfectionism in a way that's useful rather than that
Speaker 1: detracts from what you're doing. And I definitely think this
Speaker 1: is relevant to the next topic. But one question I
Speaker 1: want to ask you before we get into the meat
Speaker 1: is about your decision to turn brunette, because I think
Speaker 1: that also is something that shouldn't necessarily be as big
Speaker 1: a thing as it sometimes is. But in an industry
Speaker 1: where you're presenting your physically on camera and in photos
Speaker 1: and stuff, was it a conscious decision? Is it something that,
Speaker 1: like women in general, I think sometimes in a business
Speaker 1: context feel not taken seriously if they present like in
Speaker 1: a way that they care about their appearance, like I
Speaker 1: found in business as a young woman, you often get underestimated.
Speaker 1: Was there any of that as a factor or were
Speaker 1: you just like I want to change, I'm naturally brunette.
Speaker 1: It's less maintenance. Like where did that all come from?
Speaker 1: And how did it did people change towards you?
Speaker 2: You're gonna laugh because it was for a job. What
Speaker 2: it was for a job, so typical erin will do
Speaker 2: whatever it takes for the job. It was fashion week
Speaker 2: in twenty eighteen and a color company approached me and said,
Speaker 2: you want to dye your hair pink?
Speaker 4: No way.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I could make pink work, but
Speaker 2: I'll go dark because I've been blowing my entire life.
Speaker 2: So I'm naturally very very fair as well, Like this
Speaker 2: is all every three weeks. I have to get my
Speaker 2: roots done because I'm so naturally light. It's all manufactured,
Speaker 2: the darkness. So I went dark for a job and
Speaker 2: the response was, oh my god, gosh, I love you dark.
Speaker 3: It brings out your eyes. I love this look on you.
Speaker 3: Donnie and my style as he's like.
Speaker 4: You're never going blond again, You're staying dark.
Speaker 2: My hairdresser having ten God love you. He will not
Speaker 2: tell me blond again.
Speaker 3: He's like, no, no, I will do it.
Speaker 2: I will not do it.
Speaker 3: This is better.
Speaker 2: And you know, I guess growing up as a performer,
Speaker 2: I care about you know, again, this is a perfectionist
Speaker 2: in me.
Speaker 3: I like to, you know, be put together.
Speaker 2: I like I feel like I've got my shit together
Speaker 2: when I've got my face done, and you know, when
Speaker 2: I get ready for work.
Speaker 3: That was just part of, you know, being a performer.
Speaker 2: You put your stage makeup on, you get your face ready,
Speaker 2: and you get out into the world. And I guess
Speaker 2: for that reason, I kind of don't I'm not really
Speaker 2: attached to my look as such.
Speaker 3: Like you know, long short hair, Like I don't care.
Speaker 2: I could walk into the hairdresser tomorrow and he'll cut
Speaker 2: it all off and it won't bother me.
Speaker 3: I don't really have a connection to.
Speaker 2: I suppose what you know, the color of my hair,
Speaker 2: all the length of my hair or what I'm wearing or.
Speaker 3: Whatever it is.
Speaker 2: I sort of I trust the people who know what
Speaker 2: they're doing. And I think that's been really useful for
Speaker 2: me in this world.
Speaker 3: Is you know, I have a manager and.
Speaker 2: A publicist because that's what he's good at. It's not
Speaker 2: what I'm good at. I have an amazing stylist on Igolola.
Speaker 2: He tells me what to air all the time. He
Speaker 2: is incredible, and I listened to him because he knows
Speaker 2: what he's talking about.
Speaker 4: And the same thing with my hairdresser.
Speaker 3: I'm like great.
Speaker 2: Like you know, I love surrounding myself with people who
Speaker 2: know what they're talking about. And I know how to present,
Speaker 2: and I know how to sing, and I know how
Speaker 2: to do a good job. And I think staying in
Speaker 2: my lane and then letting other people who have their lane,
Speaker 2: I suppose influence my life has been really helpful for
Speaker 2: me because I'm a really indecisive person. So I see
Speaker 2: against myself so much and I think, yeah, I went
Speaker 2: dark and I stayed dark because you know, the response
Speaker 2: was great, and I ended up working in Asia a
Speaker 2: lot more as a result. I think being blonde is
Speaker 2: just too unattainable. I think being blonde and working in
Speaker 2: India and Pakistan and Bangladesh and Nepal and the places
Speaker 2: that I have worked, blonde hair is amazing, but it's
Speaker 2: not relatable, whereas being white, but having dark hair in
Speaker 2: an Asian country, you're still I think you're still that
Speaker 2: little bit more relatable than if I was white with
Speaker 2: blonde hair and working on their TV channels and absorbing
Speaker 2: in their culture. And I do think that it's worked
Speaker 2: better for working in some of the countries that I've
Speaker 2: worked in, and I love absorbing myself in the culture.
Speaker 2: And you know, when I work in India and Pakistan
Speaker 2: and these places, I love wearing the local clothes, I
Speaker 2: love eating the local food.
Speaker 3: I love like I want to absorb the world around me.
Speaker 5: And I think being the bright pageant blonde hair that
Speaker 5: I was, without even really giving it too much thought,
Speaker 5: I've just I've slid into life as a brunette, which is, yeah,
Speaker 5: sort of worked for these these industries that I work
Speaker 5: in and these countries that I work in a little
Speaker 5: bit more.
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 2: Sometimes my clients have told me that's the case as well. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like I think blonde would have just been a little
Speaker 2: bit too different. You know, we want people to warm
Speaker 2: to you, and I think, yeah, working in some of
Speaker 2: the places that I've worked, it's been, Yeah, it's been.
Speaker 1: It's been a good thing, so fascinating, and I love
Speaker 1: watching you doing presenting work in traditional local dress and
Speaker 1: doing dancers with your fellow hosts. It's just it's amazing
Speaker 1: to see. I think that's something amazed. There's so much
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about, and I'm like, god, like,
Speaker 1: I know, get what could do for hours?
Speaker 3: Sorry, that was really long winded, all of that stuff.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's that's relevant.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think I think in terms of dying
Speaker 2: my hair, it was for a job and it's just
Speaker 2: stayed that way because I've enjoyed playing another character for
Speaker 2: a while, being a brunette and as a performer. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you sort of used to putting on, putting on a
Speaker 2: face for work or a week for work.
Speaker 3: Or whatever it is, and I'm just brunette erin for
Speaker 3: now and I'm loving that. I maybe I'll go.
Speaker 2: Red one day, probably go about people knows, because the
Speaker 2: maintenance is play too much.
Speaker 3: Every three weeks I'm getting my rates done. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: You're like the opposite of most people. It's so interesting.
Speaker 1: You're like a packet brunette. I didn't even know a word.
Speaker 3: I'm so I'm so naturally fair.
Speaker 4: It's crazy, but.
Speaker 3: You know, I again, I'm a sucker for feedback.
Speaker 2: People like the brunette hair, and I think people know
Speaker 2: more than me about most things, so I'm going.
Speaker 4: To be brute lovely neighborhood.
