We always thought it was going to be easy to have children when we wanted to. My mom had six
children and we never thought it was going to be difficult or this difficult to get pregnant. Does
that sound familiar to you? Well, that sounded familiar to Ryanne. She was 28 when she contacted
me and no one would've thought that a 28-year-old who seemingly was healthy would have difficulties
getting pregnant and staying pregnant. When she reached out to me, she had been trying for five
years without success. Two miscarriages, a handful of IUIs, and a lot of frustration
and up and downs. And this is like so many women and couples who joined my Hope Fertility coaching
program. They never thought it was going to be that hard. And like many other members of my
Hope Fertility coaching program, functional medicine was not the first choice for them.
So I want you all to listen to her story in her own words and I'm going to interject
with my thoughts because I want to walk you step by step what my findings were, what we
did for her, and what the results were because I do think this could be super helpful and impactful
on your fertility journey as well. But before we get started with hearing from Ryanne, I do want
to just give a quick shout out to the sponsor of this video, Fairhaven Health for not only
sponsoring the video and making it possible for me to create this for all of you, but for the awesome
supplements that they produce like FH Pro for women. It's one of my go-to multivitamin fertility
support vitamins that I recommend for women. And if you want more information on not only this
product but all of their products, you can use the link in the description below to check it out.
My name is Dr. Marc Sklar, also known as the fertility expert. And welcome to Fertility TV,
your YouTube channel dedicated to helping you get pregnant. I've been helping couples from all over
the world for over 18 years through my online coaching programs and right here in San Diego at
both of my clinics, using natural reproductive functional medicine to support all of you to
get the best results and hopefully the fastest results on your fertility journey. And Ryanne
was one of those who was able to get the results that she wanted by joining me in my Hope Fertility
coaching program, like many of you potentially out there who want additional. So I want to invite
all of you who need a little bit more support who want me and my team as your personal coaches to
guide you privately to get the results that you're looking for to apply to see if you're a good fit
to join the program. All you have to do is use the link in the description below.
So now let's hear directly from her. She's going to share her story. I'm going to
press pause and I'm going to interject where I think it's appropriate. So let's get started.
Well, it was about six years ago, my husband and I decided it was time to try to have baby.
And we thought it was going to be easy. My mom, she had seven easy pregnancies. My sister has two
and we didn't really anticipate having issues. So we started trying, it was about 18 months in,
I got pregnant the first time and had a miscarriage. About
a little over a year later, I started having IUIs done at a local clinic and
the first one was unsuccessful. The second one was, lost that baby. And then we did about four
more and got to the point where they told me I needed to change medication, do things that were
more invasive. And I just felt that wasn't the right thing. I couldn't shake it. And
I don't really remember where I first heard about you. It was a webinar, a fertility webinar.
I think you were talking about recurrent loss specifically. I really liked your manner and
the things that you were saying made sense. And so I did some research and I eventually
said, "Okay, I need a consult with this guy." So, we started working together, got
your input on what was going and here we are. So I want to pause there for a second because
I think this is really an important piece. She did what all of you should do. She did what most of
us ... we started where most of us would start. She went to her OB ... well, first she started
trying. She was trying for a bit of time without success, or actually in her case, she got pregnant
but had the loss unfortunately. She kept trying, she went to go see her OB, they ran a little bit
more tests and that's where they started to do IUIs, which is potentially an appropriate place
to start. But here's what often happens when we start there, is we don't end up doing significant
testing. We don't end up doing appropriate testing to find out why we're having these losses.
She was 28 when she started seeing me, which means when she started trying, she was much younger.
We shouldn't have losses at that age and we shouldn't have difficulty. But to their credit,
typically with one loss, we all don't get wrapped up in a lot of testing and we do start to move
forward. But when you've had that length of time like she's had where you're not having successes
or in her case, she had the second pregnancy with the IUI that was successful and then unfortunately
she miscarried again, that is a time where we need to start to take a step back, evaluate what we're
doing and run appropriate tests to find out why. The typical approach moving forward is to say,
"Well, let's just push you towards IVF because we're not getting results with IUIs," but it
still doesn't answer the question. Even if IVF is appropriate in her case and
I don't believe that it was at that moment in time based on her age, her ability to get
pregnant and the lack of testing, we didn't have answers as to why she wasn't able to conceive.
And that's really what needs to drive our decisions moving forward before we start to
invest a lot of money, time, energy, and emotion into procedures that may
or may not be what we need specifically. One of the beautiful things about the functional medicine
approach and functional reproductive medicine approach that we take when we coach our couples
is that we're looking for root causes. We're trying to understand why we're having the issues
that we're having and that's going to dictate the plan that we're going to create for all of you,
which is exactly what we did for Ryanne. So she knew inside that she needed something else,
that she needed more comprehensive support, which is what she sought after and why she
reached out to us. And that's the same thing for many of us. But what we found out in her testing
was that there were a significant amount of things that needed to be looked at and addressed and
should have been looked at earlier but weren't. So I'm going to kind of list some of those things
right now so that you understand the sorts of tests that we did and what we found for her.
