Adrienne Bailon: Your Friendly Guide To What You Can Expect When You’re Using Science To Expect

I’ve written a lot about my journey to motherhood on this blog right as it was happening and as I was going through my struggles. I was on the journey with all of my readers, and now I write about my experiences as a disabled mom to my son. I know in my previous blog post about Raven Symone I wrote that I didn’t like to be labeled as disabled anything, but labels is what society is all about, so we’ll go with that.

Raven Symone isn’t a mother, so we can’t talk about her much even though I wouldn’t loved to continue talking about her. She’s just so cool. Though she herself isn’t a mother, she’s known numerous women who’d been her peers during her Disney days, including Hilary Duff, Lindsay Lohan, and Adrienne Bailon. Bailon co-starred with Raven on ‘The Cheetah Girls‘ franchise. Raven left after the second movie, but a third one was made without her. Bailon went on to tour with the remaining group members as well. And the first movie was produced by none other than Whitney Houston.

Raven and Bailon remained friends throughout the years. Bailon appeared on Raven’s show, ‘That’s So Raven’, and she even reprised her role in the spinoff series, ‘Raven’s Home.’ The same couldn’t be said about the rest of the group members. Raven left the entire franchise due to her conflict with fellow member, Kiely Williams, and Bailon implied at a conflict between herself and Williams through her time on ‘The Real’. Raven and Williams publicly made up and apologized to each other during an Instagram Live in Covid-19 years.

Both Raven and Bailon went on to have their own successful careers following their Disney days. I’ve written about Raven in the previous blog post, so you can check it out after reading this blog post. Bailon went on to co-host ‘The Real’ between 2013 and 2022. Long before that, though, she dated Rob Kardashian for two years. She even appeared on their reality show, ‘Keeping Up With The Kardashians.’ She talks a lot about her relationship with the Kardashian family on her talk show, and it seems like she’s still on good terms with her ex’s sisters.

What intrigued me to watch the show from the start was Bailon’s openness. She was never shy to talk about her life’s mishaps, no matter how embarrassing they might’ve been. We then saw her vulnerability when she ended her engagement, and her relationship altogether, with Lenny Santiago. She then went on to marry Israel Houton in a fairy tale Paris wedding in 2016. And then, up until the very end of the show’s run, we got to see her talk about her struggles with fertility.

Bailon always wanted to be a mother. I think her most used sentence on ‘The Real’ was, ‘When I have kids…’. She was also so invested in conversations that had to do with her co-hosts Tamera Mowry-Housley and Tamar Braxton’s children. So when we saw her not get this dream of hers being achieved throughout the years, it became more and more evident how heartbroken she truly was. I personally couldn’t help but notice her face when her co-host, Jeannie Mai, announced her pregnancy. Mai was notoriously against having children. Her entire identity on ‘The Real’ was her refusing to have children.

We got to see Jeannie Mai become a mother on the show, but never got to see Bailon become a mother throughout the show’s run, and that really f*cking sucked. I was rooting for Bailon to get her happy ending. We did, however, get to know throughout the show that she went through IVF. On August 5, 2022, Bailon and her husband welcomed their first child together, Ever James, via surrogate. She then opened up more on her struggles with fertility on her YouTube show, ‘All Things Adrienne’. She had a total of 8 embryo transfers that failed, and it was when she had one embryo left that her doctor recommended using a surrogate for her next cycle. That was how Ever James was conceived.

Through my own fertility struggles, I felt that Bailon was speaking to me as a friend every time she opened up on ‘The Real’ of her fertility journey and her desire to have children. That was initially why I started watching ‘The Real’ religiously rather than occasionally. I didn’t have anyone to talk to about this very topic because I didn’t know anyone who went through the same things I did. It wasn’t that I needed any sort of advice, though that would’ve been useful too, but rather I needed someone to connect to through shared experiences.

I was recently asked by a friend if I could speak with two of his friends about IVF as they were going through fertility struggles now. They’re not going through any fertility treatments right now, but definitely are considering it. And with that I saw an opportunity; an opportunity to be what Adrienne Bailon was to me to someone who was close to someone close to me. So I agreed to help and answer any questions they might have had. And when they messaged me, I couldn’t help but notice just how grateful they were. They kept telling me that I didn’t have to tell them anything I wasn’t comfortable sharing, but I wanted to. I wanted to share that part of me as much as I could.

Infertility is a very sensitive topic. It’s not so much as a taboo topic, but rather a tough one to swallow. It can become almost embarrassing. We’re now very fortunate that we have science to help us get where we want to go, though I know of some couples personally that didn’t get the end result they wanted even with the help of science. Such fertility treatments as IVF are fairly new. The first baby that was ever conceived through IVF is now in her 40’s. Back in the old days, many couples broke up because they couldn’t have children. My paternal grandmother, for instance, was born through her father’s second marriage. His first wife wasn’t able to bear children, and therefore, their marriage fell apart. My grandmother was born in the 1920’s, so of course, any fertility treatments for her father and his first wife weren’t in the cards.

