Pushkin.
Hey, everyone, maya here. I hope you're settling into the change of seasons. October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, and it has me reflecting on an experience that my husband and I, along with our gestational surrogate Hailey, navigated a few years ago. Many of you know about my slight change of plans when I hurt my hand and had to give up my dream of becoming a concert violinist.
This is another important part of my story, and I hope that sharing my reflections might bring some comfort if you've experienced loss of any kind. I appreciate your listening. Dad jokes that when I was like a five year old or whatnot, he'd come down to the basement and I'd be with my little kitchen set. I'd be on this pretend phone having conversations with my fictitious neighbors about my rebellious children. I'd be like, Oh, you wouldn't believe it, Karen,
Little Bobby is driving me crazy. First of all, it says a lot about my assimilation that my child's name was Bobby, despite the fact I'm Indian and Rob you might have been more appropriate. But I don't think there's ever been anything more that mattered to me than eventually becoming a parent. I mean, it's just it's always been a guiding force. That's me, Maya Shunker. As you can
probably tell, we're mixing things up on today's episode. Instead of coming to you as the host, Maya Shunker, cognitive scientist, I'm coming to you as just me Maya. Recently, I was on my way to finally becoming a mom, which had in years in the making. When my husband Jimmy, and I learned I can't healthily carry a baby. We explored gestational surrogacy, having someone else carry our baby. This has involved fertility treatments, freezing our embryos, and finding a
surrogate match. Things were finally coming together these past few months until we were thrown our own change of plans. I never intended to share such a deeply personal story, but then I realized that's kind of what this show is all about. My guests come here to process their experiences with change out loud, and I realized I wanted to do the same. So two days after I got some terrible news, I asked my producer and friend Tyler Green,
to turn on the mics and interview me. This is a slight change of plants, a show about who we are and who we become in the face of a big change. We started our conversation by talking about Jimmy and me and our search for a surrogate match when we moved out to California. That's really when our journey began.
And it's very scary, obviously, right. I mean, to trust someone so much that you're willing to put your child's development and well being in their hands is nothing small, you know, So, I mean, the surrogacy matching process is so interesting. It feels like you're dating again, Like you're looking at all these profiles of women who can potentially
carry your baby. And unlike a traditional dating profile, which is like, you know, I love playing soccer and making dinners, they're like, you know, here's my dynocological history, and here's the nature of my three berths that I had with.
My own children.
It feels totally nuts to be learning some intimate details about a person's medical history and to be judging compatibility based on based on these factors. It's like, hey, how's your uterine lining? Does it respond well to fertility treatments? You know?
Like, that's nuts.
Usually, as I go about the world, I'm focusing on people's personalities and whether I like them and whether they like me. And suddenly you're in this world where all these bizarre metrics matter more than anything else, which is this person's pregnancy history and their ability to conceive.
You're like, it's not match dot com anymore, but it looks almost the same.
There's all these things exactly.
But wow, didn't know I needed to know that exactly.
So we're sifting through all these profiles and we come across one. Her name's Haley, sorry, okay, and she just looks perfect.
She looks perfect.
She's smiling in her photo with Minnie Mouse ears on her head. It's a picture with her and her daughter in like Disney World. I read her profile. She's got three beautiful children of her own. She's a stay at home mom. She is incredibly artistic and creative and builds amazing things in her home. And she's also a social activist. And I still remember when I looked at her profile.
You know, usually you write a paragraph about yourself at the end, to just say you know why you're interested in being a surrogate and what draws you to it, and you know, this is an opportunity for women to say why they think they'd be a great surrogate for you. And she said, I feel so self conscious talking positively about myself. I've asked my sister instead to share what why she thinks, you know, I might make a great surrogate.
And it was such a beautiful description of Haley, you know, generous in such a deep way, so loving, so caring, and so loyal. And you know, at the time, I didn't know how much that loyalty trait would matter, but it did, and so I still remember it was the middle of my work day and I go into a conference room and we meet Haley over video, and it was it was like love at first sight, you know, that's the best way to describe it. I think we all felt so bonded to each other.
I'd always seen it as.
