'Fighter' David Nail, wife overcome infertility
David Nail remembers his grandfather saying that he always checked his babies for 10 fingers and 10 toes. But 45 minutes after Nail’s wife, Catherine, gave birth to their twins, Lawson and Lillian, in December, all the country singer had done was stare at their faces.
“I didn’t know if they had arms and legs, and I sure as hell didn’t know if they had 10 fingers and 10 toes,” said Nail, seated in the living room with his wife in their Nashville home. “I stopped in that moment and counted to make sure. It was such a powerful experience that you just couldn’t imagine.”
For the couple, twins marked the beginning of a new journey — and the end of a years-long “tremendous struggle” to conceive them.
Nail sings about the couple’s path to parenthood on his new album, “Fighter," in stores Friday. The title track is an ode to Catherine, her feisty spirit and her dedication to their marriage, but the sentiment touches many poignant spaces in Nail’s adult life.
The singer's success in music has never been a sure thing — now four albums into his career, he’s had radio hits with songs including “Red Light,” “Let it Rain,” “Whatever She’s Got” and now “Night’s on Fire." He spent years elbowing his way up crowded country radio playlists while simultaneously fighting his way through anxiety and depression. Almost as soon as the Missouri native got his mental health stabilized, he and Catherine were gut-punched by infertility.
David Nail finds new frame of mind
“I was embarrassed for the longest time,” Nail said. “A lot of what we dealt with had to do with me. And as a man, you definitely don’t want to hear that. It’s your job to provide and be a husband and a father, and she had dreams of being a mother.”
After failing to get pregnant on their own, the couple sought help from Nashville-area fertility specialists. Catherine, an elementary school teacher, endured procedure after unsuccessful procedure. The silence in the clinic’s waiting room was deafening, Nail recalled. There was no conversation because everyone was facing the same personal battles.
When the couple decided to try in vitro fertilization — or IVF — Catherine had to give herself injections in the stomach to stimulate egg production while Nail was on the road. Terrified of needles, she started the shots on her 31st birthday.
Right before their first scheduled embryo transfer, the hopeful mother’s lungs filled with fluid as a result of the treatment. She had to be hospitalized so the fluid could be drained, which meant the embryos had to be frozen and the procedure delayed while her body healed. It was several months before she got the opportunity to try again — this time right before the 50th annual Academy of Country Music Awards in Arlington, Texas.
The couple knew they wanted to implant two embryos to increase their chance of getting pregnant, and they also knew this might be their only chance to have children. If they were lucky enough to have twins, they were ready. However, the clinic wasn’t. When the Nails showed up, clinicians had only thawed one embryo. To make matters more complicated, Nail was scheduled to fly out of town for a work commitment shortly afterward. Doctors agreed to thaw out the second embryo as Nail raced home to pack for his trip. About an hour later, the couple returned to the clinic and the transfer was complete.
A few days later, they left for the ACM Awards. One night while they were at dinner in Dallas, Catherine felt a very distinct cramp that she thought was one of the eggs implanting.
“When you’re trying to get pregnant, you’re watching for every possible signal from your body to tell you it’s pregnant,” she said. “I looked at David and I said, ‘I think we might be pregnant.’ ”
The next day, she felt the same cramping again in a different spot. Because her husband was so cautiously optimistic, this time she said to herself, “I think they both took.”
After the awards show, Catherine returned home to Nashville and Nail resumed playing shows on the road. They had an appointment with the fertility specialists on a Monday to see if the treatment was successful, but the hopeful mom couldn’t wait. The Thursday before — while her husband was out of town — she bought two pregnancy tests. She went home, put on “fun music,” took the tests and waited as “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” played in the background.
“I didn’t want to go into a doctor’s office and find out if we were pregnant,” she said. “The whole process of IVF takes the organic feeling out of everything. I wanted something to feel like a surprise. I remember it was the longest two minutes of my life while I waited on that test. And at that point, pregnancy tests and I had a really bad relationship. I’ve been known to throw them across the room and call them liars.”
When it read positive, Catherine said she started screaming — and then immediately worried how she was going to keep the secret from Nail until he got home. She used the time to plan the surprise. Early in the couple’s fertility journey, Nail — an avid Nike Air Jordan collector — picked up an infant-size pair of the sneakers. Catherine found the little shoes, opened the box, put the pregnancy test inside of it and placed them in a Nike shopping bag on the kitchen counter to look like a new purchase for Nail to see as soon as he walked in the house. Then, she set up the video camera.
He took the bait.
“He was like, ‘What’s the Nike bag? What did you get?’ ” she recalled. “He gets the box out and he’s like, ‘Baby shoes?’ He gets the box out and he sees the pregnancy test and his first instinct is like, ‘Huh? Are you sure? We aren’t supposed to go to the doctor until tomorrow.’ He totally second-guessed it.’ ”
The next day, the doctor confirmed what the test already told Catherine — she was pregnant and her high hormone levels indicated she was likely pregnant with twins. At five weeks pregnant, an ultrasound confirmed it.
Catherine loved being pregnant. She never got morning sickness, but she did have to stop working earlier than she planned and because of a premature spike in hormone levels had to go on modified bed rest for nearly three months.
Lawson and Lillian arrived via scheduled cesarean section on Dec. 12, 2015. Lawson weighed in at 6 pounds, 2 ounces at 7:44 a.m., and his petite younger sister arrived one minute later and a few ounces smaller.
“That moment changed me,” Catherine, tearing up, said of hearing Lawson cry for the first time. “I want to hear that cry forever. I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. They showed him to me over the curtain. I wanted to pull that curtain down and hold him. It was like a dream. And then she came out guns a blazing, too.”
Nail — along with Scooter Carusoe and Lee Thomas Miller — penned the song “Babies” on “Fighter” for Lawson and Lillian (her parents call her Lilli Cate).
Lyrics include: Good things come to those who wait|I used to think that’s just something people say|So imagine when you get the news| After years of trying, not just one but two.
“I think when you’re in the thick of it and you’re getting setback after setback after setback, it’s really hard to find any positive,” Nail said. “But looking back, there was positive all over the place. I used to tell her the good Lord will bless us to be parents when we’re ready to be parents, and there was a good chunk of that time I wasn’t ready to be a parent. I think he wanted to make sure that we got on top of that.”
Reach Cindy Watts at 615-664-2227, ciwatts@tennessean.com or on Twitter @CindyNWatts.
Babies bring change to album
David Nail’s sleep schedule wasn’t the only part of his life altered by his twins — the December arrival of Lillian and Lawson also caused the country singer to reimagine his music.
Nail thought he had fourth album “Fighter” complete. But when he listened to the songs again a couple of months after becoming a dad, he found some of the tracks no longer resonated.
“I was just at a different place in my life,” Nail said.
Nail’s record label MCA Nashville gave the singer approval to record new songs for the project and the four new additions — "Babies," "Ease Your Pain," "Lie with Me" and "Old Man's Symphony" — completely changed the album.
“Suddenly you listen to this collection and what you thought was a certain type of record that said a certain thing suddenly did a 180,” Nail said. “It was extremely personal.”
The singer considers the 11-song album — that features collaborations with Vince Gill, Logan Brill, Lori McKenna, Bear Rinehart and Bo Rinehart of NEEDTOBREATHE and Brothers Osborne — the period at the end of a sentence.
“The best way I can explain the record is that it’s a lot of subject matter I’ve previously sung about but I hadn’t got it fully off my chest,” Nail said. “I feel (creatively) free, and I’m already curious to see what I’m going to do next.”