Speaker 1: It isn't used to anyone that episode one or two
Speaker 1: with Doctor Richard Harris is possibly my personal favorite episode
Speaker 1: of all time. One of my ultimate messages here is
Speaker 1: that it doesn't matter how unusual or unique your personal
Speaker 1: combination of yay is. Someone out there is looking for
Speaker 1: exactly that, and nobody could ever have known that an
Speaker 1: anethetist cave diver was the key to one of the
Speaker 1: hardest rescue missions of our time. They say you remember
Speaker 1: exactly where you were the moment you heard about a
Speaker 1: disaster like thirteen young boys getting stuck in a cave
Speaker 1: almost impossible to reach for eighteen days. It may just
Speaker 1: be me, but I feel like the details of just
Speaker 1: how impossible the rescue was went over my head at
Speaker 1: the time, and I never really grasped that they may
Speaker 1: not survive. So what I do remember was the moment
Speaker 1: two years later when I realized the dive just to
Speaker 1: reach them was so hard it took the life of
Speaker 1: a Navy seal and could take eleven hours return that
Speaker 1: it was through coffee colored water in tunnels so narrow
Speaker 1: it touched both their chest and back at the same time,
Speaker 1: that the boys had to be sedated to prevent panic
Speaker 1: in the multi hour dive, and restrained to stop their
Speaker 1: limbs getting cut off by jagged rocks, and that even
Speaker 1: the divers themselves weren't sure they'd come out at the
Speaker 1: other end until hours later when they did. These and
Speaker 1: so many other details of this impossible feat still give
Speaker 1: me goosebumps. It's one of my favorite stories to hear
Speaker 1: over and over again. And now you can watch the
Speaker 1: mission unravel in the incredible new film based on the
Speaker 1: true story, Thirteen Lives on Prime Video, directed by Ron
Speaker 1: Howard and starring the likes of Joel Edgerton and Colin Farrell.
Speaker 1: You'll get goosebumps, spine tingles, tiers of despair, and tiers
Speaker 1: of hope. It is streaming from August fifth, so it's
Speaker 1: out and no out. Do not miss out. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: you have such a fascinating story. I would love to
Speaker 1: talk more about working in Pakistan and India and long distance.
Speaker 1: I feel like we need to do multi parts to
Speaker 1: this episode, but like, well, but I think while I've
Speaker 1: got you for this first episode. I think one thing
Speaker 1: that has been quite recent for you that is current
Speaker 1: for me as well, that is still not openly spoken
Speaker 1: about enough, but that you have been incredibly, incredibly honest
Speaker 1: and raw about in a way that I think has
Speaker 1: given so many people comfort education, Like, I just still
Speaker 1: can't believe how little I know about my own body.
Speaker 1: So I would love to get into this section now
Speaker 1: while I have you, and that's to just talk about
Speaker 1: the fertility journey, which is something that as perfectionists, you
Speaker 1: sort of say, like, this is my timeline, my body
Speaker 1: will fit into how I want this to work, and
Speaker 1: unfortunately and rudely, that is not how nature actually operates.
Speaker 1: So can you tell us, as much as you are
Speaker 1: comfortable with how it has unraveled for you, how you
Speaker 1: started the process, what your timeline originally? Was The biggest
Speaker 1: question I've had is what tests you actually did and
Speaker 1: then you know what the journey's been.
Speaker 2: Like, Yeah, I mean mine's only really just beginning, and
Speaker 2: I could still talk to you for another hour about
Speaker 2: how it's all sort of panned out for me so far.
Speaker 2: But I did Essays Australia last year and as part
Speaker 2: of the show, you do a lot of medicals.
Speaker 3: You do psychological assessments, you do physical assessments.
Speaker 2: And around the time of getting these tests done in
Speaker 2: order to be allowed on the show, I was talking
Speaker 2: to my friends. A lot of my friends now are
Speaker 2: starting to have children, and of various degrees of success. Obviously,
Speaker 2: now as I'm learning more and more, there is no
Speaker 2: straight line to a successful pregnancy and a successful birth.
Speaker 2: There is so much that can happen and so much
Speaker 2: that takes for it to even to even get pregnant.
Speaker 2: But being around so many of my friends going through it,
Speaker 2: so many had said because I'm very career focused, I'm
Speaker 2: very career orientated, I still think I'm twenty five in
Speaker 2: the head.
Speaker 3: I'm obviously not.
Speaker 2: I'm thirty three years old now, but in my brain
Speaker 2: I sort of I wasn't really there yet. My husband,
Speaker 2: on the other hand, is so clucky. He's like, give me,
Speaker 2: give me, give me babies. But for me, I just
Speaker 2: wasn't really there yet. We have a long distance relationship
Speaker 2: as well. He's based in Brisbane and oversee I'm in Sydney.
Speaker 2: A lot of factors for why the time wasn't right
Speaker 2: right now. But I came off the pill after doing
Speaker 2: SAS Back in May last year, and before I got
Speaker 2: on the show and was doing my medicals, I did
Speaker 2: a simple AMH test. My friends had said, just get
Speaker 2: the blood test, like it's really easy, and my doctor
Speaker 2: at the time kind of fought me on it and said, yeah,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't mean anything, and I don't want you
Speaker 2: to freak out because it might come back a certain
Speaker 2: way because quantity does not equal quality, which is something
Speaker 2: that became very apparent for me later on down the track.
Speaker 2: Don't read too much into it. I'll do it if
Speaker 2: you want, but okay, it's like all right, fine, well
Speaker 2: eighty bucks, I'll do it anyway. I did the test,
Speaker 2: and my test came back at the very low end
Speaker 2: of normal or high end of poor, as Ben Blacks
Speaker 2: to tell me.
Speaker 4: So he's like, you need to get on this asap.
Speaker 4: It's the high end of poor.
Speaker 3: I'm like, it's the low end of normal.
Speaker 2: Yeass half empty. But I went okay, and the information
Speaker 2: wasn't surprising to me. I've been on the pill since
Speaker 2: I was sixteen years old. Not great at the whole
Speaker 2: one per day thing. Absolute scatter brain. Never ever had
Speaker 2: a remote whoopsie or a late period or because I
Speaker 2: never had a period. I was on the pill for
Speaker 2: such a long time, and I've been an emic off
Speaker 2: and on when I was a bit younger. So my
Speaker 2: doctor also said, don't even worry about having the withdraw bleed.
Speaker 2: Just keep going on the active pills because it's not
Speaker 2: an actual period anyway, you didn't ovulate, Okay, cool. So
Speaker 2: I did that for sixteen years. I finally came off
Speaker 2: the pill after says because I thought.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, we're married now. If it happens, it happens.
Speaker 2: Let's you know, let's just sort of see I've been
Speaker 2: in the pill for a really long time. And so
Speaker 2: many of my friends had also said it might take
Speaker 2: a long time for you to get your cycle back,
Speaker 2: which is something that everyone kind of says as well.
Speaker 2: So I came off the pill and I just didn't
Speaker 2: get a period for months, and I like, okay, and
Speaker 2: everyone goes, oh, you know, just give it a bit longer.
Speaker 3: It can take time.
Speaker 2: Hard.
Speaker 3: It took me a year.
Speaker 2: Oh it took me two years. You know, all the
Speaker 2: things that you hear from other friends and family when
Speaker 2: you chat to them about it, and one thing about
Speaker 2: me too, which I think has served me really well.
