Infertility and a Lifelong Undertaking | Take 2 with Rabbi Shlomo Bochner

[Music] welcome back to mishpacha's take two where we try to sit with some of those people who are changing the world each one in their way and share their stories some more than others if you're going to call your organization boney olum builders of the world could be very presumptuous or it could be right on it's just list with somebody who is building the world of slavery thank you for coming and not an easy man to pin down a busy man and i appreciate making the time thank you thank you you just came back from gateshead england okay saying why are we gonna get there we just opened up a new branch it was a beautiful summer what does that mean there's stuff in the uk we have four branches we have one in stanford hill one of gold is green one in manchester and yesterday we celebrated the first get-together the first dinner they made for gates with gates has his own group of ascona own council group i think everybody watching this is familiar more or less with what bone alone does but what does that mean a new branch a new venture of what the new branch of people giving referrals advocacy advice yes why can't somebody engage in this call the manchester branches explain that first of all it's not the same medical people available from one from manchester to skates and not everybody's what does that mean the branch means that everybody gets the asconum in the neighborhood get to know all the medicine and medical help they can get in their vicinity in their neighborhood was not shy to send everybody a few hours here or a few hours there so first of all they have to know then they have to understand the fertility and everything that comes along with it well well enough being trained and then they have to get to learn all the medicine that's available for them if it comes to a point which is very complicated and they have to move on so they're all hooked up to the main office in london branch which they control medicine all over and they work hand in hand so when they need something more than that they have people advising them and explaining them and we can get the help from them if locally it's not available what does puerto rico okay when items when i'm started off trying to help finance people that have to pay for fertility treatment this was the original goal this all started because on stage funding because it's all started because we saw when we went through this that money really made a major over many people many people failed because they couldn't afford so this was the idea to help finance but it's very hard to finance treatments when the people financially don't know sorry you just said something you just swore my voice or something there people didn't have children because of money absolutely i myself stopped many times in my treatment because i couldn't pain i couldn't get the blood work results even that's how it used to work those days how is that possible though it wasn't because the possible in the film community people didn't have trolling because of money is money for everything how is that possible how it's possible they don't know what the answer is people the fact they need to ask for help maybe maybe there was nobody really they wanted to put them this is one of the hardest myths to get involved in because first of all it's a huge huge prize to raise so much money right second of all is you have to understand medicine well enough to understand how you're spending your money right and the third thing is like i said before people were embarrassed to talk about this in public even embarrassed to go ask one-on-one can you help me so i remember my early years that when i had to go around asking ramona chadwick i couldn't find anybody and if i found somebody told me call him back he never called me back so when i when when i understand it i made myself a commitment that my cell phone will be open 24 hours a day 365 days a year i even sleep under my pillow with the phone because there were many times that i so desperately needed someone to talk to there's nobody available and also those days very few people understood the terminology what actually is being done over there so from the meta says whatever we went through this is how the organization started by the time that we were ready to start otherwise by the time when they told us we cannot do anymore so i basically took all my connections all the world you're jumping over a story which is really a book but with things that we've discussed right that it was a tremendous difficulty for you as we've discussed and your wife had the spirit and the the strength somehow with the famous birds and my wife's absolutely encouraged to say she said that time she we were driving home in the car after that last visit and she told me which let me see the remind told us no but we're going to answer with a resounding yes i looked at her like what are you talking about she says we're going to be there for other people we're going to build claudia so and my wife is not really that type of person to come out there but so i was quiet i just told her a few minutes i said honey are you this is the this is the plan because i i'm not looking to spend my life to go around all over this is the plan and if you don't want to join me we'll do it ourselves she got together four or five friends and they they launched brain in them i joined him a little bit later by the way she persuaded me and we got into it and it was about funding people who needed that's how it's really started yeah what change why would someone come to you if people are ashamed and they're ashamed of you so well so this comes along with a little bit of i the mercedes netflix on our part was that we stood out as the first people and spoke about it in public this i think was the first question that we gave for claudius so i spoke for many people we started putting together media awareness who invited you to speak who why where did you set up these pictures so it's interesting from the four people that joined my wife to form this organization everyone had a history on their own everybody had their own connections so the first thing they did was they said let's make a public gathering and we'll see how people will respond so they took a house in borough park and said they did very little advertisement it's going to be the first inaugural party for an organization called buena island which is going to deal with infertility in clarissa they had no clue where this is going to be you