So first and foremost, with her and with anybody, we want to do a comprehensive hormone panel to
just get a baseline for where she's at. And in her case, a lot of those things actually came out just
fine. But when we started to dive deeper into some of the labs, because they were appropriate for
her, they're not appropriate for everybody that might be showing us root causes for reoccurring
pregnancy loss, that's where we started to have answers. So her anti-nuclear antibody,
ANA was positive, and that's just a general marker for a potentially autoimmune issue. It doesn't
tell us exactly where the issue is. It just gives us a general marker that tells us we have to look
deeper and try to run more tests, but that already starts to raise a red flag as to what's going on.
Additionally, I did run some different genetic tests for her MTHFR and factor five, both of
which came back positive as well for her. Her homocysteine levels were elevated, which means she
has more inflammation as well, which is common to see when we have positive MTHFR genetic markers.
She also had quite a bit of stress, but which you could imagine after five plus years of trying with
multiple miscarriages and multiple IUIs, any of us would be stressed under that so we have to account
for that. And she had a history of digestive issues. And because of that history of digestive
issues, we ran a more comprehensive stool test to find out what was really going on digestively so
that when we made her plan, we could properly support her. So that's a lot of information,
right? That's a lot of findings that starts to dictate how we're going to support her and all
of the couples that join our program. And this really starts to dictate
all the changes that we're going to make for her, whether it's dietary changes,
a whole comprehensive GI support plan. We have to support her immune system. Those genetic markers
that came up for her also show that she has a propensity to blood clotting. So these are
things that absolutely need to be supported and addressed. And she was going to and really awesome
about doing everything we recommended. So we laid out that plan that went over lifestyle, dietary
changes, the supplements she needed, and she followed it to a T and she followed it, I think
it was for about six months or so total before she actually got her positive pregnancy test.
Working with you was the start of ... it was a massive turning point on a lot of different
levels. And it was the first step that I needed to take, I think in really changing how things were
going and figuring out what needed to be done and what needed to be addressed. And it really was.
This is an important key step in changing things for her. She recognized that if she kept doing
the same things that she was doing and going down the same path that she was going down,
she wasn't going to get different results. So she knew she needed change, but she also knew
that she needed proper guidance to get that change, which is what we were able to provide for
her. It also wasn't for her as if we just created one plan and she was able to follow it and then
there was no changes that needed to be made. As we make progress, as our body changes, as we improve
our health and our reproductive function, then naturally we want to follow that progress. We
want to run additional labs to make sure you're achieving that progress and then modify the plan
to accommodate for that, which is what we were able to do for her periodically over time until
she finally got that positive pregnancy test. And then obviously supporting her through
that pregnancy to make sure she had a healthy delivery, which she did. And this is exactly what
we do in our Hope Fertility coaching for program. We create comprehensive plans and support you
from beginning to end. So if you're interested in joining the Hope Fertility coaching program,
I want you to understand a little bit more about it. Everybody who joins it gets a private one
on one consultation with either me or one of my team members to support you. And this is where we
dive deep into your specific case. We get a full medical history, review all your lab work, we go
over it comprehensively and then we tell you where we think you're at right now and if there's any
additional tests that we might not have thought of before, then we talk about what additional
testing we think you need to incorporate as well. And then once we have all of that information,
then we're able to take that and create a customized, personalized plan for you based
on our findings. That includes everything from lifestyle changes, to dietary modifications, to
timing of intercourse and how to track your cycles, supplements. We try not to leave
anything out, home therapy techniques as well. It's as comprehensive as we can get it because we
want you to get results and get them as quickly as possible. And then we meet with all of you
weekly in our group coaching that happens once a week and you come in, you update us on your
progress. We review your progress and we make modifications as needed. And there is actually
so much more. So if you want more information on the full breath of what the program offers and
what's included in it, then I want to invite you all to apply for a discovery call to see if you're
the right fit for the program and so that we can answer any of your questions. And all you have to
do is use the link in the description to apply. All right, it's that time in the video where I
want to hear from all of you. I want to know what did you find interesting, valuable and important
by listening to Ryanne's story and listening to me tell you what we were able to do for her.
Comment below and let me know. If you like this video, give me a thumbs up. If you're not
already a subscriber to my YouTube channel, you need to be, so hit that bell to subscribe and
get notified when I put out another video for all of you. And until the next video, stay fertile.