Speaker 2: And why I decided to speak about this is I
Speaker 2: am a really open person, and I came from a
Speaker 2: family that were necessarily super open with their emotions and
Speaker 2: what they were feeling. But for me, being open and
Speaker 2: being very vocal has helped me cope. And and I'm
Speaker 2: also someone who if you look me in the eyes
Speaker 2: and say are you okay, I can't lie. So when
Speaker 2: I started going through everything that I'm about to touch on,
Speaker 2: for me, it actually was it's cathartic and it's therapeutic
Speaker 2: for me as well as the fact that it seems
Speaker 2: to be for other people. So so sharing is as
Speaker 2: much for me as it is for for everyone else
Speaker 2: that ed it does. It does really help me. But
Speaker 2: so I didn't get my period back. It got to
Speaker 2: November of last year and Ben, my husband again, he's like, right, okay,
Speaker 2: low end DePaul, we need to like go on, is like,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, babe, babe, Like I don't think I'm
Speaker 2: there yet, Like this is this would work? He goes, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: but like if you don't have a lot of eggs,
Speaker 2: like we've got to We've got to put him in
Speaker 2: the freezer.
Speaker 3: We've got to put him in the ice trail a lot.
Speaker 4: Let's get it ready to go, Like he makes a room.
Speaker 2: Literally, he's he's so, And he asked around all of
Speaker 2: our friends up in Brucebee.
Speaker 3: He found a doctor who came very highly recommended. He
Speaker 3: booked us in to go and have a consult. He
Speaker 3: did everything going, I'll get around to it. It's fine.
Speaker 2: So he's very proactive, is my darling husband. And we
Speaker 2: go in to see this fertility doctor together. I'm like, hey,
Speaker 2: x y zed, I have a low AMH. It was
Speaker 2: a six point four on this first reading, which is
Speaker 2: a low end.
Speaker 3: Of normal number.
Speaker 2: As I mentioned before, and basically, as we know, we
Speaker 2: start with a certain amount of X when we're born
Speaker 2: where we don't know.
Speaker 3: That's something that I'm learning is people's information.
Speaker 4: On this is fast.
Speaker 1: Don't assume most people don't know anything about their body.
Speaker 2: Born with a certain number of eggs and that decreases
Speaker 2: until we hit metopause. So on the scale, I was
Speaker 2: very much down towards the bottom. And so he's talking
Speaker 2: to us, the doctor's talking to us. He's like, great,
Speaker 2: Like we'll just do some tests. We'll do some genetic tests.
Speaker 2: We'll see you know, there's many, many things that you
Speaker 2: know come into play when it comes to fertility. Let's
Speaker 2: just do all the blood tests, and oh, let's do
Speaker 2: a pelvic ultrasound as well, because we'll just check that,
Speaker 2: you know, you've got all the right tubes and ovaries
Speaker 2: and what your uterus looks like, yadda yady. So it
Speaker 2: does the internal so fun.
Speaker 1: Just for everyone listening, if you have listened to the
Speaker 1: episode a couple of weeks ago, you'll know that this
Speaker 1: is the exact stage that I am at right now.
Speaker 1: So the AMH test is the blood test that measures
Speaker 1: how many eggs you have, and then if you get
Speaker 1: a certain remember not the quality, just the quantity. And
Speaker 1: then the pelvic ultrasound is kind of what completes that picture.
Speaker 1: So where parallel is happening at this point.
Speaker 4: So he gets up in there.
Speaker 2: They're so fun, so fun, love an internal ultrasound and
Speaker 2: he goes, h oh, it's not a good sign. What
Speaker 2: he goes, well, you've got a lot of eggs. And
Speaker 2: I was like, huh, I thought I had no eggs.
Speaker 2: And he goes, yeah, look and he, you know, moves
Speaker 2: the lovely contracture of the one side and it looks
Speaker 2: like honeycomb.
Speaker 4: Did you see all the little circles, The little circles, He.
Speaker 2: Goes this honeycomb, They're all follow calls and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 2: he goes, We'll go to the other side. So rap
Speaker 2: away to the other side. He goes, and that side
Speaker 2: has even more and I was like, what he goes,
Speaker 2: You've got thirty five plus the average woman has around
Speaker 2: six to ten. Apparently during a cycle, I had thirty five.
Speaker 3: He's like, this.
Speaker 2: Doesn't make sense to me based on your AMH.
Speaker 3: Which was very low.
Speaker 2: Let's repeat the test plus another whole bunch of tests
Speaker 2: which will tested for genetic disorders and other fun things.
Speaker 2: Will test bend, will test bend sperm, We'll see what
Speaker 2: he's like, and we'll reconvene.
Speaker 3: So they've done these tests.
Speaker 2: They did a blood test, that they did a sperm test,
Speaker 2: They did the AMAH again on me, and of course
Speaker 2: I ended up going.
Speaker 3: Overseas for work. So when we got these results, I
Speaker 3: was on.
Speaker 2: Wasn't even a zoom call because they're banned in the UAE,
Speaker 2: but it was Yeah, no video calls in the UAE,
Speaker 2: but I.
Speaker 4: Spent hundreds of dollars calling.
Speaker 2: Australia to get the results of these tests, and it
Speaker 2: came back that I actually had an incredibly high AMH
Speaker 2: of thirty four point four. I think it was at
Speaker 2: the time, completely other end of the spectrum, and I
Speaker 2: actually had something called PCO. It's not PCs, which is
Speaker 2: polycystic ovarian syndrome. I just have polycystic ovaries or multi
Speaker 2: systic ovaries as it's called. And basically, I have so
Speaker 2: many eggs during my cycle that my brain never ever
Speaker 2: gets the que to ovulate. And if you don't ovulate,
Speaker 2: then you don't have an egg released from your ovary,
Speaker 2: and the space that egg has left is what usually
Speaker 2: cues the brain to cue the uterus to shed its
Speaker 2: learning and have a period. So I just didn't ovulate ever.
Speaker 2: And he said, look, it's really hard to tell. I
Speaker 2: can't see any evidence of you having had a cycle.
Speaker 2: With the number of eggs you have, you might only
Speaker 2: have a period once or twice a year.
Speaker 3: For someone like you.
Speaker 2: I would suggest IVF because I can make you ovulate,
Speaker 2: but it's a lot of drugs and it's very hard
Speaker 2: on your body to only have a small percentage of
Speaker 2: a chance each cycle that a woman has when she
Speaker 2: is trying to fell pregnant, which as I've learned, is
Speaker 2: very low anyway, or if you're going to put yourself
Speaker 2: through your body through that amount of hormones, you've got
Speaker 2: a much better success rate of IBF. I think that
Speaker 2: is what is going to have to happen for you.
Speaker 2: And I remember just completely breaking down overseas, like I
Speaker 2: put the phone on mute and I just kind of
Speaker 2: bore my eyes out. And it shocked me because as
Speaker 2: someone who wasn't wanting to get pregnant tomorrow or really
Speaker 2: even getting the head around it was just going, yeah, okay, great,
Speaker 2: let's you know, bank some things in the freezer, ready
Speaker 2: to go when the time is right.
Speaker 3: It shocked me at the sense.
Speaker 2: Of devastation I felt at the lack of this ever
Speaker 2: being a normal process. Like all of a sudden, I
Speaker 2: was thineking, Wow, I'm never going to get excited and
Speaker 2: do a pregnancy test and you know, oh surprise, were pregnant.
