33. You’re Doing IVF Prep Wrong… And It’s Costing You

If you’re preparing for IVF and feeling like you need to do everything… this episode is your permission slip to exhale.

Because more isn’t always better.

And in a world where Fertility Awareness Week is flooding your feed with advice, protocols, supplements and “must-dos”… it’s very easy to end up overwhelmed, second-guessing yourself, and wondering if you’re missing something.

In this episode of The Wilde Way, I’m cutting through the noise and bringing you back to what actually matters when it comes to preparing your body for IVF.

This is the stuff that moves the needle.

✨ In this episode, we cover:

• Why “doing more” can actually be holding you back in your IVF prep
• The truth about supplements… and why they’re not the magic fix you’ve been told they are
• The common mistake I see women make when it comes to AMH and fertility numbers
• What I call the “circle of woe” and how stress impacts your hormones, immune system, and fertility
• Why nervous system regulation isn’t optional… it’s foundational
• The missing piece most fertility conversations ignore (and why it matters more than you think)
• How to start supporting your body properly without overwhelm or perfection

🧠 Resources & Links Mentioned:

🎬 Watch the Netflix documentary on plastics (eye-opening and so relevant to your toxic load):
 https://www.netflix.com/title/81206879

📋 Get your free IVF Prep Checklist:
 https://abiwilde.myflodesk.com/ivf-prep-checklist

💬 Want personalised support? Book a 1:1 clarity call with me:
 https://calendly.com/abi-wilde/30min

💛 Final Note

If you’ve been feeling like your body is letting you down… please hear this:

Your body isn’t broken.
She’s overwhelmed.

And when you start supporting her in the right way, everything can shift.

You don’t need to do everything.
You just need to do the right things.

If this episode resonated, send it to a friend who’s in the thick of IVF prep or trying to conceive 🤍
And if you haven’t already, make sure you’re following The Wilde Way so yo

If you’re craving a little extra support, I’ve got some beautiful free resources to get you started.

You can grab my IVF Prep Checklist here:
https://abiwilde.myflodesk.com/ivf-prep-checklist

And if you’re in that in-between, the waiting, the overthinking… I’ve also created a Two-Week Wait Support Kit to help you feel more grounded:
https://abiwilde.myflodesk.com/two-week-wait

If you’d like more personalised support, you can book a free 30-minute IVF support call with me here:
https://calendly.com/abi-wilde/30min

We can chat through your fertility journey and what your next steps could look like.

I’m creating something really special… BLYOOM — a supportive app for women trying to conceive, with nervous system tools to hold you through the real moments… the two-week wait, negative tests, pregnancy announcements… all of it.

If that feels like something you need right now, you can join the waitlist here:
https://abiwilde.myflodesk.com/blyoom-waitlist

And if you want more, come hang out with me on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/abi.wilde

It’s where I share free tips, tools, and fertility support for whole-body ...

