The Mama Making Podcast

C. NaTasha Richburg | Married to the Dream: A Mother-Daughter IVF Journey

• Jessica Lamb, C. NaTasha Richburg • Season 3 • Episode 115

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In this episode of The Mama Making Podcast, host Jessica Lamb chats with author and advocate C. Natasha Richburg about the deeply personal story behind her book Married to the Dream. Natasha shares her family’s journey through IVF, highlighting the emotional challenges her daughter faced and the powerful role that love, friendship, and faith played in supporting her through it.

They explore the importance of community during fertility struggles, how storytelling can foster connection, and why staying grounded in hope matters most during life’s hardest seasons. This episode is a heartfelt reflection on family, perseverance, and the dreams that carry us forward.

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Jessica Lamb (00:00)
Hello everyone and welcome to the Mama Making Podcast. If you're new here, I'm your host Jessica. If you're not new, then welcome back. Today, I'm very excited to have C. Natasha Richburg on the podcast today. Natasha is a woman of many talents and has an expensive resume information technology to music production. But today we are going to focus on her book, Married to the Dream, an IVF story. Thank you C. Natasha for coming and I appreciate you being here.

C. NaTasha Richburg (00:27)
thank you so much for having me, Jessica. This is exciting.

Jessica Lamb (00:30)
I'm very excited to chat with you. So tell me more about you, your family, where you're from, whatever you're comfortable sharing.

C. NaTasha Richburg (00:37)
You want me share just the good stuff or all the juice? No. No, I'm a mother of four and a wife of one. And so as my children were growing up, as I would say, we were full of poor.

Jessica Lamb (00:40)
all the stuff.

C. NaTasha Richburg (00:50)
And Melvin and I have been married for 42 years and we've any topic around children, family, IVF, marriage, information technology. I teach at UMBC, University of Maryland Baltimore County. I was an IT executive. I'm a life coach. I do consulting. I'm so excited to talk about the book.

Jessica Lamb (00:53)
Wow.

Yes!

C. NaTasha Richburg (01:13)
I've written

12 books and this one is I co-authored with my daughter about her second IVF experience. So I'm ready to talk about it and I'm ready to give hope. This is about hope, baby, hope.

Jessica Lamb (01:24)
Yes, yes,

yes. So let's get into it. How did this all come to be? I know you've been an author 12 times over. How did this book come to be?

C. NaTasha Richburg (01:34)
This book came to be because my daughter was married to her first husband for almost 10 years. And during that time, she was trying to have a baby and the marriage just fell apart and she felt like he can go out there and maybe find love and find a child. And then she remarried. And when she remarried, it just so happened, this was her second husband.

think he came into her life to help her find her way to fertility. Because what he said to her after going through all of these doctors in the military and having all of these experiences with her first husband, her second husband say, why don't you just go get it checked out? Well, at the time she was working for a hospital and she had a connection with Johns Hopkins Hospital. So she went to one of the best fertility specialists in

the country. So she and I thought that she was just going to get something checked out that we already knew wasn't working, but yet we understood the power of yet it wasn't working yet. So as I was sitting there waiting for her to go and find out what was wrong with her and thinking she was going to come back in an hour, it turned out it was three to four hours.

And the doctors found out what was wrong. He came out and he said, mother, I know what's wrong with your daughter. I said, well, what? He said her tubes were leaking. And with all that gook, it was impossible to get pregnant. I took the tubes out. After she heals, she will get pregnant.

Jessica Lamb (02:57)
That's incredible.

C. NaTasha Richburg (03:15)
So after 4,718 days, just short of 12 years, she got her first positive pregnancy test. And the day she got that test, her husband said, I don't want you or the baby.

Jessica Lamb (03:30)
So this is where it all came to me.

C. NaTasha Richburg (03:30)
And thus, this isn't

even the juice, this is the first book. And so at that point, you don't want her? Well, we don't want you either. And she came back home to her father and I, and we was her whole support system so she could have her first IVA baby. And she wrote, Abandoned Guilt and Assault Gladness.

Jessica Lamb (03:36)
Okay.

C. NaTasha Richburg (03:56)
and it was doing COVID. girl, so it was nobody allowed in the hospital, just one person. I bought me some pink luggage, outfits for every day, because I was her person and I didn't know how long she was going to be there. And we went there and she had her baby. And after she had her baby,

and the baby was growing and she was without a husband. She says, I want a second baby. I was like, And we got rid of that embryo associated with him and got donor sperm. And I said, you know what, Erica, you divorced him, but you stayed married to the dream.