Speaker 2: Like I'm it's always going to be clinical and organized
Speaker 2: and very very very expensive and very hard on my body.
Speaker 2: And it's just just the loss of any normality around
Speaker 2: the process really hit me really hard. And then it
Speaker 2: turned out that I had another couple of issues as well.
Speaker 2: I carry a couple of genetic little nasties, which I'm
Speaker 2: not at the end of the world, like some of
Speaker 2: them can be treated with folic acid. There's a few
Speaker 2: things that can be done. But luckily Ben was all
Speaker 2: good to go and great, so very thankful that it's
Speaker 2: only one of us that has infertility issues. I can't
Speaker 2: imagine for couples who have both sides have issues. It
Speaker 2: becomes obviously incredibly difficult to conceive the more issues you
Speaker 2: have to contend with.
Speaker 3: But I felt shit, I felt broken.
Speaker 2: I felt as a perfectionist, like when your body fails you,
Speaker 2: like physically fails you.
Speaker 3: It's so personal, like wow, the one thing you're supposed
Speaker 3: to be able to do.
Speaker 2: And don't get me wrong, like I don't think women
Speaker 2: will put on this earth to breed, like we are
Speaker 2: so much more than the fact that we reproduce. But
Speaker 2: that primal feeling of.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, you can't even do this, like really, like
Speaker 3: what do you mean you can't do this?
Speaker 2: It was a lot, and I think the confusion of
Speaker 2: not feeling like I was even close to being ready,
Speaker 2: but then being so upset and so devastated about It
Speaker 2: was really hard to get my head around and sit
Speaker 2: in those feelings and not even understand why I was
Speaker 2: feeling the way I was feeling. And then I don't
Speaker 2: know about you, but I went down that path of like,
Speaker 2: is this the universe saying that you're not meant to
Speaker 2: be your mother? Like you?
Speaker 3: Is this even your path?
Speaker 2: But then you know, the rational side of my brain,
Speaker 2: we're kicking and I go no, Like, I know so
Speaker 2: many amazing women in my life who've had infertility issues
Speaker 2: and they are the best mothers in the world. They
Speaker 2: were meant to be mothers. But when it's yourself, you
Speaker 2: just can't get that perspective. It's it's just it's a lot.
Speaker 2: And I think it's been my tagline the entire way
Speaker 2: through it is like this whole process is a lot
Speaker 2: to get your head around. And from there, you know,
Speaker 2: we've now done two rounds of a collection and Embrewers
Speaker 2: first round ended up in nothing, and that really hit
Speaker 2: me for six again, like I felt like putting my
Speaker 2: body through all of that, the huge exorbitant cost of it,
Speaker 2: and even with a Medicare rebate, which I'm lucky enough
Speaker 2: to be, you know, have access to being in Australia
Speaker 2: and having someone who who has issues, I can get
Speaker 2: around half back on medicare. It's still you know, around
Speaker 2: six seven thousand dollars around after the rebate for the
Speaker 2: first one to end up and absolutely nothing. That truly
Speaker 2: felt like my safety net had broken, and I didn't
Speaker 2: know what to do because you know, you go, okay, well,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm not ready yet, but I'm going to
Speaker 2: put these little bad boys away and then when I'm ready,
Speaker 2: I'm going to get my head around that. And then
Speaker 2: when there was nothing to put away and to go
Speaker 2: through injections twice a day, and like I found the
Speaker 2: hormone swings really difficult. I know Ben has found the hormones,
Speaker 2: but I do.
Speaker 4: Not care because you have to deal with mate.
Speaker 2: The skin, Like I've always been very lucky to have
Speaker 2: good skin, and my skin has just said fuck you.
Speaker 2: It's just been a lot and for the first round
Speaker 2: to you know, result in absolutely nothing, because again there's
Speaker 2: no guarantees even with emberors, there's no guarantees that the
Speaker 2: embryos will take. And then I'm sort of not even
Speaker 2: at the stage where I'll be dealing with transfers and
Speaker 2: the scene that they call the two week weight, which
Speaker 2: is after the transfer, you have that two weeks to
Speaker 2: see if it's actually taken if you are pregnant, and
Speaker 2: then there's obviously still a chance of miscarrying at any
Speaker 2: point in your pregnancy, but IVF pregnancy is for whatever
Speaker 2: is and already even higher chance of miscarrying. So there's
Speaker 2: to look at the journey and it to have already
Speaker 2: felt like so much and to be like, but you're
Speaker 2: still down here and there's all of this to go
Speaker 2: has been a lot. So I'm about to start my
Speaker 2: third round of egg collection. My second round was a
Speaker 2: lot more successful. I ended up with three Embreys, which
Speaker 2: is great, and mindu, that's from twenty two follicles. So
Speaker 2: you go in with twenty two follicles thinking that you're
Speaker 2: going to have twenty two little chances, and it becomes
Speaker 2: like the hunger Games, like anyone who's pluns with IVF
Speaker 2: literally aside the egg hunger Games, and you start off
Speaker 2: with like a big number, hopefully if you're lucky. Some
Speaker 2: women go through all of this stim cycle and the
Speaker 2: end up with a few, but you have your number,
Speaker 2: and then each day it just they call you up
Speaker 2: and they go oh, there's this many left, and then
Speaker 2: there's this many left of this grade, and there's a
Speaker 2: few of this grade, and then you know, all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, you're left with zero, like my first round
Speaker 2: or three, which is actually considered pretty successful, three out
Speaker 2: of nineteen.
Speaker 3: Really they're pretty shitty odds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for a typically a plus student, that's hard, hard
Speaker 1: percentage to get you around.
Speaker 4: Better than zero.
Speaker 3: But it's just it's just it's a lot. And then
Speaker 3: they get frozen.
Speaker 2: And because of the way that my body works, they've
Speaker 2: already sort of said to me that a fresh transfer,
Speaker 2: which is where after you do your cycle, as it suggests,
Speaker 2: rather than freezing, they'll do a fresh a fresh transfer
Speaker 2: to hopefully, you know, get you pregnant. Probably isn't going
Speaker 2: to be how it's going to work for me anyway,
Speaker 2: because I don't really have a lining, I don't have
Speaker 2: the right hormone levels. I'll have to go on pgestion,
Speaker 2: vaginal suppositories and all.
Speaker 4: Sorts of the joys. The joys. You could write a
Speaker 4: musical about this. You should literally make an IVF musical.
Speaker 3: It would be r rated because there would be a
Speaker 3: lot of swearing and.
Speaker 1: So much vagina talk.
Speaker 4: I mean, then there'd be a whole monologue of fuck you,
Speaker 4: I hate you.
Speaker 3: No, it's a lot.
Speaker 2: And the one thing I would say as well is,
Speaker 2: you know, everyone's journey is completely different, and I never
Speaker 2: would want to give anyone advice and anything because the
Speaker 2: way that your body responds and what it responds to
Speaker 2: and how it works is so completely different. And there's
Speaker 2: so much that we still don't know about fertility and
Speaker 2: about our bodies. And I've got friends who have successfully
Speaker 2: had many children who I'm teaching them how they got
Speaker 2: pregnant because you don't know.
Speaker 4: They never had to know that. They never had to know,
Speaker 4: Like even.
