ivf. >> age is the number one predictor. >> i'm too young for that. my future is ahead of me. >> the stress of infertility. >> i couldn't achieve my way out of this. >> we had been trying for ten years. >> i'm sheinelle jones from nbc news. i'm a journalist but also a wife, mother and sister. i have listened to so many stories about what happens behind closed doors, but i believe it's time to come together and talk about it. i've linked in some of my best friends, and we've decided to share openly and honestly. >> obviously, this is happening to a lot of women, especially black women. >> just being able to hope someone is why i want to let people know it's very common. >> every woman has a story. this is ours. >> i know each one of you in different ways, and i think about, you know, we talk about the fairy tale of, you know, first comes love, then comes marriage, and i think about my bridesmaids and all the girls that were behind my on my wedding day, and when i think about all my friends, more than half, if not half of them, are having problems. >> yeah. >> and we never saw it coming. tell me when you are by yourself and you why laying your head on the pillow, do you allow yourself to grieve and then snap out of it? >> for the longest time i relied on my willpower to say just keep focussing on the destination. and at the time the destination was you're going to get the baby. i'm a problem solver. i can bear it if i get there, but then it's ten years and i'm like oh, i'm tired. and there is loss, there is loss in infertility. there is pain, and there is grief like you would never understand unless you've endured it. >> this little dress. >> i have worn their dress only one time. this was the dress i had on when the doctors told me they couldn't find my little boy's heartbeat. >> when she said, could you hold on a second, i'm going to go get the doctor, i just lost t i am so sad and so broken. very not been payable to will myself to wear it again, but i just kind of hide it in the closet somewhere. my name is ada. i stopped doing ivfs after number eight. i had endometriosis and multiple fibroids. behad been we had been trying for ten years. >> every month when you have a menstrual period, what you're shedding is something called the endometrium. but for those with endometriosis, it goes back in and in rare cases can implant in your lungs or brain and can cause a lot of period every time you have a period and sometimes in between. >> i watched mom every month have painful periods. mine happened at 11. i got to school, and i remember rounding the corner, and i felt this rush of pain coming from my uterus that was consuming my entire body. i don't understand, like i'm so hot, what's happening. i passed out in the hallway. and that was the beginning of 25 year journey before i got a diagnosis. i remembered the doctor not responding how i thought a doctor would. the doctor definitely belittled the pain. oh, just make sure she starts taking tylenol a few days before the period. you start with the regular strength tylenol. i've definitely gone up from the 200 to now 800 milligrams that i use a couple times a day. after, you know, 30-something years, it takes a toll. for someone to just dismiss you and say, yeah, i hear you're in pain, but just do this. you start to think, well, i guess this is a me problem. >> fibroids are an overgrowth of the muscle layer of the uterus. about 80% of women will suffer from fibroids. black women are at higher risk of developing fibroids. they start to be a genetic component as to why they affect black women more disproportionately. unfortunately, there's not enough research. >> when i would lay down you would see this mountain, flat stomach, mountain, i wonder what this is. that little mountain was the fibroid. i finally got a name for it. now i can fix it. what was supposed to be 30 minutes was six, seven hours. when he went in, he said there was endometriosis lesions everywhere and when he came out his first comment to us was how did you bear this for so long. finally, somebody sees me and somebody can understand that i'm not crazy after all. i actually in my mind thought, i've paid my dues. i've dealt with the pain. i've missed classes. i've rescheduled my wedding, so, when it's time to have a family, you have a family. i never put two and two together. i didn't realize the spectrum of infertility versus fertility. i remember at that time i was so going to a learning about ivf session. and i didn't expect to hear the stories that i heard. i was hearing stories, like, we're in ivf number eight, because we get pregnant, but i've had five still births. then i heard a lady say, i'm in my 17th year of ivf. i packed up my keys, and i ran out of there, because i thought oh, no. the doctor said i'm a great candidate. i don't know what they're talking about. so this is ivf number eight. from ivf four to eight was just awful. by the end of 2016, 2017 we had four embryos. out of those four we lost three, and we're down to one. i would sometimes say i feel bad. i wish you wouldn't have married me, because you didn't sign up for this. and he would say, don't tell me what i signed up for. i signed up to love you. but i still struggle with it. whether or not he knew he wanted kids then or later, i feel guilty. so the fifth ivf, i think something started to change, because i started hearing him say "i don't want to lose you." he would tell me "i it not marry you for this, but i'm also not going to keep allowing to you do more ivfs and more surgeries because with every one comes a risk." i really think ivf and grief go hand in hand. there's this misconception with infertility that you should always be heading in some direction and it should end with a child. i'm okay with where i am now. that this is what is for me. it just seems like now we're doing life. and it's a good place to be. for me, i always felt like i can't talk about it until i get the baby. i'm talking about it now, because this is a place. and i think there are more people in this place of what if never? 