Welcome to the Brilliant Fertility Podcast. I'm your host, dr Katie Rose, and this podcast exists to help illuminate the path ahead of you. With expert interviews, clinical pearls and real client success stories, my intention is to bring you hope for what's possible on this journey and to give you tools and resources to navigate the ups and downs on the road before you. If you find this podcast helpful, don't forget to subscribe on your favorite listening platform. And I have a big request If you have a minute, can you leave us a five-star review and let us know what did you learn? What did you come away with? Did you leave with that spark of hope? This helps more people like you find the podcast. My mission is to support as many humans as possible on their path to become parents, and by you sharing and subscribing, you're part of that mission too, and I'm so grateful for you for being here. One of the most common questions I see in the fertility space is how can I get pregnant faster? I'm Dr Katie Rose. Welcome to the Brilliant Fertility Podcast, and this is a heavy question. And before we dive into it, I have also received several questions about Erica's episode from last week If you haven't listened to it, especially if you are feeling like you're running out of time. You have to go back and listen to that episode, because I'm going to start with some reflections about her journey and then we're going to dive into this question of can you get pregnant fast? How can you get pregnant fast? So, looking back at Erica's journey and discussing that with her, like debriefing that experience number one the question I got from people was how long did it actually take from the time we started working together to the time of conception? And it was about 15 months. So you can imagine, especially as it relates to that question of like how can we get pregnant fast, 15 months might feel like forever. I can appreciate that what we need to be thinking about is the priority, right, and when you really dig down into the priority and you ask someone what's more important getting pregnant fast or having a healthy baby everyone answers healthy baby, and I'm sure you are feeling that way as well. But we're human and our bodies age and we get scared about that. Human and our bodies age and we get scared about that. So, looking back at Erica's story, where she conceived at 45, almost 46 years old she's almost 48 and is feeling the healthiest that she has felt in her life. I hope gives you some inspiration about what's possible. So, just to look back and reflect on, like what was really important, cause I know that everyone wants to know like, well, what did you do specifically? What did she eat? What supplements was she taking? What acupuncture points did you use? Uh, she was in the brilliant fertility program, so she was also able to access frequent coaching around fears that were coming up.

The number one most important thing to recognize is that her individual protocol was more important than any cookie cutter protocol. I know it's so easy to reach out and grasp some information from online. And what did this person do? Oh, she's also 40, something I'm going to do what she did. I hope that works.

We live in the age where we have so much information accessible at all times and it can feel so tempting to just use this protocol that someone else used. But it doesn't matter if they're the same age, it doesn't matter if they have the same diagnosis, it doesn't matter if they have the same AMH level. Your protocol has to be individualized to you. That's the biggest takeaway that I want you to have about all fertility treatments there's no cookie cutter protocol. The second takeaway is that implementation and and consistency is far more powerful than just having information and going balls to the wall randomly with some protocol. And even if that protocol is designed specifically for you, if you're not consistent with it, we can't expect much of a result. So I would much rather see someone who does 80% of their protocol 80% of the time than someone who is 100% on top of it 40% of the time. I hope that makes sense.

A metaphor for this that I loved that I saw recently was this infographic where they had like this big boulder and they said, like all right, this is what happens to the boulder when you dump a bucket of water on it. It's like nothing. The water just rolls off. But what happens when you let water just drip continuously on that boulder? It's going to eventually start to create a little indentation and that'll go deeper and deeper and deeper. I mean, this is how the Grand Canyon was formed. So don't knock the power of consistency when it comes to getting results. That means you don't have to eat perfectly. That means you don't have to take your supplements perfectly every single day. That means every once in a while you can stay up late with your friends, you don't have to go to bed at 9 PM for the rest of your dang life and not have any fun. So I want you to remember that consistency and just implementing your individualized protocol is going to get you better results than just having a ton of information at your fingertips and trying to implement all of it perfectly all the time. And I exaggerate that with a little drama, because the energy behind the two states matters as well, and we'll get into that in just a moment as well.

