Today Ali is talking to an ART O.G.! It's Ellen Weir Casey, "The Original Fertility Advocate," who forged her own unique path to parenthood in the very early days of IVF. "Infertility wasn't even a word then," Ellen says. "It was, 'You're not getting pregnant. There's no way you're getting pregnant.'" Ellen tells Ali her entire family building journey, starting with how she got an unapproved IUD in her early 20s, which led to a severe internal infection that resulted in extreme scarring in both fallopian tubes. Ellen was around in the earliest days of Assisted Reproductive Technology, so she was doing research in the library basement. This was also way before email and iPhones and Facebook and Instagram, so she was typing up letters on her typewriter and sending them in the mail to doctors and clinics. She talks about her early miscarriage, being one of the first women in the world to have micro-surgery, and when IVF babies were called "test tube babies." She also talks about how having her daughter became an international news story, and her powerful memoir, "Unstoppable," a captivating story of loss, struggle, and perseverance. "I believe that it's important for women to know the stories of the women who went before them, who opened the doors, that they can walk through now," she says.  

To order her book, go to https://www.amazon.com/Unstoppable-Forging-Path-Motherhood-Early/dp/1632994976

TOPICS COVERED IN THIS EPISODE:

Miscarriage; early days of ART; IVF; micro-surgery; test tube babies; advocacy 

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