Ep. 155: "How I got pregnant when IUIs didn't work" -- Braelyn's story

I love client stories like Braelyn's. She and her husband were struggling to conceive a pregnancy and her OBGYN sent her to a Reproductive Endocrinologist for fertility treatments. The options she found there weren't what she expected. In today's episode, she shares their story of walking through fertility treatments unsuccessfully and eventually changing direction to focus on conceiving naturally, and in a way that honored their faith. Braelyn's story is one worth hearing! I know you'll enjoy it. 

NOTE: This episode is appropriate for all audiences, but does focus on the topic of infertility and fertility treatments. 

Show Notes: 

Ep 149: Fertility Journey Transformation with Josiah and Callie

Ep. 145: Dan & Lindsey's radically different approach to infertility

Ep. 102: Rebecca's Story of Secondary Infertility 

Transcript

Caitlin (00:22)
Welcome back to the Woven Well podcast. I truly believe that a key part in empowering and educating women is connecting them with other women who are walking that same journey. So it's really important for us to know that we're not alone because we're definitely not. So because of that, each month we have episodes with real clients of woven natural fertility care to hear their stories and gain insight and encouragement from our community of women.

Today's guest, Braelyn, is a client I began working with just last year in 2024. She's a teacher living in North Carolina and she began working with me as she and her husband were trying to conceive of pregnancy. So I really am looking forward to her sharing her story with you. Braelyn, welcome to the show.

Braelyn Ketcham (01:06)
Thank you so much for having me this afternoon. It's so lovely to see you again and talk with you again and just share a little bit about our journey. So thank you.

Caitlin (01:16)
You are very welcome. I'm so glad that people are going to get the opportunity to hear your story because like I said, everyone is unique, but there are so many similarities that we all share. why don't we start off by you sharing a little bit about yourself.

Braelyn Ketcham (01:32)
Yeah, absolutely. So as you mentioned, we are currently in North Carolina and I'm teaching here. We've moved around a bit, so we've just decided to try to settle and be near family and it's just been wonderful. Especially right now we are expecting our little girl next month to arrive, so it's just a very exciting time. We're just busy preparing and full of excitement, so lots of good things going on.

Caitlin (02:00)
Yeah, that's

so exciting.

so obviously I shared that you were trying to conceive and now you've let us know that you are expecting and do within the next month. So would you tell us about your fertility journey before working with woven? So who were you working with? What did that look like? Any diagnoses or anything you were dealing with specifically?

Braelyn Ketcham (02:11)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, absolutely. So as I kind of look back and as I was thinking through our journey a little bit more, I realized just how early some of my fertility struggles may have started just based on irregular cycles or frequent ovarian cysts and

just a lot of

struggle there throughout.

high school and college and for me, I wasn't paying much attention to how maybe that could affect me later on

or what I was eating or all the stress I was under was impacting me. I didn't really pay much attention to that. I just thought, cool, I'm not getting a period. That's fine with me. I'm good without it. And even when I did get it, it wasn't that big of a deal. So.

Caitlin (03:15)
You

Braelyn Ketcham (03:21)
I can definitely see now there were some warning signs that I neglected.

my husband Jonathan and I, we've been married five years, we married in 2019 and we started trying to conceive in March of 2021.

little thing is we get to celebrate kind of like our.

almost fourth year of trying when our daughter comes. So

celebrate is a word maybe some people are wondering about, but I can get into that. Honoring, yeah, recognizing the struggle there. But anyway, so we started and didn't have much of an idea of what we were doing.

Caitlin (03:56)
honoring perhaps?

Hmm.

Braelyn Ketcham (04:10)
For example, birth control wasn't something I was really instructed on. We had just been told, just use the pill, it'll fix everything, fix your irregular problems with your cycle.

And so once we kind of come off that, we didn't really know what to do. We were probably, like most people, those expecting things to work very quickly. Because we were so young, we were still, we were finishing up.

Caitlin (04:32)
Hmm.

Braelyn Ketcham (04:35)
college and I was working at the time but it just didn't end up being that way. So we decided to after six months get some testing done but we get their same run around as so many couples do. gotta wait a year, decide what you have done and how your doctors will decide what to do next and then.

We were told all right, let's start IVF. Let's start our UI and I felt like we had done nothing to Understand our problems at all. So we immediately told our doctor that we didn't feel comfortable with IVF as

couples don't many couples

however, that wasn't something that we felt

Was a path that we wanted to take so

We didn't know much about IUI, so we went with that. We thought this is probably a better option. And

it was

not what we thought it was going to be. IUI is an intrauterine artificial insemination.

