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 favorite. 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. It's so cliche, but like it has gone by so fast. And like I just can't like fathom that we are almost at 2026. Like, what the fuck? Uh there, yeah, my mind is just disbottled. I think all of like October and November, I was just constantly like playing catch up in my mind, like, what week are we on? What? And to wake up as of the day I'm recording this, like it is December. And you'll hear this episode later in December, but as of today's recording, it's December 1st, and I am just flabbergasted. And I I recall when I was trying to conceive my second son, and it was taking a while. It took a long time for my period to even come back. It and then it took a longer than I had hoped for to actually get pregnant. And I remember the month of December before I conceived, just feeling like a lot of pressure around, like, oh my gosh, it's like the last month of the year. And we are so funny as humans about time, right? And the the time constraints that we put on things. So I had a few little areas like pressure points around time and that pregnancy and the end of the year coming, and just feeling like this year was for nothing. And uh the time gap between or the age gap between my older son and whenever we would have another child was lengthening. And I was, I was just feeling like, you know, all of it was so out of my control. And knowing the things that I know and working in the field that I do for as long as I had at that point, even it's like I could step outside of the moment and laugh at myself a bit. But in those very human moments, there was that combination of just feeling so much pressure, but then also feeling like it hasn't happened yet, like why even bother? Like it's not gonna happen this year. And the grief and the angst that came from that was so real. And I had to very intentionally step back and utilize my practices of connecting with my intuition, connecting with my body, and calling in that baby's spirit. So I know that it is so much easier said than done. And I hope that by sharing some of the beautiful pregnancies that have happened in our practice in the brilliant fertility program over the last couple of months, that this adds to your sense of what is possible, that it helps create this foundation of hope that goes beyond this like passive experience of hope just being so relative to like how we're feeling in the moment or like what's happening outside of us, but just like this this feeling of knowing that like truly everything is gonna work out somehow. Ultimately, I did end up conceiving in the January following that month where I was feeling a lot of pressure, and um I remember having like such a deep sense of knowing really like feeling like this this child is so close, and um I don't know, it just it brings me back. I mean, at this point almost seven years, but it brings me that that feeling of like if I had only known how good everything was going to be, it might have made those times where I felt that pressure or that sense of why bother, um the hopelessness, the helplessness. I I wish that I could go back and tell my earlier self, like, hey, it's all gonna work out on the timeline it's gonna work out in. But it's it's hard when you're in the midst of it. Or for those of you who have experienced losses this year, it's like, how the hell are you supposed to sit there and and be like, yeah, this is all working out because this sucks. I'm supposed to trust the timeline when I've lost my baby. F you, big middle finger. I know, I hear you, I I feel you. And this is not to invalidate any of those experiences at all. This is a conversation around the nuance of all of it, the duality of all of it, and to share some of the experiences from patients and clients this year that have really just blown me out of the water. So I'm gonna share a couple of these with you and um and hope that it brings you a sense of joy. I'm not gonna be using anyone's names or identifiers so that we can maintain their privacy, but um but a couple of these especials. So we've I've had, let me, I'm counting in my list here. Um four pregnancies in the last three weeks announced, um eight in the last six weeks, and then we've had five babies that were born just within the last two weeks, which is the best feeling ever. Um, I love getting the pictures and knowing that the people that I work with are far from your simple cases. Like these are generally people who have either experienced one or multiple pregnancy losses, who have been through IVF, who have gone through unsuccessful rounds of IVF, some of them multiple unsuccessful rounds, and to, you know, see where they are now and not just the result that they've had of like, oh, we have a positive pregnancy test, or we've gotten the furthest in a pregnancy that we've ever had before, but to really see the people that they have become and that they've grown into is probably the biggest impact of all. So I am gonna start with our most recent positive pregnancy test. And um in this, I'm gonna just gonna call her T. Um, so T came to me about a little yes, less than a year ago, and she had been already trying for about a year. Um, and just you know, hitting roadblock after roadblock of like everything looks normal. Uh we don't know what to tell you. There's no reason you shouldn't be pregnant yet. Yeah, you could try this, but maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. And you know, in terms of her hormone numbers, like they all looked okay. AMH was maybe a little bit lower than ideal for age. Nothing was like really truly off, but there were some areas to optimize. And the three areas that I see most often in my practice, and uh in this case were true was thyroid, vitamin D levels, and nutrients. And so with this particular person, when her thyroid was first checked, it was kind of like borderline as far as fertility optimization numbers go, like 2.5 to three is like, hmm, I don't know, I don't love it. At first, she kind of danced around, like, well, do we can I just see if anything else I would do would make a difference? Like, okay, like, yeah, it's obviously like you're educated on this matter. I will keep an eye on this with you. Like, I'm always working with my patients, right? I'm not commanding them to do any one treatment, but to say, here are your options, here's the informed consent, what feels good to you right now. So at first she was like, well, let's just start with like some support. I'll try to uh get more just consistent with my nutrition and sleep and see where it goes. And you know, unfortunately, her thyroid numbers just kept getting closer and closer to true hypothyroidism. And then um, finally we did start actually prescribing a levothyroxine, a low dose of levothyroxine. There were also some signs of endometriosis, so uh family history and painful periods and some spotting before the periods were starting. And I just thought, no, I don't love that. Like I would really, I would love it if anyone with painful periods could just get a truly good, thorough endometriosis evaluation. It's one of the most challenging aspects of women healthcare is endometriosis evaluation, which is why it takes so long. She's in the process of um getting that referral and actually getting scheduled for laparoscopic surgery when she