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Them Before Us Podcast
Them Before Us #089 | Born of IVF & Blinded By Birth Control | A story of Pro-Life Hope
00:34:23
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Chelsea, thanks so much for joining us on the Them Before Us podcast today.
- [00:15]
B
Yeah, it's so good to be with you today.
- [00:17]
A
All right, well, I'm really excited to jump in to your story, and I don't know where you want to start. Do you want to start with what you know of maybe your origins? And we can just go from there. I'll just ask you questions from there.
- [00:31]
B
So I was very, very young when my parents told me that I was conceived through ivf. It's actually something I really appreciate from them. I think I knew about IVF before I even knew about the birds and the bees, which is kind of like a weird way to learn about reproductive technology is before you really learn about normal reproduction. But that's just how upfront my parents were with me about it. And it really got me interested in, like, reproductive issues in general, which naturally brought me over to pro life issues. And that's when I started to see that there can be problems with the way that people choose to reproduce, don't reproduce, reproductive violence. All these bad things can go wrong with which. In which is supposed to be a really healthy, natural, beautiful situation. Mother has baby, everything's wonderful, but that's not always how it goes. And things like get really scary, really dark really quickly. And so when I realized that in in vitro fertilization, it's not as simple as, oh, this lovely couple wants to have a baby, and we're going to help them have a baby. And it's beautiful, and everybody's happy at the end, it's, hey, we're going to make, like, a ton of babies, and then we're going to kill most of them, and then maybe one of them will survive. And. But we're not al. We're also not going to fix your actual fertility issues, so you might miscarry anyway, because we never solve that problem. But now you're just going miscarry at a bigger scale. And it's just really, really horrible, dark things. That left me with the question of, like, am I. Am I okay with this? And I've just really come to the conclusion that I'm just. I'm just not. Because I really believe in the dignity of every human life from the second it starts, which is that fertilization, it's growing, it's unique DNA. It's a human. That means it's alive and it deserves respect. And IVF does not respect little human lives at all. It does the opposite.
- [02:34]
A
So you're young when you're first introduced to it, but you Must have learned all these other dynamics that go along with ivf, probably over time. But what was your parents conversation with you when you're little? How do they explain that? That basically you're kind of created outside of mom and dad's like, out. Well, you were still put into your mom's belly. So they would have explained that. How do they go about that with a little kid?
- [03:01]
B
Yeah, so my parents are very blunt, which can be really helpful. So even when, like I didn't understand what those words meant, like I said like before I understood natural reproduction, they would just say like, well, you were made in a laboratory and then mommy had you in her tummy and I was like, oh, okay. Like I'm, you know, when you're like 8 years old, you're not like really even old enough to think that's weird. It's just your normal. And it wasn't until I got older. I remember my. I started really looking into pro life issues when I was about 12 years old. When I was 13, my parents put a computer in my room, which now as an adult I'm like, do not do that. I had way too much unfettered access to the Internet. But surprisingly I used it to look up pro life issues, which is a very weird hobby now looking back as a 13 year old. But it wasn't. So it was over time, like reading different things, listening to different interviews, different prolay speakers, hearing them talk about it. But I realized what the science was behind ivf because I don't think my parents even knew to communicate about it. They weren't saying like, hey, Chelsea, this is a mistake that we made. This is what happened because we didn't have informed consent. They didn't even realize that. So it's actually me and my sister learning about these issues and engaging in conversation in front of my parents that I think they learned about these issues. Like one of the most heartbreaking things my mom ever said is like the embryos that we. That were not used during her rounds of in vitro fertilization that ended up being discarded, she said that she didn't know she was killing her babies. That's not fair. Yeah, that's not right. But that's what happened to my parents. So in a way I was the one educating them.
