I want to start off this video by thanking all of you for trusting me
with your fertility. I can't believe it but Fertility TV has reached 200,000 subscribers and
I never imagined in my wildest dreams that this could be possible when I uploaded my first video
six years ago. I uploaded that video because I wanted to reach out to more people
just like you and help you with your fertility. And I've done way more than I ever thought that
I could do. I've reached so many of you to help support you on your fertility journey. And for
that, I am not only grateful but I am thrilled about and I'm super excited to have reached
200,000 subscribers because of all of you. To celebrate reaching 200,000 subscribers,
I'm bringing all of you a new video, a new story of hope because I know how impactful these videos
are and how much you all love them. And as a thank you to all of you for trusting me
with your fertility, I've got two surprises for those of you who've been thinking about enrolling
in one of my online coaching programs. But first, we're going to talk about the story of hope. We're
going to hear Alicia's story. And then at the end, I'll share those two surprises with all of you.
Today we're going to watch Alicia's story. And as always, I'm going to be commenting throughout it.
So you can learn a little bit more about what I did and why I did it for her and see how it can
improve and impact your fertility journey. Maybe there's something in there that you can start to
utilize, as well. This is a tough story. It's a difficult story with lots of hard times but
in the end, there's always hope and she ends up with the baby of her dreams. She tried for
a few years on her own before she reached out to myself and my team. So for those of you,
who've been trying for a while, keep watching this video. I think you're going to find it helpful.
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 working with 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. And the story you're about to hear is a story that I hear
often. More so in terms of the length of time that someone's trying before they reach out versus all
the intricate details and the difficulties that Alicia went through. But you're going
to find this really, really helpful and useful on your journey. So keep watching to learn more.
So now, let's learn more about Alicia, her story and her fertility process.
She was over 35 when she started her fertility journey and she really didn't think it was going
to be a fertility journey. Like many of you, she just started trying and she was over 35. And
quickly after she started trying, she did get pregnant but sadly due to severe preeclampsia,
she gave birth to the baby at 24 weeks. And after four weeks in the NICU,
unfortunately her and her husband lost the little one. And after such a tragic experience,
rightly so, they decided to take a little break, take a step back, focus on themselves,
their relationship before trying again. And when Alicia and her husband were ready
to start trying again, they were unable to get pregnant on their own. So they were concerned,
rightly so. A year passed and they felt like it was time to start to look for more help
to see if there was something going on that needed a little bit more support. They went
to all the normal specialists and they were giving trigger shots, which didn't work. They did IUI's,
which also didn't work. And the next destination on this journey was to start talking about IVF
but they weren't ready for that. That's not the path they wanted to go down. So
now let's hear from her in her own words. I'm a woman of faith, so I give all glory
to God in all of this but I know that God used Dr. Sklar in a big way to bring about our pregnancy.
And he used acupuncture and people praying but it was just that was such a big piece of God's plan
for our fertility. Just on a personal faith note. We'll take a moment here. Not to acknowledge
about what she said about me but to acknowledge what she said about faith. Faith is something
that continues to be an important piece of anyone's journey that I have seen over the years.
It provides continued hope, it provides continued determination and it gives you a
place to be rooted and grounded. Regardless of what you believe in, God or no God,
spirituality or no spirituality, faith in your ability, faith in your body, faith in a higher
power, whatever it might be. Faith is an important piece in any fertility journey. And I want you all
to take that piece out of this, especially from her journey and her story because that
kept her going through all the dark times. And there were some hard times for her. So remember,
there's always hope if you have faith and belief in yourself and potentially something more.
Very little difficulty. It was one of those things where we weren't even trying very hard.
And I think it only took us four months and we conceived our beautiful daughter but unfortunately
I had preeclampsia, severe onset preeclampsia, and she was born at 26 weeks gestation
and we lost her. She lasted six days, fought really hard in the NICU and she sadly passed away,
our daughter. So it was really, really a difficult time. And after that, we waited almost a year for
my body to heal after the preeclampsia. And then we started trying again and nothing was working.