Jessica Lamb (04:41)
Mmm.

C. NaTasha Richburg (04:41)
And that's where the title came from. So our writing strategy is she writes it in her journal. I type it and add my juice. And then she says, mommy, that's too much. Take that out, take that out, take that out. So then I bring it back down. She gives me another chapter and I put my stuff in. And she says, that's too much. And then I get to write a couple of chapters in it. And the whole idea.

Jessica Lamb (04:51)
Mm-hmm.

C. NaTasha Richburg (05:08)
It's for people who struggle. Just know, just know it's just not yet.

Jessica Lamb (05:14)
Mmm, I love that.

C. NaTasha Richburg (05:14)
So,

and I've seen people on different posts, they go through all the, she went almost 12 years for that man to say, don't want you, or the baby, that's so common.

Jessica Lamb (05:23)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah, and I didn't know until I started doing more podcasts on this or interviews on this podcast, talking to families and seeing how affected your family life and your marriage becomes going through a process like this, just because it is so intense and you're just trying to get to the light at the end of the tunnel. And yeah, I didn't realize how common

divorces after or even in the middle of a process.

C. NaTasha Richburg (05:51)
Yeah, after you go through all the vet and we think even though he never said it, we think he thought it would never work. That's why he went along with.

Jessica Lamb (05:59)
Mm-hmm.

Okay.

C. NaTasha Richburg (06:01)
But if it wasn't for him suggesting she check it out. That's why I tell people you might have been the doctors, but you might not have been to the doctor to figure out what's wrong.

Jessica Lamb (06:12)
Mm.

Right. Yeah. What?

C. NaTasha Richburg (06:15)
And this one

doctor figured it out.

Jessica Lamb (06:17)
And as we know in women's healthcare, it takes a lot of work for us to find the right people who are ready and willing to do the work to help us. So, yeah, I think finding that right doctor and it all, all paths led to, like you said, she was married to the dream. I love that title. Tell me more about, you talked a little bit about the writing style and how you both kind of co-wrote it.

C. NaTasha Richburg (06:40)
Yes.

Jessica Lamb (06:42)
What did you guys predetermine what parts of the story you were going to tell? What things, where's how things would get arranged within the book? Tell me a little bit more about the process.

C. NaTasha Richburg (06:51)
So

the whole thing about the process is hope. So what do we have to tell people? The good and bad and ugly. So we started with the end of the first book when he didn't want her. So sometimes you start at a place and you know how if you have a baby, sometimes you have postpartum. So we needed to tell people that. We needed to describe the experience because when we went into labor and delivery, they were wonderful.

Jessica Lamb (07:10)
Mm-hmm.

C. NaTasha Richburg (07:20)
And when we went to the mother and the baby part, they were horrible. So we had to start at the bottom. We had to start and tell the story that my daughter didn't want a baby shower. So said, this is what we're going to do. You're not going to have a shower. I am. And you're welcome to come if you want. Tell me some people you want to come. I'm going to invite my people. I'm going to have a shower. And you can decide if you want to participate.

Well, she did decide, if you want to buy a dress. And so the part of the family, when they're married to the dream, you got to be married to it too.

Jessica Lamb (07:55)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

C. NaTasha Richburg (07:56)
You gotta have hope. You can't let Del creep in. You gotta have the hope that they can't curry. So that's the process. She lost friends behind this. How dare you not get pregnant, then get pregnant, have a baby and decide you wanna get donor sperm? You know how hard it is for African-American woman to find an African-American sperm donor? That's hard as I don't know what.

Jessica Lamb (08:02)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

C. NaTasha Richburg (08:23)
It's not an abundance out there after you do all the genetic stuff, you gotta do all the genetic stuff, and then you find the genetic stuff that matched you. She had only like three men.

Jessica Lamb (08:33)
Wow.

C. NaTasha Richburg (08:34)
And it just so happened that the one that matched her had the ideal statue similar to her father. He was tall, he was dark skinned, he was a thick guy. He kind of had the kind of things that she wanted. So we wanted to tell the good and the bad and the ugly. We wanted to tell about secondary infertility. Some people have their first baby just like that and the second one comes hard. That's very common.

Jessica Lamb (08:59)
Mmm, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

C. NaTasha Richburg (09:02)
And

so we wanted those people to understand you have hope too. Don't think just because you got pregnant easy the first time, you're gonna get pregnant easy the second time.

Jessica Lamb (09:11)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, so was her second pregnancy significantly harder than the first?