- [04:47]
A
I mean that's, and that's a lot of pressure for the child or even adult child or growing child to go through. We, we understand that a lot of the folks going into this industry are not well informed about it. And the industry itself doesn't Want you to be well informed because a lot of people would probably say no, like you're saying if they had described to your mom ahead of time, hey, just so you know, the ones that you create that aren't, quote, viable or that you won't be able to, to implant or you, you know, over time, they're frozen too long and you can't use them anymore. They're going to be discarded. That means the humans you created will die. They don't speak like that. They don't worm people that way. And we don't want to vilify the folks who go into this industry because most of them don't understand what's actually happening. And so you. This might have been. What was this 30 some years ago that your parents are engaging in this. What do you think was or what do you know of their mindset and what they were told and why they kind of went in that direction.
- [05:51]
B
So it was 1994 when my parents were going through their invo in vitro fertilization rounds. And you're right. Like, my mom didn't have an iPhone in her pocket, so she could fact check everything that her doctor just said to her. She had nothing but his word to go off of. And it was at a time where IVF wasn't as popular as it is right now. So she didn't have any friends who had done ivf. It wasn't something that the church, we're Protestant. It's not something, something that our church was talking about specifically. Our church didn't know anything about it, so they were really on their own. It wasn't something that you felt comfortable sharing with your friends. Because then you have to say, like, well, actually me and my husband are infertile and like, we do it all the time, but it's not working. That's not something you want to bring up at the church brunch in the 1990s. It's a little uncomfortable at that point. So it's something that happens in secret. And abuse is what happens when things are kept in darkness. And so I think that if my parents had had informed consent, they would have made a very different decision. My parents are very pro life and they're very, I mean, my mom looks at Jesus for the decisions that she's got to make, but that's if she's given the correct information. And when she was 19 years old, her appendix ruptured and there was so much scarring that they were told that she might as well have a hysterectomy. This was in the 70s. They. The only reason she didn't have a hysterectomy is because my grandfather was so upset that the only thing that he could see as a possibility for her was her to keep her physical anatomy to still feel like a woman. He was very sensitive to that. He was like, you're not going to walk in here, tell her she's never going to be a mom, and then also take her reproductive organs? Like, absolutely not. And so, thank God, him just having that sense that that was an overstep that was unnecessary. She was able to keep her fallopian tubes and everything. But then when she was married to my father and they were really, really wanting to have kids, really desperate to have kids, she got a full fertility workup because now it's the 1990s, no longer the 1970s. And they told her that she also had sperm antibodies. And so they basically told her, like, between the scarring of your fallopian tubes that we've already tried surgery to fix and only accidentally made worse, and the antibodies, you are not getting pregnant, period. There is no way the sperm is going to reach the egg. Your only option is IVF. And I mean, I'm not an OB GYN, but there's a huge difference between OB technology in 1990, in 2025. So I think that that was probably accurate information at that point that she was being told that. But then, like I said, the rest of the conversation wasn't added in. Like, so what we're going to do now is xyz. It was just like, okay, just take these shots and we'll make. And we'll make sure you have a baby.
- [08:59]
A
Yeah.
- [08:59]
B
And that's. That's a half truth.
- [09:02]
A
Yeah. So interesting. I don't even know sperm antibodies. I mean, I assume by those two words that means something in your body is identifying it as an enemy, and so it's destroying it before it can the egg. Wow.
- [09:13]
B
Right. So not only could her egg not get through the fallopian tube, my dad's sperm couldn't even get through the cervix and up there.
- [09:20]
A
Wow. It's interesting, too, because when people are facing infertility, the industry pushes them into ivf. And rightly so, is highlighting the biological connection still. Right. So instead of saying a viable way to care for children might be to go through the foster or adoption system, because there are kids there who need parents. And so that might be a way to both. We like to say at them before us, adoption is not for adult wish fulfillment, but it's good thing to want to be a parent. And there's children who need parents, so that might be a way to care for them. But they see that we see the value in biology. But that almost then makes the ethical questions and what happens to the majority of the babies that are created even worse because you are making your own biological children.
- [10:18]
B
And even.
