If you've had one (or multiple) miscarriages, here's my advice

If you’ve had one loss, or several, and you’ve been told it was “just bad luck” and to call your doctor when you’re pregnant again… this episode is for you.

In Episode 4, Caitria breaks down why you don’t have to accept statistics-based advice as your truth, and how to start rebuilding from the inside out after loss. We talk about the mental spiral of “what ifs,” how to gently rewrite the stories running in the background, and the practical, grounded foundations that help your physical body feel safe enough to cycle, conceive, and stay pregnant again.

In this episode, we cover:

• How to listen to your gut when medical advice doesn’t feel right in your body
• The what-if spiral... and why it’s human (not something to shame yourself for)
• The mindset shift that changes everything: stories vs facts (and how to rewrite the ones that aren’t serving you)
• “Equal and opposite” thinking: making space for best-case scenario without denying reality
• Brain dump journaling: a simple, powerful way to unload the mental heaviness (timer + pen + paper)
• The “what am I making this mean?” tool... and how to interrupt the belief that your body can’t be trusted
• Post-loss care as a season of internal winter: warmth, restoration, slowness, and deep nourishment
• Nutrition basics that matter more than supplements right now
• Why this is not the time for detoxes, cleanses, keto, or extreme protocols... even if the marketing makes it tempting
• Common “funky” post-loss symptoms (jawline acne, night sweats, headaches, digestive changes, fatigue, irritability, sleep disruption)...and why they don’t have to mean something is "wrong"
• Movement after loss: walking, gentle strength, Pilates/yoga... only as energy returns
• Why acupuncture can be an incredibly supportive regulation tool in this season
• A preview of next episode: the exact labs Caitria recommends post-loss

Resources & Next Steps

• CLICK HERE to grab our Functional Fertility Lab Bundle, including the exact labs Caitria evaluates for all her fertility clients.
• Want this level of root cause-focused functional insight on your fertility journey? Apply to work with us one-on-one HERE

If this episode hit home…

Share it with a friend who’s been told to “just try again,” or leave a review... it helps this podcast reach the people who need it most.

Listen to Episode 5 next: We’re getting specific... the exact labs to run post-loss, why they matter for fertility, and how to interpret them.