Speaker 2: Me, I go, wow, okay, so if we got pretty naturally,
Speaker 2: the sperm actually swims up the Filippian tube and meets
Speaker 2: the egg, and then it descends into the uterus and
Speaker 2: then it implants on.
Speaker 3: The site like I thought they met in the middle
Speaker 3: and had a great time.
Speaker 4: No, they don't.
Speaker 2: Me and with IVF unless you do something called IXY,
Speaker 2: which is an extra charge. Again, they literally throw the
Speaker 2: egg in the sperm.
Speaker 4: In a dish and go happy days, good luck guys,
Speaker 4: unless you pay extra.
Speaker 2: Which Ben and I did to actually get a hand
Speaker 2: picked sperm of fantastic quality, and so one into each
Speaker 2: follicle for the best chance of fertilization. But again that's
Speaker 2: an extra cost, and then genetic testing is an extra cost.
Speaker 2: So you know, with us, just recently we had four
Speaker 2: embrewers that made it to day five, day six plasticists,
Speaker 2: which is what you call an embreer that successfully made
Speaker 2: it to that stage. One of them was chromosomally defunct,
Speaker 2: so that's not one that we can use. So it's
Speaker 2: it's just it's such a rollercoaster, and there's so many
Speaker 2: steps that go into it, and I'm just blown away
Speaker 2: by science and so grateful that I even have an
Speaker 2: opportunity to because my great Auntie I found out, also
Speaker 2: had polycystic ovaries and was never able to have children
Speaker 2: because she's ninety and this wasn't available to her back then.
Speaker 2: So incredibly grateful that it's even a chance for someone
Speaker 2: like me. But getting your head around the process and
Speaker 2: how much of a physical and a mental battle even
Speaker 2: this stage of IVF has been has been a real shock.
Speaker 2: And I think sharing the experience online as I mentioned
Speaker 2: a little earlier, and the has been incredibly cathartic for
Speaker 2: me and as someone who really does sort of wear
Speaker 2: their heart on their sleeve and is quite an emotional person.
Speaker 2: It does help me to be honest and to sort
Speaker 2: of share how I'm feeling. And the number of women
Speaker 2: that have reached out to me since, and people that
Speaker 2: you and I know in this industry as well, who
Speaker 2: I had no idea had gone through this. Since it's
Speaker 2: so much more common than you think, and there's so
Speaker 2: many of us who are going through this, I just
Speaker 2: hope those of us who are comfortable and willing to
Speaker 2: share do it because it is helping people to see
Speaker 2: other people going through the same thing. And I would
Speaker 2: never push anyone to share anything that they're not comfortable sharing.
Speaker 2: But luckily for me, I guess it is something that
Speaker 2: I'm able and willing to share, so I know, for
Speaker 2: me personally, when I started going through this in November
Speaker 2: last year, all I wanted was to find other people
Speaker 2: to relate to and to listen to, and maybe who
Speaker 2: hadn't necessarily finished their journey, whether or not it was
Speaker 2: positive or negative, but to find people to go along
Speaker 2: with it in real time was really nice. So that's
Speaker 2: kind of why I decided to put it out there
Speaker 2: and share and you know, see if anyone it would
Speaker 2: help anybody else, because it was certainly helping me.
Speaker 1: I mean it's helped me so much personally, being like
Speaker 1: that little bit behind you in time even to know
Speaker 1: what these tests are called, Like, I had never heard
Speaker 1: of an AMH test before. I had never understood that
Speaker 1: polycystic ovaries and polycystic ovary syndrome were different. So when
Speaker 1: I did the same, I had the AMH result being
Speaker 1: very high and thinking, oh, I'm super fertile, and then
Speaker 1: in the pelvic ultra sound being like you've got a lot,
Speaker 1: but I think it's polycystic, and then thinking it was
Speaker 1: peacos and being like, oh my god.
Speaker 2: And because then you google that and to all of
Speaker 2: our gals out there who have peacause, I really sympathized
Speaker 2: because I can't imagine having the issue is that just
Speaker 2: say you and I have, but then having the actual
Speaker 2: cysts and the fun things that come with the syndrome.
Speaker 2: It's you know, it's a really really difficult, you know
Speaker 2: thing to have, or you know the girls that have
Speaker 2: endometriosis that's incredibly painful and there's an extra surgery often
Speaker 2: of scraping away the end door before you can even
Speaker 2: get to doing you know, the part that I'm doing
Speaker 2: at the moment.
Speaker 3: So it's a really broad thing in fertility, and there's.
Speaker 2: So many things that can you know, go into having
Speaker 2: being diagnosed with having infertility, Like there's it's just such
Speaker 2: a broad spectrum of things. And yeah, I just it's
Speaker 2: a lot. It's a lot, and I often don't really
Speaker 2: know how I feel. And each day it can be
Speaker 2: completely different. Some days I'm really up and I'm positive.
Speaker 2: Other days I'm just like fuck this, Like I just
Speaker 2: you know, sitting in a car and rejecting yourself before
Speaker 2: you go into work that day, or in a public
Speaker 2: toilet or in an airport toilet or you know, it's
Speaker 2: bruising as well and bloating because when you've got PCO
Speaker 2: like I do and you do, Sarah, when you go
Speaker 2: through IVF, and essentially you're pumping yourself full of hormones
Speaker 2: to blow up these follicles all the same time for
Speaker 2: them to be harvested.
Speaker 3: Great word half.
Speaker 2: They usually call it egg collection these days, but it
Speaker 2: was an egg harvest back in the day that they're
Speaker 2: taken out. If you've got twenty two follicles that all
Speaker 2: grow to be over twenty millimeters each. You've got over
Speaker 2: the size of grapefruits sitting inside of you. So you know,
Speaker 2: if you think of the size of a really nice,
Speaker 2: juicy grapefruit, having that kind of packing that heat for
Speaker 2: two weeks.
Speaker 4: In size, it's actually really uncomfortable.
Speaker 3: So God, yeah, so it's a lot, but it's a lot.
Speaker 1: I think the more the more people like you are open.
Speaker 1: And I had a similar thing of like, I don't
Speaker 1: want to announce this because then the pressure that it
Speaker 1: puts on you to do it quickly, because suddenly everyone
Speaker 1: knows that the temptation is to keep it so secret
Speaker 1: and to keep it behind closed doors. But for similar reasons,
Speaker 1: I thought, like Nick and I have this element of
Speaker 1: I'm adopted and his mum was adopted, so we don't
Speaker 1: even have like medical background to look at. My mum
Speaker 1: went through IVF in Monash ivf's first ever round of IVF,
Speaker 1: and even I didn't know what IVF involved because I've
Speaker 1: just never asked her, Like there's so little information out there,
Speaker 1: and even hearing you explain sort of that it involves
Speaker 1: injecting yourself, I think people don't even know that. People
Speaker 1: don't even know it's an option or how you would
Speaker 1: even get there. And I think you have been so
Speaker 1: incredibly brave in sharing that journey in real time, because
Speaker 1: it is so different to hearing once you have a
Speaker 1: child going back and going, oh it was really hard
Speaker 1: at the time, hearing how you're feeling when it fails,
Speaker 1: how that does mess with your mind and something that
Speaker 1: resonated so much, and I think a lot of women
Speaker 1: in their thirties in this generation will be really feeling
Speaker 1: the sort of feels about is you saying it's one
Speaker 1: thing to desperately want this to work and to feel
Speaker 1: like a failure when it doesn't, but it's even more
Speaker 1: when you don't actually even you're not desperately wanting the
Speaker 1: child tomorrow. Yeah, we've had COVID, so we've come out
Speaker 1: of this three years, three years biologically older, but three
Speaker 1: years less of experience in life, Like we haven't been
Speaker 1: able to do anything.