- [10:20]
A
Yeah. And even just the process of. For men, easy to procure sperm for women, it's quite invasive. And I mean, gosh, I don't even know what the technology would have been back then. But right now they have to pump you full of hormones and shots and try to mass produce and harvest your eggs, which can be really detrimental for women as well. Okay, so you learn about it as a child. You're researching the pro life movement when you're 12 years old. Take us through more of, you know, did your conversations with your parents get dicey over time as you learn more about it and, you know, kind of, what do you think about IVF generally, ethically, and does that align with your parents? Do you disagree with your parents in some ways or what are those conversations like? I'm sure it's very complicated.
- [11:09]
B
Yeah. So I think that when the truth was arrived at in me educating myself online and me just being a very chatty person. So, like when I come down to the dinner table in middle school, like, I want to talk about what I learned that day. And I remember all the time, like, getting chided by my mom because my little siblings, they're. They're twins and they're also ivf. They're two years younger than me, so I would want to bring up like abortion when they were like in fourth grade. And I'm talking about it at dinner. And the same thing with ivf. And so part of it was like, chelsea, please stop talking because this is inappropriate content for the age of the table. But then it started to shift as my siblings got over older. Sorry, not over. As they got older, they were able to engage in the conversation with me. And then it got complicated morally and just sensitivity wise because as soon as I'm saying, like, yeah, so like the embryos that are in the clinic, they just like kill them all and then throw them in trash because like my parents, I'm also very direct. And then it gets really quiet and really uncomfortable because that's not a normal thing for a parent to be told by their child about their other children. That's a shell shock if you're going to get told that by like your pastor or like your friend. Who's patting your hand or doctor. But you're not supposed to hear that while you're passing the mashed potatoes to your 14 year old. That's really uncomfortable. And so I think that my parents know that what I'm saying is true, and it's really, really hard for them to hear it at the same time. So in our household, we've kind of adopted this unspoken rule of like, let's not make things more painful than they have to be. They know that. I feel a call in my life to talk about pro life issues professionally. I'm a speaker. I do Instagram videos. I talk about this issue. I'm not going to stop talking about this issue. But I have enough respect for my parents to say, we can't undo what happened. So I'm going to not rub this in your face. I'm not going to flaunt my, my work to you. But on the other side of the coin, it is true and I'm going to say it.
- [13:38]
A
Yeah.
- [13:38]
B
And so we've been trying to balance that together. My parents, my parents support everything that I'm doing and I'm so appreciative of that because I know some other people who are conceived in IVF who agree with me that, like, what happened was not okay, but their parents are not supportive of what they're doing. And that's incredibly difficult because every child wants to be supported by their parent. They want them to pat them on the head and say, I'm so proud of what you're doing. I'm so happy for the impact you're making in the world. But you all have to realize that our parents are people and they're hurt too. And we really have to kind of thread that needle of like, let's hold truth in one hand and let's hold their feelings in the other hand and say, how can we, how can we bridge this gap and make this into a good thing without unnecessarily harming people even more than they have to be?
- [14:29]
A
Yeah, that's a really compassionate take. And we, we talk about this quite a bit, especially with donor conceived kids or kids that have come from surrogacy. And then I think kids conceived by ivf, same thing. In a lot of ways, some of those kids have worse outcomes even than kids who've lost both biological parents for a few reasons. One is that you have to look at the parent, whether it's the one parent or the two parents, and at some level, you have to acknowledge they chose to do this to you. And I think your compassionate take though is acknowledging that your parents didn't have all the information. And that's what's amazing about your story, is that you're able to now share it. So more and more people are getting this information before they go down that road. And the second thing is a lot of the kids conceived in these unethical ways have to bear the emotional weight for their parents because the parent, the reason they chose to go about these things is they were struggling with infertility or they could. They didn't find someone to marry, so they're single by choice. Or they had a hard breakup and they re partnered with someone of the same sex so they couldn't, you know, have children biologically. And so they chose to do these things. And so instead of the child being able to say, I'm processing and feeling this and I need you to carry this for me. Me, they can't do it because they know they're going to make their parents upset or their parents are going to say, don't just be glad you you're alive, or we've had someone shared their story that I think it was a single mom by choice used a sperm donor said to the child whenever the child would do something wrong. Do you know how much I paid for you? Upwards. Yeah, upwards of 20, $30,000. And the kid said, it's impossible not to feel like you're a product when you know these things about you. So.
