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Steel Roses Podcast
Steel Roses is a podcast created for women by women. Social pressures for women are constant. Professionals, stay at home moms, working moms, we are here to tell you that you are not alone! This podcasts primary focus is providing real honest content shedding light on the daily struggles of women while also elevating women's voices.
All women are experiencing similar pressures and hurdles, and yet, no one is talking out in the open. If these topics continue to only exist as whispered conversations then we further permeate a culture of judgement and shame.
Join Jenny weekly as she discusses topics that effect women in a relatable, honest way.
Steel Roses Podcast
Navigating Fertility Challenges with Erica Hoke
What if everything you've been told about your fertility challenges is incomplete? When Erica Hoke was given a devastating prognosis—less than 1% chance of conceiving naturally and told IVF wouldn't work for her case—she refused to accept it as her final answer.
After suffering through excruciating menstrual cycles for twelve years before receiving a diagnosis of stage four endometriosis, Erica found herself at 35 with seven different fertility-inhibiting conditions. Rather than surrendering to medical protocols that offered no hope, she embarked on a journey that would not only transform her own fertility outcome but eventually help countless other women facing similar struggles.
In this deeply personal conversation, Erica reveals how conventional reproductive medicine often fails to address the root causes of fertility challenges. She shares how toxin exposure, nutrition, stress management, and emotional processing can dramatically impact fertility—factors frequently dismissed by doctors who tell patients "diet doesn't matter" and "you can't change the health of your eggs."
Most powerfully, Erica challenges the notion that fertility issues are simply "bad genes" or inevitable hereditary conditions. "It's not bad genes causing this," she explains. "It's how your body handles your environment." This perspective opens new possibilities for women who've been told their family history dictates their fertility fate.
The discussion also highlights the normalization of dysfunction in women's health—how severe menstrual symptoms are often dismissed by both families and medical professionals, leading to delayed diagnosis and treatment for conditions like endometriosis, which takes an average of 12 years to diagnose.
For women feeling hopeless about their fertility prospects, Erica's story offers a different path. Through her three-month "egg rehab" program and Infertility Success book series, she provides personalized support addressing the physical, emotional, and environmental factors that conventional medicine often overlooks.
Whether you're currently navigating fertility challenges or supporting someone who is, this episode will transform how you think about reproductive health and the possibilities that exist beyond standard medical protocols. Connect with Erica through her website to discover how her holistic approach might support your unique fertility journey.
Infertility Success to Postpartum Mess: The Truth No One Tells You
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Infertility Success Stories of Faith and Miracles: Hope, Healing, and Triumph over Infertility Through God's Grace
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Infertility Success, MORE Stories of Help and Hope For Your Journey
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Infertility Success: Stories of Help and Hope for Your Journey
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Hello everybody, this is Steel Roses podcast. This podcast was created for women, by women, to elevate women's voices. I am very excited to introduce everybody today to our guest, erica Hope. She is a natural fertility coach who has guided countless women through infertility with compassion, expertise and proven strategies. Erica combines her deep understanding of how toxins impact fertility health with insights into often overlooked medical tests, targeted nutritional changes and powerful stress management tools. Her holistic fertility coaching focuses on the physical, mental, emotional and environmental factors that can make all the difference when you're trying to conceive. Whether you want to conceive naturally or improve your IVF success rates, erica's personalized approach will help you feel informed, empowered and supported every step of the way. Erica, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. So I know that I know I said a lot, but I wanted to I wanted the listeners to really understand, like where you were coming from.
Speaker 1:I would love for you to share your story with the listeners, how you ended up with this focus, and then we'll kind of just take it from there.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, thanks for having me on, jenny. Well, I guess the best place to start is the beginning, and that is with my cycles, you know, as a teenager. Shortly after I started getting my period, they just got progressively worse and what that looked like was vomiting on the first day of my cycle, terrible pain, uncontrollable bleeding. And then it just kind of progressed from there for 12 years. 12 years to get my first diagnosis. So that was stage four, endometriosis. So all in all I ended up with seven different what I say is like infertility or fertility inhibiting diagnosis.
Speaker 2:So by the age of 35, I had accumulated most of these, I had gotten married. I knew that. I knew that I was going to have challenges, right Like I had a history of all of these problems. But I kind of felt, like everybody does, that IVF would be my backup plan, right, like I've got all these things going on, but IVF is going to be my backup plan. And then it wasn't. Then my plan B did not work out and I was told at the age of 35 that I couldn't do IVF, that I would need donor eggs and that I had a less than 1% chance of conceiving on my own Well.