Speaker 3: You feel like you've been robbed of that time.
Speaker 2: And I think the most frustrating thing, as well as
Speaker 2: what it means to be a woman has changed so much,
Speaker 2: and it's like biology hasn't caught up with our progression
Speaker 2: in society, and these years where we are killing it
Speaker 2: in our careers and we've been working our way up
Speaker 2: to this point. Is that's the time that you really
Speaker 2: at the last legs of fertility for many ways, and
Speaker 2: you kind of.
Speaker 3: Feel like, I don't want to choose. Why do I
Speaker 3: have to choose between the two? Why I kind of
Speaker 3: have both?
Speaker 2: But realistically, there will be a step that is taken
Speaker 2: back when you fell pregnant and when you first have
Speaker 2: a child, at least for a little while, it's inevitable,
Speaker 2: and it's so frustrating when you're like, why, body, Like
Speaker 2: why do you want to have kids when you're a
Speaker 2: teenager or two?
Speaker 4: I know you forty, Like, it's.
Speaker 3: Just so frustrating that, you know, we've had this amazing
Speaker 3: evolution of yeah, of what it means to be a
Speaker 3: woman in this.
Speaker 2: Day and age, but our bodies have caught up with
Speaker 2: the program, Like you know why why that elongated as well?
Speaker 2: Like it's it's very frustrating, and you know, I know
Speaker 2: future Eron definitely doesn't want to miss out on this
Speaker 2: part of life. Just current erin getting her head around
Speaker 2: how it fits in and how it works, and when
Speaker 2: you when you're married to an athlete who spends six
Speaker 2: months plus of the year overseas. I don't want to
Speaker 2: do it on my own. I don't, but I don't
Speaker 2: want my body to, you know, not allow me to
Speaker 2: do it when I'm ready and do will I ever
Speaker 2: feel ready?
Speaker 3: Because I don't think many women do.
Speaker 2: And for someone like me, it's a real shame that
Speaker 2: it couldn't have happened naturally, because then the decision might
Speaker 2: have been taken that out of my hands and I
Speaker 2: wouldn't have obsessed over the timing so much. It's you know,
Speaker 2: it's happened, and it was meant to be this way
Speaker 2: and great, but for me, it's always going to be
Speaker 2: clinical and calculated, and I'm sad that it won't be
Speaker 2: as much of a you know, a surprise and a joy.
Speaker 2: It's going to be a relief or a disappointment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wish. I wish it could be.
Speaker 2: I do still agree with the fact that it will
Speaker 2: ever be quote unquote normal. But the more I learn,
Speaker 2: the more I realize that no one ever really has
Speaker 2: a normal sea anyway. So it is what it isn't
Speaker 2: And you know, for however I'm feeling, whatever I'm going through,
Speaker 2: there's definitely plenty of other women going through the same thing,
Speaker 2: and you know where a little underground army, as I say,
Speaker 2: And there's so many of us, so many of us
Speaker 2: who go through it. So you know, to everyone who's
Speaker 2: reached out to me, thank you and have shared some
Speaker 2: really really personal stories with me, Like I read everything,
Speaker 2: I respond to everything, and I so appreciate it. And
Speaker 2: you know, I'm rooting for everyone whatever whatever your journey
Speaker 2: is with this, whatever you choose, like, I really hope
Speaker 2: it works out for them.
Speaker 1: Oh, Aaron, that's just so beautiful. I know you don't
Speaker 1: want to sort of give anyone advice because the journeys
Speaker 1: are so different, but perhaps a couple of questions that
Speaker 1: might be sort of instructive, just anecdotally. One of the
Speaker 1: questions I got asked was, how do you be really
Speaker 1: happy for friends who do feel pregnant naturally or who
Speaker 1: do seem to have a bit of an easier journey
Speaker 1: and those at our age the announcements are all the time.
Speaker 1: How do you celebrate, like sort of detach your experience
Speaker 1: from happiness for them. But grieving is the word to use.
Speaker 1: I think it is grieving for the loss of that
Speaker 1: natural surprise journey. How do you still celebrate for people
Speaker 1: you love?
Speaker 2: See, because I'm at a stage where I'm not trying
Speaker 2: to get I'm not going through transfers at the moment.
Speaker 2: I think that this may change later on down the track.
Speaker 2: At the moment, I feel something when people tell me
Speaker 2: they're amazing news, I'm not really sure how to put
Speaker 2: it into words. I'm still so excited it and so
Speaker 2: over the moon for my friends, and I think I
Speaker 2: will always be that way. But that little pang in
Speaker 2: the heart is it might be getting ever so slightly stronger,
Speaker 2: but it's not really at that point because I haven't
Speaker 2: gone through transfers and failed transfers yet, like unfortunately so
Speaker 2: many women do when they get to that point.
Speaker 3: Because I'm not there yet.
Speaker 2: I think I'm still quite okay with that part of it.
Speaker 2: And I'm a really empathetic person, and I think I
Speaker 2: will always be just so excited for anybody who's excited
Speaker 2: about something that they're telling me, and you know.
Speaker 4: How great, like I would never want.
Speaker 2: And it's already happening with some friends who have felt
Speaker 2: scared to tell me, and I'm like, no, I'm so
Speaker 2: happy for you, Like I don't want this for anybody.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad that you know it's worked out this
Speaker 2: way for you, and it may not always be that way.
Speaker 2: I might wake up tomorrow and feel differently, but at
Speaker 2: this point it's, you know, I guess because I'm not
Speaker 2: actually at that that live transfer, you know, two week
Speaker 2: wait time after time period. Yet I'm not kind of
Speaker 2: feeling those feelings. So I'm still I'm very very happy
Speaker 2: and very very thankful that, you know, people in my
Speaker 2: life are not having to go through this, because I
Speaker 2: wouldn't wish it on anybody. It's so much harder physically
Speaker 2: and mentally than I ever would have thought possible. And
Speaker 2: as I keep reiterating, I am still very much at
Speaker 2: the beginning of this journey and very aware, I think
Speaker 2: because I like to educate myself too on the possibilities,
Speaker 2: and you know what my body will be put through
Speaker 2: in the future is it may be very hard, and
Speaker 2: it may also take time for any of these embryos
Speaker 2: that we managed to get to take. So I think
Speaker 2: I'm I'm trying to keep it real because on one hand,
Speaker 2: I've got my husband, to bless him, he was glass
Speaker 2: half empty when it came to my acut.
Speaker 3: But he's glass half full with everything else.
Speaker 4: He's like, yay, we've got three babies. We've beanies on
Speaker 4: at a test tube and I was with a great
Speaker 4: hard in their hand.
Speaker 3: I said.
Speaker 2: I was like, well, God help them if they're not athletic.
