Eleshia Harris: Hi, I'm Eleshia Harris, and I am your host of The Eleleshia Show. I am also the founder of eleshialifestyle.com, and I'm so excited that you're here with me and I am here with you. I'm also really appreciative. Each week, I'll be sharing strategies and stories, and insights to help you enhance your wellbeing and to build your business while still navigating life.

Because sometimes, we often try and separate the two and let's face it. If you are not well, you have no business. So let's try and work with these two things combined, because we can, to enhance your lifestyle. Again, I'm really excited to have you here. I have wanted to put together a podcast for over two years. And so, here I am ready to share, and let's get into this week's episode.

In the first episode, I discussed a little bit about my fertility journey, but I wanted to come back in and give you a little bit more information and insight into actually what I had to go through to get my baby girl because I just think it's really important that I share just in case there is somebody that is going through their own journey, and they don't know where to start. So here I am, back to give you some more information and just to dive a little bit deeper into my fertility story. 

Before I even start, just to start with, a quick disclaimer. I am not a doctor. These are just some of the things that I did that I really think made a difference in my journey into me getting to the goal of having the baby and not having to have the operation that was scheduled for me to have. So let me get into it. I hope you really get something from this information and it helps to guide you on your way. 

I was ignoring the warning signs. I had warning signs, but I was so busy and still continuing to work, still looking after my brother, grieving. I was just ignoring what was going on in my body . I had really bad acne at the time, and I was bloated. And what was going on was that my body was inflamed, and I just was not taking care of myself. And I got a really big wake-up call when I went out to lunch with a friend of mine. She had come down to have lunch with me, and we went to a raw food restaurant. 

I love raw food. So I ordered a salad with activated nuts on it, and oh my goodness! The minute I ate one of those nuts, I knew something was wrong and my whole throat closed up. And I just remember saying to my friend, well actually not saying, 'cause I couldn't speak.  I was pointing to her. There's something wrong. There's something wrong. Luckily, she was so experienced that she gave me water to flush it all out, but I knew then that I had to take more responsibility for what was going on in my body, and I did. I made an appointment with the doctor and saw her straight away, and she referred me to a specialist, but Eleshia being Eleshia, I decided that I couldn't wait. I needed to know now so I booked a food intolerance test, and I got the results back. And oh my goodness. The list of foods that I used to be able to have that I couldn't have any more due to all of the inflammation in my body. Yeah. That made me take a step back and really make the decision that I had to do something, and I had to do something now. 

So prior to that, I'd already had the diagnosis that I had polycystic ovaries and a blocked fallopian tube and scarring and fibroids. So I already knew that my fertility was challenged, but I did not realize that a lot of the foods that I was putting in were causing me more issues. So I had to change things straight away to get the inflammation down in my body. Now, one of the things that makes inflammation in your body is stress. So the first thing that I had to do was to start eliminating as much stress as I could in my life. I'd already stopped working by this point, and I was just teaching a few classes 'cause I was trying to build my Pilates classes at the time, but I did a rapid 360 on my lifestyle and decided that it was time to stop going out that I needed just to really hone into spending time by myself resting and relaxing just to draw those levels of stress down to a place where it was manageable. That hadn't happened in over seven years because of the fact that my mom had been ill. I was working really hard, and I was looking after my brother. So I needed to make sure that I took care of myself first before anybody else if I wanted to make sure that I was going to be okay. 

So I had been told that I wouldn't be able to have a baby naturally. I would have to go through keyhole surgery, and I would then have the option to have IVF, but I had to do what I needed to do now because time was not on my side. I was 37 at the time, and I knew that I had to get myself into optimal health fast. Even if I was gonna end up having to take the IVF route, I wanted to make sure that my body was ready for it. Ultimately, in the back of my mind, what I wanted was to have a baby naturally. So I put all of the steps that I knew into place. So I eliminated the stress as much as I could. I decided that it was time to boost my diet. So I started to add in supplements. I made sure that I was eating my greens. I was eating organic when I could. I was eliminating sugar because that was a huge factor in my inflammation. I like sugar, but I have to eliminate it and because it was really important that I did so. 

After doing extensive research, I learned that eating sugar can really interfere with your hormone production and balance, which means that it can affect ovulation from happening so it can affect the release of the egg, which means that at the end of the month you haven't released an egg which means that you can't get pregnant. So it was really important for me to really take my sugar-eating levels right down to the point where I decided that I was going to do a five-day eliminate-the-sugar challenge. So I eliminated all sugars except for natural sugars. And I brought people on the ride with me. I needed that accountability. I know that about myself. I need accountability. 