Speaker 1:So from the beginning you had mentioned, like in the beginning, your cycles were really awful. So I actually have a question here for you, because I think this happens quite a bit and I know I have endometriosis as well, so I know that you know it's something that's hereditary, it's passed down and what ends up happening is that within families, because all the women have it, they don't realize that this is not actually supposed to be happening. You're not supposed to be vomiting during your period. And actually, what a blanket statement is for everyone who's listening. If you, when you have your cycle, have incredibly heavy flow to the point where you have to use a tampon, a pad, and you're still going all the way through, that's a red flag.
Speaker 2:Yep, yeah, and it's totally the normalizing of dysfunction right On a lot of different levels. Like you mentioned, familial, you know, it's like well, that's how my cycle is, and so it's normalized, especially in previous generations where people really just didn't even talk about their periods, right, you know, they had nothing to compare it to. At least now we're having the conversation, but back then they were like I don't know, I'm not going to ask anybody about that, so it was just normalized. But then also in the medical community, that level of dysfunction and distress in a patient, it does not raise a red flag, necessarily no doctor, a patient it does not raise a red flag necessarily Like no doctor, unless you push for additional testing or you push for an answer, is going to send you for anything.
Speaker 2:And so in my case, endometriosis, as you probably know, I don't know how long it took you, but 12 years is about the average to get a diagnosis. But the thing that always sticks in my mind is I wanted them so badly to tell me that I had endometriosis without going through surgery. And I want your listeners to understand they cannot do that, they are not allowed to do that. They will not diagnose you without surgery. And so by the time that I got to the point where I'm like I don't know do the surgery.
Speaker 2:I'm I'm like a hot mess over here, I'm like not functional. Then it was stage four and it's so incredibly frustrating. Now there are blood tests. I will say that, like in the past few years, there are some blood tests that have come up that you can get at least some screening and give you a better idea of whether or not you have endometriosis without having laparoscopic surgery.
Speaker 1:So the blood test and I just want to the reference medical person in me wants to be like. So the blood test that Erica is referring to, it's called the CA-125 test and it's sometimes used to indicate the possibility of the condition. But they will still like definitively say yeah, like they'll definitively say doc.
Speaker 1:the healthcare community will say, like we really don't know, we have to go inside and look. My diagnosis was by accident because I was getting. I vaguely remember, you know, my early years of my cycle and it being painful, but again my mom said oh yeah, your aunts were like that too, you know, and you know, I didn't even realize it until, like I was an adult, but my mom had uterine fibroids.
Speaker 2:She didn't know that that's what it was. You know, like she had fibroids and endometriosis probably, but she didn't know.
Speaker 1:And she and she still to this day, like I said, I had endometriosis and she still was like, oh you know, they're all on menopause, Like.
Speaker 2:They're like, oh well, Well, and they just had hysterectomies.
Speaker 1:That was the solution back then they just yanked everything out.
Speaker 2:Yep, they just yanked it out. We can't fix you. You've got this problem. We'll just solve it with surgery. So I think it's not bad genes that is causing this. It is the fact that this is how your body handles your environment. Because of a methylation issue, because of whatever. It's not an inevitable thing. It's a response to your food and your environment and your toxins and things like that. You can break that, but you have to do something different than your family and how you were raised. You have to address it differently. You can't just keep doing the same thing. So in my case, taking the NSAIDs and stuff was actually making everything so much worse because I have a methylation problems. That's a long rabbit hole that I don't even know that I can unwind right this second. But what I'm saying is it's flows and families. Because your mom treated it a certain way, she's telling you to treat it the same way or you know your exposure is the same, not necessarily because it is quote unquote hereditary.
Speaker 1:So listeners outside of the discussion with Erica, I wholeheartedly believe that, yes, while they'll say exactly what Erica just said, this is across all disease States, and I want to get back to Erica's story. But I want to just make this statement because it's in line with, I think, what she's going to talk about Across disease states. You will be told this is hereditary, I've been told. You have, your family has a history of diabetes, a history of high blood pressure and a history of heart disease. You're going to get it. It's going to happen. You have to be careful and I actually I'm a vegetarian.