knew that you were shooting high with the name but uh that's a big name honestly i wasn't the one that came up with the name is the ladies their credit even the logos their credit i came in already more or less when a lot of these things were settled yes they were a very devoted group and and the truth is if you look back in history notions of countries really are the builders they will take on things that men would think 10 times before should i shouldn't i they just moved ahead and i gave them a lot of credit for that so when they made that first party she called my wife called me at night 10 o'clock at night she said slime you're not going to believe there's a line around the block people came mommy's like on their own when she came home around 2 30 in the morning she told me that um agrees that they've got to be a lawyer there has to be an organization their response was so and they hardly advertised but it went around so far and from there actually it took off so one of the main characters was not so much the money as i thought this is going to be the most important i was always surrounded with people that had a very very high base of knowledge in this field this actually pushed us up really up with the first ones that actually introduced genetics in such a way because right so we met for the magazine two years ago you were telling me that you feel that people don't really understand what bone allen does right they have the superficial understanding that they help with but they don't really get it if i would ask you in 120 seconds in deference to my own adhd or less tell me what is wrong with them do what is the thing that people don't know about it it's it's let's put it it's but adam is involved even before the boy and girl get married if there's an issue until the baby is born now that can involve so many so many steps whether it's hospital genetic issue and a boy and a girl knew before they're getting married there's an issue so somebody has to plan if they can get married what does that mean it doesn't um do that that is hard nation checks for only recessive that means both have to be positive but there's something which is a dominant one can bring over the same they're not going to check for that they only tell you you're a matchmaker theory if you identify some kind of a gene that's prevalent in part of the film community or the jewish community could you weed that out of the community this is this is one of the biggest achievements that brendan takes credit for there's something called ivf pgd which means actually when you do an ivf you have the embryos on the table you can buy it see every embryo go under the microscope it will tell you if this embryo carries the mutation or doesn't carry the mutation and we only implant something which is clean of that mutation you're basically kind of a lineage of pain that has been there generations in their dna from now on on this machine comes this child will always have children that have no trace anymore of this disease now this is so relevant and people who understand genetics when it's a fragile x whether it's there's so many i don't understand anything any kind of physical illnesses or emotional illnesses they they hit both they hit both it can be metabolic it can be molecular there it goes you're a bob of the clothing guy from bob parker how do you even talk this way how do you know so much i i know a lot because unfortunately i say that with respect being above the clothing business it's funny i'm not being demeaning no no i take it but i don't know how are you so knowledgeable so from from being in this field and being smacked around a lot this is how i learned somehow i i wanted to understand when i was going through it what are they doing let me have an input what's the result so i basically learned as l as i went along but again i have to say the version was very good i always had very very super knowledgeable people around me which doctors it's not it's not a hadith to us that we get a few times a call a day doctor's column goes rabbi whatever he's talking to where are we going from here what would you like us to do here we way above many many of the centers we do we identify mutations it's a very level high level total living level of medicine that a lot of people give walking through the process a couple gets married and they live in gateshead nobody should ever have to deal with this right it takes a couple years three four it doesn't take the these days doesn't take a couple of years people know right away if they're gonna be facing some do and nobody waits today three four years because there's always blood work to do which has not made you invasive to tell us if we're here we recommend that people should wait six months after they should already be calling and seeing no a lot of it really depends if there's any medical history or there's any symptoms that's usually the medical history of people who didn't have children right away yeah if the boy carries a certain issue the girl maybe they didn't pay attention to it or issues come up when they're married they're ready but some to some people might not be that important but when you talk to people you get the facts and if you train you will pick up certain points i would like to test this i would like to check for this and let me jump out of the medical for a second and i'm just curious because you're a wise man what what do you see as the role of of parents in this in this is that a young couple's own thing should the parents be involved do you appreciate when the parents call you so i'm gonna go a little bit out of the box the inbox thought is paying should never get involved and couples don't want parents to know and this might be the rule for most of them but as years move on i've seen and actually i think it's a very positive trend there are some parents that have a very good relationship with the children some parents don't have their relationship those parents are very close to their children it's a blessing it's really a blessing because they give them a lot of support and a lot of especially the parents are intelligent and they don't pry for issues that the couple is not comfortable to share with them but just be there as a support inside it's a major major benefit to many people i can't say this is do parents ever have a right to ask their children say you know you're married a year you're an after did you call a boner is that i don't know but if they don't even ask the children feel the pressure you know sometimes you don't