Transcript

0:06

If you have had one or several miscarriages, or you've struggled to get or stay pregnant for any length of time, first I want you to know that my heart is with you and you're in the right place here because we are about to dive into exactly what I would recommend that you do moving forward, which will most likely be very different than what your doctor may have told you. The first thing I want you to hear is that you don't have to take your doctor's advice as your truth. Different doctors will say different things. Some will recommend waiting for three losses before doing any testing, any further exploration into the why behind the losses, which, as I already mentioned, is outdated advice that's based on insurance coverage and arbitrary statistics. Some doctors will recommend testing after two losses. And the best ones will tell you that when you want answers, you deserve to get them. What did your doctor tell you? And how did it feel in your body to hear it? Was the voice in your head just screaming, no, as they told you that it was just bad luck and to resume trying whenever you're ready and call them when you're pregnant again? Because mine did. Advice based solely on statistics may not feel right, and that is totally, totally, totally okay. You get to decide what feels right for you and what your path to recovery and fertility optimization should look like. You get to decide when the time is right for you to take a deeper dive, to understand your body better, to get answers instead of just having one million questions flying through your head all day. Because you're going to, you're going to have so many what ifs swirling around. What if I had slept more? What if I didn't do that workout? What if I ate more vegetables? What if we went to the doctor sooner or didn't go at all or tried progesterone suppositories? Or what if I was less stressed? And on and on and on. Human brains will always try to find a way to find answers, even when we know we'll never get them. Try not to make yourself wrong for this, because it's literally just part of being human. So instead of trying to shut those down or ignore them or make them go away because they won't, just notice them, be with them, journal about them, talk about them in therapy, whatever it looks like for you to actually sit with those what-ifs. Make peace with the fact that those questions will remain unanswered, and that there are other parts of this experience that you actually can get real answers around. One of the things that you absolutely do have control over is everything that you believe or don't believe about your body, about your situation, about your fertility, about pregnancy. You are responsible for believing that there is a way and that it is possible for you to get and stay pregnant, to hold a healthy baby in your arms. You get to believe that you will be led to the right information, the right practitioner, the right path to pregnancy for you. You get to believe that and you need to believe that. So let's get curious about it. Do you believe that? Do you believe right now, today, as you're listening to this, that you will be led to whatever right information, right practitioner, right path to pregnancy, whatever it's, whatever it's supposed to look like for you? Do you believe that it is already being laid out? Do you believe that whatever you need to find, you'll be led to? Or maybe not? Maybe you need to spend some time with that. How much time each day do you spend believing and being the version of you that's already there? What would the three months pregnant version of you do? The six months pregnant version of you do? The version of you that's holding your newborn? What does she eat for breakfast? How does she feel about her body? What does she know is possible for her? What does she read? What does she watch? What does she listen to? Who does she surround herself with? What does she look for proof of? Does she spend her days on the internet, on message boards, reading about other people's traumatic pregnancy experiences? Or does she spend time getting quiet and being with herself and envision herself happily and healthily pregnant? This is what I mean when I say how much time a day do you spend believing? It can feel like imagining. Let's call it that. Are you imagining that you are already three months pregnant, six months pregnant, holding your newborn? Are you getting familiar with that version of you? Are you feeling what it feels like to be her? Are you making decisions as her? You know, what would that version of me eat for breakfast? What would that version of me think when she first wakes up in the morning? What's the last thing she thinks about before she goes to bed? Etc. etc. etc. And on that same vein, what are you accidentally convincing yourself is true about your body and your fertility that is actually not? Like what stories are there that aren't serving you? Is it I've had one loss, so inevitably I'm going to have another? Is it, you know, the next time I get pregnant, it's going to be terrifying? Is it, if I just had done X, Y, Z differently, I would have stayed pregnant. Are any of those things ultimately true? Like would any of those things hold up in court? Could you prove them in a court of law? No, you couldn't. So what that means is it's they're actually not facts. They are stories. And if they are stories, that means you can rewrite them. So after you can pause the episode here or take some time afterwards, but I want you to notice what stories am I telling myself? While you're spending some time getting curious about what stories you might be believing about yourself that you didn't even realize were kind of running in the background, I want to share with you some of my favorite tools to help notice, navigate, rewrite, and uh, you know, begin to believe something different. So one of the one of the tools that I like a lot is just the idea of the equal and opposite. So when your brain goes, what if worst case scenario happens, right? What if I get pregnant and have another loss? Or what if I never get pregnant again? What if that was my one shot and I missed it? Okay, equal and opposite of that, what if it isn't my one shot? What if I get pregnant again and that pregnancy ends in a healthy baby? If one side of the spectrum is true, it means that just by nature, the equal and opposite must also be true. It's it's one of the foundational truths of the world that we live in is duality. If one side of the coin is possible, so is the other. So we're not trying to pretend worst case scenario doesn't exist, because realistically, you know it does. You've already experienced it. But that doesn't make it the only possibility. So when we zoom out and say, yes, I am well aware that worst case scenario is possible, and let's flip the coin, look at the other side. Okay, what's best case scenario? If worst case scenario is possible, that means best case scenario must be possible too. When we do that, it takes away some of the power and the heaviness and the magnitude of the other side of that coin. Both sides are possible. Both there's room for both, not just the worst case, the negative, the what if that we're focused on, right? So it can just help to neutralize the what-ifs. So that can be a game that you kind of play with yourself throughout the day, where you notice yourself going down the what-if rabbit hole. Okay, pull back. What's the equal and opposite of whatever, whatever story you were telling yourself? If one is possible, then so is the other. And you just leave it at that. It may feel really simple, but it's actually incredibly powerful because again, we're not we're not then only spending time thinking about the worst thing that could happen. We're we're putting energy toward and creating space for the best case scenario. Another strategy that I love is brain dump journaling. And