So I did a whole challenge and yeah. I think the first time I did it there was about 10 of us, and we all got really good results, and that was the kickstart that I really needed. So I did that. And then I upped my water intake. I started to take prenatal supplements. So it's really important that when you're looking at your supplements that they are prenatal to ensure that you're getting all of the right vitamins, nutrients that you and your unborn baby need. I can't emphasize that enough. I made sure that I was doing that. I also made sure that everybody in the house was eating healthy. So everybody was on this journey with me, and it was really important for my husband to be eating healthy as well because I wanted to make sure that his sperm levels were as healthy as they could be. I kept exercising. As a Pilates and Barre instructor, I was still teaching classes but I made sure that I was taking classes as well, and I kept everything low impact and I also added resistance training to my regime because resistance training is really good for people who have fertility issues because it helps to regulate the hormone productions and also improves your muscle tone, and exercise really does help your mental health. 

So I needed that. I needed that. I needed that distraction. Instead of distracting myself with work and so forth, I needed to distract myself from my own wellbeing and just really looking after myself. So exercise really helped me to do that. I also looked at everything that was toxic in the house - the things that I was cleaning the house with, the things that I was putting inside my body, the things that I was putting on my body. I was really, really strict about what I was doing from that perspective. I stopped wearing so much makeup. It was just really important for me to take these little steps because again toxins can disrupt your endocrine system which is really important when you are trying for a baby.

 I started acupuncture which was really good for me from my stress level perspective. I enjoyed those sessions. I knew that I was going there just to relax and just to still my mind. So it wasn't just from a fertility perspective. I knew it was going to help my mindset as well. I also had a previous injury that I now know more information about. So I had this niggling in my left hip that I just couldn't get to ease up. And now I know one of the reasons why is because - One, we hold our emotions in our hips but also there wasn't enough blood flow getting down to my pelvic area, which is really important when you're trying to conceive. 

And I did more research. I read as many success stories as I could. I really looked at my mindset. I visualize. I made sure I took other supplements to really, really give my body the best, best chance because I wanted to make sure that firstly, I really got the inflammation down, but then, I also wanted to make sure that I was giving my unborn baby the best chance to live in a nice, clean house. 

I don't know if you've ever heard of the fishbowl analogy. It's not mine but I learned it when I was studying juice therapy, but let me just give you the quick version. So imagine you've got a fish in its bowl and you're feeding it and you're feeding it, all of this lovely stuff but the water's really dirty. And then the fish gets ill. So think about that from a human perspective. So we want something to really happen, but we're still continuing to put toxins on our bodies and inside our mouths.  For a prime example, we have coffee in the morning and then we have our croissant with it. And then in the afternoon, we have our lunch. We have a sandwich, and we have a packet of crisps and we have a Twix with it. And then, I need a cup of tea at three o'clock and I think I'll have a chocolate biscuit with that, and then I'll have my dinner as well. And then it gets to a point when your body feels so lethargic, and it feels like you've got a lot of this ease in it. So this "ease in it" that it's not functioning well. Well, that's one of the things that I wanted my body to do. I wanted it to be able to be in optimum health so it could function well. I wanted to make sure that I had really good egg quality as well. So that was really important to me. 

So all of the things that I've listed that I did really helped just to get my body into optimum health and yeah! And then, I conceived twice. Unfortunately, the first baby didn't survive but I have a beautiful toddler now, and it was just really bittersweet. I'd completely forgotten about the appointment that I had in June. So when the receptionist from the hospital called to say, "I'm just confirming your appointment to have your keyhole surgery." I was able to say to her, "I don't need that appointment. I'm pregnant." You could hear the joy in her voice and that also just made me feel so blessed but also made me know that somebody who may have been waiting for an appointment was going to be able to have my appointment. So, yeah.

I just wanted to share more in-depth with you what I went through and the things that really helped me. Again, I'm not a doctor, but if there's something from this episode that you hadn't thought about that you can implement, it would make me really happy to know that this episode helped you. Also, I want you to know that obviously, this is a hard journey, and I am always available to have conversations about it. It's a subject that's really dear to my heart. It wasn't until I started to talk about it that others talked about their journeys as well. So I know how hard it can be that to sometimes feel like you're on your own on this journey. And again, as I said, I just wanted to share my journey in order to hopefully be able to help somebody else that might be going through their journey. Take care until the next time.

In this episode, I mentioned that I needed to reduce my sugar intake pretty fast. So I did a five-day eliminate-the-sugar challenge and from that challenge, I've put together an e-book that gives you 10 simple ways of how to reduce your sugar intake. All you need to do is click the link in the show notes to get access to it. I really hope you enjoy it.

Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of The Eleisha Show. If you know somebody who needs to hear the conversations that we are having, please share it. Take a screenshot and send it to them. Also, I would really love for you to rate and review the podcast as this really helps, and I'd love to read your comments. Lastly, remember, you need to invest in yourself first because you are important and amazing. Take care. Until the next time. Bye-bye.