We live in a world now where having children is a choice. So many couples now choose to live a child-free life for themselves. It’s not just for one reason, but for many. Seth Rogan and his wife, for instance, chose not to have children because it didn’t seem like it’d be fun to have them, and the older they get, the happier they are with their choice not to have them. I myself was prepared to live a child-free life after my first and only IVF cycle failed. But I know of women who go through cycle after cycle after cycle to get to have their dream family.

A friend told me that she has a friend who, after going through 10 cycles of IVF, all of which failed, she and her husband both mutually decided to stop their fertility treatments altogether. My friend’s friend posted her experience, as well as her decision to stop treatments, online. She got a lot of hate for her decision, and that’s just a nice way of putting it. This was utterly disappointing to hear, especially since the hate came from women who’d gone through IVF themselves. With that being said, I wanted to make a list of things of what IVF can do to someone – to someone going through the treatment, as well as their partner. Consider this a ‘What To Expect When You’re Using Science To Expect’ guide. So here we go:

• IVF is difficult to get to – it’s not like you can go to your doctor and he’ll automatically refer to an IVF specialist. First, your doctor will tell you that you need to have unprotected sex for at least a year. Then both you and your partner will be doing testing. Depending on the situation, your partner will be referred to a urologist, and you’ll be referred to a fertility specialist. Each could take months to call you for an appointment. You will then need to take medication for at least 6 months before getting started with any treatments. Your doctor will tell you to try IUI, which rarely works and is mostly used to get more money out of you, before getting to IVF. In between IUI and IVF, there’s a span of at least a year or so.
• IVF can put a financial burden – fertility treatments can be very expensive. Even with the fact that the government covers half of the cost, your bank account will certainly suffer. Because I was diagnosed with PCOS, I skipped through IUI and went straight to IVF. I also only had one cycle. That alone cost me and my husband around $8,000 CAD. Initially, during our construction, we were told it’d cost us around $3,000. But the costs just kept adding up. And there’s no cost high enough to get that desired result of having a child, right? And of course, if you do have IUI before you get to IVF, it’ll be more costly. Each cycle of IVF will also cost more with all the medications you have to take that isn’t covered by OHIP or the government, depending where you are.
• IVF can put a strain on your marriage – it’s not just about needles and being in pain. Fertility treatments are no joke. There’s a lot of stress involved that takes up a lot of time and energy. You might say that women are the ones going through IVF. I thought so too before I even got to know what IVF was. Now, however, after having gone through the process, I realize that men go through it as well. Women go through the physical burden of IVF, while men go through the emotional burden of watching their wives or partners go through the physical burden. It can be a lot to handle.
• IVF can put a strain on your health – I’m speaking from personal experience here. IVF put a serious burden on my health. Not just my chronic or physical health, but my mental health as well. It had everything to do with what I’d mentioned in the points above. Everything combined was just a lot to deal with, and I didn’t know if it was worth it anymore. Before I got pregnant naturally 3 months after my failed IVF cycle, I was considering giving up on having kids altogether. My husband and I were told there’d be zero chance we’d conceive naturally, and I didn’t know if all that stress was worth risking my health for. That’s why I believe it’s important to take breaks in between cycles to let the body and the mind rest and take a breather.

Back in April, Bailon opened up even further about the realities of IVF. When she spoke with People Magazine, she said, ‘I only did eight cycles of IVF, but that doesn’t include the amount of IUIs I did and every other kind of imaginable treatments that you could imagine for fertility. So it was a pretty tough six years of trying to have my son.’ When she was asked how much IVF cost her, she said that she thought it could easily be over a million dollars. She added, ‘And that is not realistic for the average person. And I recognize that.’

In 2018, dyeing a segment on ‘The Real’ Bailon opened up about her struggles to get pregnant, and the hardships of strangers asking her if she was pregnant because of her changing body. She said, ‘I think so many people are very insensitive to that, in the sense [that] I know you guys are like, ‘Is she pregnant?’ ‘Her face is fuller’— FYI I’ve always had a really chubby face so that’s not what it is. I think that as an audience we should be sensitive to the fact that everybody doesn’t get pregnant right away. I think for myself I thought it would happen so easily for me and it just hasn’t happened that way. I’ve had to come to peace with that it’ll happen when it’s God’s timing and I believe in that and I have faith in all of that. But it can be really discouraging and it can be really frustrating.

Ok, I don’t necessarily believe that God had a plan for me. Bailon is religious, and I absolutely respect that. I just don’t have the same beliefs as her. What I do believe, however, is that, in life, everything happens right when it’s supposed to. With that being said, patience is the key to everything in life, fertility and other aspects of life that have nothing to do with it. I believe that I had my son just at the right time, and I’m actually so glad I didn’t have a baby a moment sooner. I’m now at a place in my life where I’m mentally and physically capable of taking care of and being responsible for another human being. I’m now at a place where I’m capable of giving my son the love that my son needs, whereas before, when my husband and I first started trying for a baby, I wasn’t ready at all. Life is funny that way.

Wishing all current and future IVF warrior all the luck in the world – your friend.