C. NaTasha Richburg (09:15)
my god!

God, did you say significantly? Is it a harder word than that? my goodness. By then she was 35, which is geriatric or whatever they call it. We was in the hospital every other day. And I got a, it's a chapter in there and it's talked about the stitch will do the sitting. Cause she had to have the stitch.

Jessica Lamb (09:25)
Yep.

Ugh.

C. NaTasha Richburg (09:41)
done because the baby kept trying to come at 20 weeks. We describe their whole process.

Jessica Lamb (09:47)
Wow, that's incredible. think being able to, there's a real...

honesty about sharing the really, really hard parts, but also the like, look what came out of it. But I think it shows how much you can go through and how far people are able to push themselves. But then also have this beautiful experience as well through the hard through the hard stuff. How did you kind of determine the how much of the hard stuff you would share?

Or if you were like, this is an open book, we're sharing everything.

C. NaTasha Richburg (10:20)
We shared everything.

was to the point that she kept going into, first she kept going into labor and then they did the stitch and that really helped. Then she got to the point that they put her on bread rest and she was in the hospital. So I would do my work. I'm watching the baby. My husband's watching the baby. And then we're going to take her lunch.

and then bringing her real soap and changing clothes. She's coaching the nursing staff. They absolutely loved her being there, but every day it was so difficult. And remember I told you about this child that didn't want a baby shower. She didn't want it the second time by the, the first time, by the second time she wanted a baby shower. They told her she cannot leave the hospital. She said, I'm signing myself up. I'm going to my shower.

Jessica Lamb (11:05)
Yeah.

Good for her.

C. NaTasha Richburg (11:11)
She went to

the shower and came back to the hospital. It was just hard. It's like us watching her every second and praying that everything would be okay and hoping the experience be wonderful and letting people to know that even though it's hard, you can do it. And her baby came six weeks early.

Jessica Lamb (11:19)
Yeah.

Wow.

C. NaTasha Richburg (11:34)
And he had to

go to the neonail. He was there for two or six, eight weeks. We put it in the book.

Jessica Lamb (11:37)
Hmm.

Okay.

Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's, it's hard to share how impactful all that like up until you have the baby, because so many people are like, well, you have a beautiful baby now. And it all ended up great. But I think we tend to miss that those inside parts from getting pregnant to having your baby that weren't

C. NaTasha Richburg (11:42)
It was rough.

Jessica Lamb (12:03)
didn't feel beautiful or didn't feel transformative in a positive way. So I love that you guys have chosen to share that it wasn't easy and it was really hard. did you have a specific idea of what you wanted to share about her mental health during that time? I imagine it was super isolating and hard to be away from everyone.

C. NaTasha Richburg (12:21)
Yeah, one of the-

We had a double isolation because we had the first baby in the middle of COVID where we couldn't be around people. even, while we were in the hospital with the first baby, which leads into Mary to the dream, because the dream didn't end. I thought the dream was ended. I thought we had to dream when we was happy. No, we wasn't. So we stayed. So it was, and she got divorced. It was final the day after the baby was born. So when the baby was born,

Jessica Lamb (12:30)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mmm.

C. NaTasha Richburg (12:54)
when we was in the hospital and she finally said, might have a siphon seat. Before I left, I pulled up my laptop and put out invitations to have a siphon seat because that depression comes in. So that depression of the siphon seat, that's why I tell mothers, friends, let them be sad, but you be happy enough so they can catch into your happy. And I said, we gonna have a siphon seat.

Jessica Lamb (13:04)
Thank

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

C. NaTasha Richburg (13:20)
And what we did, which helped her come up, we packed gift boxes for everybody that invited online and mailed them to them. So when we had to sip and see, they can open their boxes, be online, and we showing the baby like this and doing games. I think if we didn't do that, the depression would have been real.

Jessica Lamb (13:30)
Aww.

Yeah,

Can you talk a little bit more to I mean, it's obvious that your family is very close and definitely leaned on each other, both both sides, you and your husband and I'm sure it was hard for you guys to watch your daughter go through it. Can you talk a little bit more to the power of family and staying connected and staying connected to your community and how that impacted

the pregnancy and the process through writing the book.

C. NaTasha Richburg (14:10)
yeah, it's very important because when you waited your whole, and see, I'm not that type of child. I didn't care about having children. My child wanted a child when her, her son, when my son was born, that was her child. Cause she wanted a child by four. So when somebody who wants a child from four and they finally, this is how desperate she was. When she got that first pregnancy test,

Jessica Lamb (14:27)
Yeah.