Speaker 1:I chose to go vegetarian exactly for I think a lot, for a lot of what Erica's about to talk about, because of toxins and things that are in our foods that we don't, we're not aware of as much and we don't control, and there's pesticides and all kinds of things that are going into our food supply. That is affecting us on a cellular level and because we're being exposed our entire lives to them, it is affecting everything. Now, an example really is, like you know, of young people going through puberty much earlier. Well, it's because there's so much hormones being injected into the foods that it is causing young people to get their period sooner. Like I had to take my kids to the urgent care the other day for ear infections and it was my twins, my twin girls, and the doctor was like, have they started menstruating yet? They're eight. I was like what? Yeah, so I want to, I want to circle back.
Speaker 1:So you basically were told like IVF is not going to work for you. Yeah, you know, you knew you had endometriosis. So you get based. You're told you have a 1% chance of conceiving. You're basically saying you're not going to have kids, it's not going to happen by you, right? Well, your response in that moment, at this point, you're probably like a research expert, because that's what you have to do. You have to advocate for yourself. What was, what did you do at this point? What was your reaction?
Speaker 2:Well, I think that a couple things happened before I got to that point that I was. My eyes were starting to be opened and I don't want to skip over that. So, like I said, I had seven diagnosis. So endometriosis was just one of them. I also had uterine fibroids, which you mentioned you had also. So it took me two failed laparoscopic surgeries, and what I mean by failed is they did laparoscopy, they went in, they said we don't see any fibroids that we could remove.
Speaker 2:At that point I had to advocate with my OBGYN and my reproductive endocrinologist to do a third, different type of surgery so that I could get some relief. I could get some relief. Pregnancy was secondary to that, because I was having such uncontrollable pain and flow that I needed to address that for my own health, aside from pregnancy. But nobody was coming to me and saying, well, we didn't find this and you still are symptomatic for that, so let's do this. No, I had to be like there's something else. You've got to be able to do something else for me. What can we do next? And it wasn't, it wasn't didn't come easy, right. And so that was an eye opener for me, because when they did that surgery for the fibroids. They did a saline infused laparoscopy, where they fill your uterus with saline, and what happened with my particular fibroids is that they were kind of embedded in the uterine wall, so they float out instead of retract. Without going into a lot more detail, yeah, yeah, and so they took so many fibroids out. It looked like a handful of aquarium gravel.
Speaker 2:So at that point I was like, wow, what if? What if I didn't push? No one was there telling me this is something that you can do. I had to push. So when I got to the point where they told me, listen, you're hyper ovulating. Because I want to, I want to flush this out a little bit too. You're hyper ovulating and we can't stimulate you for an egg retrieval. And oh, by the way, you have diminished ovarian reserves and you don't have enough eggs for us to do a retrieval anyway, and you're going to need donor eggs in order for you to get pregnant. That seed was already planted in my mind that, okay, what else aren't they telling me? What else can I do? So it was incredibly.
Speaker 2:I don't want to gloss over the fact that it was incredibly devastating. It was traumatic. It was a really hard thing to hear, because that is getting the rug pulled out from underneath you, right? Whether it's a diagnosis like mine or some other diagnosis which totally takes your hope and your choices away. It was devastating. So I sat in that for a minute and I was like, well, okay, we're not going to go the donor egg route until I exhaust all other options and I don't know what those options are, but I'm going to find out what affects fertility and I'm going to go full in on that and see what I can do to improve my chances of getting pregnant naturally.
Speaker 2:And it was things like acupuncture for fertility. It was things like personalized testing which, again, as a consumer, so many of my clients come to me and they will say to me you hear all the time in the infertility world, I've been tested for everything. I am a pin cushion, there isn't one single task possible. And I will tell you that is a complete and utter lie. I've not met one client or a single person of my authors in the infertility success series that that was actually true. It is a lie.
Speaker 2:Everybody is a consumer and I'm getting soapboxy this morning, but everybody everybody, as a consumer, thinks that when they go into the reproductive endocrinologist that they are going to do a deep dive into their history and they're going to look at all their labs and they're going to figure out why they have unexplained infertility or why they have infertility. And that is not what happens at all. They do a protocol, which is it's a lab procedure, right, they're doing lab process in order to get you to conceive. So I've said a lot, so I'll take a breath there. But that that's kind of what launched my advocate myself advocacy and kind of got the ball rolling for me about making the changes and toxins and supplements and diet and all of those things that I found were true, truly impacted fertility, even though the medical community will tell you diet doesn't matter, supplements don't matter, you can't change the health of your eggs. All of those things, they're all complete lies.