So the third part that I really want to emphasize is this idea of having alignment as a more powerful option over just trying to avoid stress all the time. I had a very cute conversation with one of my acupuncture patients who's getting ready for her embryo transfer, and she was like okay, so after the transfer I'm just not supposed to get stressed, right. And I just chuckled. I think we can all chuckle because it's like the minute you say like no stress, it seems like that's when the universe is just like oh, you said no stress, I'm just going to pile the stress on. And so instead of feeling like oh my God, I just had to avoid stress, and like put myself in this cocoon where I am just, you know, protected in this bubble. We have to instead look at what is your yes and your no. Are you in alignment?

And if you heard Erica's story, she said you know she basically dived into an entirely new career. While she was on this journey, there wasn't a lack of stress. She didn't have endless amounts of time to be meditating and meal planning, and her job and her additional training in her new career took quite a bit of time and it was stressful, but it was also something that she was looking forward to. It was giving her more security. It was bringing her more fun, and that's important to think about as well. So instead of obsessing around not having any stress, trying to avoid stress, let's look at how can we support you being in alignment with your dreams, how can we build resilience to the things that inevitably will come up in life? And I love that part of Erica's story where she said you know it's not to say that I don't have hard things happen, but I'm more content. There's more peace, there's more ease, I have more tools to be in that, and that's personal power me to.

The last big takeaway here was moving from a place towards a place, maybe where you can feel okay, no matter what, versus a mindset of I have to get this baby, no matter what, or my life is incomplete without this baby, or insert whatever variation of that has maybe been circulating in your thoughts at times that if, if there is no baby, who am I? Am I worthy of being here? What is my purpose? Erica did a lot of inner work to discover what it felt like to live in gratitude, no matter what, no matter what hard things were present, and she'd been through so much that she's a really wonderful example of what's possible when you shift your intentions, when you talk honestly about your fears with someone who can support you through that. You don't have to use toxic positivity to get to that place, but there is a gentle unwinding and creating space for that possibility.

That's necessary and I know all of that feels like sure, great for someone else, but it might feel like bullshit if you don't have the tools or the people to help you put that into practice. And if you're feeling overwhelmed by that, that is a sign to ask for help. If you're feeling like, yeah, that would be great to have more ease, I would love to feel like I could be okay, no matter what, but I just don't feel that. I feel angry and frustrated and devastated and insert any emotion that you need to feel. I guarantee you someone else out there is feeling it and someone has walked this path before you and been able to find a place of feeling. Okay, no matter what. I wish I could guarantee every person who walked through my doors, who met me online, that we could get them that perfect, healthy baby. Someone is guaranteeing you that that's the biggest red flag and you should just be running for the hills because no one can ethically make that guarantee.

But if you're doing everything in the physical form, if you're doing all of all of the things and you're feeling like nothing is working I'm running out of time then I want you to just revisit these ideas from a different perspective of is there a way to do this differently? Is there someone who can guide me? You don't have to do this alone, and this week we're actually starting up again with our three day virtual fertility retreat, which I'm so excited about. It's looking like we're going to do this seasonally because the feedback on it has just been so positive, and so this is three days spaced out over seven days to give you plenty of time to digest the learnings and begin your own transformation. In these three days I'm pulling back the curtain on how I approach the most complex fertility cases in my practice that get real results, and I know a lot of you who listen to this podcast have probably already done one of our free trainings, have maybe actually done one of the free retreats in the past, and before we jump into the getting pregnant fast question, I want to just give a little brain science here that we actually need to hear things five to seven times for it to be retained in our long-term memory. And in the three-day retreat, which I try to keep to about an hour a day, sometimes we go longer because if people are really engaged and I'm in teaching mode and I'm so passionate about sharing this information I share a lot of the tools for nervous system regulation and balancing hormones and processing emotions and releasing limiting beliefs. We can get a lot done in that timeframe and there may be part of you that was able to integrate some of that information and part of you that just wasn't ready for pieces of it, and now you'll be able to revisit it from a new lens, as a different version of yourself and you will be ready to receive that information differently. So let's now dive in to this question how can I get pregnant fast?

