For as long as I can remember, I’ve envisioned being a wife and mother. Like a lot of little girls, I walked around the house “mothering” my dolls and cradling our family cats like the human babies I wished they were. I played M.A.S.H and picked colors from an origami fortune teller to predict who I would marry and how many kids we would have. The problem is life doesn’t always go according to plan. In fact, it hardly ever does.
According to M.A.S.H., I would be married with at least two kids by my mid-20s. Instead, at 28 years old, I had just gotten engaged and was only a few years into my career in marketing. I thought I still had plenty of time to become a mom. Little did I know my biological clock was ticking…FAST!
I carried on with work, racing triathlons and living my best life, just expecting nature to bring us a baby at any moment. I kept hoping for it, but I didn’t stress it too much. Then, in March of 2020, I finally got a positive pregnancy test. Two weeks earlier COVID-19 had completely shut down the world. There was a lot to worry about, but my husband and I were still through-the-roof excited to finally start our family! Honestly, I had never seen my husband so giddy.
Ten short weeks later, my sunshine turned to a dark cloud of grief. I was at the OBGYN for my first official prenatal visit when the doctor said, “I can’t find a heartbeat. Unfortunately, it’s a miscarriage.” Not only were the words heartbreaking, the way she said them was nonchalant, like she was reading from a menu. Ironically, the next words out of her mouth were an actual menu, as she dictated my options for what to do next: wait and let it pass naturally, do a D&C (which she didn’t even take time to explain) or take a pill and initiate the miscarriage. “I’ll be back in 5 minutes. Let me know what you decide.” My husband was waiting in the car, because of COVID restrictions. How was I going to make this decision by myself…in 5 minutes? Was she crazy?!
I’d love to say it got better from there, but it actually got terribly worse. After I lost our baby, I wanted to hop back on the horse immediately. So, we started seeing fertility doctors. They told me I had low AMH, high FSH and elevated thyroid levels. In other words, I had low egg reserve, hypothyroidism and very little chance of conceiving without assisted reproductive technology.
But knowing fertility treatments are expensive, we took it slowly over the next 5 years, starting with a natural cycle using only Clomid. It didn’t work. After that, we tried a couple rounds of intrauterine insemination (IUI). Nothing. The next logical step was in vitro fertilization (IVF). That failed miserably, too. When they went to retrieve my eggs, I only had 2 follicles and neither was mature enough to fertilize.
I was exhausted – physically, mentally and emotionally. Not to mention, our savings account was bleeding dry.
So, what did I do next? I put on my dietitian cap and took a long, hard look at my diet and lifestyle choices. Sure enough, the missing pieces started coming together. My AMH went up, my FSH came down and my thyroid levels dropped to an optimal range for pregnancy. At 37 years old, I completely flipped the script on my hormones with just a few changes to my diet, environment and exercise routine.
Now, I’m on a mission to help other couples optimize their bodies for the best chances of conception. I know firsthand how upsetting it is to struggle with infertility. But my years of education, training and life experience have also taught me that there are factors within your control. All you have to do is take those next baby steps, and you could have a healthy baby of your own.