Speaker 1:It's interesting. So you mentioned protocol and I want to clarify for the listeners essentially what happens every year, annually. There's organizations in the United States that will release their trusted organizations. You can't see it If you're listening to the podcast. I just did a quote. Air quote, air quoteusted organizations that are meant to be top of the top. These are the top experts in the field, across all disease states. This is true and these organizations will come through and say you know, these are the rules of care that we're releasing this year. We've updated them. This is the standard of care and all doctors in these particular disease states and again it's across all of them fall in line with what the protocols were that were just released and then they will follow them to a T. Now sometimes you get doctors that will follow it but then also expand on it, and those are wonderful doctors, like really, really great doctors.
Speaker 1:But not everybody does that. As Erica just said, a lot of folks will just look down the list, check, check, check. You know what you have all these things not gonna be possible for you. We tried everything. This is your lot in life. What Erica is saying here is this doesn't have to be. You can continue to try and you actually can make changes.
Speaker 1:And I will say this, like I mentioned earlier, that I've been told like, oh, you're going to have all these diseases, it's going to happen to you. I'm the only one in my family who doesn't have high blood pressure the only person and it's because of how I choose to live my life and how I what I consume, and I know that, and they're out of consuming there's a lot of other things holistically that I do. So, erica, you're told, you're basically told there's no hope. You have to advocate for yourself. So you started to go down this rabbit hole of research. Now, when you were going through this and I want to highlight this how often by medical professionals were you told like this isn't real, this doesn't make sense what you're saying? Or you got pushed back, or they were telling you like well, you know, I'm the physician here. There's a lot of women that are intimidated, and even myself included. I get intimidated by the doctors too, even though I know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:They throw things out there and I'm like, well they're. You know, my family very much is like, oh well, that's the medical professional. We have to do what they say. They said it and that's not necessarily the case, and I think that's what you found here, Like you were able to do more for yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So a lot of tabs open in my head right now. So I guess what I want to start off by saying is, if you don't fix these foundational things, nothing that you do is going to be as successful as it could be. I'm not anti-medicine. I consider what I do as a bridge between holistic care and the medical community. Because here is the breakdown they are not holistic, they are not whole person minded, they are not root cause minded. Okay, so let's just, let's just categorize it as that is, that, accept that for what it is. You know that it doesn't make them wrong. It's just not what they do. It's not what they were trained to do. It's not what they were trained to do. It's not how they were trained to do it. So if you want someone who's going to take a holistic approach, you have to provide that care for yourself. You either have to find, you have to find those resources yourself. So whether it's like you mentioned, whether it's infertility or whether it's another you know, hereditary disease.
Speaker 1:So I and it's okay because there's I think you know there's so much to say about this topic that it's it's very hard to even like hone it in and like pick the certain elements. One thing I want to touch on, because I don't want to discount this, was the emotional element of what you were going through.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So we're cause, we're very we're talking very like statistically of like this is it? And this is how you know, make sure you advocate for yourself. But I, I haven't experienced it at all, but I do have relatives that had gone through very traumatic infertility experiences and had to, and, and you know, everyone has kids now happy and healthy.
Speaker 1:Everyone had to go down their own paths for it. You know, and so I am. I don't know if you're going to be able to answer this, but how did you find the strength within to say, like I'm not going to accept the diagnosis that you're telling me. I am going to continue to look at this Like how did you find it in yourself to continue to go down that path?
Speaker 2:I would say I found it outside of myself because in my own strength, I would have felt I relied heavily on my faith. In my own strength, I would have felt I relied heavily on my faith. As a matter of fact, I'm looking here at a sticker that I used to say to myself, like a little verse from the Bible that I used to say myself, which is counted all as joy, and what that means to me and what that meant to me, is that this is for a purpose, and the purpose is is that I would be a much sicker mother. Maybe I would have never been a mother, but I would be a sicker mother if I had managed to get pregnant on my own without making these changes. I don't think that I would have. And also generationally, which circles us way back to the beginning of the conversation I am now able to help my kids and say to them hey, you can't live your life like this, because this is the health pattern that we need to put into place so that you will be healthy.
Speaker 2:I'm going to answer circle back to the first question that we were talking about, which is self-advocacy, and then also emotional support. How do you go about self-advocacy in the medical community. I think that you just have to know intuitively that you live in your body. You're the expert in your body. So even if they have a degree in a white coat, nobody knows your body like yourself. You don't need to Google that right. So just standing up for yourself and not letting someone dismiss your symptoms, dismiss how you're feeling, that can just be the first step. It is something that I coach my clients through all the time is having those conversations and why it's important to have that self-belief. But let's just say, if I was getting giving a tip of the day in that area, that is what I would say to start with, because you can't be intimidated or talk down to about you know, your Google, research or whatever when you're talking about your symptoms, how you feel and things like that. Just honor yourself and honor what's going on in your body and approach it from that direction. You know, if somebody takes offense of that, maybe you do need another doctor.