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Hi, beautiful, and welcome back to the wild way. I'm so glad that you're here because this week is fertility awareness week. And honestly, this is exactly why I wanted to record this episode. Okay, because there is so much noise out there right now, so much information, so many opinions, and so many like you should be doing this messages. And what I see happening is women feeling more overwhelmed than ever. And a big part of what I do with my clients is help them cut through that noise and actually focus on what matters. So today I just want to simplify this for you. I want to walk you through some of the biggest things I see women focusing on before IVF that are actually not helping and what to shift instead. I remember being in this phase myself, okay? All of the googling, all of the overthinking, all of the saving all of the millions of Instagram posts before ChatGPT got on the scene. Feeling like I should be doing more and more and more, but not actually knowing what would make the biggest difference. And now, working with women going through RBF, I see the same patterns over and over again. And honestly, that is why week psych Fertility Awareness Week can feel like a bit of a double-edged sword. Because yes, awareness is important, but it can also leave you feeling a bit like you've got to do everything instead of just helping you focus on the right things. So the first thing I see all the time is over-supplementing. And I actually had a client ask me this week, what supplements should I be taking for fertility? And I get it, okay, because it feels like the most obvious place to start. Like just tell me what to take and I'll do it. But this is where things start to go a bit wrong because you cannot out-supplement what is actually happening in your body. Your body is communicating with you all the time. It's sending you signals, okay, little messages constantly. Hopefully we're listening. And most of us just ignore those messages and think, okay, it's fine, I'll just take something for that, right? We're just all about band-aids. But supplements don't fix the root cause, okay? They just optimize. And optimization only works when your foundations are strong. So this is something I do a lot with my clients, okay? We don't just throw supplements at the problem. We actually look at what your body needs first. So just as an example, yes, CoQ10 is amazing for egg quality. But if your gut isn't functioning properly, if your body is inflamed, okay, if your foundations aren't in place, you might not even be absorbing it properly. So now we're just talking about expensive supplements and basically making expensive pea. Okay, so I see this all the time. Women spending so much money and not actually getting the benefits. So what we do instead is simplify first, okay? So support the body first, and then we layer in supplements after. And even things like, you know, the MTHFR gene mutation, which so many women have and don't even realize, okay, these kinds of things can impact how you process nutrients. So you could be taking a B vitamin thinking you're doing all the right things, but your body is not actually using it properly or assimilating it correctly. This is where personalization really matters. And the second thing I see all the time is obsessing over AMH and numbers, okay? And honestly, I see this one break women because we've been taught that this number is everything. But the truth is that AMH is just a number, okay? It is a snapshot in time. All it tells us is your estimated egg reserve. That's it. It does not tell us egg quality, it does not tell us your ability to get pregnant. And I've had clients come to me in complete panic over this number, thinking everything is over, okay? And it's just not the full picture. I've seen women with low AMH fall pregnant, and I've seen women with high AMH really struggle. So this is not a definitive number. And what's really important to understand is that your AMH is not fixed. Woo-hoo! Okay, great news. There is so much wiggle room, and I've seen this number shift when women start working on their foundations properly, okay? Their inflammation and their overall health, okay. When you start working on your fertility foundations, even your AMH can change, okay? And there's also increasing discussion, okay, around how reliable AMH actually is, especially with things like PCOS and endometriosis, where results can actually be a bit skewed. So if you've been told something about your AMH and it's made you feel like your body is failing you, okay, or like you're behind, or like you're too old, or whatever it is, I really want you to take a breath here because that number does not define your fertility. And this is a big part of what I support my clients through: getting them out of that fear spiral and back into feeling empowered in their body again. Now, the next big one is ignoring the nervous system. Okay, this one is huge. This is something I go really deep on with my clients, okay, because you can't bypass this piece. So let me explain this in a really simple way. Because once you understand this, it changes everything. I call this the circle of woe. And it basically starts with stress. Because now when I say stress, I don't just mean like feeling stressed, okay? Because there are actually two types of stress. There's like that mental and emotional stress, like your work, your life, your overthinking, that constantly feeling on feeling, you know, being in fight or flight, having that physiological, emotional, mental response. And then there's also body stress. And this is the one that so many women don't even realize is happening. Okay, you're not being told that this is what's going on. So things like your toxic load, things like all the microplastics. Okay, did anybody else watch that documentary on Netflix? It was amazing. Um, go and watch it if