C. NaTasha Richburg (14:38)
She took a test every single day until the end of the first trimester.

So she didn't just take a test I got, no, every single day she took that test and how important it was that I kept her up. Okay, Erica, let's do a photo shoot. Something to look forward to. Let's do the photo shoot. Let's order stuff online. Let's get you a nice maternity dress. you still little. Let me get you something. It was always looking for excuses to stay ahead.

Jessica Lamb (14:44)
lot. Yeah. Yep.

⁓ right, right.

C. NaTasha Richburg (15:09)
Okay, journal real good, because you know we can tell this story to help other people to know that was 4,718 days. So it was just like less, less, it's like raw cheerleaders. And then a couple of times when she was bleeding real heavy and had to go to the hospital, my husband was calling like every 10 minutes. That's exciting too.

Jessica Lamb (15:09)
Mmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

C. NaTasha Richburg (15:35)
That anticipating, that always looking for something. you don't want to sip and see, I want it. you don't want a baby shower. And then when we get to Married to the Dream, she was so married to the dream. We had a big cookout so everybody could meet the baby when he finally got out of the hospital. Did she want to do it? I don't know. But did it help her spirits? Yes. Because you got to buy.

Jessica Lamb (15:37)
Mm.

Aww.

Yeah.

Yeah.

C. NaTasha Richburg (16:01)
You gotta invite people, you gotta plan, you gotta do. So it was always keeping something doing.

Jessica Lamb (16:08)
Yeah, something on the horizon to look forward to.

C. NaTasha Richburg (16:11)
And the people who are in the space, say to everybody in their space, you keep your sad face to yourself. You bring your whole face out and you keep your sad face behind closed doors. Anybody got time for that?

Jessica Lamb (16:17)
Mmm.

C. NaTasha Richburg (16:23)
gotta

bring your happy face out. We gonna do this, we gonna make it. It happened for a reason. You got stitched up, but you good. Oh, you need me to bring you something to eat? I got this.

Jessica Lamb (16:34)
Yeah, think people don't understand the value of just simple support. I do think that having a support system established through pregnancy is great, but even after, I think there is something to being like, I'm going to be around happy people, there's no expectations of me, I get to come as my full self.

I think that that's huge for being able to feel like I have a community on the situation might not be ideal, but I have a community on my back who is there to pick me up when I can't pick myself up. And I think that there is huge power to being able to say, yeah, I know someone's got me.

C. NaTasha Richburg (17:12)
And one of the things that was good that we wrote about in the book, I called them the IVF girls. She went online and met two other girls who lived in Texas who were going through it and they all got pregnant at the same time for the first baby and they all had their babies the same time.

Jessica Lamb (17:29)
That's crazy.

C. NaTasha Richburg (17:30)
Yeah, and they kept each other going even though they lived in Texas, we lived in Maryland and kept each other going. But the main thing that was the saddest part and we wrote about it, I tried not to write about it too hard, but when she stayed married to the dream that made people around her uncomfortable.

and they kind of pulled away. And that meant my light had to get brighter. And so people tend to be with you when they think you're down, but when they see you coming up, how dare you come up without my permission? And we talked about that. And we had to step away from that group of people, because they really weren't friends.

Jessica Lamb (17:53)
Mmm, yeah.

Wow.

C. NaTasha Richburg (18:10)
They like you when you're all the way down, but when you're getting it, they don't like that. And I try to tell people that's normal. But the friend that's happy for you, if it's just one, stick with her.

Jessica Lamb (18:12)
Right.

Yeah. Yeah. And you never know. It's very interesting as you go through life thinking like, these are my best friends or these are my really close family members. We're going to be tight forever. it takes little to nothing to quickly figure out who your people are. Fortunately, sometimes it takes a hard event like this, where it's super unexpected that you kind of realize who your people are.

But while that's challenging to go through, then you know who your go-to people are the next time something happens. like I said, just having those people on your shoulder being like, hey, I'm here for you. Well, it's hard to go through, I imagine. It's also a little bit empowering to be like, okay, this is who I've got.

C. NaTasha Richburg (19:06)
You

never know who's gonna be there. may be turned in for you until it's time to step up.

Jessica Lamb (19:12)
that stems from?

C. NaTasha Richburg (19:15)
just think people really like people that are broken. when you get to the point that you start getting it together, that makes people uncomfortable. So what I've learned through this, when you meet people that are broken, like looking at my daughter at one point, she was broken. People celebrated that. But when the baby came and she stayed married to the dream, that made them uncomfortable. Well, why would you do a sperm donor? You don't have a man.