Speaker 2:But the emotional part is something that is so important. The emotional key is not just emotional, because if you can't cope, you can't continue. That's just flat out the bottom line. You have to put some coping mechanisms in place so that you can make it through this infertility journey. So what that looked like for me was it was talk therapy it was using the resources of my faith. But there are also. What that looked like for me was it was talk therapy, it was using the resources of my faith, but there are also things that I've learned that I share with my clients now, which is things like tapping TRE method.
Speaker 2:Tapping where you connect with the emotion that you're feeling, and if you're not familiar with that, it's something.
Speaker 2:The reason that I love it is because what I call it my pocket. Actually, I have a practitioner that provides all this information in my program and she's the expert in that. But you identify the emotion and then you process it and you have these things that you can. You know, when you get your negative pregnancy test or you get that call from the IVF clinic that your you know embryos didn't make it, you can go to your car, you can go in the bathroom and, instead of stuffing those feelings down, you can process them in the moment and then go on with your day, which is so important because this is a 30-day cycle or 28-day cycle process, and if you are constantly stuffing your emotions down. Then, once you do get pregnant, once you do bring that baby home, once you do take the pressure off and release that pressure off the valve, so to speak, then a whole lot of stuff is going to come out and it's not going to be pretty. So we don't want that to happen.
Speaker 1:You know. I want to highlight what you're talking about here because this is like a personal practice and something I'm teaching my kids like. If you said, like now that I know what I know, yeah, I started teaching these guys since they've been little like how to process their emotions. What I don't think a lot of people realize, and maybe they just think it's dumb for lack of a better word yeah, um, is when you don't acknowledge emotionally what you're going through.
Speaker 1:You don't acknowledge emotionally what you're going through, you don't acknowledge the feeling and you, like Erica said, stuff it back in. That actually continues to eat away at you and, energetically, your vibrational energy, and I'm going to get a little like it's going to sound woo-woo, but let's just before you even go there.
Speaker 2:This is all rooted in science, thank you, I was going to say that next it's all physiological rooted, so you're probably going to talk about the frequency and the energy part of it, but this is all. Converts into cortisol levels and hormone levels and your body's ability to process that what.
Speaker 1:Eric is talking about. There is actual scientific research and data. This is not total BS, and I will say and let me just make this statement I work in science, I work in research, I work with pharmaceutical companies. That is what I do for a living. So I am very much. Even though Erica mentioned a blood test earlier, I went right away to look it up to make sure I had a good reference. I am a reference person. If there is not something to back it up, then I'm going to be like all right, I can't really take this at its word. What we're talking about here is actual backed up by science, but it's just science that's not promoted out there because nobody wants. They don't want to take away the monies, right. So this is all real legitimate stuff.
Speaker 1:Now, outside of the, you know your energy level, which I know some people can't. It's hard for a lot of folks to wrap their head around that. You know your vibrational energy is incredibly important to your whole well being. So that's one thing like making sure that you're maintaining your emotional energy and not, you know, having any toxic like energy in you Physically. I'm curious did you shift your diet and what you were consuming in this? Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the literal translation of what you're talking about. And what I'm talking about is inflammation. That's the little translation in your body. So, yeah, I made, I made diet changes. You know, if you had asked me at the time, I would have been like oh, I eat, I eat salads, I'm healthy, you know.
Speaker 2:But I was really eating a standard American diet and not a lot of organics, which meant that I was consuming a lot of pesticide, a lot of hormones in the meats and things like that. And so making those changes, because I didn't know at the time that I had a methylation problem. I'm not going to do a deep dive into this, but I had MTHFR, which I didn't really even learn until after I had given birth to all of my kids. But all the things that I was doing in order to help my body was basically linked to that. So removing the toxins, changing and improving my diet, but then also the acupuncture, contributes to all that too, at a cellular level, at an organ level, and so all that, all those things that I, all those things that I put in place to support myself, were because of that methylation problem which, I was told, up to 80% of the population is a carrier of at least one of that. One of the geneticists told us that, so I wouldn't be surprised I.