Such a liability, like why can't I carry this baby? Why can't I carry this baby? And when I met Haley for the first time ever, I thought, It's okay. Knowing her and having it be her will make this We'll make this just as good, even better, because I had the opportunity to get to know someone like her and I had never felt that way before. You know, usually after a video call like that, you give both sides some time to figure out whether they think it's right.
I think we just wrote to each other within like a.
Minute, like we're in, the other sides like we're in, and so we might have been the fastest match that ever happened.
I love that. So what happens next?
We plan to do our embryo transfer in February of twenty twenty, so she comes out here. And there's also there's also this like grading system with embryos. They look at the embryos under a microscope, and so it's like, oh, this one's a six double A and this one's a two DD, And you're like, is this predictive of anything? Like I'm walking down the street being like, is that person a six double A? Like, what's Obama?
Six? Triple A? For sure? Probably a seven? Just a seven?
What's Beyonce? I need to know what Beyonce is? Like if Beyonce was a like three CB or like a two d D, that gives hope to embryos everywhere. Okay, So anyway, we were we chose our best looking embryo and they were all genetically tested, so we had you know, we knew that they were chromosomally normal.
So we choose choose our best one.
And I remember sitting in the ultrasound room that day because you know, Kaylee was She's so inclusive throughout the process. You know, I was like, do you prefer we're out of the room in the room, like at the end of the day, this is her body, and she said, I can't imagine not having you guys in the room.
So we're in the room. The lights go off and I see.
Them take our little girl embryo and implant her, and I I was overwhelmed by emotion and like, I didn't even I don't think of myself as that kind of person, like Jimmy's the one who cries at Disney movies, up Mulan the Lion King. Like I might get a little, you know, heary eyed. But I was so surprised, and I think it was we can cry for lots of reasons, but I think it was it was a combination of so many factors. I think one was profound relief that
this moment was finally happening. You know, it had been years in the making, to just see it happening finally with like a real human Haley sitting there like that was overwhelming for me. And then I also just visualized her. I was like, oh, well, she have thick, curly hair like me. You know, you just have these images. I just imagine her with like you know, I kind of had just a bunch of curls shooting off my head when I was a kid, and they had There was
no order, it was just randomness everywhere. I was like, I wonder, she'll have my you know, Shirley Temple spiral curls, but with like an ethnic twist because they're you know, kind of it's I have textured hair.
I have to see those pictures. By the way, I'm not letting that go.
I will send them to you and so. And I just remember holding Jimmy's hands so tightly and it was a beautiful moment. And you know, we left and obviously we have nerves and whatnot. And you know the way that it works, you're supposed to wait until ten days after to do the formal blood work. That Haley wasn't going to wait, so she was going to the store
buying pregnancy tests. She proceeds to send us images of all the pregnancy tests she's been taking over the preceding days of the line darkening and darkening and darkening, and it's very positive. And she gets her blood test done and we're having a.
Baby girl, you know.
And so we're over the moon and we sign in buy a video to that first ulture sound and we see her little heart beating and in the same way that Haley was perfect to us, that little embryo seemed freaking perfect to us, too, so cute and like the nurse said to Haley and us, your little gal's measuring perfectly. Her heart's beating at a perfect rate. We're good and so yeah, we felt so relieved, you know. And we go home and it's so funny how these surrogacy pregnancies work.
You know, you want to be able to control things, so you end up focusing on really small things like is her a multi vitamin? Like the best version of the multi vitamin, you know, Like how much folic acid is she getting? You know, Like you just start asking yourself all these really small things. It's a it's like
that Iceberg analogy. You just see the tips. So you focus on all those things that you think are in your control, but underneath the surface there's a ton of stuff that's totally not present to you and is totally out of your control. And it's about nine thirty at night, and all of a sudden, we get a text from Haley and she says, are you guys up? And we immediately know something's wrong, because, like, why is she texting us at eleven thirty her time asking you for up?
We call her and she says, I just started bleeding profusely and I think I maybe miscarrying and I'm not sure what's happening. And my heart just sank and I was like, oh my god, how is this possible. We just saw the baby a few hours ago on the ultrasound, you know, looking super healthy and happy, and Hayley was healthy and happy. Like it just felt like a tragedy, you know, And to go from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows within a six hour period,
it just felt cruel. Sure enough, she goes in the next morning for an ultrasound and there's nothing there, you know, like there was something there the day before, but there's nothing there today.