- [16:19]
B
Yeah, but what the parent there like, trying to be optimistic as possible about that comment. Let's assume it was like 100% not meant that way. Like what the parents are trying to communicate is I loved you so much. I made all these sacrifices so we could be together. And that's how they look at it. So when you turn to your parent and say, what's wrong with you? Why did you do this? Why did you make these decisions? How could you do such a thing? They're completely caught off guard because they just wanted to have a baby that they could love so much. I remember my mom told me I was about a month old. I was her first successful birth through ivf. I was about a month old and she had me sitting on the bed and she just burst into tears, absolutely sobbing because she was so happy she finally had a baby.
- [17:10]
A
Yeah.
- [17:11]
B
Because at that point she's in her late 30s. She's been convinced since she was 19 it was impossible and there I am and I look just like her. Yeah, that's. That's an incredible, amazing thing for her. So the kid is being communicated two very conflicting messages through these unnatural reproductive situations. It's I love you so much, I was willing to put you at risk for abuse. And how are you supposed to respond to that? That's so confusing because on one hand you're like, my mom loves me. But on the other hand, I know that through the IVF laboratory, the reason that I was the one who was chosen to be birthed was completely random. The leftover, and I hate using that term to refer to actual people, but the leftover embryos, the leftover embryos, my siblings ended up being thrown in the trash. I could have just as easily been thrown in the trash. So it's very confusing when you're told, I love you so much. And then as the kid, I'm looking around, I'm like, but what about my siblings? What about them? I'm the same as them and they were hurt and I'm just here because I got lucky.
- [18:28]
A
Right?
- [18:29]
B
What kind of love is that? It's so confusing. But then you don't want to say that to your mom because she's your mom. You don't want to make your mom cry.
- [18:36]
A
Right?
- [18:37]
B
Because you love your mom. It's so much pressure. It's so difficult. And I think that's part of why a lot of people conceived in these situations are not speaking out. There's another issue is this is so new. IVF is so new. We're only just now as a generation being old enough to articulate how we feel because like, there's a lot of 10 year old kids conceived through IVF. There's not that many who are in their 30s like me. This is just, it was so rare when it started out. Now it's everywhere. But as we all get older, we're going to have thoughts and we're going to have opinions that are going to make people feel very uncomfortable with what has been done to us.
- [19:20]
A
Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. Well, and like we said too, the, the posture of someone, especially like yourself, that seems pretty well grounded, like you've been able to process and, and you have compassion for your parents and you can also, you're trying to balance that compassion piece, understanding it from their perspective and also being able to advocate for the truth, which I think will help a lot of folks going forward as this technology continues to go into it with their eyes wide open. There's probably a lot of people who are like, I know all the these things you're saying. I'm willing to do that because it's worth it to me to get a baby. And that's maybe a different conversation, but at least we're probably catching the folks who, once their eyes are opened, they see, I'm not going to go about this because I'm understanding that this violates the rights of children. I'd love to transition a little bit to, you know, you shared that your story. There's kind of these three huge points where your life intersects with sort of the pro life movement. And the second point, so the first being conceived by ivf. The second point is that you were blinded because you were using a kind of birth control. And just. I have a. Just a more general thought is I've known so many young women who've been encouraged to get on birth control, from everything to controlling acne to you have a lot of period pains or kind of the wink, wink, they're probably going to have sex anyway, so let's get on birth control.
- [20:50]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [20:50]
A
And people are using it in a way not even necessarily thinking about, I don't want to get pregnant, but for these other interesting reasons. And then women are being on birth control for 10, 15, 20 years and then are surprised when they can't get pregnant later. You know, like for. So the culture is so upside down. But anyway, we'd love to hear just from you how that, how the birth control piece intersected with your story and kind of what happened there.