Speaker 1:I had my one of my sister-in-laws she, she went through just the hoops she had to jump through to conceive and then my niece ended up being born.
Speaker 1:She was about two months earlier, so she was yeah, she's healthy, happy now, but it was very scary in that moment. She didn't quite my. My sister-in-law didn't find out until later on that she had a gene mutation uh, incredibly rare um, that caused infertility. So her daughter, quite literally, cause she didn't know about this, her daughter, quite literally, is a miracle. It's a miracle that she's even here because, based on her medical like state, based on science, she should have never conceived. But I will say this she went to, she didn't go through medical, traditional medical, she went through holistic and homeopathic. She and and that's how she was able to conceive. Yeah, it took a lot, it took her years to be able to get there, but she was eventually able to do it. Um, there's so many things to touch on, so I'm trying, I'm trying to like everything for the listeners.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we talked about you know you get this, this 1% basically diagnosis, like it's not going to happen for you Emotionally. You started addressing the you know the emotions making sure you're addressing the cortisol so that way you're not having that inflammation. You did have some dietary changes I'm going to assume you know, because obviously we talked about that and then you had the will and the strength to continue on. So once, at what point did you know I'd like to use this to help other people. I've gone through this, other people must be going through this. At what point did you start to think to yourself I think I can help other people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it was just I started telling people my story and I, you know, I had three children under three years old, so I had, you know, my oldest really close together. So kind of. When I was able to come up for air and I started participating again in the Facebook communities, the trying to conceive communities, and kind of sharing my story, kind of sharing my story, I realized that there's so many women out there that just don't have any hope and they don't know anything else to do except for IVF. And like we've talked about you know you can go on one of the dot govs and it will say make it less likely to conceive, hormone and endocrine disruptors, make it less likely to conceive naturally and make it harder for your IVF to work. Like that's on thegov. They know that that's out there but nobody is telling these women.
Speaker 2:And there's a woman out there and I often say when I do podcasts like I'm really talking to that one woman out there who is just can't do IVF. Maybe she can't afford IVF, let's be real about that and she just feels devastated because nobody's talking about what else you can do, how you can actually help yourself a lot to be successful and conceive, naturally outside of IVF. So I really do this as a mission to help that one person, that one woman who just feels utterly hopeless, like there is nothing that she can do outside of reproductive medicine to get pregnant.
Speaker 1:You know I've thought about that quite a bit, because IVF is not that it's not covered by insurance. Right Like this is not something that's like yeah, it's that it's so much to go through and then to be trying to continue to bang on that wall when it's like truly is a wall.
Speaker 2:There are people that are mortgaging their house. There are people that once they do get pregnant and conceive, they have six figures worth of bills that they can't. You know. They have very little maternity leave. Now they have kids, but now they have the expenses of child care. They can't quit their job. It's really. It's really a mess, and it is getting better. The insurance companies are covering, you know, more procedures.
Speaker 2:There is more help out there than when I was going through it, but there is this huge gap where there's not accessibility and care to a huge number of people, and so they just feel hopeless and they they've been told nothing, that nothing that you do is going to change anything and let me just zero in on that for a second, because I see this all the time too is that people really don't give it long enough, like dietary changes, supplements and things like that, and I know why.
Speaker 2:I know why that is is because they're not sure that it's working. So if you love coffee and you watch a reel of somebody saying you should give up coffee and they don't really, you don't really understand why you should give up coffee to get pregnant. You're not going to last very long because you are now not getting pregnant, and that thing that you're, that is a comfort to you, is now gone. And so it's this vicious cycle of shame and failure and frustration and not knowing what to do. And that's kind of where I step in and I say, hey, you know, just like you, here's all the research about leaky gut and microtoxins and mold and coffee, and you know, I'm not telling you you can't have coffee, but maybe we should just adjust when you have your coffee. Let's put these things in place instead, things like that. And so I think it's just an incredibly frustrating process for women who are not getting support from a coach and knowing exactly what they're doing is effective.