But your parents are saying, I get it. want your kids kind of close in age. You can't wait for some invisible man to come. And then they are their best friends right now. So what if we waited? They would be, they like almost two and a half years apart. They wouldn't be two and a half years apart. And so she valued their closeness over waiting.

Jessica Lamb (19:45)
Right.

C. NaTasha Richburg (20:01)
And it turns out the crazy thing, he looks just like she spit him out. It's like, where's the sperm donor? We trying to look for him in there? We don't see him anywhere in there.

Jessica Lamb (20:05)
Right.

Yeah. Wow.

Can you talk a little bit about her decision to have a second? I imagine it was challenging. I mean, one kid is a lot of kid. And especially at that age, at that two year old age, knowing that it was going to be kind of an uphill battle for her. How what was like the tipping point for her saying, Okay, I'm ready. Let's do this.

C. NaTasha Richburg (20:33)
It turned out my daughter Erica is one of an introvert with an extroverted personality, but she's by herself. Well, her daughter's an extrovert. She loves people, everybody she meets. Ha, we took her to the Lion King. We stood there and she waved to everybody.

in the section towards even. We go to Walmart, she stands there with the green away. She said, well, for a child like this, she need a sibling. It was like the child dictated she needed a sibling because she liked, if she goes to a family party, she's gonna dance till the music stops.

Jessica Lamb (20:57)
Aww. Yep.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

C. NaTasha Richburg (21:10)
She was like, with a child like that, I had to do it. And she's right.

Jessica Lamb (21:14)
Yeah. Aww.

C. NaTasha Richburg (21:15)
So that's the thing

that drove it. And the insurance was such that at the time that her insurance at the working for the hospital covered a lot of the costs. And so that allowed them to be affordable for her.

Jessica Lamb (21:25)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's amazing.

What were some of the things that were pushing her away from wanting to do it? Or was she all in?

C. NaTasha Richburg (21:36)
From the second one, nothing really pushed her away once she saw the personality of her child. The personality pushed her like, this can't be your only child. She will not be happy. And her personality is, if she saw you, she would be like, hi, Miss Jessica, can I sit with you? You want to play? And she's that type of person. And everybody falls in love with her. And she was like, this child needs a sibling.

Jessica Lamb (21:42)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

⁓

Yeah.

⁓

Yeah, that's amazing. think, yeah, I think you don't really realize the power of your love for your child that like, hey, I'm going to go through something hard and uncomfortable for me. And I'm not sure what it's all going to look like, but being able to like put all that aside to say, this is what my kid needs. think unless, unless you've been through it or watched someone go through it, it's hard to understand. But I think,

I think that's a testament to your intuition in going with your gut. And it seems like she was like all in on it for the second time.

C. NaTasha Richburg (22:34)
night.

Right, like suppose a person's a single mom. I say you, just to be comfortable, you gotta at least have two people who are killer in your support system. Who could come in in the middle of the night if you need something. I mean, who's gonna go in the operating room? Who's gonna rush you to the hospital if you have to be rushed? Just killer support. And who won't take no for an answer? you don't wanna shower? Okay.

Jessica Lamb (22:41)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

C. NaTasha Richburg (23:05)
You don't have to come. I'll take pictures. know, somebody who just got to hold it there until they could catch up. There's somebody that can hold the joy until they can find it. And then it's just like, and we were writing for this book and I was like, Erica, one thing about you that's evident in every chapter, you never divorced your dream. You always stayed married to it.

Jessica Lamb (23:07)
Yeah.

Yeah.

I love that.

Mmm.

you share a little bit on your side of things, what it was like for you and your husband to kind of watch your daughter go through these experiences?

C. NaTasha Richburg (23:42)
Well, one of the good things about having four children, you kind of learn that as they get older, you're no longer their parent, you're their coach. You're their senior advisor. You give them advice and they got to make the final decision. And then whatever decision they make, you just got to love it, even if you hate it. And that's how it ended up. I'm going to give you advice. It's your final decision.

Jessica Lamb (23:52)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

C. NaTasha Richburg (24:09)
No matter what it is, I'ma love it. Like I always tell Erica, if she dating somebody I don't like, I'm team Erica. I'ma tell you what I don't like and why, but if you want to go out, I'm with you.