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>> my family came from a colonized nation. and still, your worth is tied to what your womb can produce. and if you're not producing, there's no need to consider you a woman or of value. and that comes from all of our fore mothers to all of us on this couch in this moment. >> generational trauma, which is quite impossible to undo in some cases. >> it was a little bit of a panic in her eyes. my mom says, you're supposed to be getting married yourself, and you're supposed to be starting a family yourself, and you're not meeting this expectation. it just felt like, if i don't get started on this, i'm going to be a huge disappointment. i'm tracy. i'm in my early 40s. growing up, there was an expectation that i'd be a good girl. and good girl meant don't get pregnant. don't have a boyfriend. and then all of a sudden there was a mandate that i had to find a husband. for me, marriage wasn't necessarily the end-all-be-all and the finale of the show. i dee sided, may not get there, might as well have fun, so that's what i did. once we got married. i was like, great. and then there were questions of, are you going to have children. he said to me, this is not a maybe we will, maybe we won't thing to me. this is an obviously, we will. and i said to him, well, for me, it's a, if it happens it happens. if it doesn't, it doesn't. and looking into his eyes and saying now what if we never have children, all of that was on the table, and it created a deeper connection with my husband, because it was an opportunity for honesty. and we laid the ground work for later the real serious hard work of partnering. we were on a sky trip in utah. and thought i was pregnant, and so i bought a pregnancy test. got up early, still kind of like twilight outside, and went to the bathroom and took the test and sat there all by myself and two blue lines. climbed back in bed, tapped him on the shoulder. showed him the two blue lines. he flipped out. i flip out. the crying. it was a beautiful morning. and then we got back from that, and then i started to miscarry. a few months went by, then it was some healing and some space and some sense that first of all the a pain that i wint through hyperfocussed me that i think i really do want this. i want us to raise a baby together. i want to feel what it's like to be pregnant. i want all those precious employments. i want that with you. okay. let's do it. after months and months of trying, it just wasn't happening again. we were not getting pregnant. i'm seeing things are not moving. i go to my gyn, my gyn says you need to speak to a specialist. this is the hardest part. the doctor says we're going to have to do a test called the hsg which tests your falopian tubes to see whether they're functioning the way they're supposed to function. and we get to the procedure, and it's extremely painful. and i'm screaming, screaming. please stop, stop, i can't, he's like just, just, you're going to be fine. i'm just trying to push the fluids through and open it is up, and i'm like stop, stop, and the nurse is holding my hand, and finally, he's like, all right, he flips around the screen, and he says see, here, here, those are blockages. you're going to have to have ivf if you want to have a baby, thanks, and leaves the room. and i'm just laying there. my husband calls me and says how's everything, are you okay? first breaking the news to him that you're not going to be able to give it to him. so it was the death of a lot of expectations, viewpoints on my own body. >> in-vitro fertilization, more commonly known as ivf, you're taking injectable hormone to try to grow as many eggs as possible. you take the trigger shot and then you'd have an egg retrieval in the operating room. i think it's very important to acknowledge that it can be a long road. the process is complicated. it's emotional. it's trying. i think that most people will be successful if they persevere. but that doesn't mean that it happens the first time for everyone. but you should not give up. >> these are all the used needles. side by side they will measure the length of my kitchen. >> i think i had fertilized seven embryos and only two ended up being that really high quality. on implantation day, we will two embryos that she wanted to implant and she did implant two embryos, then there's a two-week waiting period to find out if the embryo did implant. the two-week waiting period is a very big thing in ivf world. it's a lot of, god, it's like you're almost doing a rain dance while you're drinking juice. it's like all the things. you're doing everything you can think of so that this is a successful implantation. then, we get the pregnancy confirmation, and it was a beautiful morning. and a year later, i had her. i was holding her in my arms. i do believe that i was destined to be a mom. i love that my daughter is considered a rainbow baby. she's a child after miscarriage. renaming this jury not infertility but fertility. >> i'm very grateful to see and hear what you all have been through. because after spending moist of my life as a single person, once you hit a certain age you start asking why, why am i not married? 