finally got her first positive pregnancy test. And when we could zoom out and look back at the whole year and all of the things that she was doing and trying the thyroid supplementation, like actually having proper thyroid support, getting her numbers in really healthy ranges, probably made the biggest difference. But there were so many little things that added up that sometimes it can be hard to go back and say, oh, it was this one thing. It's because you were eating 90 grams of protein every day. We don't know if it was that for sure, but she was really consistent with that for almost a year. She was really consistent with taking her vitamin D for almost a year. And she was really consistent with getting acupuncture almost every week for a year. So there were a lot of things that she was doing that accumulated over time. And I think that's a huge piece to take away from this, is we're always looking for our magic pill. We're always wanting that things that's going to change this cycle, make it happen this cycle or next cycle. But the reality is that these practices and supportive protocols are cumulative. And most of the people I work with end up conceiving within about seven to nine months. That's the average. Sure, there are some who are outliers, they're going to conceive in one to three months. And there are going to be some who it takes longer than it takes, you know, a year or 15 months. And those are often the people who were the most depleted in the first place, where it took a little bit longer to figure out what their individual body was wanting to communicate. And some of it is just like it's outside of our control, right? Like we don't know the timeline of this soul's journey and when exactly they're supposed to be born. So I am just constantly reminding myself and my patients that we have to do our best with the things that we can influence, like our nutrition and our sleep, and you know, the types of products that we're using in our homes and on our bodies, and deciding, hey, I'm gonna deal with trauma differently. I'm gonna learn how to process my emotions differently and more effectively. Like we have influence over these things. And we have to learn how to surrender the exact when and how it's gonna happen. We can put it out there and say, like, okay, universe, I'm doing my part, and I'm ready and I'm willing and I'm open to how this baby is gonna come to me now. I'm ready to love them unconditionally, and I'm doing my best. I'm doing all the things I know to do, and I'm trying to find joy, and that was part of T's journey as well. It's like she was leaning more into, as I observed as the practitioner, like when she was traveling, she was like, you know what? I'm I'm gonna eat the thing that I really want to eat, and I'm gonna enjoy the heck out of it. And I'm not gonna obsess about, oh, did that mess this cycle up for me? Did that shoot my inflammation up? I'm I'm gonna just enjoy it. I'm gonna live life while I'm open to this. And I think that really made a difference. So the other one that I want to cover, and this one is just like it's so juicy. And I see this a lot, and I'm I'm not gonna go into a great amount of detail around it because it's regarding relationships, and over 12 and a half years of doing this, I can't tell you how many times I have seen couples separate or divorce as they have reached a point in their fertility journey where they realize like this this is hard, it's bringing out sides of us that may not be compatible. And I've I've heard other people describe this as like possibly like oh, the infertility puts so much strain on couples, and it's like, yeah, it does. And I see it brings some people much closer together, and I see it really highlight the differences in in others, and and this is this is a really challenging area because I am tiptoeing around this a bit, as I know so many people struggle with this, but I had observed a patient who came to me years ago at this point, observed with her partner just this like feeling of like something is something is incompatible here, and not quite being able to put my finger on it, and over time and really watching her decide how to take care of herself in mind and body and soul, essentially growing out of this relationship and it being simultaneously heartbreaking and freeing. And as she thrived in career and in realigning her habits and finding love again, um, you know, I had this sense we were I was still checking in with her fairly regularly. And I I asked at one point, where where do you feel like you are on the conception journey at this point? Like as as her you know marriage had ended, and she said, Yeah, I I mean I think I've let it go. I I feel sad and at peace with it. And I outwardly was like, okay. And inwardly was like, I don't think it's done. And a couple weeks later she came in, she was like, Well, it turns out I'm pregnant. And it was, I was just like, oh my goodness, thank you, intuition, because I felt I felt something there that was just like could not be logically explained, and it didn't feel like something I should push the matter on. But uh now that she's far enough along in this pregnancy to like, okay, this is this is real, this is happening, this is looking really healthy. Um, it's just it's such a thrilling example of how like no one could have predicted this. Three years ago, no one would have, no one would have put this out. I don't know, maybe some psychics would have. I I do not uh want to put myself in that bucket, but I do lean heavily into my intuition and you know had felt that one pretty strongly. And she's she had been through so much fertility-wise um before this pregnancy that just ultimately came as a complete and utter joyful surprise. So I hope that those little nuggets of uh cases feel good to hear about and um give you a sense of just what's possible. Um, we we've got several other really inspiring stories from this year, people who had um experienced losses in the past and are now well into their pregnancies, people who had been through unsuccessful IVF, who are have now conceived unassisted, which like, gosh, that's always wild and fun. And you always wonder like, what was the one thing or the many things that accumulated to allow this to be possible? But if this month is feeling particularly like, ugh, there's a lot of pressure, and I don't need like, do I even keep up with my good habits? Like in general, yeah, it's worth it to keep supporting yourself this month. Keep up your self-care practices, your acupuncture, eating generally consistently well. One or two meals are not gonna be what throw things off. You know, one or two holiday meals or going out for drinks with your girlfriends are not gonna be the things that mean you don't get pregnant. It is the 80 to 90 percent activities. So don't stress about the holiday party, don't stress about eating your favorite holiday dessert a couple times. Um, keep at the consistency, and it is the consistency over time that garners the most results. And if you need to check in a little bit deeper on this, you can schedule a discovery call with me. We'll link it in the show notes and keep an eye out for new offerings next year for our group work together in the Brilliant Fertility program so that you can learn the foundations of what my clients have done as well. All right, happy December. I'm sending you so much love.