Speaker 1:It's a lot to. It's like a full-time job and I've actually talked with my sister-in-law about this. At when she you know, when she went through it, we weren't as close. And then post, like she, she started the process again. I sit there. I was like she was telling me like the things she had to do and the appointments and going all these places, and I was like I could never, I couldn't. I was actually just telling you right before we hopped on to record that I'm not signing my kids up for activities this year because I'm like I can't do it, like I can't imagine doing that. And I'll even say this, like, even like for my current health issues. Like you know, I have endometriosis that never technically doesn't right. Wait, hold on. You're going to like this technically never goes away. They tell you there's nothing you can do. You have to have a hysterectomy. That's what I was told last. I was having incredible pain last year and they were like hysterectomy sounds like it's going to be right for you, you're done having kids anyway. And I was. I was freaked out because I'm like I work in this space. I know it's okay. I was scared, like to be perfectly frank, I was scared so I didn't at the time. I couldn't afford it because of the agency I was with. The insurance was really awful and I didn't have any. I didn't have enough time off to cover the. You know all the stuff Right? Well, you'll appreciate this. This is actually a little bit funny. I have that in the back of my mind.
Speaker 1:I have this endometriosis situation and then I also I'm in my early forties, so I'm going through perimenopause at the same time and I'm like I'm feeling sluggish, I feel like crap. I also find out at the same time that I'm anemic. So I'm trying to like figure all these things out. And I have read I started doing research on, as we just said, got to advocate for yourself. So I started doing research on supplements like what can I do here? So iron, obviously I'm taking iron supplements, like I have to do that. Iron supplements, like I have to do that. And I think you know that's part and parcel because I'm vegetarian, like I need to balance myself.
Speaker 1:So then, for the perimenopause, I'm like I had read magnesium glycinate, like this is this is what you need, jen, you're probably deficient, start taking that. So I started taking it and then, like three months later or so I noticed my cycles are not as painful and I was like, well, that's kind of odd. Like all of a sudden, my endometriosis is not bothering me anymore, like I wonder what happened here. Well then I looked it up. Magnesium glycinate is incredibly helpful if you have endometriosis, and I had no idea and now I'm like super excited. I just recommended it to somebody. I'm like this is amazing. So the reason I'm telling that little story there is because you have to really push it yourself, like, and you might stumble upon something, and then it just works for you. Everyone's case is also different, so I want to say that too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I flashed Erica's website. I'm going to push it again Cause I would like you guys to visit her website, because if you reach out to her and you start engaging with Erica, one of the first things is like everyone's story is different, everyone's journey is different. Like what she said earlier, the doctors are not deep, diving into the personal, the whole history they only have and I'm going to share this. I don't think everybody is aware of this Physicians usually only have an allotted amount of time that they're allowed to spend per patient, per insurance regulations. Not a lot of people are aware of that and they're like why does my doctor run out of the room? I only get a couple of minutes with them. That's actually why you're only given 10 minutes time slots, so they race in and out.
Speaker 1:So it's really going to be a lot more discussion. And this is where Erica comes in. Yeah, like, let's pull the threads. What is your story and how are we going to make something that's customized for you, that is going to support you in this journey? And, eric, I talked for you there a bunch, but that's what I was thinking the entire time you were talking.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, the way and I want to talk about about protocol, if you don't mind, because it was like I want to kind of circle back to that. But the way that it kind of works is, you know, I want to make sure that I can help you. I don't want to waste anybody's time, so I do a 15 minute call, I make sure that I can help you, ask you a few questions and then I send out a form and it's a pretty extensive form of 30 questions about your testing, about your diet and lifestyle changes and about basically the gaps that I can see. You know, to point you to a next step. You know whether that's additional testing or what have you, and that's all completely free. And then it's what systems can we put in place to support you? And that's where the program comes in. So it's like a three month egg rehab program is what I call it. It's the Nurture Path Fertility Incubator. So that is going to walk you through and handhold you step by step. It's just short little videos, because everyone's super busy, you know of how to make and have those diet and lifestyle changes and the why behind it, and it tracks with you, with your cycle, because there's a huge emotional component. So we address that during your menstrual cycle when you're upset, angry, frustrated, because now you've gotten your period again, you're not pregnant again. So we can kind of go into the next cycle with a clean slate instead of stuffing all of those emotions down. But that's kind of how it works. It's a little bit of a detective work and then just knowing, like I talked about before, that what you're doing is the right step to support your body, to improve your egg quality, to make the changes and the why behind it, and then coping tools, 100% coping tools.
Speaker 2:But when you were talking about protocols, yes, there is that oversight where everybody gets the protocol. But I just realized this about a year ago I had partnered with a reproductive endocrinologist and he was telling me that now there's only three or four, there's hardly any independent reproductive medicine offices. They're they're corporately owned by conglomerate groups. So they might be branded as different air quotes, different offices, but they're owned by conglomerate groups and they control the protocol based on, you know, numbers and stats and things like that. And it's really hard to go go off that path. The doctors get in trouble for going off that path. They really have to push back against their own system and their own employers to give personalized care.
