Although it's rarely discussed, infertility is a problem that exists for black women too. Reproductive problems like endometriosis and fibroids are among the list of issues that can make conceiving a child after a certain age nearly impossible. Women like K. Michelle and Kenya Moore, who recently found out that she was pregnant, are sharing how they've managed to take control of their bodies (more specifically, their uteruses) by undergoing In vitro fertilization.
The procedure is an assisted reproductive technology that allows extracted eggs and sperm to be manually combined in a lab dish. Once fertilized, the embryos are transferred to the uterus and the mother is able to carry the child to term. This process is useful to women who have trouble conceiving, and is increasingly becoming more normalized.
Although the procedure can cost upwards of $100,000, the process is priceless for women who are infertile and dream of having children. Though sometimes this process may be performed a number of times before it is successful, Kenya Moore said that she got lucky on the first round.
"I don't have a horror story. It's weird because you hear other people's troubles with the injections and the hormones. And for me, it was a pretty simple process."
Scientifically, our eggs are less viable as we age, making this process popular among women who are hyper-focused on their careers or who have considered having kids after the age of thirty. Women like Kenya are opening up about the procedure to encourage other women to try procedures like IVF and egg freezing as means to outsmart those ticking time bombs that are our uteruses. In her interview with People, she opened up about the details of the procedure:
"You take the hormones to stimulate your ovaries, you go in for the procedure — obviously you're being monitored every day to where they need to see how many [ovarian follicles] you have, how big they're getting, when to extract. And then, obviously, the process when they grow to make sure they're growing at a certain rate and reach a certain size.
After that, they're ready to be implanted. You don't go under any anesthesia for the process and it doesn't hurt. You have to rest, which is always a great thing. To be quite honest, the thing that hurt the most was them sticking me with the IV when they had to extract the eggs because my veins are so tiny. But that's the only thing that was uncomfortable. The rest of it wasn't painful."
Kenya said in the interview that she administered her own hormones and, unlike other women who have undergone the process, did not suffer from any side effects and noted that the hardest part about the process was dealing with her fear of needles.
"[With IVF] they specifically tell you a start date to go and take a blood test because the ones you take over the counter, the pee-on-the-stick kind, don't always show the hormone level if it's not strong enough … so it may give you a negative when it's actually positive. So they rely on a blood test to show you how much of it you have in your system and how it's progressing.
As soon as I take the [blood] test and I'm driving home, I'm like, "I should just go and get a test from the supermarket." So I rode to the supermarket and literally took the test in the supermarket bathroom because I could not wait. It was just overwhelming. I could not wait. And it was positive. And then I got the call from the doctor later that day confirming that I was indeed pregnant and had a positive test and what my HCG levels were. She said it was all really good news. I was like, "Oh my God, I don't know what to say!"
Although she and her hubby don't know the sex of the baby yet, she reaffirmed in the interview that girl or boy, this baby would be her biggest blessing and we are super excited to watch her bump grow and finally meet Baby Twirl.
I was diagnosed with endometriosis years ago and I'm almost 25 years old; It's amazing to me that I'm at an age where I have to consider my egg count, and start planning my life around when I need to have a child before it's physically impossible. I'm in my bag, but I don't want my window of opportunity to have children to pass me by while I chase it.
Kenya's story is a reaffirmation for women like me who are worried that they may never conceive and a reminder that it's always a good time to pursue what really makes you happy. Kenya wanted a baby, and thanks to mother nature and modern technology, she'll have her wish before the end of 2018.
For generations. women including myself have been pressured to race their biological clocks; having to put their personal goals and ambitions aside so that they could have children before it was too late. Modern technology turns those tables and gives women the opportunity to make the decision to become a mother literally whenever they want to, and it's pretty lit.
To read the full interview click here.
Featured image via Kenya Moore/Instagram
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Skylar sees things differently. At the time, she was shooting content on her iPhone. Temi came into the picture with a new perspective, an understanding of tech, and, eventually, a camera. “He doesn't give himself enough credit,” Skylar says. “He wasn't just my tripod. He wasn't just standing behind the camera and going ‘click.’ He was giving advice. He was giving me insight to how I could look at things from a different perspective. And I was like, 'Oh, he’s an artist.' I think it was maybe a heartbeat of that kind of energy of like, ‘Baby, can you take this picture?’ And it turned so quickly into, we're partners. We can work together in a way where we're advancing each other's creative thinking.”