have to ask the question you know you get that sense that i'm i'm being i'm being pushed to answer so but i don't think this is a smart way to do it because then the couple will rebuff they're not going to like that it's either you ask me you don't ask me so i sometimes will tell a mother which is you know my mother would say you invite a couple for shops after luxem the man is your shoe your husband's issue sit down with your daughter on the couch and ask schaefer is there anything that i can do for you don't ask first offer the offer opens up the door it's not the ball is in her court do i take that offer i don't take that offer many times if this door is going through a very hard time and she trusts somebody should say mommy i need help in this i need help in that but sometimes i can see the door tell the mother okay mommy from here now let me let me do this on my own because it becomes invasive and then privacy between a couple it really depends but more and more people parents are getting involved today than ever before because i don't know why is it because covet brought to that or maybe people are need more help and some parents are intelligent enough you know it might be that you took away a certain stigma and it's easier to talk about this because it could all say there's no great question i don't recommend it unless it happens really on its own it really depends on the relationship between them in the old days they went to boniolum let's say and they got some kind of course and and a check you're okay now you're doing something different what are you doing there no today it also really depends really what the case is if it's a run-of-the-mill case it's one if it's involved research because we don't have the answer or we're dealing with an issue that means a lot more than a basic ovulation induction so to speak and then it becomes more of a complicated question and especially when it touches genetics i want to move over to a point we do a lot in high-risk pregnancy unfortunately today doctors will tell a woman they don't like what they see on the ultrasound now they might be right they might be wrong i'm not getting into that part people go go into a tizzy when they hear that because rightfully so is my baby going to be healthy he's not going to be healthy one of the major roles has been doing for over 20 years was we always had people us that understood how this thing really works the anatomy of this whole situation we're always connected to very very big centers which we can ask a question which normally said this may not give us the answer many many babies were headed for the abortion and they were born really healthy children this happens very very often because why what did you do because no it's basically taking the same case and shifting over to a different center where an ultrasound is done way better than the sentence they were and you come back with better results i just had a couple i mean the doctors here were lying no they were not speculating it depends how well you trained in this field how to do an ultrasound there's different ways to do it and a lot more experience involved i once had a couple come to me first baby he looked me up at hasanah it was a freezing night and he came over to me and said yeah he says i have a question to ask you i went to the doctor and the doctor does not see kidneys in the baby there's no kidneys tomorrow morning i'm getting calm tomorrow morning i got him into a different center and i remember how the doctor called me from the dante and he showed me he sent me a clip and said you see these two tiny black dots those are two kidneys your baby has kidneys now this doctor who he went was a run-of-the-mill place and did not pick up when did that become bonaire's thing when did that become part of it right actually quite right after the beginning why because it became necessary because once you helped the couple and they became pregnant and issues came up who did they call they called me back again so it was training as we went out of all the way i had no knowledge in that field but again i had people with me that knew the stuff i'm very particular that the people work around me or the centers that i use are people on the right caliber i don't send people to doctors out of a reference book only if we met them before we know how it works why would they meet you meaning today they i know already why they would meet you but in why would they sit with you this is another siata dish my in my entire involvement in claudius sending people to doctors i must say i never had yet a doctor that refused me never doctors that i never met they will never meet again somehow when whoever i called and i asked him and i do ask sometimes questions which is a little bit famous out of the box a little bit claudius does need a different level of um help than sensitivity right and aloha plays a major role over here i've never had yet somebody tell me now what was like fundraising for this cause early on again today people understand already and there's quite a few babies walking around the world [Music] he was a super super clever man he was a brilliant man a very smart person and and what whatever kashmir so he once told me [Music] so i i my life randomly well maybe it's a cynical thing to say you should you should be michael me yet again you the ones i know on your staff i'm quite close with kohlberger who's a superstar he's just you're very anybody associated with you in any area if it's marketing if it's development if it is um you raise a lot of money and and people are cynical about it sometimes it's like as if so much of the communal part has to go to bernard it's one of those organizations that's always doing they're always doing events and you're always doing things there's always programs we're talking about tens of thousands of people who are part of your programs and and people there's other needs in the world come on right there there's all kinds of things that need to happen in christchurch my sister need to go on and there's people what how do you it just so happens you're familiar with the question though right you know that people say that no they actually did not hear that but could be not that not everything gets always born at home and always such big money but you have to stand the umbrella covers a massive amount of services which could be broken up many different organizations i opened up recently six seven months ago another organization is called cashiernetworks.org this is a website where every boy or