I want to consider physiology for a moment here. Let's look at the ovarian physiology first. So women are born with all of the eggs that they will ever have, but these eggs are arrested in their development and they don't start to mature again until we go through puberty. And then we'll have one cohort per month, roughly. That gets recruited and within that cohort one will make it to ovulation. Hopefully that's the dream, right, and the reality is that final maturation process takes up to a year.

There's this heavy focus on the three months before ovulation because that has been shown to potentially be the time when we have the most influence over the follicular health. The follicular health, so the cells that actually line the ovarian follicle, that house the egg, are sending nutrients to the egg. They're supporting the mitochondrial health of the egg and if we've gone through a period of stress or illness or toxin exposure, then we'll often see, following up with that, a period of two to three months where we have some cycle irregularities or some painful cycles or something that was just a little out of the normal. So I want you to think back to if there's ever been a time when you were super stressed out and all of a sudden your periods were really painful or heavy, out of the norm or your PMS was like really coming in hot, and that wasn't maybe your norm.

My example for myself is after I had COVID, I had several months in a row afterwards where I had really short luteal phases. It was so strange. That was not a norm for me since restoring ovulation in my early thirties and I was seeing these luteal phases that were like seven, eight days. I was like what the F is this and PMS just through the roof and, of course, in the brain fogginess of post COVID not really thinking through it on my own I finally finally talking to another provider is like oh, oh, there's so much inflammation, it's hijacking the mitochondrial health and energy and of course, that can impact the cycle.

So if something like that can impact a cycle in a negative way, what are things that could impact a cycle in a positive way and how long do we expect that to take? So it's going to take a minimum of three months if there's something that we need to physically support. So when someone comes to me and they're like I wanted to be pregnant yesterday, three years ago, five years ago. So like, yes, I understand, I appreciate it. Let's dig into what emotions are there in all of that waiting and what is your body trying to tell us about what it needs physically? What do we need to dig into there? You can go back to all the episodes about testing and be realistic about that timeline to supporting the physical health of the ovarian follicles Minimum three months, but really it can take up to a year to optimize all of those eggs that are in the background that have not completed their maturation. We cannot change egg count. We can influence egg quality and I think for Erica's example you know, even in her mid forties it taking 15 months to get an egg and a sperm meeting up that could do it. It's like there was a lot of preparation that really needed to lay the framework for that to happen.

The second thing that I want to address is sperm, and I don't think that this is any coincidence. It's probably as evolutionary. It probably is evolutionary, but sperm take 70 to 100 days to be created and men will not produce sperm until they're in puberty, but they're producing millions of them all the time. They might not want to hear this, but sperm are kind of fragile and they're also sensitive to things in the environment like heat, infection, toxin exposure. So if we have something that the sperm have been responding to and we see lower counts morphology motility or DNA fragmentation which, side note, dna fragmentation cannot be tested on the traditional complete semen analysis. You have to ask for that test separately. I'd love to do a whole episode on that alone.

The big thing that I want you to understand is that it takes time to create sperm. So when we have both partners really stepping into a lifestyle that supports egg quality and sperm quality, we can expect that it's going to take minimum three months or so to see. That change would anticipate someone getting pregnant. Working through a lot of the tools that I integrate into my practice be that nutrition supplementation, detoxification and that's that's sometimes a hard pill to swallow, right? If, if you actually are recommended to pause on trying so that you can prepare your body more readily, when you feel like you've already been trying, even if you've already been doing things that you may have thought were good for your body but weren't exactly what your body needed for fertility, it's so frustrating. Um, I, I have a, an EFT tapping that we've recorded in the Brilliant Fertility Program specifically for when people are advised to pause on trying because there's a lot of emotion that comes with that. But at the end of the day, the goal is healthy parents, healthy pregnancy, healthy baby.

And when you do prepare your body and you spend that time in conscious preparation, not only does that impact you and your health and your baby's health and that pregnancy, but future generations are impacted by that as well. Future generations are impacted by that as well, because there's this concept called epigenetics, where our actions of what we put in our body, what we put on our body, the stresses we're exposed to this can influence several generations beyond us, and it's not just in the mother. It can be an influence of the sperm health as well and how the information in the sperm DNA is carried through. So we cannot actually change the DNA, but we can change the expression of the genes, whether those genes are turned on or off. And investing three, six, 12 months into that, in the grand scheme of life it's priceless. You won't get time back, but you can absolutely invest forward into your future health and longevity and the health of all these generations to come. You can tell I can get pretty passionate about this epigenetic concept.