Caitlin (05:35)
Hmm.

Braelyn Ketcham (05:43)
was something that we thought would work pretty easily. However, the process taught us and showed us

that it wasn't the right fit. We were, ended up being very uncomfortable with the process. It didn't feel like we were welcoming maybe our potential child in a warm environment. It felt more sterile and just what the definition was, And so we left feeling

Caitlin (05:55)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Braelyn Ketcham (06:22)
little bit spiritually

I don't want to say traumatized but maybe

just we were very discouraged with

Caitlin (06:28)
Hmm.

Braelyn Ketcham (06:33)
how that ended up being our only option so

decided to stop fertility treatments at that time with that current with that clinic

and decided

that we would take some time to step back. And this was a little bit after two years of infertility and do

more hard work, do some more research on what we could have as our options.

Caitlin (07:00)
Hmm.

Braelyn Ketcham (07:04)
we decided to try and look into some more natural fertility planning.

tried looking into some

more theological reasons

fit what we were comfortable with to pursue fertility treatment. And after speaking with family and friends, we heard about Creighton. So, and I wish I could say we started it right away. We definitely listened the very first time you heard about Creighton and we went with

a lot more time than that,

Caitlin (07:42)
Sure.

Braelyn Ketcham (07:44)
we decided to just keep reading and researching. During that time, we had been moving and our reading and research led us to something that called the theology of the body, which I know you recently had a

about as well, which was so good. And as soon as we started reading

John Paul, to use theology of body or Christopher West theology of body for beginners, we were just even more convinced about how we wanted to go about conception. And we were freed a bit from the anxiety or exhaustion of trying to conceive.

which had gotten just about to its peak at that

is draining. You can sometimes feel like a shell of yourself. There's burdens that are so unseen by everybody else, but so felt by you. And so day in and day out, can be a lot, even though the world doesn't see

Caitlin (08:39)
Mm-hmm.

Braelyn Ketcham (09:04)
your burden of infertility. The Lord certainly does.

And he certainly did for us. So we were so comforted by all these teachings and by what we were finding

started to feel less of per se a job or less stressful. And it became more about how can we be in tune with one another in our marriage? How can we be in tune with our own bodies?

Caitlin (09:29)
Hmm.

Braelyn Ketcham (09:33)
your mind, body, and soul created by the Lord. And we easily lost sight of that throughout those couple of years. But yeah, then eventually we came back around and reached out to some special Creighton instructors and got the ball rolling that way.

Caitlin (09:44)
Hmm.

I really appreciate you sharing that story from start to finish. And one of the things, one of the things I noticed about it is the words that you were using in the beginning to describe your journey or draining and sterile, and you felt like you were a shell of yourself. And then later by the end, it was almost more of a

Braelyn Ketcham (10:03)
today.

Mm-hmm.

Caitlin (10:24)
excitement partnership.

Braelyn Ketcham (10:25)
Mm-hmm.

Caitlin (10:26)
collaborative between yourself and your husband and between you all as a couple and the Lord and as you said you felt seen even though it was something that was unseen to others you knew that God was with you in that journey and I think that alone is worth taking the time to explore that.

Braelyn Ketcham (10:32)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Caitlin (10:51)
alternate path because you really weren't given an opportunity to learn along the way. I mean when you talk about the experience you had as a teenager and in college with irregular cycles and the cysts you were told to get on birth control you weren't given a lot of information about birth control and then you were told that when it was time to try to conceive just go for it it would be quick when it wasn't

Braelyn Ketcham (11:02)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Caitlin (11:18)
They sent you to a

reproductive endocrinologist who told you, okay, it's time to do IVF. You were sort of just pushed along to the next opportunity as you went, but never once were you educated and able to participate in this aspect of our humanity, our fertility. And so...

Braelyn Ketcham (11:28)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Caitlin (11:40)
you did eventually, I think when you got to the line in the sandwich, like no spiritually we need to draw a line here, we feel uncomfortable here. That's when you started looking into alternatives and into education. So you were spiritually educating yourself and you began looking into practical physical education about fertility things. So

Braelyn Ketcham (11:47)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Caitlin (12:05)
That's where you ended up working with Woven and learning the Creighton system. And I'm interested because you've had the experience working with both a reproductive endocrinologist who was recommending IUIs and IVF and that more restorative reproductive approach. What do you feel like were the main differences for you all as you walked through those two different options?

Braelyn Ketcham (12:08)
Mm-hmm.