Speaker 2: But you know, I need to manage he's expectations a
Speaker 2: little bit. And I think that's something that you know,
Speaker 2: women who are going through this with male partners will
Speaker 2: probably struggle with because there's just so much they don't
Speaker 2: understand about women and what we go through anyway, and
Speaker 2: managing his expectations on how this is all going to work,
Speaker 2: Like you know, when we first found out we had IVF,
Speaker 2: he's like, that's okay.
Speaker 3: It means we can plan. When I'm like, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: this is just this is.
Speaker 2: A chance to get pregnant. This is not a guarantee thing.
Speaker 2: And I don't want to be pessimistic, but I also.
Speaker 3: Want to be realistic.
Speaker 2: And I think it's good that he is positive because
Speaker 2: if he was negative, like I can be about it,
Speaker 2: it would be.
Speaker 3: So much soul story.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's managing your partner's expectations too as well,
Speaker 2: which I found really difficult and me just leaving random
Speaker 2: podcast episodes for him to listen to things just I
Speaker 2: just think you should listen to this or you know,
Speaker 2: from a male's perspective of what it is to go through.
Speaker 2: And another thing as well is the number of men
Speaker 2: that have reached out with malfactor and fertility has been.
Speaker 3: Really eye opening and that's fascinating.
Speaker 2: And the sense of guilt that sometimes they say they
Speaker 2: feel because the woman still has to go through IVF
Speaker 2: even if she has no issues. If there's malefactor and fertility,
Speaker 2: that's just the way it works. So there's almost another
Speaker 2: layer of their part is so small in so many
Speaker 2: ways of physically and emotionally what they go through, but
Speaker 2: it's so emotional still as well, because.
Speaker 3: You know, it's your partner and it's your child.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I think that was really interesting as well
Speaker 2: to hear them sort of speak out and talk to
Speaker 2: me about how they were feeling and watching their partner
Speaker 2: go through that when they go well it's because of me, Well,
Speaker 2: you know what, it's you guys together and this is
Speaker 2: your journey and just you know, be there for one another.
Speaker 2: I think that's just so important. Just try and support
Speaker 2: each other as much as you can. Through it because
Speaker 2: it's not easy for anyone. And I know I'm guilty
Speaker 2: of forgetting how Ben feels sometimes because I'm like, you.
Speaker 4: Don't know, say no words, and you'd be like, what
Speaker 4: am I getting to share? But I don't know. There
Speaker 4: are many lines answer my question.
Speaker 2: He's luckily for me, he's a very calm, very level
Speaker 2: headed person and I'm the emotional crazy before anyway in
Speaker 2: the relationship, let alone when I'm stimmed to the eyeballs
Speaker 2: full of what.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, so you've done a collection and then there's obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, procedurally different phases of IVF from what you'll
Speaker 1: be going through.
Speaker 3: So what is next?
Speaker 1: What are the next steps? And even if you don't
Speaker 1: want to give anyone else advice, maybe what would you
Speaker 1: give future erran as advice for navigating the next chapters?
Speaker 3: So next steps?
Speaker 2: To me, I've got three embrros on ice, but in
Speaker 2: an ideal world, should we get to choose Ben?
Speaker 3: And I would like two children.
Speaker 2: So the chances of a transfer taking for someone of
Speaker 2: my age is around thirty percent, So probability maths tells
Speaker 2: me I need at least seven mbrro So I need
Speaker 2: to keep going with my egg collections until I managed
Speaker 2: to get at least seven embryos, is what my doctor
Speaker 2: has advised me. So I'm about to undertake my third round.
Speaker 2: I'm going to see the doctor in a couple of days.
Speaker 2: And because I don't get a cycle, they put me
Speaker 2: on the pill and then take me off it each
Speaker 2: time to create some sort of a yeah, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of hormones.
Speaker 1: A lot of hormones going on, so you're doing life.
Speaker 3: Again, I do, I don't know. I yeah.
Speaker 2: So I get put on the pill and then taken
Speaker 2: off each time as well. So it takes me a
Speaker 2: little longer between cycles because I don't have one.
Speaker 3: Which is great.
Speaker 2: So I'm on the pillar again at the moment I'll
Speaker 2: go and see the doctor. He'll do another internal ultra sound.
Speaker 2: He'll check that I've held up okay from the last
Speaker 2: egg collection. Having a lot of follicles also means a
Speaker 2: lot of needles, So in IBF, basically a needle isn't
Speaker 2: certain into each follicle and the follicles drained and hopefully
Speaker 2: within that there's an egg. Sometimes there isn't, but because
Speaker 2: it's twenty two, usually for me needles each time. They
Speaker 2: just need to make sure that everyone's healing up. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 2: so I'll go back and see the doctor and then
Speaker 2: Bet and I've kind of got an idea in mind
Speaker 2: next year as to when we'd like to start trying
Speaker 2: to transfer.
Speaker 3: In a perfect world, We'll see how I feel.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to put any pressure of myself in terms
Speaker 2: of that, and I'll be guided by my doctor as
Speaker 2: to when the time is right for me physically as well.
Speaker 2: They also suggest seeing a counselor when you go through IVF.
Speaker 2: It's not something that I've done personally yet, but I
Speaker 2: think it's really I think it's really important, particularly if
Speaker 2: you're not someone who likes to talk to everyone around.
Speaker 3: Them about what they're going through.
Speaker 2: I would absolutely recommend, you know, getting those feelings and
Speaker 2: those thoughts out with professional And then in terms of
Speaker 2: what I would say to future Erran is you know, Eve,
Speaker 2: I think knowledge is power, and if it's as simple
Speaker 2: as getting an AMH test the starting point going and
Speaker 2: chatting to a fertility doctor if children is something that
Speaker 2: you think you might like in the future, even if
Speaker 2: it's not now, I think knowledge is power, And you know,
Speaker 2: if I'd known I had PCO years ago, maybe it
Speaker 2: wouldn't made a difference as to when I started this.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I can't go back in time, but I think fertility
Speaker 2: is one thing that sticking yourhead in the sand and
Speaker 2: hoping everything works out for the best doesn't kind of
Speaker 2: really work that way. So yeah, I would say I
Speaker 2: would say sooner rather than later. If children is something
Speaker 2: that you see in your future, just ask the questions,
Speaker 2: Just book an appointment, ask the questions. Find out your
Speaker 2: own personal situation. You know the blood tests that Ben
Speaker 2: and I did in terms of finding out about our
Speaker 2: genetic situations. You know Ben and his side of things.
Speaker 2: It's just it's good information to have. And then once
Speaker 2: you've got the information, you can figure out what it
Speaker 2: is that you want to do together. And for my
Speaker 2: friends out there who are you know, single and haven't
Speaker 2: found a person yet that they want to settle down with,
Speaker 2: I'd say, yeah, a conversation of you know, where do
Speaker 2: I sit in that range of eggs and how many
Speaker 2: I have? How much you know, how much time do
Speaker 2: I have in a perfect world. I think it's just
Speaker 2: it's just good information to have for you. And if
Speaker 2: it is on the lower side and you want to
Speaker 2: freeze eggs as a as a safety net.
Speaker 3: Great, do it. I don't think you'll ever regret that
Speaker 3: decision later on down the track.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think not knowledge is power, and just
Speaker 2: biting the bullet and going and asking the right questions.