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in the mail. so this is what we're going to be working with. my name is whitney. i'm 35 year old. i'm an entertainment lawyer, and i always saw myself getting married and having kids. this is everything. on my 34th birthday, i came home from work. i had the dream job, had my apartment in new york, and there was nobody to share it with. i'm alone. i literally have no one to share my life with right now. and i cried. now that i'm 35, i feel like that runway to find a partner and to have a family is getting shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter. >> i was in my late 20s, early 30s in the fellowship, and there were people younger than me who were struggling. that was my first wakeup call. the last of communication that we have with our doctors, with our mothers, with our friends just leads to stress and a paucity of information later on that is really difficult to overcome. it's extremely frustrating to see women going through struggles that they may not have had to go through if they had the proper information. so i started talking to my sister about it when she was in college, really encouraging her to take control of her fertility, as i tried to do with ply own. >> i probably would not have froiden my eggs if i didn't have a sister who is a fertility specialist. it really wasn't until my 30s that my sister started encouraging me to freeze my eggs. when she pulled me aside and said whitney, really, i i this you should start freezing your eggs, my initial response was no. my future is ahead of me. >> it's really difficult to watch my own sister to go through egg freezing. i don't want her or anybody else to feel like they're giving up hope when they choose to fried freeze their eggs. it's an important point to get across. so part of my reaching out to her is that i hope she reaches out to her friends and we just start the conversation of really empowering ourselves and taking charge of our fertility. >> all right, this is day four of taking medications to freeze my eggs, and yeah. let's see how this goes. >> i asked my parents if they thought i should do it, and they were both like, oh, yeah, you should definitely that. and i was actually very surprised by that reaction. and so i was, like, well, damn, i guess i should just go ahead and do this. i'm starting to feel a little bit on the moody side. unsure if that is anything related to the hormones i'm taking or if it's just the state of life. i thought of egg freezing as something people do when they have given up hope on their dating lives. and freezing their eggs is the only option for now. okay. ready and, okay, okay, okay. it honestly was not as bad as i thought it would be. first things first. you go to the doctor and get your blood work done. and then once you get your test results back you start the process of giving yourself shots. >> let's do this. for seven to ten days i gave myself three injections. by the ninth day my follicles had grown large enough that the eggs inside were ready. then one of my friends gave me the trigger shot. once you take the trigger shot, you go in for the surgery. i am about to head in for the retrieval, so wish me luck. i'd gone through two different cycles of egg freezing. the first time i had 14 mature eggs, and then this time i had eight mature eggs. as somebody who doesn't like to believe that my fertility is dwindling every year, my body really is changing the older i get. and so now i feel grateful. i can honestly say it has been very empowering. there's a difference between giving up hope and then feeling empowered. and i think it's important for people to lift that veil of embarrassment and shame that they may feel and to be vulnerable with their friends, because, as soon as you do that you find other people you can share your story with. >> and i think one of the things that will take the shame away is the information and understanding, because, you know, i think people don't realize how common miscarriage and infertility are. i had a miscarriage and went to one of my best friend's baby shower that same day. >> same day? >> same day. hat same day >> same day? >> same day. tide pods child-guard pack helps keep your laundry pacs in a safe place and your child safer. to close, twist until it clicks. tide pods child-guard packaging. i thought i was managing my moderate to severe crohn's disease. then i realized something was missing... ...me. my symptoms were keeping me from being there for her. so, i talked to my doctor and learned humira is the #1 prescribed biologic for people with crohn's disease. humira helps people achieve remission that can last. and the majority of people on humira saw significant symptom relief in as little as 4 weeks. humira can lower your ability to fight infections. serious and sometimes fatal infections, including tuberculosis, and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened, as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart 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help you get the best result possible. ♪ the barnes firm injury attorneys ♪ ♪ call one eight hundred, eight million ♪ another thing that i want to talk about is carrying this secret when you're moving forward with your life. you know, people are working, we're in school. you have relationships, and you're carrying this secret and yet it's one of the biggest and most difficult things you've dealt with. >> i felt like when i was experiencing miscarriages, at first it felt like i could only talk about it to administrationers, so if i was on a flight. >> yes. >> as long as you don't know me, yes. >> and we would start chatting and somehow it would come up that i had a miscarriage and they would tell me about their fer nilt challenges as well. i'm one of those people who likes to handle things on my own. my naim is zakieya barnett. i always knew i wanted a houseful of children. i dated my husband for about two years before we got married. we got pregnant two months after our wedding. we were not trying to get