- [21:21]
B
Yeah. So, because I really. It is because of IVF that I even had this birth control conversation with my doctor. So IVF was what kind of opened the door for me to be. Feel capable of looking at pro life issues. It sparked the interest. It greenlit that conversation in my family where I was like, oh, well, what else is going on in reproduction? And what I learned is that some forms of birth control can prevent a fertilized embryo. So exactly the same thing as what's in a petri dish in an IVF laboratory from implanting in the uterus. And of course, with my convictions and with the science that already knew, I was like, oh, that is not okay. That is not okay with me. And so I tried to talk to my doctor about it. I said, is this medication you're going to give me, is this going to prevent a zygote from attaching on the uterine wall? And she just looked at me like I was stupid. Like it was the dumbest thing that she had ever heard anyone be concerned about, ever. And I felt so embarrassed because I was only 19, I was just about to get married I was told I had to take birth control if I wanted to start working. My culture told me that if I got pregnant first thing, getting married, it'd be like, the worst thing to happen ever and would probably get divorced. And I totally bought that. Like, hook, line, and sinker. I was like, okay, I cannot have a baby right now. It'd be the worst thing ever, so I better figure out something medically to make that not happen. And then combined with the doctor just looking at me like I was an idiot for having any concerns about the medication she was trying to give me. I was just like, okay, fine, just give me the pills. I don't even care. I just want to get out of this room. My mom's in here. You're talking to me about sex in front of her. This is horrible. Please let me leave. Just give me the pills. And what happened when I took the pills is I had a pulmonary embolism. That's blood clots in my lungs. I almost died. And I started getting headaches, and the headaches got worse and worse and worse. I went to see that same doctor, complained of headaches. She told me I was just a stressed out person and I needed to calm down, so I ignored the symptoms. And then a couple months went by, and my vision had been getting blurrier and blurrier. I thought I just needed a new pair of glasses, but actually, I was going blind. And I went to see another doctor, and they literally were like, oh, my God. Like, you are going to be. It was a Friday afternoon. She's like, you're going to be blind by Monday.
- [23:33]
A
Whoa.
- [23:33]
B
You have to have emergency surgery right now. She got on the phone, called a neurosurgeon at UAMS in Little Rock. She's like, she needs to be seen now, right now. And somehow it still took the hospital two days to get me into the operating room. I didn't go in for surgery until Sunday morning. And by that point, there was almost no vision left. So what was even the point?
- [23:54]
A
Wow.
- [23:55]
B
And it's just. That's not supposed to happen when you take birth control pills. Like, none of this is communicated with you. The fact that you might be risking an embryo not attaching to your uterus with some birth control medications is not communicated to you. The fact that it can kill you is not communicated. I'm lucky. I had a friend who. She's about a year older than me. She went to college freshman year. They put her on birth control because that's what you do. And she had a heart attack in front of her father and died before the ambulance could get there. I'm lucky. I'm lucky. And she's dead.
- [24:33]
A
Yeah.
- [24:33]
B
Because of some stupid pills that she didn't even need. And I realize that now because I'm learning about body literacy. I'm learning about all the things you can do if you're like, okay, really, really can't have a baby right now, even though I'm married. Or, you know, just the fact that, you know, babies aren't that bad. Like, it's fine. I have three of them now, and I'm blind. It's okay. Like, you figure it out. It's gonna be fine. But that's not communicated to you when you're making these decisions as a teenager, you're just like, oh, the worst thing ever. The worst thing ever would be for me to be a mother. So I'm going to take medicine that poisons my body instead. And somehow the fertility industry has communicated us. That's okay, because in 15 years after all that poisoning, we're going to be able to sell you IVF because of all the complications that we have caused that we've exacerbated. And I have a friend, she had an iud, and then she took it out so she could have a baby. She couldn't get pregnant for six years after.
