Have you ever heard about natural IVF. In this fertility TV episode,
I'm going to share Jennifer's fertility story with you. How we helped her fix her thyroid,
the type of IVF she was able to do and how she ended up pregnant with twins. So keep watching,
so you can hear right from Jennifer and learn from her journey to make yours a little bit easier.
My name is Dr. Marc Sklar also known as the fertility expert and I've been helping couples
for over 19 years get pregnant. Either through my online programs, wherever you are in the world,
or right here in San Diego at my clinics. This channel right here that you're watching is all
about fertility and helping you get pregnant and supporting you on your fertility journey.
I want to make information about fertility available for everyone, wherever you are in
the world. I believe that many of you trying to become of moms have been misdiagnosed and misled.
Left with no answer and no hope on your journeys. This channel was created to help empower you, to
help you create your fertility plan, and to help restore hope in your ability to conceive. A small
thing that you can do to help me on my mission to help women from all over the world get pregnant,
is give this video a like and a subscribe so that more women can hear about this video and
get the empowerment, support, and hope that they deserve. So now let's get started with this week's
episode and hear straight from Jennifer so that we can all learn a little bit from her journey
to hopefully make our journeys a little bit easier. So this is Jennifer starting out and
as I always do in these videos is I'm going to let her talk and then I'm going to interject on
what she was able to do, what we were able to do for her and guide you throughout her story.
My husband and I got married, it'll be three years in July. And
we were a little bit later in the game, day after my 35th birthday. And of course
we decided after our honeymoon, we wanted to start trying. And we had about six months of just
unsuccessful pregnancy tests. And it was just kind of getting scary because of our age. And you hear
out there, if you're over 35 that there's all these misconceptions. And so went to the doctor
and we started... They said, "Wait six more months", because you have to have a year of
infertility and then they will start doing other methods. That's when Marc, we started
to work with you and we started the IUI process. So I want to stop right here. And I want all of
you listening to recognize a couple things. These timetables are not specific to you. They're very
general and they're decided on to help manage patient flow and the amount of patients coming
into an office. So if you feel like you need support sooner than the guidelines that are
given to you, then I want you to listen to your gut. I want you to get the support that you need.
It's not about waiting, if you know that you need it. If you have a history of reproductive issues
of hormonal issues or you just feel inside that you want to start to get answers now.
Then get the support that you need and don't wait for the timeline that's been dictated by somebody
else for you, okay? Those timelines are, for those who do want it, that if you are under 35, that
it's a year or more. And if you're over or 35, that it's six months or more. So actually for her,
for Jennifer and her husband, they actually could have started to get support sooner, but that's not
what they were told, they were misinformed. Our second round of IUI, you said,
"Why are you doing this right now? Because your thyroid is really high" and you really went
over and took the time to go over my blood panel. So this is a really key piece for Jennifer,
especially, but for anybody listening. First and foremost, you all deserve to understand
what your body is doing. You all deserve to understand what your lab are telling you,
your body is doing. And if you have run labs and no one has sufficiently explained them to you,
then you need to get the attention that you deserve and get the clarification that you need.
So Jennifer did labs, she was doing an IUI. She did an IUI before, we ran labs afterwards and her
TSH, her thyroid stimulating hormone was elevated. And because that was elevated, I wasn't happy with
her moving right into another IUI cycle, which is exactly what she was told to do by her OB, which
is go in to do another IUI cycle. I didn't think that was appropriate given the circumstances.
And I wanted to make sure that she got her thyroid under control before we started moving forward.
Again, her thyroid and for all of you is an important piece to helping you manage your
hormones and get pregnant and have healthy balance regulated hormones. So it was really
important that we got this taken care of. I can't tell you how often this is overlooked. Now
for Jennifer, her thyroid, her TSH specifically was elevated, but not elevated so far that it was
over the clinical reference range, but it was definitely over what we like to see
in the fertility world. So she was closer to four and in the fertility world, we want to be
between one and two, for sure below two and a half and she wasn't there.
And so that's a big variable that needed to be addressed and something that we all, when we
discuss thyroid issues need to be aware of. So they put me on, I think it's thyroid Oxy
or thyroxine, a thyroid medication. I'm still taking it to this day,
but it was really weird Marc because when I was working with you in conjunction of my doctor,
he got really mad at me, really made me feel so bad because I just brought to his attention that
I think my thyroid level is a little high. And that I would like to be on medication
to do something about it because I didn't feel like that was helping me in my journey.
And he got very combative with me and told me that wasn't accurate and all this stuff. And then
once you and I spoke and then he double checked it, I went into his office, we sat down at
his desk and he double checked it and he said, "Oh, I guess I didn't realize how high it was".
That's when he said, "Oh, you know what? We do need to put you on medication".
And my thyroid went down It's at 1.5 now. This is so important, your OB has thousands
of patients. We have to recognize that they don't remember everything about your case.
They're not aware of every detail they forget and it's not on purpose. They're just managing
a lot of patients. So you have to remind them. Now sometimes when you remind them or ask or request
for some things, they take it personally, they're her ego gets in the way and they take offense.
You shouldn't let that get in the way of what you need and deserve. And to Jennifer's credit,
she didn't, she pushed the right way and her doctor for as much of a hard time as he gave her
for questioning him about her thyroid function,
he was the one that then conceded and recognized that he was inaccurate in what he said
when he reevaluated the labs and he missed it the first time and put her on medication.