pregnant that quickly. having gotten married a little later at 36 i said this is a little sooner than i had planned but fine. i was very excited. we were both excited. it never cross might mind that when i was ready to start our family that we would have challenges. i remember touching my stomach all of the time and just feeling oh, gosh, there's this life growing inside of me, and i started thinking about what this child would look like and be like and all the dreams for this child. that happens right away. i just started spotting. did some research and it said sometimes spotting can be normal, but it did say if the spotting gets heavier go see your doctor, could you be having a plst carriage. i remember sitting on the toilet and i think at some point i realized that i was having a miscarriage. i looked into it, that miscarriages were fairly common t happens all the time. the doctor said the same thing. she said it's sad, it happens but give your body and your emotional self a couple months to recover and then try again. and about six months later got pregnant right away. went to the doctor at the ten-week appointment and i'm thinking, i don't have any issues, so good. whether the doctor was doing the ultra sound, think heard and saw the heartbeat, but it was weak. the doctor told me we hear a heartbeat today but flex week next week when you come in we probably won't. i came to terms with it, that this was probably going to end in a miscarriage. you had the option to have it removed. but i have a natural approach. allowing it to happen naturally is taking control back saying i have control over my body and i'm not going to do anything i don't want to do. i really felt i wanted this to happen naturally and if they're supposed to pass naturally, let them pass naturally. i had a friend's baby shower i had to attend in new york. on that particular day i started spotting and cramping, and i thought, man, this is going to happen. at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning i went into my friend's bathroom and i miscarried. this one was a lot more sad than the first one. it's just a lot going on in your head and a lot of emotions. i want to go to a fertility specialist, to see if there's something wrong, something we can fix and go on. i'm a problem solver by nature. all of the tests came back with no issue, no problem, you have plenty of eggs, you're fertile. sometimes miscarriages just happen. that's what my obgyn says, that's what the research says. i took a couple months and we tried again that summer. and got pregnant right away. so getting pregnant has never been an issue for us. some of the excitement and care-free-ness and joy that you file about being pregnant is taken away from you, because you're worried every day, and this time i remember sort of praying that i didn't have a third miscarriage. i remember saying, god, i can't. you know, come on. like i just can't. i can't do another miscarriage, please let this be the pregnancy that comes to fruition. and it did. i have a beautiful daughter. it's such a rush of just emotions and excitement and amazement. the pain that you go through for however many hours you're in labor didn't platter. i'm meeting my baby for the first time. shy she was perfect. now having two beautiful, wonderful, healthy daughters, it's a conversation in our household, are we going to try for one more, make it a trilogy? in retrospect, i probably would not have kept it in so much. because anytime i spoke with someone or shared my story it was healing and comforting to be able to talk and share openly. know that the family that you want is still very much attainable if that's what you want. i think when you don't have that information, if you have your first miscarriage or you're trying to get pregnant and it's not happening, you feel like it's never going to happen, but realizing that that's a pretty common aspect of the fertility journey. that information will help you know, this may just be a step along the process, and i don't have to be ashamed about it. that's how bodies work. that's how pregnancies work and i don't have to feel hopeless, because there may be many other steps along the way. >> i think it's important for people to be informed more than anything else, right? ask questions. i think sometimes going to the doctor's office can be very intimidating. unfortunately in our medical system, they have to move on, and they move on very quickly, and we're not trained to ask questions, because sometimes we don't even know the next question to ask. imes we don't even know the next question to ask. ♪ ♪ cases of anxiety in young adults are rising as experts warn of the effects on well-being caused by the pandemic. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪3, 4♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪hey♪ ♪ ♪are you ready for me♪ ♪are you ready♪ ♪are you ready♪ people with moderate to severe psoriasis, or psoriatic arthritis, are rethinking the choices they make like the splash they create the way they exaggerate the 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you're pregnant all day without heavy perfumes? now they can! with downy light in-wash freshness boosters. just pour a capful of beads into your washing machine before each load. to give your laundry a light scent that lasts longer than detergent alone, with no heavy perfumes or dyes. finally, a light scent that lasts all day! new downy light, available in four naturally-inspired scents. the information out there is either lacking, or it's voluminous. and either way it is frustrating and you legitimately don't know which direction to go down, because everybody's story is different. the doctor initially said i don't recommend that you even try to have a baby, because of