Jessica Lamb (24:17)
you

Yeah. And I think kind of a unique perspective because I feel like a lot of parents don't allow their kids to grow up and be their own person and kind of take that backseat role. Because I think for however many years you're so used to controlling every move. And I think a lot of parents get pushed away because of that. Seeing like this whole trend of

like low or no contact with their parents. I wonder if that's part of it, that having someone who's supposed to be on your team kind of be, feel like they're against you. I imagine you're kind of combating that unknowingly.

C. NaTasha Richburg (24:58)
Well, one of the things I've learned, I'm a truth slayer. And when you tell the truth, everybody doesn't like it. I have four children. Two of them, I call them, they're my ankle children. I talk to them every day. One I talk to every once in a while, and one doesn't talk to us at all. We didn't do anything, but we have standards in our life. So it's obvious, whatever she's living, she don't want us to see. But she only knew us as a parent of a young adult.

Jessica Lamb (25:17)
Mmm.

Mm.

C. NaTasha Richburg (25:26)
at this age, who cares what you're doing? But you gotta live with that. But the other ones are benefiting from having the advice of senior advisors, but you're gonna do what you wanna do.

Jessica Lamb (25:27)
Right

Right.

Right, yeah. And like you said, I think with each kid you start to learn more and I think you're, I mean, looking back at my parents at, distinctly remember the time that I'm like, oh, they're just regular people. They're not like this pedestal, like they don't know everything, they don't know.

the right thing to say all the time, being able to be like, they're just people and they people that had kids and they're not always gonna know how to do everything or do everything perfect. But I think as you go on through life, you change so much that each, and if you have a few kids, each kid is gonna get a different style of that parent. And I think that's so interesting.

C. NaTasha Richburg (26:24)
And but one of the things if somebody, if your audience will say, well, what was really the hardest, hardest piece about it? The hardest piece is you, the person going through this gotta be more very comfortable with yourself. You gotta know what you're doing. You're called to do. If you're called to keep participating in the IVF process, then keep doing it. Don't give a.

Flip what nobody say, not your mother, not your father, not anybody, but make sure you find somebody that can get with you. Just like with Oprah and Gayle, Oprah wanted to leave Baltimore, Gayle was the only person that believed in her. Get your one person that believes in you and forget about the rest of them. It's not their call to be your support system, but you do need some support because those, taking those needles, that stuff make you crazy.

Jessica Lamb (27:02)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mmm.

Yeah.

C. NaTasha Richburg (27:15)
So you need support.

Jessica Lamb (27:17)
for people who are like, I'm struggling to find who my people are? Like, how do I know who the right people are?

C. NaTasha Richburg (27:24)
It is so

many, I just know Facebook community, it's so many Facebook communities. Join one of them. Introduce yourself. Tell them what you need. That's how Erica felt the IVF girls and they stayed with each other all the way.

Jessica Lamb (27:32)
Mm-hmm.

That's amazing.

C. NaTasha Richburg (27:42)
You got join one of those communities and become friends. Find somebody that lives kind of close to you in that community and become friends and that'll be your connection.

Jessica Lamb (27:53)
Yeah, yeah, with our culture being so heavily online, you almost have no option but to get online, whether it's on TikTok or Instagram and find people. If you don't have people in your immediate area that you're good friends with or family that you're close with, you have so many options for finding people that understand what you're going through.

C. NaTasha Richburg (28:16)
Right, it's like one of the girls when she had her second baby, she lived, I think we went to Philly and the baby had a birthday party and she invited like 20 some people, five people, Kenny. And we were one of the, we were one of the.

Jessica Lamb (28:28)
Wow. wow.

Yeah.

C. NaTasha Richburg (28:32)
That's how people do. When you realize your dream, please know people, everybody's not going to be happy. Everybody's not going to be happy when you realize it. We watch TV and we watch these shows when people realize their dreams. It's all like this. That's not how it really works. But there's somebody with a like interest that will celebrate you realizing your dream. And that's your person. Those are your people.

Jessica Lamb (28:33)
Right.

Mmm.

Mmm.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah, I love that. think we, like you said, it's so exciting to be like, this is my thing. I've found it. I know what I want. You just expect your people to be excited about it. And it's not for everyone.

C. NaTasha Richburg (29:12)
It's not for everybody. It's going to be a bunch of naysayers like with Erica. Well, you don't have a husband. Why you want a second child? Once you meet her child, you see why she need a second child. Cause if her daughter didn't have somebody to play with, she really wouldn't have a second to herself. So you can see why she was the driving force between her doing it right now, even without finding a life partner at this point.