Speaker 2:So just keep that in mind. Like, sometimes, the doctor is not just being a jerk. You know, when you ask for a test, you have to have a doctor that's willing to stick his neck out for you. This doctor in Tampa, on the West Coast of Florida, he works for Shady Grove, but he is that. He is that doctor that's willing to go to bat for you, change your protocol and things like that in order to get you. You know he takes all the tough cases in order to get you where you, where you need to be, and not just keep doing the same protocol over and over again, which is literally the definition of insanity, right, I'm glad you said that, because that that's that I.
Speaker 1:I have a respect for our medical professionals. I need them, we do. We need them. But you're right, like they are sometimes like put into a position where, like they're just not allowed to and they they might even get in trouble to guide you outside, like, because then it's also opening them up for like a lawsuit and this, and that, like there's so many levels of complication, unfortunately to our system, that it prevents the patient from being like the top of mind. One other thing I want to touch on with you too is your book series. So Erica has a book series. So if you're not quite ready to reach out directly and if you're nervous about it, erica actually has a really wonderful book series available on Amazon. I have the link up now and I'll push it again. We talked a little bit about it in the beginning, where I said, like how did you know? Or in the middle there, how did you know you wanted to start putting things into books. So the books, how you have about what? Four books is it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the infertility success book series is a four part series and the first two books deal exclusively with infertility stories and book three is about a postpartum journey after infertility. And then book four is a faith journey during and after infertility, kind of shining a light in those dark places where people feel shame and they can't really have these conversations openly about those topics. So they're all told from the lens, though, not just like hey, let me tell you my story as a memoir. No, the authors really poured themselves into these chapters and said not just like hey, let me tell you my story as a memoir. No, the authors really poured themselves into these chapters and said at this point man, I wish someone had told me to ask this question right now, before I had this procedure or this test, so I wouldn't make this mistake because the outcome was not good. You know there were people that did all the stories. Some was not good. You know there were people that did all the stories.
Speaker 2:It's a compilation, so the stories are, you know, really varied. Each author had their own path, as you mentioned. Some of them were reproductive medicine, some of them were raw food diet, some of them were, you know, iui, secondary infertility. My own story is there, you know where I couldn't do IVF. So there's just a variety of stories so that each author could connect with somebody based on kind of what they're going through, you know, get some help. And they're really great too for understanding, you know, for family members to understand what the mindset is of someone going through the infertility process, because I think people would be shocked to hear someone going through infertility or their family member say I told my husband that he should divorce me and just go find somebody else that can give him a family, because I can't give him the family that he deserves. That's the level of deep despair and shame that these women vulnerably share their stories and I just think that it's a really great way for people to understand, you know, what somebody in their family might be going through.
Speaker 1:You know that that's a good segue. I have one final question for you, as somebody who hasn't had to experience this. If, what is it that someone from the outside can do or say when they know they have a family member or a friend who's struggling with infertility? Because this is an area where there is a tremendous amount of shame and I think, because we also don't know how to react, that that's part of the problem, and I want to ask the question what could I say or what could I do, to just say like I'm here for you, I don't understand what you're going through, and what is it that somebody on the outside looking in could do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, instead of you know, trying to figure out the right thing to say, I would just offer your support. Hey, I know that you have a procedure coming up. Is there anything that I can do to support you? Can I bring you a meal that night? Can I drive you to the office, you know, is there anything that I can do to support you? And just let them kind of take the lead on that, because so often people go inward, because you know people try to. You know it's the toxic positivity, right, and everybody means well. But if you don't understand the mentality of someone that would tell their husband that they love to divorce them or that, you know people say things like you know, they just dismiss the feeling, right. So I would just say anything that you do, don't dismiss their feelings about it, don't gloss over the feelings.
Speaker 1:Identify that. This is ridiculously hard and you can't imagine what they're going through. And just if you're listening to this on podcasts, you can watch the full interview on YouTube. It'll be featured there as well, with all of Erica's links. Erica, thank you so much for joining me today and to sharing your story and for what you're doing to help women. It's a huge, huge thing. So thank you for what you're doing.
Speaker 2:Thank you for being available for me to get my message out. I hope that there are some women out there listening that this was exactly what they needed today.
Speaker 1:I hope so too, so listeners, reach out to Erica if you're looking for support. Thank you so much for being here with us today, and we will catch you on the next one. Take care.