That's what they told us.
So she had miscarried and I will tell you the hardest part about a surrogacy journey is that there's a third person grieving along with you, and that's so excruciating. It's like, Jimmy and I felt like we could manage our own pain, but to see someone who was so loving and only wanted to bring us joy suffering and in pain and going through the physical trauma of a miscarriage like bleeding throughout the entire night and horrible cramping and feeling nauseated and dizzy and all the things. Like,
it's so horrible. It's so horrible to have a third person. And you know, in our minds, we're thinking, because guilt is an inevitable feeling on all on all sides, we're thinking to ourselves like we're the reason Haley had our first miscarriage, you know, That's what we're thinking. And Haley's probably thinking why did this happen?
Like why why?
Why couldn't I make this work? And we're all having these irrational thoughts that are not rooted in real things, because you just want to find an explanation.
You know, you want to.
You want to blame someone, and the easiest person to blame is yourself or like who else am I to blame the universe? Like I don't you know, so I just wanted to blame myself.
For everything.
And so so that happens, And the reason why it was so painful, Tyler, is that it happened the day before we all entered quarantine in California, so we couldn't even grieve with our close friends and family, like the very small circle of people we had told about this pregnancy.
And at this point, where you were you thinking, I'm sure you had actually many thoughts at this point, like should we work together with Haley again or somebody else?
It's a great question. We so desperately wanted to work with Haley, and we were hoping doctors would tell us that we could, that it would make sense to Unfortunately, you know, they said, we have no reason to believe anything really about this situation, like there's a lot of miscarriages at six weeks, and we were really concerned at the time, like, well, Haley be down for this. She just went through a traumatic experience and one that she did not you know, you can sign up for this,
but like do you really know what that's going to be? Like, you know, and so one thing that really touched our hearts is when she said, I'm in this with you until the end. I will do this until you become parents.
And just to catch us up on the timeline, so this is this is again March of twenty twenty exactly. And then at some point you make a decision to try again or you're able to try again.
Yeah, so we all get vaccinated, but we try again, and so she comes out here and we go through the whole process again. So this is August of twenty twenty one. Okay, so it's August twenty twenty one. Haley flies out here and we just had a wonderful time because it was in some ways it was as though no time has passed, right because we felt so close
to her. But in other ways it was as though so much time had passed, because you could see changes in the depth of our conversation and just how comfortable we felt with each other.
And so we go into the room and.
I can already feel some of the light you know, PTSD feelings kicking in because this time when we're doing the ultrasound, I don't cry to do the transfer, I mean, you know, the embryo transfer. I'm just I'm holding my breath more than I did the first time. Like I feel a little anxious, you know, and you know everyone's like, just stay positive, stay positive, stay positive.
So I so we stayed positive.
And within two weeks we got those darkening line pregnancy tests. I told her that, you know her, her hormone levels were super high this time. So I was like, Haley, you're pregnant AF. So that was our that was our WhatsApp group name, Haley's Pregnant AF. We'll be right back to the slight change of plans. When Jimmy and I found out that Haley was pregnant again, we were ecstatic. We had transferred one embryo and we felt so fortunate
it had worked. Jimmy and I would go for long walks together and start imagining what life would be like with our little Chinese Indian baby, and we named her like Karina, that's going to be our name. So as pregnant AF with Karina shunker Lee. And she's pregnant, and like clockwork, on exactly the same day, Haley gets morning sickness as she did the first pregnancy. Everything's going super well, her levels are looking super strong.
And.
I just start I just start feeling anxious as the six week mark approaches, because it feels very irrational and like there's no reason at all to believe that if there's a miscarriage, it would happen, you know, at the six week mark, right like it could happen at seven and a half weeks, it could happen, you know, twenty weeks. You just don't know in this process. So I felt
like I was getting irrationally anxious. So I kept trying to talk myself off, talk myself off the ledge and be like, there's no reason to believe this would happen. I'd set up an email address for Karina, and I'd been sending her emails along the way about the pregnancy, about Haley. It's like, hey, you know, hey little Karina, it's mom. You know, here's an update. And I remember I wrote to her the night before. I said, Hey, tomorrow is a really big milestone for us, because we
get through it. Like it's one day more, you know, that next day it's one day more than the last pregnancy, and I just feel like I'll feel some relief. It's Tuesday morning. I wake up and I have relief because I look at my phone, and I'm like, there's no message from her saying that she bled overnight. And then she texts us saying, you know, I was a little scared this morning because I woke up not feeling morning sickness. She had had other days like that, so it wasn't
immediately alarming. And then at ten thirty am, I get a message from her and she says, I just had a gush of blood and my heart sank.