girl that has a medical genetic issue they can post in anonymity i'm a boy living in lakewood new jersey i'm 25 years old i have noonan syndrome so this site is being viewed by thousands of people now these boys and girls never trusted to go to ashath because before you know the news gets around and they won't even have a chance to go on a date so we came up with this kiddish you posted anonymous right and we have like six chatran working behind the scenes and we get requests for matchings a girl gets on set she sees that maybe this might work for me so she calls because her genetics allow her yes she whatever she knows medically this might be a match for her so we ask once once there's a request we get the medical record stuff from both of them we review it and the shuttle starts putting these two together so we're it's only six seven months in practice we had i think 40 coming close to 50 dates from people that never went on a date yet now shidduchim are going to happen from this so this is another program we do a lot for singles encouraging them to cry preservation i even when i have extra funding we give them it's a total organization on its own you go you go into genetics we just had a major breakthrough and one genetic mutation which was and nobody ever went that way to find a 100 solution for it it's not just it's not the setting to speak details about it it cost me a ton of money so this is you go to the genetics then you move on basically you have do you have a board or you make these decisions on your own board for sure you have a board who makes every decision i don't spend any big money before i don't bring it up to i have two boats actually i have a medical board within us which is my most important board because they're responsible people and they will evaluate they know their medicine even better than i do then there's a board and tap them listen this is about money when i do this we want to spend for you you still work outside of bono you still have a day job or it's getting less and less i the last few years i only work like six seven weeks a year that's really but i met a man is not here forever and if hashem gave me if i wouldn't be mad honestly i wouldn't be doing it but i do see that in medicine every day you know we just did yesterday we have our own lab it's called ais advanced geology solutions what i'm telling you now is a total organization on its own but it's all part of binance this is a setting where male and borneo is completely donor funded completely identified no government there's no grants there's nothing nothing how come no kickbacks no nothing professionally the government does not appreciate having children but after that and grants most of the grants are and none from hands this is a fact and they don't value having children whenever i did approach them once or twice my aunts always came back there's so many children here we need more children for fostering for that who needs more children and in the firm community did you find people who didn't understand the need to give money to them or never yes i did unfortunately and and to many of them that didn't understand and each and i actually had with them a little like a douce conversation some of them came back to me then you know i was so silly that i even brought up the subject my grandchild was going through something my son is going through they had they can't human someone but people just have to learn that this is a lot more available so someone tell you this week the lab is open i'm not open every week in the year because i can't afford it yet seven times a year so far we had this week a boy that's engaged and he got ill cancer so the hustle time was pushed off pushed off finally is in remission now the girl really wanted to marry only when she knows that he can have children now i can't bore you with the details it's not in a public setting we basically got that shidduch back on track i was so happy i could be actually for that this was not available before and nobody would even get a vow to that level but to me this was a that i put back as if they were coming again they're going to get married why because we had our lab available we did the speaker procedure in a 14 year old boy which we found out he's carrying a certain genetic mutation if we wouldn't do something for him now at 14 years old he would never have children so this is really you can make yourself be an organization on its own so by now basically we're where is the lab now it's in the city wow so what do you do all day you're you're fundraising for all these yeah this is a very i can only tell you at night what i did during the daytime i really don't know in the morning i'm sitting with you now in the morning i have no clue what's waiting me for the day i want to i want to go back to something we talked we've talked about this in public settings too and you said interesting things on it people know others in this situation going through this and saying you know waiting for troubling hoping for children and i asked you then do you think it's appropriate to go over to somebody and say i'm not having any fear i'm thinking of you you said yes yes others were surprised at that or it happens a lot of times and so people say let's buy him uh kaliner and other people i'll be embarrassed that's different uh he doesn't want to be that's the that's that's a public you're putting the person into in the public in the shoe which i just to go with privately tell the person i think you should know even if you feel that at the second others like disagree with you on this other said no no don't say anything you say yeah go over not only is it i think it's not only people with no trouble people say no i think it's wrong because you know what for the first moment it might be like a push back five minutes later i promise you this person is going to feel so great that somebody has me in mind i have a minute whenever i meet somebody and i'm involved with people with sick children they should do whatever wherever i meet i go and give them a i have your mind and i really do but it gives so much definitely brings a joy maybe it's not made for everybody it could be but i do it all the time you know why because when i was when i was following my own pain hardly ever anybody came over and told me that but if there was a person told me that you know my friend i haven't it meant the world to me even though i know his thinking can is not going to bring me my salute but for a moment i was not anymore that lonely for that second