the risk that it would pose to you. sure, my husband certainly felt the same way that, okay, we get married and when we decide to start a family, we start a family, so you do feel guilty, because you feel as if you are taking something away from them. i had done everything i could imagine in terms of being proactive. so i realized that i couldn't achieve my way out of this. my name is joy. i've always believed that first comes love, then comes marriage, and then comes a baby carriage. but at some point you realize life isn't so simple. i remember doctors asking me, you know, are your periods heavy? but how do i know what heavy is? how do i know it's normal? because all i know is my body. i remember laying down at night one time, and i saw a bit of a protrusion. i'm thinking like what's going on? it's normal? and then maybe around 23, 24, going to the doctor and him telling me that i had a fibroid. i had never even heard of a fibroid before. my immediate reaction to him was, am i going to die? unfortunately, i think we don't hear a lot about it because it disproportionately affects women of color, and it starts to feel like nobody cares. my initial questions was, why am i growing these? and he said your body just likes to grow them. i'd never had an obgyn that i felt slowed down in that process. it was just there are certain signs, you are having these symptoms, you have to get them taken out, we're going to get you scheduled for surgery. so when i had the surgery, first off, i was told i would have a very small bikini-line incision, and i woke up straight up and down filleted. the position of it and size of it, they were not able to get it out through the smaller incision. every now and then when i notice the scar i sometimes think to myself, is there something else i could have done? the doctor initially said, well, we're going to make sure that we preserve your fertility, do you want to have children? absolutely, great, okay, took it out, okay, fine. i'm fine now. had my normal annual, and the doctor's like, you are back, you have fibroids again. it is not a surgery you want to repeat. the impact of oh, you are getting these removed, could you be mitigating this problem by causing a new one. then we're deciding that we want to start a family. knowing my history and knowing that i had fibroids, i'm just going to go and seek the doctor's opinion and say listen, all the surgeries have actually impacted your uterus to the point where i don't even recommend you have a baby. i just thought it was a cleat lack of awareness for showing empathy and essentially he was saying you should get a surrogate. you don't know my financial circumstances, you literally have told me very no other options. >> infertility is one of the top three stressors in terms of a medical diagnosis, up there with cancer. the stress of infertility can make a woman question her own being. >> you have friends and family members, and you touch their belly, and you feel the baby kicking and all the other things associated with pregnancy. i'll never have that. and so there certainly was like a loss. and so i needed time to process that loss. you learn very early on as a girl into a woman that no matter what is happening with you, you still very much show up. i learned very early on to compartmentalize, thinking what is the priority right now? right now? we eventually decided to freeze embryos while we figured out what we wanted to do. you have to start with being on birth control for a month before you even start the process. you're getting blood work done. you are getting ultrasounds daily with that blood work to make sure they're monitoring the number of follicles in developing. you're giving yourself shots. it is a commitment. and it is a lot. my first yield was over, probably over 25 eggs, literally the next day it was only 18 fertilized and literally it kept getting cut in half. i ended up with four embryos, and so we just decided to, okay, we'll freeze for now, and we'll come back and just sort of figure out what we wanted to do. we both knew we still wanted children, and we still wanted our own genetic children. so the decision to go down the route of surrogacy was a very quick and easy decision. it is very much like online dating. they want to you tell your story. who are you as a family, as couple, individually, what's been your journey? i think that kind of helps to connect everybody a little bit. at the beginning of covid, it has definitely slowed down the pace at which they're able to match you. initially was like oh yeah, i'll be four to six months. i've been waiting for seven months. but honestly, the waiting has allowed me to get to a place to recognize everything has its timing. i know that i've done what i could. and to position myself and my family to be able to grow and i'm at peace with allowing the process. thinking about my journey through womanhood, there were times when i had no one to talk to and you learn so much you didn't know about people the moment you start to open up. sometimes you just have to take the first step. you shouldn't be alone in this and i think you feel less shame because you are less alone, but there is such a community in sharing. it's okay to decide to do something different. >> yes. >> and it's okay to stop and just reevaluate, because you're like conditioned to, i need to do these things, and sometimes you say, do i want to? >> yes. >> everybody's experience is different, everybody's body is different so sometimes even navigating what is the best option for me is crippling and that's why this conversation is so important. >> because if we had those facts, we would prevent the suffering of so many woman. so n as 7 days try fast acting biotic gummies from align. the #1 doctor recommended probiotic brand. before nexium 24hr, anna could only imagine a comfortable night's sleep without frequent heartburn waking her up. now, that dream... . ...is her reality. nexium 24hr stops acid before it starts, for all-day, all-night protection. can you imagine 24 hours without heartburn? for all-day, all-night protection. ♪ ♪ ♪ hey google. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - oh...oh. - what's going on? - oh, darn! - let me help. lift and push and push! there... it's up there. hey joshie... wrinkles send the wrong message. help prevent them with downy wrinkleguard. feel the difference with downy. xfinity rewards are our way of thanking you just for being with us. enjoy rewards like sing family fun nights! rent sing for $1, then belt out all your favorite tunes from the movie with sing karaoke. plus, see sing 2 in theaters with buy-one-get-one free fandango tickets. join over a million members by signing up for free on the xfinity app. our thanks. your rewards. >> turns out generations of women have been going through this. when we talk to our moms, oh yeah, i had two or three miscarriages. okay that is a lot. so why don't you share this? so it does feel like a betrayal. >> i think when you are successful and have control over so many other things and you're winning, winning, winning and you encounter this thing that you feel like okay, i'm not winning at this and really don't have a lot of control over how to fix it, that's where it just feels like a betrayal and feels so frustrating. >> that's a very good way to put it too. i think we lived that way our whole lives so much so we don't even notice we've been doing it all these years until we take a pause button and something doesn't work. >> it's interesting, because, i can identify with tracy a lot, both grew up, half-parents from africa. when i grew up it was close your legs. if you look at them you die, you know, what i mean, then the same people, wait until you're married to have sex then the same people, what's wrong with your uterus, why aren't you pregnant, and i'm just like what do you want from me? i've done everything right and i'm still being judged and it just is so -- >> and for our daughters, this is the thing. like i was so happy to have a girl because i just want to keep the good stuff of our culture so much, so much, and i also want to, i just want to be transparent with her as much as possible. >> another thing that i want to talk about is when you're moving forward with your life, you know, people are working, we're in school, we have relationships and yet it's one of the biggest and most painful things people have dealt with. how do you describe that? >> i think it's absurd, honestly, when i had my first miscarriage and got up and went the next day to work and had meetings and reports to give and function as if nothing happened and it's very abnormal to do that, right, if you had death in the family or something you would take time off of work and everyone would support you, take your time, you know, come back when you're ready, but because we feel like we can't share, i think we push through life as if you're not experiencing the loss and the agony sometimes that goes with feeling, you know, just so alone, so i think that it's just absolutely absurd. >> and it's somehow, you know, it's that whole veil around womens fertility, what women are experiencing monthly, i mean, honestly, i know we say this but if men were experiencing periods we would have a week off, they would all be synced up, it would be call men-struation day or week or whatever and we would be talking about it so openly but because feminity has all these veils we feel we can't talk about miscarriages. >> you know we say all the time, check on your strong friends, and we are all our strong friends because there's the expectation you're supposed to keep on moving, you know, why would you crumble? you're going to crumble because of that? it's happening to plenty of people. so you never feel, you don't know what that expectation is but i know for me, i think it's important for people to be informed more than anything else. right? like, ask questions. i think sometimes, going to the doctor's office can be very intimidating and, you know, unfortunately in our medical system it's like they have to move on and move on very quickly and sometimes you can't even ask a question before they're out the door and seeing the next patient. >> well, that's why this conversation, though, is a fertility specialist, obgyn's dream. because first of all, i live and breathe the struggles of each one of you every single day with everyone that i see and i just can't tell you how meaningful it's going to be for everyone that you're sharing. and i think it will help to remove the stigma, remove just the feeling of inadequacy as a woman and you just talked about, you know, women not getting the appropriate attention to their health and healthcare and that's true. that's real. you know, the amount of even just research dollars and funding that goes towards women's health, it's just abominable so i am just so happy to see all of you sharing and really taking this to the next level and step of where we need to be in women's health and especially minority women's health. >> the veil wasn't opened until i started sharing what was happening to me. >> whenever i was in a conversation with someone who was sharing their challenges i immediately opened up about mine. >> hopefully, it's the first of many conversations. . >> good evening, everybody. welcome to a special hour, msnbc reports, attack on the capitol. we are less than three weeks away from the one-year mark of that attack, a day i witnessed, i reported on, and indeed, many people will not soon forget. >> we don't know what that