Regina Townsend

Follow Regina on Instagram @brokenbrownegg

Five sentences about me…

I am a young adult librarian and youth advocate who works in a public library in the Chicago suburbs. I've been married to my husband Jahbari for almost 17 years. After nearly ten years on the infertility journey, and 7 years to the day I started the Broken Brown Egg, we had our son Judah after a successful round of IVF. I enjoy helping others feel seen and heard. I take my experience and perspective as a black woman into every arena I find myself in because I believe representation matters, and I know what it's like to be the only one in the room and feel incredibly alone.

Five sentences about what I've endured in the fertility realm...

Before my PCOS was diagnosed, I experienced years of ridiculously abnormal periods that would last more than 20 days at a time. Being a young married couple just starting our lives and careers, we went through times where we didn't have insurance, so I often had to go to the emergency room and clinic to find help for my periods. Most of those visits ended with a birth control prescription but no real answers other than “lose weight” or “it's your thyroid.” Jahbari and I have also experienced a disrupted kinship placement adoption but served as foster parents for the same baby for 6 months. In both the medical community and the child welfare system, I've experienced what it's like to be unheard and disrespected, and I know intimately how that can affect your mental health and self-esteem. I don't want that for anyone else.

One thing I wish I knew going into my fertility journey...

That it was going to be a marathon and not a sprint.

One thing about me that is forever changed because of my fertility journey...

I've always been something of an empath, but infertility has solidified my respect for the fact that we never know what other people are dealing with. We may see them at work, church, or school, but that is such a minuscule part of who they are and what they may be experiencing.

One funny moment or anecdote from my fertility journey...

The day of my trigger shot for IVF, I happened to be working the late shift at work. I had to take a quick lunch break, meet my husband in the car, drive to the alley across from my job and do the trigger shot in the car. I had to sit in the back seat, and he had to give the shot by maneuvering the drivers seat down to administer it from the front seat. It was years ago, but to this day I'm convinced someone in the community probably thinks I was doing something untoward in the alley.

One product, practice, or ritual I adopted during my fertility journey, which I have/have not kept a part of my life...

Writing and transparency. Transparency became part of my self-care as I navigated fertility because it was getting to be exhausting trying to hold all of my thoughts and feelings inside. Through the blog, I was able to find release and connection, but I started to take that same energy into my conversations as well. I stopped trying to find the right thing to say to someone who was rudely asking "what we were waiting on" and just tell them the truth "we're having fertility issues", or telling my job "I'm going to be taking tomorrow off for my mental health". It was self-care and self-preservation, and now I don't even know how to turn it off. LOL