Jessica Lamb (29:23)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, and I think not everyone's meant to stay on your journey with you. I think you're going to pick up and drop people as you kind of go. So I think being open to the opportunities that an uncomfortable situation brings can be helpful too.

C. NaTasha Richburg (29:44)
Sure.

Right, right. And that secondary infertility is really real. Because a lot of times people have a baby one time and they think, I'm in they have baby clubs and you might not be. You may not be. So you might have to join the club of people that use IVF and get some friends.

Jessica Lamb (29:58)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

other stories or examples from the book that you think are important to share with people?

C. NaTasha Richburg (30:18)
I think one of the main stories is when you finally get pregnant, especially for those who've never been pregnant before, and especially if you're like over 35, which they try to make it seem like you're old as I don't know what, let me tell you something. If you over 35, you're gonna be going to the hospital a lot probably. So have your little bags ready for if that blood start gushing, but don't.

Jessica Lamb (30:34)
Yep.

C. NaTasha Richburg (30:46)
think of something wrong because it may not be something wrong like you see on TV. Just may not be anything wrong. Your body old and it's tired and it hurts and that's why it's bleeding. We went through that so many times. I didn't even get nervous there for a while. I stopped getting nervous because we went to the hospital quite a few times with blood and it was nothing.

Jessica Lamb (30:51)
Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

my gosh.

C. NaTasha Richburg (31:10)
many times. So when you hear that heartbeat, then it's like, so that's one thing like that. Then you need somebody if, suppose you get a gush and it's a real big gush. See, I was there to drive. Her father was there to drive. You might not be able to drive yourself, but you might not want to mess up an Uber. So you need to have somebody on speed dock.

Jessica Lamb (31:11)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

C. NaTasha Richburg (31:36)
It got to the point that the hospital and emergency room, they knew us. everybody knew us. We knew us. So you get to know everybody. Churchill, you on tonight? We'll see you then. So you kind of get to know all the nurses and the doctors and everybody like that. that's one of the, a real funny story. I always tease Erica about this one. She had the first baby. She was in labor a long time. So when she was having the second one and she was getting close,

Jessica Lamb (31:48)
Yeah.

C. NaTasha Richburg (32:02)
She was doing contractions. Well, one of the interns that was there for the first baby, he had graduated to a high level intern and she said, you can't check me. Your hands are too big. He said, I keep telling you my hands, but she said, I'm not you. I want them to check me. She would not let that doctor check her. He felt so self-conscious. She's like, you can't check me. that was because we went so much, we stayed, we bought the

Jessica Lamb (32:25)
So funny.

C. NaTasha Richburg (32:30)
The nursing station, food, stuff, we stayed in hospital. You can't be nervous about it. It is what it is. Just gotta go work through it. We went up through the times.

Jessica Lamb (32:36)
Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think they become your support system for that short little, little moment in time. They become part of your team.

C. NaTasha Richburg (32:47)
Yes, they were definitely part of our team. the main thing that we wanted people to walk away with, it's just the power of not accepting no. It's just yet. It hasn't happened yet. It is not an absolute no, it's just yet. And just hold on to the yet. Just yet. And then you have to make a decision. Do I want to give birth?

Jessica Lamb (32:57)
Mmm.

bright.

Yeah.

C. NaTasha Richburg (33:09)
Or do I want to have a baby? Because it might be to the point that you're yet might be, you're just going to adopt a baby.

Jessica Lamb (33:12)
Mm.

I see, yeah.

C. NaTasha Richburg (33:17)
Because some people really only want to give birth and some people want to be a parent. So it gets to that point where you might have to start thinking like that.

Jessica Lamb (33:26)
Yeah, yeah, and it's just a different path to your end. Yeah, I love that. I was gonna ask for any advice that you might have, but I feel like that's good advice that you're just waiting till yet. It's not over.

C. NaTasha Richburg (33:30)
Right? Yeah.

Right?

If just, just keep the yet. It's not, it's not over. It's not over. I'm telling you, I told Erica, if you didn't meet your second husband and he didn't tell you, just go check it out. You would have never met that doctor. He would have never saw what's wrong. All, she, her first husband in the military. She went to a whole bunch of different doctors all over the country. Nobody ever, nobody ever.

we don't see why you're not getting pregnant. Nobody ever the first time after he did that procedure She got pregnant the second time when she did the sperm donor. She got pregnant

Jessica Lamb (34:16)
Wow. Yes.