- [25:29]
A
Yeah.
- [25:29]
B
And then I mentioned. I was like, oh, didn't you know that sometimes the. The contraceptive is, like, effective even after you take it out? She's like, no one told me that.
- [25:39]
A
Yeah.
- [25:40]
B
So that's just how it is.
- [25:41]
A
Yeah. And I'm sure, you know, some of that's in the tiny fine print that you check a box, you check a consent, and you sign it and all these things. But we had a colleague wrote an article for us along the lines. I mentioned this all the time, Something along the lines of, they told us, you know, put your fertility on the shelf, and then they sell it back to us for thousands later.
- [26:02]
B
Exactly.
- [26:03]
A
They take your most fertile years. Well, and, you know, the advice you're getting at 19, when you're about to be married, is that, like you said, the worst thing that could happen to you is you get pregnant right away. And for most of human history, the ideal world is that you get married and you start having babies right away. Like, yes. Have babies when you're most fertile. Yeah. Youngest, sort of, maybe your body heals the fastest, more just in the sense of, you know, how a little kid will break their arm at, like, at four years old, and they're healed within six months. Or something. And someone who's a little older breaks their arm and it's like a one year recovery. And so the younger we are, it seems like our bodies in a lot of ways are just primed to heal faster. So women having babies younger, I mean, in their 20s versus women trying to have their babies in their 30s, it's like, there might be a difference there, but our culture has it so backwards, saying, go be a partner at, you know, a law firm or go be an insurance agent 40 hours a week. That's where you're going to find fulfillment. And then we'll sell.
- [27:05]
B
Yeah.
- [27:05]
A
Then for 50,000 bucks, we'll maybe get you a baby at the expense of how many other babies will have to die.
- [27:14]
B
Yeah. Because it's all about money. The entire thing is completely about money. And I realized that when I was pregnant with my son, he was my second baby, when me and my husband finally felt ready, whatever that means, to have kids. And he had an abnormal ultrasound. And immediately they were talking about abortion. Immediately. And to the point where I felt like I was almost being bullied by my doctor. I don't know what kind of lack of awareness it takes for a doctor to tell a disabled woman that she better consider abortion because her baby might be disabled. I don't know why he didn't think that would be offensive to me personally, but it was. And it was. It was horrible. But this really peculiar thing happened. As soon as I hit my state's little legal cutoff for abortion. All of that abortion talk disappeared. They suddenly had a diagnosis for me. They suddenly knew what was going on with my son. They knew it wasn't serious. They knew everything would be fine. And. And, you know, an optimist would just be like, oh, well, they just finally figured it out at 20 weeks. But me as the pessimist, I'm like, oh. Or is it just that they couldn't make money off of me anymore?
- [28:20]
A
Right.
- [28:20]
B
If I'd bought an abortion, I would have had to go to a different state, pay a different clinic, and they couldn't get the cash money from me anymore. And so they were like, what's the point of harassing her about it now? We're not going to get the. We're not going to get the profit margin, so just let it go.
- [28:34]
A
Wow, that's crazy. You know, we talk about abortion and IVF we say, are two sides of the same coin. One side of the coin is, I want a baby so desperately, it's okay to basically end human lives, to be able to get this one human life. And the abortion industry is, I don't want this baby so much. I can just get rid of human lives. But at the end of the day, it's all about adult desire in the moment, not about a human being that's been created and what is the best thing for them, whether they're on ice, whether they're in a lab, whether they're already in someone's stomach. And so it is interesting, you've, your life's sort of been bookended by these two sides of that child commodifying coin. And, you know, one you didn't have anything to do with other than you were the product of it, but the other, you were able to see it clearly and be able to make the informed choice. But yeah, it's so fascinating, the lack of awareness. Maybe some medical professionals have. Like you're saying, well, your kid might have some special needs to a person who has special needs. Like, yeah, I have a disability too. It doesn't mean my life is not worth living or that I don't have value. Neither does my child.