I was like, you have got to be kidding me.
How is this happening again, like on exactly the same day as last time, Like it just it didn't make any sense, And so we called the doctor and they they're like, Okay, it could be a miscarriage. However, it could be another thing. It could be a hematoma. Right, It could be that there is some blood pooling in that area and it just needs to get out. Why don't we have her goat get an ultrasound? And so even though she's like actively bleeding, she goes to get
this ultrasound and we're expecting the worst. I mean, I'm an optimist, so of course, until you tell me like, no, there's nothing there, I'm always going to hope. I'm always going to hold on to that shred. I think Jimmy at this point had just given up. He was like, Maya, all hope is lost. And this incredibly kind doctor is on the call and he's doing the ultrasound. He's like, there's your baby, and her heart beat's perfect, it's one
hundred and sixty. She's measuring exactly as she should at six weeks, and oh my god, there is that hematoma, Like there is this blood pool, and so that does explain the bleeding. Like, you guys are good. And I was just sobbing, like the relief that I felt, Oh my gosh, there's an explanation and our baby is looking great and we're going to have this child. And then he goes over the area again and he goes, oh my god, there's another one. You guys are having twins,
and that one's also perfect. That one has a beautiful heartbeat and is measuring great. You guys are having twins. And Hailey was so happy, and I remember in that moment I said to her, I said, look, I'm grateful for one or two. I don't I didn't need to. I just just wanted one, you know. But what matters to me most is that it's with you. And so what I just kept saying, I was like, I wanted this to be with Haley. I wanted this to be with Haley, and it's with you, and we get to
do this journey with you. And Jimmy and I take a walk at this point of the day. We're like, let's just get some fresh air. And now we're planning our life with twins. We're thinking to ourselves, if you need to buy a home, there should be like many bedrooms, and how are we gonna care for twins? And we start thinking about a second. You know, Haley had said, I guess it's time to start thinking of another name.
So we're like, what goes well with Karina, you know, And we just start brainstorming and we have this walk and it's just like we're floating on air, you know it. We can't wait to tell the people who we've told that she's miscarried to that it's actually the opposite. And
you're not even just getting one, We're getting two. So I go back home and I text Haley and I say, you know, I leaded the what to expect act on my phone this morning when I got the news about the blood because I didn't want to get my hopes up and I just wanted it. I wanted to remove all evidence of that of my phone and I said maybe I should reinstall it. And her response was, guys, the thing that I've been bleeding out recently, like, it's
not it's not blood. And she takes a picture of it and we send it to our doctor and our doctor calls us. We're like, could this be anything? Could this be?
Like?
What is this?
You know Jimmy studied biology in college. He's like, my MAYI that's his nickname for me. He's like, this is not a blood clot. I'm so sorry. And when the doctor looked at it, I just remember I heard I heard the sound in her voice. She's like, you know you could hear it, Like I knew the answer before she said it. She goes, I'm just so sorry, guys. I can't believe this has happened. And it's hard to describe what that feels like. I wanted to throw up.
I felt totally nauseated and disoriented. I felt so sad that Haley was suffering. I felt so sad she was going through this trauma again. And it was confirmed by a ultrasound that there was nothing there anymore. The next morning, and the hardest part of this process was learning that our embryos were actually great, and Haley was great, but very likely there's some sort of incompatibility between our biologies. The doctor's best guest right now is that her immune
system sees our embryos as foreign in some way. I asked my doctor, I said, have you ever seen this before? And she said no, And I think there's a bizarre immune response happening here. And what that meant is we can't work with her anymore. She said to me this morning, She goes, it is so cruel that a relationship that is so compatible is biologically incompatible, and you just can't fight biology.
What are you going to do?