The pair often says they’re two sides of the same coin. Skylar is an Aquarius. She attended art school, paints, and loves poetry. She’s more than happy to let the couple’s management firm and agency, Kensington Grey, handle their admin work. And, she loves to sleep in. Temi, on the other hand, wakes up early. He’s a Virgo. He loves a to-do list and regularly checks in on the couple’s brand partnerships spreadsheet to make sure everything is on track.
Because his storytelling was steeped in his love of technology, he didn’t always think of himself as a creative person. “Where I [am] the dreamer who wants to pluck things out of the sky and spend all day with my head in the clouds, Temi [is] so good at grounding me and helping me figure out how to make things make sense on paper. We just work together in such a complimentary way,” Skylar says.
It’s been more than six years since Brooklyn-based couple Temi and Skylar started dating, and nearly four since they cemented their working relationship. On TikTok and Instagram, the couple’s travel, fashion, and home content regularly rack up hundreds of thousands of views. They’ve worked with brands such as Coach, Aesop, Away, and Liquid IV, bringing their vibrant perspectives to every campaign they execute. Still, nearly two years since both Temi and Skylar committed to full-time content creation and creative directing, the couple says their romantic connection remains their priority.
“We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting,” Skylar says.
Working from home can make it hard to separate work from personal life for any entrepreneur. It can be even more challenging when your business partner is also your lover. Temi and Skylar had already used couples therapy as a tool to help them effectively communicate with one another. When they ran into challenges while working together, their therapist helped them set physical boundaries to help combat the issues.
"We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting."
“It actually took us doing very specific physical things to create boundaries between work and play in our relationship,” Skylar says. “So, for instance, we will only have conversations about work when we're out of bed or we're at the table or in the office. Initially, when we started, we had to light a candle to say that, 'Okay, this is a space where we're connecting, we’re not talking about work.' We needed really hard boundaries at the top. And then it became a little bit more organic.”
The boundaries have been crucial to implement, especially because the couple began working together so naturally. When the pair first met, Skylar was NY-based a social strategist for BuzzFeed and was using content creation to drive business to her lingerie company. She was shooting her own content. Temi was working for Microsoft in D.C. He’d recently traded in his DJing equipment for a camera. “I've always loved taking pictures,” he says. “Even when I was a kid, my African mother would wake me up at 3:00 a.m. [during a] party, and be like, 'Come take the family picture.'”
Growing up, Temi says he watched his parents support each other and be the true definition of partners. He knew he wanted the same for his own relationship. But, the couple also wanted to make sure they were being financially responsible. The pair didn’t quit their traditional jobs until they’d saved up two years' worth of their cost of living. And, Temi received his Master of Business Administration from New York University with the knowledge that it could either help him advance in his corporate career or be applicable to his business with Skylar.
Temi and SkylarCj Hart @hartbreakToday, they say their working relationship is more of a “quiet dance.” They still implement some of the boundaries they learned in therapy, but they also lean into their natural strengths and deep love for one another. When we speak, Temi has planned a date for the couple to see Princess Mononoke in 4K IMAX and added it to their Notion so they can factor it into their busy schedules. “I fully plan to date for the rest of my life,” he says.
Skylar says the couple doesn’t just wait for date nights to check in with one another, though. This often happens in the mornings, after Temi has made her peppermint tea and poured himself a cup of coffee. When they ask each other how they slept, she says, it’s not just a “nicety.” It’s a genuine question meant to foster connection.
“A lot of it happens during the day in the midst of work. We'll stop and we'll hug. Or we’ll slow dance in the kitchen,” she says. “Sometimes it's hard to set a whole date night when you have 7,000 things going on. So, we must grasp these moments and check in when we can. And I think it's become so organic to us that I actually didn't even realize how often we do it. But all day long, we're like, 'Are you good? I felt like your energy shifted,' because we're best friends, we just know. We just feel it happen.”
What’s better than being in love? Building wealth while doing it. Watch Making Cents here for real stories of couples who make money moves together.
Featured image by Cj Hart @hartbreak