Yes, that's right.

Thank

Absolutely. One thing I neglected from my story was along the way I was diagnosed as well with PMDD, which is premenstrual dysphoric disorder. when I was working with our reproductive endocrinologist, I had asked her, hey,

does this affect me? And what can we do about it? And she said

just, you know, just nothing you can do. It's just, it's just what happens. And you said it so well, I was just this person going along without any answers

help and, or just our education. And I was finally asking questions and seeking things and not really wanting to push the envelope or push people too hard. And I started to, and.

That was just my last straw. just thought there's gotta be something I can do. I'm already feeling better with the vitamins I've been taking. Surely there's an answer. And so I would say the biggest difference between working with them versus I'll start with Woven is the education alone and being able to be in tune with your body versus having somebody else

Caitlin (13:34)
Hmm.

Braelyn Ketcham (13:54)
tell you what to do with it or tell you your steps. You get to

prayerfully and you get to decide with somebody who can instruct you on what's next and what this means and that's when the NAPRO doctor comes in as well. I would say ultimately working with Lovin as well as a NAPRO doctor.

has restored dignity, I believe, in our fertility journey. Power presence of my husband and I together working, it's just been a really beautiful process, I'd say. So the biggest differences I feel were spiritually encouraged and free within these realms.

Caitlin (14:25)
Hmm.

Braelyn Ketcham (14:52)
to improve my fertility or just to learn. So I would say those are huge key differences for me.

Caitlin (15:02)
Wow, and what beautiful gifts those things are to have your dignity restored and to feel spiritually encouraged and closer with your spouse. Like who doesn't want those three things? You know, but especially after walking through the difficult journey that you did walk through and listeners notice

Braelyn Ketcham (15:10)
Mm-hmm.

Yes. Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Caitlin (15:27)
They did conceive. So it's not like, you know, I'm not hearing you say, well, we got these things, but this is an ineffective way to understand what's going on. No, no, no. This education was both spiritually nourishing and encouraging to you and your husband together.

Braelyn Ketcham (15:29)
Mm-hmm.

Caitlin (15:46)
and it was the missing link to be able to understand your own body, your fertility as a couple, what may be standing in the way in order for you to be able to conceive. And you did conceive naturally, no IUI, no IVF, no anything like that. When you were told IVF is your best option.

Braelyn Ketcham (15:59)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

Absolutely, and we learned that just that was not the case. We were just being pushed along and within their own timeline versus in what worked for them. So what's beautiful is that with

you as a creatine practitioner or any creatine practitioner in that pro, they spend more than eight minutes with you, which tends to be the average amount of time.

Caitlin (16:31)
You

Braelyn Ketcham (16:34)
doctors spend with their patients and napros will they will they will open up all the blood work that you need and they'll test things that you haven't been tested before and they'll help you find those answers. I want to say it's for anybody not whether you're planning to conceive or not. Everybody deserves answers for their cycles, their fertility.

Caitlin (16:42)
Mm.

Braelyn Ketcham (17:04)
And I think ultimately that it's an amazing pair to help you live well and to feel truly like you are in tune with your body. So some really cool things.

Caitlin (17:18)
Braelyn, thank you so much

for coming on, for sharing openly and honestly about your experience, both with Woven, but also your personal experience and what that's been like for you all physically, emotionally, spiritually, relationally. It's a joy for me to hear it, you know, because I got to be a part of it a little bit and see that unfolding. But I also I know that the listeners will appreciate it as well. So thanks for being on.

Braelyn Ketcham (17:30)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, thank you so much for letting me share my story and yeah, all the joys and griefs they're in. And yeah, it was a season and now we're entering into a new one. So the Lord is with us through them all. Thank you for letting me share.

Caitlin (18:03)
Absolutely.

Absolutely. Well listeners, our woven community is made up of some pretty special people. We ask honest questions about our fertility, about our faith, and we really do believe that our bodies were made with beauty and purpose, that we are intimately designed and loved by our Creator, and that fertility plays a meaningful role in our lives.

We believe this matters for all of us, as Braelyn said, regardless of our marital status or our pregnancy intentions. And I would love to invite you to be a part of that community here with us. You can certainly go to our website wovenfertility.com.

or join us on Instagram or Substack, also at Woven Fertility. Or if you're ready to learn the Creighton system like Braelyn did, then go to our website and join an introductory session. It's online, you can learn all the basics and see if it's the right fit for you. So as always, thanks for listening as we continue to explore together what it means to be woven well.

Braelyn Ketcham (19:03)
Thanks.