You know, the doctors are like, this would probably happen again, and we can't put you guys through that. You can't put yourselves through that. You just have to find another surrogate. And what's again I'm astonishing to us, is like Haley was willing to try again with us and again and again, because that's the kind of person she is. And I'm just overwhelmed still that someone would go through this, go through this pain, because she's so eager to make us happy.
That's an incredible gift. I've never met anybody like her in my life. I probably never will.
Yeah, so i'm hearing you tell this story, I just want to acknowledge that it is incredibly harrowing and what you've gone through over the last few days is horrible, and yeah, I am so sorry.
Thank you.
You know. I'm also struck by the fact that you have gone through this experience twice now, and that the first time that Haley miscarried was back in March of twenty twenty when COVID was beginning for all of us, and I just remember that the world was sort of changing overnight for many of us, and then on top of that change, you had this other incredible loss, And I'm curious, what was that experience? Like?
It was really hard, it's very lonely, it's very iclating. You feel like people can intellectualize it, but also maybe not just fully understand the emotions behind it, because I didn't fully understand the emotions behind it until I went through it myself. I just didn't. It built my empathy so much, and the way that I dealt with it, Tyler was I was like, I have to make something good out of this, and then it's funny to think back,
I've just forgotten about this until you mentioned it. Like I thought of this podcast idea called a Slight Change of Plans, and it was a grief project for me.
It was my way of.
Trying to find meaning and answers in a situation that I couldn't find meaning and answers in. And I didn't know how to navigate the change that was happening in my life. I didn't know how to navigate miscarriage. I didn't know how to navigate COVID. I didn't know how to navigate all the loss that was happening in the world. I didn't know how to navigate the racial injustice. I felt completely overwhelmed, and I just thought to myself, I know that I'm not alone in not knowing how to
navigate this moment. I know that there is a treasure trove of wisdom out there on how to navigate change, especially unwanted, unexpected change, and it's just a matter of finding those stories and learning from them. And that's what led me to build the show. It came out of a personal desire to understand how it is that people navigate change and to learn from them, because you know, I'm a scientist, write a cognitive scientist. I study how
the mind works, I study change. I know the science, but the science was falling short for me, and I felt like I needed to hear people's stories and I needed to emotionally connect with people.
It strikes me as I think I knew that, but I'm just hearing it for the first time, that this was your grief process, Right, I'm saying that correctly, Like this was how in a way how you grieved, Right.
Yeah, I don't, and I don't think I really made the connection fully until this moment where everyone grieves differently, you know, like I was. I was talking to Michael Lewis after the tragic passing of his daughter, and he said, Maya, no one knows shit about grief. Everyone's telling me how to feel, everyone's telling me what book to read, Everyone's telling me to do this and see this therapist and talk about No. I need to create the Michael Lewis
plan how I grieve. And he's so freaking right about that, Like there is no one size fits all recipe for how to grieve. There's no one size fits all recipe for how to change, how to deal with change. And
that's a sobering realization. When you're in the throes of grief, you just want answers, you want a solution set, and you can't get it, and so what you do instead is realize, well, I have to find I have to create a Maya plan, and I do my best when I'm active, and I throw myself into passion projects when I'm in a bad place.
Like that is.
Everyone has their own recipe, but for me, that is how I heal to process out loud, to be open with people, to throw myselves into creative projects that can hopefully help people and make people feel stronger.
So, Maya, we've been talking for the last couple of days, and it might be too soon to answer this question, but I'm curious to know what you've learned about yourself from all of this.
I learned that I'm really bad at acceptance. I always want to justify things. I always want to resist the randomness in our world that I know is just randomness.
You know I don't.
I don't have religious or spiritual beliefs that help guide me through these situations. I do just believe in people having bad fortunes in life, you know. But I'm b at acceptance, which means I tap into a very natural part of my psychology, which is to tell stories, to try to make sense of this, to try to find something find something good that can emerge from this experience. It's one of the reasons i'm talking with you today
because I need something good to come from this. And if one listener hears this and feels that they're not alone, then that is a silver lining. I want everyone to know that my husband and I went through this, because the more we talk about it, the more we can support one another. I think what I learned is you don't as a person. You don't even grew the same
way every time I'm grieving. I don't know yet all the ways, but I feel like I'm grieving the loss of these twins differently than I did the loss we had last year. It feels very different, and in some ways, in some ways it feels strangely easier because I feel stronger because I know that I know that I've done this before and I did make it out the other end, And maybe that's the hope I can give to listeners
like these experiences can make you stronger. You can learn how to you can learn what helps you build resilience in your life along the way, and you can try to do that.
