Cherish the joy: A Kalamazoo mom’s holiday miracle baby

 Born 10 days before Christmas, Ryker Christopher Paska is his mother Cherish Paska’s holiday miracle. At the age of 32 Cherish— who lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan—went to see her obstetrician because she and her husband, who had already been married for nine years, were having trouble conceiving. After running a series of tests where everything looked fine, she was diagnosed with unexplained infertility and she started down the assisted reproductive technology (ART) path. She got pregnant after one of the cycles in December 2019 (a year after she had been diagnosed with Hashimoto Thyroid Disease) but sadly miscarried. She was suspicious that she had endometriosis. After advocating that doctors needed to look into this, they discovered that she had in fact correctly diagnosed herself and she had surgery to remove it.  Fast forward to the spring of 2021 when she got the wonderful news that she was expecting her dearly longed for baby. She spoke with MFA’s media consultant Ginanne Brownell a week before Ryker was born, discussing how different the holiday season will be for her this year. EXCERPTS: 

BROWNELL: The holidays are already very hard for people suffering from infertility but I would imagine the holiday season of 2019 was doubly tough after the miscarriage?

PASKA: Yes, the holidays were hard that year, especially because while our immediate family knew what was happening my extended family did not. We are the ones in the family that don't have kids, and we're always questioned like “your time's tickin” and stuff like that. So that year, I mean, I couldn't even look at people in their eyes because all I do is cry. So it's tough. This year is different. We're just over the moon. 

You were the one who first figured that you might have endometriosis. How important is it for women –and men— to advocate for themselves when it comes to their fertility health?

I think about stuff now and I just don't know why these tests are not done to women in their 20s as a routine. It just blows my mind. But we also in America don't have a great healthcare system. My doctors would constantly say for my IUI [Intrauterine insemination], “Oh, you’re textbook, this is gonna work.” And it didn’t. And I'm like, “You can't put that in someone's head going through this because then you have so much hope.” What infertility did to me is it stripped me of hope, it stripped me on my confidence as a woman. I mean my absolute darkest days of my life. Thank goodness I believe in therapy because I don't know if I would have gotten through without therapy. And the support from these internet friends I've made through the infertility community.  You know, it wasn't my doctor that got me through it. 

It sounds like that community has been very important for you—talking, sharing, a place where people understand. 

I tell you what these women that I've met have been like my rock. I mean, I talked to some of these women every day and I've never met them. And I think if I didn't have that community, I would be lost. And I would not have advocated for myself because you learn so much in this community. Of course I have my friends and family. I mean, thankfully, none of them have ever had infertility issues. But they don't understand. So to have the support of this community has got me through some dark days. 

After IUI you moved on to IVF?

I'll be honest, I always said, “I'm not going to do IVF because maybe I'm not meant to have kids.” Well, that's really easy to say until you're in the thick of it. And you know, you want to have a baby. After the IUIs failed, we moved on to IVF. And of course I have no insurance that actually is going to cover my IVF. So thinking about the financial part was probably the most exhausting decision we had to make. But my husband just kept saying, “We will do whatever we have to do like to fulfil your heart.” So we paid our deposits and I started the shots but my body did not respond well. So they cancelled my egg retrieval, which, that's one thing that I never was emotionally prepared for. When you go into IVF, you don't think about the chances of your body not responding, you know that there's a chance you might not get embryos, you might not have a transfer. But I didn't know that I won't even have an egg retrieval. 

This is the thing that no one ever tells you—we are led down the IVF garden path that we will get pregnant, but really a lot of clinics are using stats that fudge the truth. Like, “We have a 99 percent live birth rate.” But that’s a stat for those who actually get pregnant.   

Oh, yeah. And I actually talked to my doctor. I said, “Why don't you guys like prepare people that you might not even get to an egg retrieval?’ And they were kind of just not sure how to respond. And I'm like, “I feel like you like bamboozle people into this. And we go in with so much hope these meds are going to work and we're going to get a baby. And then we can't even get the eggs out.” So for the next round they put me on the strongest amount daily for that. We did an egg retrieval on my 35th birthday, which brought a lot of emotions. And on the transfer day, our doctor came out and said that we have one embryo that made it for the transfer. And that too, is just love emotion because you hear so much of failed transfers. And my whole thought process was, “This isn't going to work.”

Fertility treatments becomes a numbers game doesn’t it? 

I was already in the mindset of, “We have to now financially figure out how we're going to do another retrieval.”  I already had my next appointment scheduled to talk to the doctor in case it failed. I was one step ahead of because that's what infertility does to the trauma and the pain. But then we found out we were pregnant and I was thinking, “Oh my gosh, this really did happen.” I'm 38 weeks pregnant today. And it's still hard for me. I feel like this whole process of pregnancy you carry your trauma with you through it. And it's scary. Every morning, I still check to see if there's blood.

You are on the leadership committee for Michigan Fertility Alliance and have said how much you want to continue to be involved on many of these issues.  

I've been very open on my Instagram (@cherishyoureggs) on every step of my journey. And I've put on there that I want to continue to advocate, be there for support. Even though I've made it to this side, I mean, infertility is still part of my life. I just want to be there for someone for hope. And I know everyone's different and everything we go through doesn't mean that it's going to work for them. But I just want to be that rock for people. So definitely, I mean, real estate is my career. But [this advocacy work] this is my passion. I'm not embarrassed of my journey, [it's] who I am.