you haven't watched it. I can't remember what it was called. I'll find a link to it in the show notes. You know, alcohol consumption, fried food, gut imbalances, gut infections, just overall inflammation. And, you know, a lot of us are carrying like underlying viral loads like Epstein Barr virus, and we just don't even know it, okay? There's a lot of autoimmune stuff, maybe an undiagnosed autoimmune disease, something going on there with your immune system. So all of that is also stress on the body. So you've got all of this stress coming in from all these different places and all these different angles. And when that stress is ongoing, the first thing it starts to impact is your hormones. Because your body is basically like survival comes first, right? Okay, because she's smart and she's amazing and she's on your side always. She's always working for you. So now it starts producing more cortisol. And over time, that cortisol starts to steal from your other hormones, okay? The magical ones, the ones that are in charge of your reproduction. And this is what is called the cortisol steal, where your body basically pulls from the mother of all hormones, so she's called pregnenolone, which then impacts progesterone, which is critical for fertility. So now your reproductive hormones are taking a major hit, right? And then from there we move into immune dysregulation. So now your immune system is a bit all over the place, okay, which creates more inflammation, more stress. And then we just keep looping. So that is the circle of woe, right? Stress impacting your hormones and then impacting your immune system and then creating more stress. That's the circle of woe. And I see women stuck in this all the time, doing all the right things, right? But their body is still in this underlying stress loop. So what we actually want to be doing is shifting into what I call the circle of flow. Yeah. Sounds sexy, right? Where instead of like feeding stress into the body, we are creating safety, we are supporting your nervous system, we are regulating your stress responses. And what happens then is your hormones start to regulate and your immune system starts to calm down and inflammation reduces, and your body starts to feel safe again. Okay. This is where the magic happens. And when your body starts to feel safe, that's when it's actually open to creating life. And this is why nervous system work is not optional, okay? This is foundational work. We need to be integrating this into our daily lives. And I know you don't have to become like this crazy zen monk or anything like that, or move to Byron Bay and live in, like, you know, one of those eco-villages or whatever it is, even though, hello, um, dream, dream over here. But what I will say is you need to be trying to integrate these moments into your day on like a basic level, right? I like to call them micro moments. So trying to find micro moments through your day where you can regulate your nervous system. So even when it's just like, you know, you're making yourself a coffee and you're standing by the kettle, take some deep breaths and make sure your exhale is longer than your inhale. Even just like putting your hand on your chest and just saying, like, I'm safe, and just like closing your eyes, you know, like just all these little things, they don't have to be big. You don't like you don't have to make these like massive mountains to climb, okay? They can be small micro moments. And these moments, when you do them consistently through your day, can actually make an even bigger impact. If you have 20 minutes or 30 minutes or an hour to meditate every day, go for it. Okay. My life doesn't make that kind of allowance right now. So micro moments is where I'm at for this particular stage in my life. But depending on where you're at, you might have the time. So, you know, whatever's gonna work for you. Now, another thing I see is women getting really clinical about everything, okay? Tracking everything, analyzing everything, looking at every single number, every symptom, every single data point. And yes, okay, that has a place. It definitely has a place, but it's not the full picture. Because your fertility specialist is looking at your body through a very clinical lens, okay? And what is often missing is the root cause perspective. The why, okay. Why is your cervical mucus low? Why are your hormones imbalanced? Why is your cycle irregular? Why is your cycle so short? Why are you getting brown spotting before your period starts? These are not random issues, okay? These are all signals. And this is what I help my clients understand is how to actually listen to their body instead of just analyzing it. Now, another big one is just looking at your fertility in isolation because your fertility is not separate from the rest of your body. Even if you're dealing with like thyroid issues or inflammation or insulin resistance or PCOS, or you've got, you know, stage four endometriosis like I had, these are not separate problems. They are part of a bigger picture. Your reproductive system does not exist in a vacuum. Okay? Everything is connected. And I wish that more women understood this because this is huge. Once you get your head around this, you realize that you're not just a diagnosis, okay? A diagnosis is basically just a doctor putting together your symptoms and giving a name to it. Yes, is there power in that? Absolutely. Because it's giving you more information, it's giving you data, it's giving you symptoms that you need to decode and figure out why my body is responding like this. It's not just like, oh, you know, my mum has thyroid issues and it runs in the family. Yeah, big deal, okay? We've all got these genetic predispositions. We've all got them. No one's exempt. And this is where epigenetics is so cool. If you don't know about epigenetics, it is your body's ability to turn, you know, particular genes that