It was about after a year of nothing, that's when we started to see specialists. Yeah,
we just went to the normal fertility specialist. So, I think an important piece here,
as we're talking about what she went through, obviously a difficult time with the loss due to
the preeclampsia that she had, which can certainly happen. And more importantly,
she recognized that she needed some time before she ever saw a specialist, right?
They wanted to give her body some time to heal, which I recommend for anybody with a loss. And
they wanted to then start trying again before they had to go to see anybody else. They felt like and
rightly so, that they should be able to conceive on their own. So those are the right steps,
nothing wrong with the approach she just took. These specialists through our medical offices,
through my insurance. And they first had us do ... I have to think about this. They had us do
trigger shots. We did trigger shots so that I could
ovulate at a certain time and then timed intercourse and that wasn't working. So then
after a few months of that, we moved to the IUI. For those who don't know, a trigger shot is a
injection that causes your follicles to rupture, to ovulate out and release the egg.
It's not an uncommon place to start. It allows you to try naturally at home and have timed
intercourse at home because you know when you're ovulating because you use the trigger shot, so
timing can be easier, right? It's also relatively low intervention and relatively inexpensive. So
those are all nice places to start for many people. But again, that's not the place to
jump to if you haven't been trying on your own at home naturally without any intervention.
This would be the next step from there. ... IUI's and the IUI's, I think we did
three or four and that also didn't work. So they told us that, "Hey, the few IUI's
didn't work, so now you've got to consider IVF." And this is a very common progression that happens
when we're on our fertility journey. We are moving forward. We go from trigger shot to IUI.
And from the IUI, we're going to do several rounds of IUI. That does, by the way, typically include
some medication like Clomid or Letrozole and a trigger injection like she used there. And so this
is a normal progression, right? And it's normal to have at least three tries of insemination before
we determine if it's successful or not. And so they did all those things. And then like she said,
the next progression from there typically is going to be IVF.
So when I evaluated her case, and in this case, actually her and her husband's situation,
what we came to realize were there were several variables that were overlooked.
First and foremost, this was both a male and female situation. Not extreme, really,
but we did need to address some things on the male side of things, which is often the case,
so we can never overlook that piece, as well. And we did have to look at some situations when it
came to Alicia and her hormones. Her hormones were a little bit off, imbalanced, not in the
right levels that I wanted to see specifically with her FSH levels. Her adrenal function
was a bit compromised, as well, due to a lot of the stress that they had been through. Right?
I mean, they had been through a lot of trauma through the first pregnancy. It was impacting
the ability for them to move forward. And so that stress absolutely needed to be accounted for,
as well. And also in my evaluation, we did find some minor blood clotting issues that
also needed to be addressed within the plan. And so, that's what I laid out for them in
terms of the plan that I wanted them to follow. We needed to address the male side of things. We
needed to increase and move blood circulation. We needed to support pituitary and adrenal function
as well to help regulate her hormones through both of those glands and that takes time.
As you heard her say, they did get pregnant. It took seven months for that to occur. And that's
not an unreasonable timeframe to hear and to experience. So I want all of you to recognize is
to make the necessary changes in our constitution to affect our cells, to affect our hormones,
it takes time. This doesn't happen in a day, in a week or a month. And so we need to give the space
for that to occur. And that's what they did. They did give themselves the space for that to happen.
I'm not saying they didn't get impatient at times because we all do. Especially when we go three,
four months down the road, not much has happened in terms of the positive pregnancy test. Then my
job is to remind all of you of the baby steps, the progress that you've achieved, which is what we
did with them. The goals where they have to go and the patients to maintain, right? That I often say,
"It's not about perfection, it's about progress." And they were making plenty
of progress and continued to be making that progress over time. So I saw no reason to jump
the gun and make huge changes in their situation. It was natural. What did they call it? Spontaneous
conception. They call it. So we wanted to try it for about a year with the natural step to
see what would happen. And it was pretty amazing because it was on my 35th birthday that I got the
positive pregnancy test and we were just so, so excited and just so happy. And
it's just a little miracle baby because we had been just waiting so long to bring a baby home
from the hospital. So it was just very awesome to be able to have that moment and to now have
a healthy child who is almost eight months old. They were willing to give it a year. It happened
in seven months and she found out on her birthday, which is also so special in and
of itself. And as she's talking to us in this little video, their little one is eight months
old, which is such a wonderful thing to hear. So let's keep hearing her story.