So when do I advise people to like pull back from trying so that they can conceive safely? Situations where people have had recurrent pregnancy losses that have never really been investigated properly. Unexplained infertility, which honestly we could dub as unexplored infertility, because so many of these cases I would argue 95% of the cases of unexplained infertility that I have seen we find something on the physical level, whether it's a nutrient deficiency or hormone imbalance, an autoimmune marker inflammation or blood sugar dysregulation. We find something and we need an opportunity to support that and regulate those before we want conception to happen. So those are some situations in which I really advise like let's pull back right now, let's pause.

And it also, even if it creates some frustration about not trying and losing those months, often this sense of relief kicks in of like okay, we can actually like enjoy these cycles as a couple on an intimate level, differently on the cycles that we're not trying. And that brings me to that energy right, that feeling of like when you think about trying and pushing and doing and solving. It often gets this really like hyped up energy. It can feel exciting at first, and then it can kind of feel like frustrating and constricting when you keep trying and you keep hitting a wall. So being able to, even listening to this, take a nice breath in and breath out, how would it feel after you trust that you've made some positive changes to influence your health and wellbeing and your partner has made these positive changes to influence their sperm health and their own physical body health, to then allow pregnancy to happen, to receive this new life?

It's a much different energy and that's one of the areas that Erica worked around as well was being able to recognize when there was a push and an obsession around doing versus like hey, I'm learning how to really live and really enjoy my life and and really support my body and lean into health and allow this to happen. I want you to notice what comes up around that for you, and if there feels like there's a bunch of thoughts coming in of like I hate this woman telling me to allow pregnancy, what a crock of shit, and that's okay, I don't hold it against you If that is coming up. I do, however, want you to be kind to yourself and that part of you that isn't ready to let go of the pushing and the doing and the trying and the fact that this all feels so hard. But I would pose a question to get really curious around what would it feel like to have more ease on this journey? What would it feel like to fully and completely trust the actions that you're doing, the positive influence that those consistent actions are having on your body, on your relationship, on your ability to live life to its fullest and, if you like, the possibility of that feeling state that that question brings? Then that's great. You're actually already on your way there. I might have just used some neurolinguistic programming on you there to allow the brain to see a different path, that you're not stuck, that it's okay if this doesn't happen as quickly as you may have hoped for, even though it sucks, and it's possible for this to feel lighter and easier at times and to know that your body is supported. So that's my long-winded answer to can I get pregnant fast? Long-winded answer to can I get pregnant fast?

The flip side of you know, asking people to kind of pull back to ensure that we're really setting the foundation for a healthy pregnancy, is like when do we go full steam ahead and at what point do we say like, okay, go for it. So, number one, on the energy piece, like just checking in with people making sure, like are we feeling, like we know what that is to allow and to receive? Are we ready for that shift? And when we look at the numbers on the labs and they're like, okay, these are really improving, like I would feel really confident if someone got pregnant at this point. And I wonder because I feel like someone is probably asking this because the question is just coming up in my mind, even though it's came through clunkily If people are wondering if there's a difference between who gets pregnant fast versus the couples that it may take longer with. There are two things that I would say are really important. Number one is both couples are on board, are on board. I cannot tell you how many times this has happened in 12 years of practice where someone has a woman has been doing everything under the sun for years, literally years.

Her husband had did a semen analysis a while back. It looked good, and so he just was like cool, I don't need to do anything. And then I'm thinking of one patient in particular. She'd been through four miscarriages, ended up going through IVF. Embryo quality was real iffy on IVF. They did finally get one round of retrievals that yielded to healthy PGT tested embryos. They weren't great quality still, but her REI said you know what Sometimes ugly embryos make pretty babies, so let's just go ahead and failed transfer.