somebody else is whatever was worth it no i think i think we should do it and i think it should be encouraged but it depends who should does it if there's imagine goes over to ingoman that doesn't have children for a few years it goes something just by going out to sugarland says you know maybe we can say you know what a world this means to this this person say it absolutely you you talked about your own pain you wanted something for the veteran very badly you didn't get it and and you're able to not be bitter you're able to go on and build yeah and i was saying that i would say that i did not just want it i put so much quickest the deals that i made with the bunch i'm even embarrassed even to repeat it but i was so desperate to have even one child the things that i took upon myself the answer was no a lot of people deal with pain and they collapse a few of them are able to be resilient enough to build how what's the answer so the answer is really a lot of it is the credit for my wife i must go back to baseball she is a stronger person than i am and she somehow had this whole posture through in a more logical way was stronger than mine let's put it that way she was able to see then in this pain that the emotion is behind it's not happening on its own there's a reason for it i had a hard time recognizing it i was a lot of anger in me it was anger more that didn't let me it took me time how did i really make peace with this when i was much sleek to do for other people even the same issues that we struggled we were not in sleep and i was able to be muslim almost literally every day with the same situation that's what somehow there was an enlightenment came into me so it's not that you were the cause of it somehow the management has a plan he didn't want to give you it's not because you couldn't this person could because you see that other people can and you're the schlier for them so look at it very differently so somehow a little by little i'm getting like the management actually took my case he discussed it and it was a back and forth and the one she said no i don't because i think this is better for you and i'll give you something else in life to do and this mission is something which you really think back not because i'm so worthy of it but the bottom line was since since day of creation of the world there was never a plain commoner i'm not not a i'm not playing playing comedy and i was able blessing and i know this is only shattered ishmael i'm smart enough to understand every movie that i was with hashem was with me never for a second that i think it's my smartest but because thing can go both ways at the same moment simultaneously and yet it's not in your hands but it's the punchline so that's something this is to me is amazing the the worst and efforts and the courage it must have taken to help somebody with your very situation to be helped when you were not helped that to be able to do that is is gatlach it's not yes i would say because my nature is very different than what i became a tr i'm transformed i'm not the same even my character has changed and i guess the guilt driving me all the time do this do that you can help this person you're going to help that person and i was involved in things that if i look back how the world slam did you even get involved how did you take it upon yourself look i did whatever the emotion wanted me to do i'm the smartest person in the world hashem sends them to me i guess evolving you keep doing things always something new after covet i was very ill i got out of the car with i said you you were very back i'm sure yeah when i got out of cover that said munchlim i'm not going to worry anymore about money i'm leaving that up to you but i do want to give my careers now for everything that is new that will make that will stay in clarity so they will make a difference for people hundreds of years from now it should be easier for a person that has these issues to be able to have a child we did so much in cancer the how we preserve even for babies this is it's it's too this is not the same thing all the tradition but i'm going back to that one question why binocular is at the forefront from all the for many many charities not and everything is important i don't think of myself as being the only one out there it just so happens that so many people in collins who need our services for their issues because we cover such a major and it's important to have it under one umbrella being honest with you because we do have the right people for it if i wouldn't have the right people dealing with each one on his own i wouldn't say she belongs like i said you attract the i don't know if you make them great or you attract them great but you have the three special people i have these six children working this super shot i'm talking high caliber not a person that has some extra few minutes when the baby's going to sleep she'll make a few phone calls people that sit on it the whole day we even connect it now it's a swirl tower program because you want to share yeah vanilla was on all across the world we have in the in in europe in the uk we have four branches we have an antwerp which services basically other parts of europe we have a vienna and austria and then we have in it's signing this is huge one of our biggest branches and that's a little bit irrational then we have a montreal then we have the entire united states from the west coast down to the east coast believe me it's busy there's not a moment in the day there's not something happening which is life-altering for this person for that person it is i'm this nonstop so it was a big pleasure to sit with you always you inspire me very much because you're such a focused person you don't even let yourself even do this often enough just to sit back and reflect like you said maybe at night when you're falling asleep you think about that's nice to give you the opportunity to realize what you're doing but all again we have to make this a point it's all seated ishmael tribune is with me 24 hours a day if not i would not be here i wouldn't be my sleep so may i continue because i'm not i'm not even a believer anymore i see it i feel it i can see sometimes i think about what's the judgment over here everybody's going to be here with me so my it's not anymore me it's not it's not about anymore but about a person it's this it is that manchester united's a pet project and he wants this thing to to be much later to continue thank you for coming and thank you for thanking my pleasure [Music] you