you have in your DNA on or off. Okay, so it's the way that your genes are expressed. You cannot change your genetics, but you can change the way that your genes are expressed in your body. Okay, which genes are turned on and which genes are turned on. There are actually very few genes that you can't actually manipulate this way, okay, due to like lifestyle factors and nutrition and all the things that I teach. So epigenetics is amazing. So, yes, you might have thyroid issues, you might have it running in your family, okay, but that is not the end of the story because there's a reason why your thyroid is responding the way that it is. And it's absolutely got to do with some form of trigger that has triggered your thyroid to react that way, okay? And it's my job to get to the bottom of what's causing that. So everything is connected, okay? There's no system that doesn't impact another system. All of this impacts your fertility and your environment and your terrain. So we have to be asking why, okay. Why do I have PCOS? Why is my body responding and creating endometriosis? Okay, because it is a signal from your body communicating to you that there is a deeper imbalance that needs attention. And quite often, what I find with my clients is that there are two particular areas that I usually get clients to focus on first, okay? Because when it comes to your immune system, when it comes to how your body is responding, I usually say if you don't know where to start, start with nervous system regulation and start with healing your gut, okay? Because your gut holds 80% of your, well, up to 80% of your entire immune system. So your immune system literally is dictated by what is happening in your gut. So if you don't have enough bifidobacteria, if you don't have enough lactobacillus, if you don't have these strains of good bacteria doing their thing in your gut, then your gut is compromised, okay? You're not getting enough prebiotics, you don't have the probiotics in your gut, and then you're not getting the postbiotics either from these beautiful bacteria that should be inhabiting your gut. Now, it's normal to have, you know, some form of unfriendly bacteria living in your gut as well, okay? But when you have something overgrown in your gut, okay, like the unfriendly bacteria overgrowing, things like candida, you might have parasites, there's a whole myriad of things, streptococcus, all of these kinds of things that live in your gut. But if you don't have enough friendly bacteria to outweigh the unfriendly bacteria, then you have something called dysbiosis. And these things can really wreak havoc on your overall well-being. Okay, and this is something that is so often missed when it comes to fertility because these things are all connected. Everything connects to every other system. There is no system that you cannot improve without improving other systems in your body. And this is what gets me really upset and angry that more doctors and more fertility specialists don't seem to be focusing on this. Okay. I don't know if they're just not told. I don't know if they don't have the awareness. I'm not sure. Okay. But I just wish that more of them had this awareness so that they could actually share this information with their patients. And then we wouldn't have women going round and round and round on a million different RVF cycles, just stuck on the hamster wheel. And then finally, the other thing is, is you know, skipping the foundations, okay? The things that we feel are too basic, but are actually everything. And this is honestly where the biggest shifts happen for my clients, okay? Your nutrition, your sleep, your movement, your stress load, your toxic load, your gut health, okay, the state of your liver. Okay, this is the terrain that your eggs are developing in. Because when these are in place, everything else works better, right? Like I said, you can't fix one system without it knocking on to all the other systems. It's like a domino effect. And the top dominoes for me, from my understanding, nervous system, gut, right? So it's not that you need to do more necessarily, it's that you need to focus on what actually matters. Because RVF works with your body, yeah, not against it. So if you're sitting there thinking, okay, where do I even start? Keep it simple, okay? Regulate your nervous system, work on your gut health, simplify your approach, support your fertility foundations. Not perfectly, just consistently. And this is exactly the work we do together in my one-on-one coaching. Okay, we take all of this and we make it specific to you. And if you want a really simple place to begin, okay, and you're like, I don't really want to do one-on-one coaching right now, Abby, and especially with everything that you might be seeing this week, okay, with Fertility Awareness Week, I've created an IVF prep checklist that you can get for free that walks you through exactly what matters. So if you are listening to this and you're thinking, okay, I actually do want support with this, I do actually have a couple of one-on-one spots open at the moment for IVF prep coaching. So we go deep on your body, okay? Your nervous system, your foundations, all of it. So I'll pop a link in the show notes if you want to have a chat and we can just see if it's a good fit. Zero pressure. So please remember, babe, you don't need to do everything, okay? You just need to do the right things and possibly in the right order. So your body is definitely not broken, okay? She is just asking for the right support. So if this resonated with you, please share it with someone who needs it. Maybe your fertility bestie, someone that you know who is going through IVF, someone who has been on the hamster wheel, who's thick in it, who could do with a bit of support. I would love you to get this into their ears. And hopefully, I will see you in the next episode. Until then, sending you lots of love.