And at that point she was just like you know what F this I have been eating so well for my body for years. I have been tracking my cycle. For years I've been going to acupuncture every week for years. I'm going to keep going to acupuncture for my mental health. I'm going to go back to doing some of the things I love like training for a triathlon of the things I love like training for a triathlon. I'm going to make sure I'm well fueled so that my body is okay with that and I'm going to get some sleep.

And if my husband wants this baby, he's going to need to take his supplements and eat a goddamn vegetable. And she just really laid that out for him. She she didn't give as far as an ultimatum, but really laid it out that hey, if you want this as much as you say you do, you've got to take some responsibility for your own health. And even if your semen analysis looked normal, I know that you don't eat your vegetables. I know that you haven't been exercising. I have never seen you take a supplement, since we've known each other for 18 years.

And lo and behold, about 70 days later she got pregnant and that baby came through as a very healthy, robust little guy. And we always kind of chuckled because we were like, yeah, the timeline of that sperm production and influence on sperm quality really lines up with when he started taking his supplements. And of course there's a bit of a dilemma there, because we look back on like could that have made a difference years before? Maybe I'm like could that have made a difference years before? Maybe Could it have saved $30,000 to $50,000 on IVF. Probably Would she trade that baby for anything in the world. Knowing who he is and being born when he was no. So simultaneously, like trusting the timeline and surrendering we don't truly have control over is so valuable. But I do think in their case that it was finally having her husband on board. Having her husband on board.

So the couples that I see who are really in all of it together, doing tests together, taking supplements together, changing their diet and lifestyles together, setting their boundaries as a family unit together because even if you are coupled without a child, yet you are still a family and you are allowed to set your own expectations for your family. And this is an area that I've had many couples really struggle with when they're like, well, you know, my brother and sister have kids already and so everyone kind of caters around their needs and like we don't have kids. So we kind of just like, do whatever the family wants us to. And it's like, well, what do you want? What's important for you as a unit? Like let's really zero in on that. So having both couple, both partners, on board within a partnership absolutely I have seen that result in faster time to conception.

And the second piece is doing the inner work. And what do I mean by that? That means learning how to process your emotions, that means releasing your limiting beliefs, that means setting your boundaries, learning what that looks like, that means developing your spiritual practice and that relationship with something outside of you. So there's there's some inner and some other realm work that can be very supportive, because there have been times when I've looked at someone's labs and they're like all right, this is pristine. Like I could not ask for a better looking lab, I could not ask for healthier looking menstrual cycle, sperm looks great, people are truly in optimal health. And then what? That's when we really really have to sink our teeth into the mental, emotional and spiritual aspect of this.

Our teeth into the mental, emotional and spiritual aspect of this, and I can't tell you how many times since I started integrating hypnosis and neuro-linguistic programming into my work, that a single breakthrough results in a pregnancy within the next couple of months results in a pregnancy within the next couple of months. Now, scientifically, like, I obviously can't say like, did that really do it? It just there's a pattern that I've observed in my practice and I know other providers who have seen a similar pattern. That is undeniable. That is undeniable. So I have to put a disclaimer, of course, that again, no one can guarantee a pregnancy. We can't guarantee that you have a hypnosis breakthrough result in a pregnancy in every single person in a particular timeline. But I've seen pretty incredible results integrating that aspect into this work in a seemingly faster time to conception.

So if your priority is a healthy baby, a healthy mom, a healthy dad, whatever your family unit identifies as because I support all family types in my practice and I apologize if my language feels has felt exclusive or too binary. It's a habit and I'm working on that. However you identify, if you are ready to bring your child into this world from a place of unconditional love, from a place of unconditional love and consciously creating a world where we have more kindness and inclusivity and celebration of our unique diversity, then let's really lay the foundation for not just a quick pregnancy, but the healthiest pregnancy possible. All right, if I haven't plugged this enough already, I want you to join the retreat. We start on Thursday, june 12th. That's going to be the same day this podcast episode goes out, so we're going to have the link in the show notes to that retreat.

If you miss the day one, no worries, we will be sure to send out replays. We have a vip upgrade option as well, so that you'll have lifetime access to the replays and our meditation. So I cannot wait to get started with that. We've had some pretty incredible feedback about the last couple of retreats, so I sure hope you join us. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here, sending you all my love, as always.