- [29:55]
B
Yeah. But this toxic thing has happened in our culture where we think our lives are about us. Yeah, we think that our lives are about being happy. So it makes sense to a perfectly able bodied person to say like, oh, well, you're blind. I would kill myself if I was like that. Which I've actually had someone say to me, wow. And because they're so, their priorities are so messed up, they think that everything is about being happy, everything is about serving themselves. My blindness is not for me. I don't know that I would have had the moral conviction, the moral outrage to stand up for my son the way that I did if I hadn't, number one, been introduced to pro life issues by being conceived through ivf. And number two, had all of that compassion for disabled children who are aborted, moved from a head knowledge to a heart knowledge by being disabled myself. And all I can look back now is say, wow, like God really put those pieces there in my life beforehand so I could look at that doctor even though I couldn't see him and say, I don't care what the mess you think is wrong with my baby. I want my baby and I'm going to have him. And if I had to go blind, if I had to be conceived in ivf, if, if these things had to happen for me to understand that, I'm, I'm so glad, I'm so glad that I did. Because my son, just some nights when I hold him And I just put him to bed. He's three years old now. I just. I just start to cry because statistically, he shouldn't have been here. Statistically, I shouldn't have been here. And here we are, and we have a. We have a family. Because we were able to call the truth what it is and say, no. Yeah, no, I'm not going to hurt kids.
- [31:32]
A
Yeah.
- [31:32]
B
Not.
- [31:33]
A
That's beautiful. Yeah. Well, as we're wrapping up here, I. I'm super curious, and I wonder if you'd be willing to share any of the ways. So being a mom who's blind, like, what. What are some interesting ways that you navigate being a parent if you can't. You know, like, if your kids. If your kids. If your kid's about to put a fork in the. In the outlet or something. Like how you're. And your husband was helping you set up the. Setting up for the podcast. And so I'm sure you guys are working together in a lot of ways, but what are some ways that that's like, just to educate those of us that are listening?
- [32:07]
B
Well, what I've learned after going blind, it's. That happened when I was 19, and unfortunately, I just turned 30, so it's been about 10ish years now. And what I've learned is that about 90% of the things you need to do in your life as a blind person are easier than they. Than you thought they were going to be. About 10% are much, much harder.
- [32:26]
A
Yeah.
- [32:26]
B
But there's lots of little tricks that I've learned. Even just like, I can tell when my kid is running to the bathroom and sitting on the potty, because I have just innately memorized the sound of the little plastic lid hitting the ceramic tank. Like, I know what it sounds like, so I know he's not in there, like, playing in the shower. I didn't hear the shower curtain right. I heard the toilet move. So I just know that. And. But the worst part. The worst part is potty training.
- [32:53]
A
Yeah.
- [32:53]
B
I had a video go pretty viral. It's been seen like 200 million times now of me slipping in pee that my. My son had left his diaper on the floor. And we had to set up that video to capture the moment. But I just. It's true. You know how many times I've, like, stepped in poop? Like, that's how I know that my kid didn't quite make it, is because I'm sliding in something slippery and nasty and, oh, no, it's poop. But you know what? Some of the best baby shower advice I ever gotten was, it's just poop. It's just poop. It washes off with water and soap. It's just poop.
- [33:31]
A
Yeah. That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story with us. Where can people find you?
- [33:37]
B
You can follow me at Blind Mom Life. I'm on. I'm on most of the things I'm on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok. Also, I'm a speaker. I work for Ambassador Speakers Bureau, if you want to book me. I do. I do so many different topics. I'm really versatile that way. So that way I'm never. I've never given the same speech twice. It's always about something different. But yeah, I just share my testimony, my faith in Christ and how he's really brought me through all these things.
- [34:03]
A
That's amazing. Awesome. Chelsea, thank you so much for sharing your story with our audience, everyone. I'll put the links to find Chelsea and more of her work in our show notes. And yeah, thanks so much for being here.
- [34:14]
B
Thank you.