For women, at least, is that we have our biological clocks ticking. And I think that
women who are past, I don't know, 35 in their late thirties, maybe think that that's the
last result completely, so do IVF. And I think everybody's different. And if people do IVF,
I say, "Yeah, that's great." But if there's some hesitation, I would definitely recommend trying
natural fertility and just talking to a specialist about a plan. Like, "Hey,
let's just try this for six months and see what happens." I know that Dr. Sklar also works with
patients who want to do IVF to help the natural fertility boost the chances of successful IVF.
So I think that it's just good to take a breath and just try something a little different.
So one of the pieces here that I think is important to recognize is,
again, it's about time but it's also about having the right plan. Like she said, it's about
following a plan, following a process for a period of time, which is what they committed to. So I
want all of you to start to ask yourselves this question, how much time are you willing to commit
to yourself to become healthier to each other as a couple, to yield the results that you're looking
for? How much time are you willing to commit to find what the root cause is? To treat that,
give it the space and opportunity so that you can get the results and the pregnancy that you desire.
They were willing to give upwards of a year and it happened in seven months.
How much time are you willing to give yourself? I want to hear from all of you. Comment below, these
are the same conversations I have with couples all the time as they join one of my programs.
We want to understand their situation and we want all of you to create a timeframe that you're
comfortable with. That line in the sand that you draw can be erased and moved when you get there
but we need a goal to strive for. So we're not asking ourselves every cycle, did we or
didn't we get pregnant and what do we do now? So if you're over 35, you've been trying for
more than six months, you may need a personalized plan to help you figure things out. To help you
understand what else you need to be adding into your process in your plan, besides just a little
bit of dietary changes and maybe some supplements that you saw on the Internet. You might need a
more comprehensive assessment. What home therapies you need to be doing, what additional testing you
need to be doing, how to interpret the labs and results that you're getting to really understand
what's going on at the root problem, at the root cause. And to help you create a personalized
plan to help you get the results that you're looking for, just like Alicia and her husband.
They committed to a timeframe that they were comfortable with.
And again, I want to ask all of you, what timeframe are you comfortable with
to get the results that you were desiring? And remember I told you all that we had two surprises
for you for reaching 200,000 subscribers. Well, I want to share those with all of you now.
The first one is, if you are looking to join my Hope Fertility Coaching Program, to get a
personalized plan, to create something special and unique for all of you to help you reach your goal,
then I am opening up more spaces so that we can talk to more of you so that we can determine if
you're the right fit to join our program. If you are interested in signing up
to have a discovery call with my team, to see if you're the right fit to join my program,
then we have more space for you. And all you have to do is use the link in the description below.
The second one is, I am going to give all of you a $200 discount on my, do-it-yourself program
called, The Positive Pregnancy Method. All you have to do is use the code, Fertility TV, at
checkout to get the $200 off. Obviously that $200 off is because we reached 200,000 subscribers.
So you can take advantage of that again, by using the coupon code, Fertility TV, at checkout.
Again, that link for that and my Hope Fertility Coaching Program are all in the description below.
I do want to remind you all and let you know that the positive pregnancy method program is
a do it yourself program. What does that mean? It means you're not going to get private coaching and
a private plan from me or my team. We don't talk privately. You get to join my online program. You
get to join my private group for that. Where all the women together, support each other to reach
their goals. And this program is perfect for you, if you've been trying for less than six months
or you're under 35. This will help you set the foundational work, help you get initial blood
tests. The foundational blood tests that I think are important and help you start moving forward
in the right direction on your fertility journey. As always, I want to hear from all of you. What
did you find valuable in this story of hope? Comment below and let me know. If you found
this video useful, please give me a thumbs up. And if you are not a subscriber to my YouTube channel,
then you need to be because that's how we got to 200,000. So hit that bell subscribe
and get notified when I put out my next video for all of you. All right, everyone. Until
the next video, I want you all to stay safe, stay healthy and most of all, stay fertile.