I can't remember what funny name she used for the medication, but that's not what it
was. It's levothyroxine, is what she was put on and that made a huge difference. As she said,
it lowered her levels to 1.4, which is perfect and where it needed to be. And as she also said,
she's still continuing to stay on it because when she recorded this video, she was still pregnant
and you need to stay on that during the pregnancy. It's really important to help
maintain a healthy pregnancy throughout. So it was really important that she continue. I actually
do not know if she's still on it right now. It's been some time since we've discussed that. But she
didn't take no and that's the important piece here was really important for all of you to get out of
this is that doctors are not always right. It's okay to question them and get what you deserve.
She did that and that made a huge difference on her journey.
Probably seeing my husband disappointed and wanting to do something for me. And knowing
that I was upset, just our relationship kind of... Like we were really close and we were
really supportive, but probably the hardest part was seeing him wanting to do whatever he could and
not being able to help me and me just like pushing back. I just had a wall up with everyone, I didn't
want to talk about it. I just was like really stressed out. That was probably the hardest part,
was not being able to really talk about it. I was too scared because I didn't want to face like any
of the reality if there was something wrong or we weren't going to be able to get pregnant...
I didn't want to put anything out in the universe that was overly positive or negative.
And I didn't want to say anything because I didn't want to be a pity party for anybody or for anybody
to really know. Seeing other people around me, my best friends, like everybody else getting pregnant
at the time. I don't know. It was amazing to get on the thyroid medication and I feel like you just
said "Relax", and to have your hope of... Like I came into your office crying a couple times
really frustrated. You just helped support me and just say, "Hey, you're going to get pregnant. Like
you can do this. You're going to be fine. Stop listening to the negatives". And I
kind of just let go over the summer. I told you, I said, "The summer, I'm just going to
take my thyroid medication. Come see you". I want to spend some time here talking about
what she said here. This process is stressful. It's stressful in relationships. It's stressful
on us. It's stressful on our friendships and family life. It's stressful across the board.
But we all can't forget that the most important thing in all of this, is that you continue to
believe in yourself, in your ability to do what you were meant to do, which was have children.
And that is a huge piece in this puzzle. She used the key word, "I had to let go",
letting go, doesn't mean giving up, letting go means relaxing the strangle hold you are having on
trying to get pregnant. It means giving space for your body to create what it needs to do.
It doesn't mean tightening it up and making it harder. It means letting go and relaxing.
So for some of you, if you ever hear me say, let go a little bit, calm down a little bit.
It doesn't mean that I'm asking you to relax and just give up. I'm asking you to create space,
to create. Because things are created within space, we need space to create what we want.
And that letting go creates the space that you need to create the baby that you desire.
And that's what Jennifer was able to do. It's not an easy task. It's not an easy request. It means
not being so strict with yourself. It means not always having everything to be
perfect and rigid, it means giving yourself some flexibility and space to allow things to just be.
When I let go in the summer, I decided to... When I told you Marc, I was like, to recap, I said,
"I'm done. I'm on my thyroid medicine. I'm so stressed out". And you said, "Go on a vacation,
do something, go have fun this summer, just forget about all of this". And so
I did and it was just kind of the stars aligning. And I remember you telling me about, there're
natural ways to go. So I went to this natural IVF clinic and I took Clomid in September.
They did what they call an egg retrieval. They just took out three of the mature ones and
we went back three weeks later and they did the transfer. It was just minimal medication,
which was amazing and Marc, this will tie in maybe to the progesterone thing I think,
but that was hard. So we got three eggs. Two of them ended up being good one of them didn't
make it through the frozen embryo process or the freezing. And went in a month later and
they transferred two of the eggs and now we're five and a half months pregnant with twins.
So she wanted to do a little bit more in part of her, letting go was just be a little bit
active, but nothing crazy. She didn't want a lot of medication. She just wanted a little bit more
support, a little extra support. And that's where the natural IVF cycle came in because natural IVF
is where you can either use no or very low medication to help stimulate your ovaries,
to get some, a small amount out of eggs. Which is what she did, she mentioned she got three
and she used a little bit of Clomid and nothing more to get those eggs. And then they were able
to fertilize those in the lab and grow those out. She had two good ones right after the freezing
process she said. And when they did the transfer, they transferred both embryos. And she ended up
with twins. That's how she got her twins. So it was a very low stimulation, very low,
almost none in terms of medication, she was able to get just enough eggs to do what they needed to
do and have two embryos implant. So she is almost six months pregnant with twins in this video.
So Jennifer and her husband were able to be proactive, to take the steps they needed to take,
to push their doctors just a little bit sometimes to get the support that they needed. And to have
a really comprehensive integrative approach to get the twin babies that they deserved. And this
is possible for all of us, but we all need the right guidance, the right support, the right
team together, put together to get us the results that we desire.
And if you've been tr trying a little bit longer than you would like, if you feel like you need a
little bit more support on your journey to get the same results as Jennifer did and her husband did,
then I want to invite you to apply for my hope fertility coaching program, to give you the same
support and guidance that Jennifer and her husband were able to get. You can use the link in the
description below to apply, to join my program. That's another fertility TV episode for all of
you. And this was a special one. Jennifer's journey really touched me. I was so excited
that she and her husband were able to get pregnant. And more importantly, I think all
of you hopefully learned a lot from listening to her story. But now I want to hear from all of you,
I want to know what was it that you learned from Jennifer's story? What's the one thing
that impacted you the most? Comment below and let me know. And again, my videos, my mission is
to help as many couples as possible, achieve their dreams. And it becomes much easier when all of you
like and subscribe to this video. So if you like this video, definitely give me a thumbs
up. And if you haven't already subscribed, hit that bell to subscribe and get notified when I
put out a new video for all of you. All right everyone until the next video, stay fertile.