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, it's great, and you know, knowing what
Speaker 3: I know now, I wish I had twenty seven year
Speaker 3: old eggs, but I don't. I have thirty three years.
Speaker 4: We're just going to have to come to terms with that.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think I think that's probably the one
Speaker 2: advice that I would say is, I know it's really scary,
Speaker 2: and the answer is that maybe we don't write, we
Speaker 2: don't feel like we're ready for right.
Speaker 3: Now, but you can't avoid mortality. Yeah, and biology. So
Speaker 3: I think that's what I would say.
Speaker 1: I admire you so much and I'm so grateful that
Speaker 1: you've shared so openly today. I feel like many many
Speaker 1: listeners will be really really either reassured or feel heard
Speaker 1: or understand a little bit more about what they perhaps
Speaker 1: could be doing.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: There's just so many parts of this story, and I've
Speaker 1: already kept you for so long, but I'm so grateful.
Speaker 1: I have so much, so much love and admiration for you.
Speaker 1: I do have one last question. There's usually a lot
Speaker 1: of finishes, but I think this one's just probably the
Speaker 1: most relevant. Given that so much of your day and
Speaker 1: year is taken up with something that is so challenging
Speaker 1: and so emotionally consuming, that there has to be some
Speaker 1: way for you to still find little moments of joy
Speaker 1: and to be able to still see the light even
Speaker 1: on days where there is so much darkness. And I
Speaker 1: think that's something overall that anyone going through anything needs
Speaker 1: to be able to do for themselves. So how do you,
Speaker 1: amongst all of this still find the yay? What are
Speaker 1: the small things in life that remind you to smile
Speaker 1: even on those really hard days.
Speaker 2: I'm a people person and surround myself with the people
Speaker 2: that I love, like that's what pulls me out of
Speaker 2: any funk. Like I I live alone when I'm in Sydney,
Speaker 2: and so when I'm away from Ben it gets a
Speaker 2: little bit harder. But you know, it's catching up with friends,
Speaker 2: it's going for a coastal walk here and couldie. It's
Speaker 2: it's physically getting myself out of my funk, whether it's
Speaker 2: to get up and go and see your friend or
Speaker 2: to get outside and go to the beach and feel
Speaker 2: the fresh air and just yeah, I think I think
Speaker 2: it's it's physically removing myself from the rut that I mean,
Speaker 2: because I you know, like anybody, we can get get
Speaker 2: so down and so overwhelmed and you know, overrun by life.
Speaker 2: And this has been a big, a big one for us,
Speaker 2: you know, this this year really when we've been going
Speaker 2: through this. But it's it's you know, spending time with
Speaker 2: the people that you love, and it's physically getting out
Speaker 2: and you know, breathing in that beautiful fresh air and
Speaker 2: and just reminding yourself that life is is incredible and
Speaker 2: it's got its ups and its downs, and this is
Speaker 2: just one of the you know, things sent to challenge
Speaker 2: me in mine but you know, we roll on and
Speaker 2: we get through it. And I think sharing for me
Speaker 2: has also been really important for my mental health. So
Speaker 2: thank you to everyone who has reached out and converse
Speaker 2: with me about this, because it's, yeah, it's it's a lot,
Speaker 2: and yeah, it's okay to sit in those feelings too,
Speaker 2: as much as we try to move through them and
Speaker 2: run away from them. I think I think sitting in
Speaker 2: them is and processing.
Speaker 3: Is just as important.
Speaker 4: So yeah, and chocolate. Love chocolate fed me chocolate when
Speaker 4: I when.
Speaker 2: I'm on these cycles, I can't you know, I'm not
Speaker 2: drinking or anything like that as well, So I'm like chocolate.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite quotes is you were assigned this
Speaker 1: mountain to show others can be moved. It was sent
Speaker 1: your way because you're strong enough to deal with it.
Speaker 1: Do you have any favorite quotes to leave us with?
Speaker 3: Oh, gosh, that's a He's find that on me.
Speaker 4: That's a big question. I know favorite. I should have
Speaker 4: said it to you before it's the finisher.
Speaker 3: I'm just trying to think. I actually have like a
Speaker 3: little note.
Speaker 2: I actually do have one, and very fittingly, it came
Speaker 2: from a music talent show, but it came from America's
Speaker 2: Got Talent, and there was a singer called Nightbird and
Speaker 2: she said, you can't wait until life isn't hard anymore
Speaker 2: before you decide to be happy.
Speaker 4: Oh oh erin.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just think it's yeah, And you know, for.
Speaker 2: Her personally, her story was absolutely incredible and and she
Speaker 2: she isn't with us and he wore this particular performer
Speaker 2: because she she had cancer, but it.
Speaker 3: Resonated with me. So much, and yeah, I think that's
Speaker 3: you know, whatever it is.
Speaker 2: Everyone's life has a different path and a different journey,
Speaker 2: and what is hard an inverted commas for me is
Speaker 2: going to be very different to it's hard for someone.
Speaker 2: But it's all relative and it's all hard, And yeah,
Speaker 2: I think there's in any situation, there's always lie at
Speaker 2: the end of the tunnel.
Speaker 1: That is the most beautiful way to feel.
Speaker 4: I got through the whole thing without crying. I was
Speaker 4: actually going to say, you made it so far, and
Speaker 4: then I ruined it all that's fun, it's fine, we
Speaker 4: did well.
Speaker 3: It's a lot.
Speaker 1: That's the tagline, and I know, I know I should
Speaker 1: put that underneath. It's like your little caption erin thank
Speaker 1: you so much. You are just an incredible, incredible human
Speaker 1: being and I am so so grateful for you today
Speaker 1: and every day.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Oh it never goes past me. What a privilege it
Speaker 1: is that people trust this beautiful neighborhood so much with
Speaker 1: their stories in such vulnerable moments of their lives. As
Speaker 1: I've mentioned before, ours are just two among a million
Speaker 1: different experiences, and I'm sure there's a lot we didn't
Speaker 1: cover in the spaces between what we've been through or
Speaker 1: going through. But there is just so much to the
Speaker 1: conversation about fertility and conception, and I think we're taught
Speaker 1: so little at a time that gives us enough notice
Speaker 1: to actually do something with So I so appreciate people
Speaker 1: as well known as Aaron being so raw and generous
Speaker 1: with their stories to help encourage more conversation and awareness
Speaker 1: around what's involved. And I would love you, Yeaghborhood, to
Speaker 1: show your gratitude by helping share the episode and tag
Speaker 1: at eron v Holland and ask with your insights or
Speaker 1: takeaways so that we can keep the conversation going but
Speaker 1: also show erin our love for everything that she shared.
Speaker 1: If anyone is interested in any further episodes on the
Speaker 1: topic or expert Q and as you know, we're always
Speaker 1: open to suggestions and requests, so please just send us
Speaker 1: an email or a DM. On a very different note,
Speaker 1: but it's sort of connected, I guess, to the fertility conversation.
Speaker 1: The adoption episode is also coming up, which is another
Speaker 1: beautiful conversation and I can't wait to share that to
Speaker 1: our listeners on their own journeys however that may be unfolding.
Speaker 1: I'm sending you all the love in the world and
Speaker 1: in the meantime, I hope everyone is having a great
Speaker 1: week and seizing their yeay