C. NaTasha Richburg (34:17)
It wasn't, it

didn't work. It worked. Well, one piece of advice that I would definitely give people, when she went through the first one, some levels, you all know those levels, it went really high and she started overstimulating or something like that. And she had to do another procedure. I said, ask them, do they have a study? Because if they have a study, they can do it.

Jessica Lamb (34:29)
Hmm.

Mmm.

Mmm.

C. NaTasha Richburg (34:42)
you don't have to pay for it. Well, they had a study. They had a study and she got in a study and they did extra tests that she wasn't going to pay for. And because of the study, she was able to know which of her four were the top grade. So that they didn't do the bottom two and she didn't want to know the sex and they put and they put it in and that's what she did.

Jessica Lamb (34:43)
Yeah. ⁓ perfect.

Yeah.

Okay.

Wow.

C. NaTasha Richburg (35:09)
If

she didn't have the overstimulating, if she didn't ask them about the study, she wouldn't have the extra testing to get her eggs tested. So to me, if you really want to increase your chances, that testing is

Jessica Lamb (35:18)
Yeah.

C. NaTasha Richburg (35:26)
they have studies, get in them!

Jessica Lamb (35:28)
Yeah, and most hospitals have some kind of clinical research division, so figuring out what they have to offer is good advice.

C. NaTasha Richburg (35:36)
And so with the first she totally when she got the divorce she discarded the last embryo when she had the sperm sperm donor. she read this book that it's in our book the name of the book

Jessica Lamb (35:42)
Mm.

C. NaTasha Richburg (35:49)
And she did those vitamins every day. The first time she only had like seven good eggs. This time she had like 40 some. From doing what was in that book. And I spoke about the book in this book. Then from that she had 18 good embryos. 18. She donated.

Jessica Lamb (35:53)
Mmm.

Okay.

Okay.

Wow.

C. NaTasha Richburg (36:17)
Like, ayyup, so somebody got her sperm donor and her stuff and they had babies. She donated them. Yeah, her doctor let her donate them right away because he was with her and he already knew she had a baby. She wanted to have no more so she got, and she froze. She saved eight for herself in case she finds an acceptable mate. But she donated.

Jessica Lamb (36:23)
That's amazing. That's really incredible.

⁓ yeah.

Okay. Yeah.

that's incredible to be able to pass that gift on to someone else. that's awesome. Well, anything else that is exciting that you want to share about the book?

C. NaTasha Richburg (36:43)
Yep. Yep. Yes.

just love the fact that hope is out there. Hope is alive. Hope comes from not just from within in a person, but the support system. Mothers, friends, fathers, uncles, just a bright eye, a nice, you can do it. I'm here with you. If you in it, I'm in it. That's everything. That's half the battle. Because think, every time somebody has a baby shower, they get sad. Every time somebody brings around a

Jessica Lamb (37:14)
Mmm.

C. NaTasha Richburg (37:16)
It makes them sad. So your job is to keep giving them hope.

Jessica Lamb (37:21)
Yeah, I love that. Yeah, sounds simple, but it's huge. Yes.

C. NaTasha Richburg (37:23)
Give them the book! Give them the book! Marry Till the Dream! And we have a lot

of advice of who to contact and what to do.

Jessica Lamb (37:31)
So where can people find you and find the book?

C. NaTasha Richburg (37:34)
Okay, Natasha Richburg. Google it. See, Natasha Richburg on Amazon. All of our books come in and that book is also one of our audio books. So you can just listen. And it's my daughter's voice. She made me talk a little bit, but it's mostly her voice.

Jessica Lamb (37:46)
perfect.

⁓ yeah.

that's amazing. Yeah. and then anything else you guys have exciting coming up? Any new books? What's on the horizon?

C. NaTasha Richburg (37:54)
Listen to it in the car. Learn. Let's have more babies.

Well, no.

We're working on a podcast. Yes, yes. I forgot something about the Rich Birds.

Jessica Lamb (38:06)
cool! Well, we have a name?

Coming soon name coming soon.

C. NaTasha Richburg (38:13)
I'm just so happy to be here and I hope more people just have hope.

Jessica Lamb (38:15)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think so. I think you gave such great advice about how to like where to start and how to find your people. like you said, that's half the battle. Yeah.

C. NaTasha Richburg (38:26)
half the battle. They think it's

just the biology, it's the sociology is half the battle.

Jessica Lamb (38:31)
Yes, yes. Well, thank you so much for being on.

C. NaTasha Richburg (38:34)
Thank you.