What would you say to Haley in this moment.
That I love her and life works in really interesting ways. You don't know the kinds of people that you'll meet and how they'll touch you. So it's a gift. It's a gift that we got to know her. That's why I that's why the regret part of my brain has just kind of turned off, because I'm like, wait, if we hadn't gone through this experience, we wouldn't have met this wonderful human being. And like that counts too in life, right, we should be putting weight on that too, Humans who
come into our lives and enrich our lives. Like life is not just about achieving a series of outcomes, it's also letting in and creating space for unexpected, beautiful gifts. And I think that's how we feel with her.
I have such a deep appreciation for you sharing this story today, and I think that in you being so open it is really going to help a lot of people. And I just want to give you a chances is there anything else that you'd like to share?
I mean, I guess one thing i'd share is I feel closed off right now about the idea of a new surrogate entering our lives. So fascinating how these bonds formed, but it almost feels like a betrayal, like how could I do this to Haley? Like could how could we have somebody else? And obviously she was saying like, you guys deserve a child so much, and you know she would only ever be so supportive of our next steps. But instinctively, I'm like, oh, I don't want to get
close to them. I don't want to have my heart broken again. I want distance, Like I can feel my protective defense mechanisms kind.
Of in high alert. And I talked to.
Our agency, our surrogacy agency folks, and they've been amazing, And none of them said to me, you know, Maya, your future surrogate, deserves your most loving self. That had an impact on me. She does deserve it, and it wouldn't be right to shield her from the love and
gratitude that I feel. So that means that I just need to put an effort in hard work to get to a point where I can open myself up again before embarking on this journey again, because she deserves to have all of Jimmy and me and all of our openness and all of our love.
And so.
I guess as I look at next steps, that's my first next step, before any of the logistics. It is like figuring out how to feel hopeful and open again. Join me next week. When I talk to Oscar nominated actor riz Achmed, we talk about how finally playing a role based on his own life has changed his understanding of himself.
He's the one role I never get to play with someone like myself. I realized that up until this point as an actor, I'd become adept to molding masks and wearing them for other people and representing other people, and realized that actually the next stage of growth is about not molding and wearing masks, but taking them off.
A Slight Change of Plans is creative, written and executive produced by me Maya Schunker. The best part of this show is getting to collaborate with my formidable Slight Change family. This includes Tyler Green, our senior producer, whose unrivaled empathy and kindness made this episode possible. Jen Guera our senior editor who brings so much heart and conscientiousness to her work on the show. Ben Holliday, our sound engineer, Emily Rosstek,
our associate producer, and Neia LaBelle, our executive producer. Louis Scara wrote our delightful theme song, and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industry, so big thanks to everyone there.
I'd like to extend my heartfelt thanks to Haley, my dear friend, for her openness and having me share our story with all of you, our fertility clinic for their compassion and support during our experience, and to Michael Lewis for his friendship and advice, and of course a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow A Slight Change of Plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker, and please remember to subscribe, share and rate the show to help get the word out.
See you next week.
So spoiler alert, Jimmy and I are not chill people about this sort of thing, right, the health of our future baby. Like Haley was telling us that she came home on a Saturday, and unbeknownst to her, her husband had bought a bunny Oscar. Okay, Now, typically this would just be like, you know, Haley's my friend. I'm like, oh my god, that's so much fun. You guys have a bunny, send me pictures? You know, how did you decide on the name Oscar? Right, that's a normal conversation.
And instantly Jimmy and I are like, is this a pregnancy hazard?
We go down? We go down a rabbit hole, no fun.
Of doing research on like PubMed and like, are there any viruses that rabbits carry that can potentially be transmitted to humans? And I just remember there was this moment where Jimmy turned over to me and moves his laptop so I can see what he's looking at. And it's like he's at like Rabbit Welfare dot co dot UK looking at health facts and he looked at me and he's like, I never thought it would come to this.