maybe you've heard me talk about it if you follow me on Instagram, maybe not. So brain dump journaling is putting pen to paper, dumping all of the thoughts out of your head and not making them mean anything. So the way that I do this is pen and paper has to be pen and paper, cannot be typed on your phone, typed on a computer. There's some special magic that happens when you physically write. So that's the most important part of this is pen and paper or pencil. Set a timer for three minutes, five minutes, something that feels reasonable. I usually don't do more than five minutes because otherwise my brain goes, whoa, that's like way too much commitment. So three or five minutes is great, or even one minute if it feels really daunting. During that time, while that timer is set, I really don't pick my pen up off my paper. So I am just stream of consciousness writing, and it's not legible. I've shared my brain dumps on my Instagram stories before, and people always ask me, like, what language is that? It literally doesn't even look like English because it's just scribbles, because it's never gonna need to be read again. It's the idea of dumping all of the crowded thoughts out of your brain to just make some space. So it could be my it could be whatever, right? Like you're we're just writing and we're not judging. It could be my hair, I don't like how my hair looks today, my breakfast turned out bad, um, my car needs gas. And then before you know it, that turns into I'm really afraid that I'm going to have another miscarriage, and I don't know if I can handle that, if it happens again, and what if I never get pregnant? And before you know it, you're dumping out all of these like fears and stories and worries, and sometimes things will even come out that you didn't even know was in there, like you didn't even know you were holding. So it's the idea of we're setting intention, we're setting a timer, we're just writing things out. Sometimes it ends up being a grocery list. Sometimes it's like, oh, I'm really craving pomegranate today. Sometimes it's I really want to go shopping for some new clothes. Whatever. There is no right or wrong way to do it. It's just, okay, I have a head full of stories and what-ifs and stress and anxiety, and I am just full to the brim, and I don't have space to just exhale. So dump your brain out, throw it away. I have a journal that once it gets completely full with my brain dump scribbles, it just goes in the garbage. Or you can burn it. You can do whatever feels good to you. So there is something therapeutic about burning it. So I would encourage you to consider that as an option too. Brain dump journaling can be done as often as you need. There are times where I do it multiple times in a day where I can just feel the swirling and the heaviness in my brain, and it's like, okay, uh, today is gonna be a double brain dump day. It's something you can use at any time, start of the day, end of the day, middle of the day, wherever you need it. And I think it serves as a really nice reset point. And I am known for saying you can start your day over at any point. It could be 5 p.m. and you could be like, I've been carrying around all of these stories all day long. And then you pick that moment to get them out and start your day fresh. Another tool I like to use is the, well, I guess it's kind of a little bit of a game where I'll ask myself, what am I making this mean? So for me, I'll use myself as an example. I had one miscarriage. What am I making that mean? Am I making it mean that I'm likely to have another one? Am I making it mean that I failed? Am I making it mean that I can't trust my body? Am I making it mean that, well, the doctor said there's nothing to worry about, so all I'm left to do is sit here and worry and wonder? Fuck no. Literally to every single one of those, fuck no. Check in, like, well, okay, what am I what do I believe that that means about me? Whatever that is. If it's I had a miscarriage, what do I believe that that means? And what else? And what else? And then you get to rewrite those things so that you can choose to believe differently. So for me, back to using me as an example, I had one miscarriage. Really doesn't mean any like I had a miscarriage, yeah, and it fucking sucked. And moving forward, I get to be so intentional about the way that I enter into future attempts to grow my family. I believe in my body, I believe that pregnancy is possible for me, and I believe that doing what I can and letting the rest go will be exactly enough for me to get there. Now that we've spent some time talking about the emotional and mental side of recovery, let's move into talking about the actual physical recovery and kind of what your body needs, because chances are your doctor spent little to no time walking you through this, and it's so, so, so important. So the focus after a loss should be very similar to what one might focus on postpartum, as well as during the menstrual phase of your cycle. All of these seasons of time would be categorized the same way as kind of like a time of internal winter, meaning the body needs gentle care and warmth and slowness and restoration. So, what does that really look like? The first thing we need to really be aware of is just overall replenishing resources. The early stages of pregnancy are very energy intensive and require a lot of resources, otherwise known as vitamins, minerals, or nutrients. Our focus nutritionally should be on prioritizing nutrient-dense foods like eggs and red meat and berries and beans and sweet potatoes and avocados and fatty fish and bone broth, soups, things like that. Chinese medicine would call these foods blood-nourishing. Western medicine might call them iron-rich or, you know, just healthy foods. Alongside eating these blood-nourishing foods, there's kind of more to the story about what can be supportive. So it's not just what we eat, but it's the rhythm in which we eat. We should not be depriving ourselves in this season. We should be certainly eating three meals a day. Breakfast should not be skipped, first of all. And second of all, it should be eaten within an hour of waking to support optimal thyroid function and metabolic function and just a general sense of safety within the nervous system. All of our meals should include a source of protein and healthy fat and fiber. We should do our best to get a variety of plant intake, and that would be fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, grains, spices, herbs. We should keep our caffeine intake moderate because more caffeine means more sort of internal overdrive stress response and therefore more nutrient depletion, not to mention just more internal sense of stress in and of itself. And we should also look at, you know, trying to crowd out items that come from packages by putting just more whole foods on our plate. This is absolutely not the time to incorporate any kind of restrictive eating habits like intermittent fasting, cutting out food groups, going keto, or doing any type of detox or cleanse. And I think there's a lot of predatory marketing that is geared towards those who are trying to get pregnant or specifically trying to get pregnant after loss that can lead you to think, oh, it was because I need to cleanse my liver or I need to do this type of detox, or it's because I have parasites, or you know, it can unfortunately, there are lots of people and companies out there marketing to the pain points of those who are trying to get pregnant or uh, you know, in general, or get pregnant after loss, and it is largely to the detriment of women like us because we are vulnerable and we are willing to do anything, and therefore we will try things like this detox or cleanse or uh you know a new supplement or intermittent fasting because we just want to grasp onto anything that will work, right? But what our bodies actually need is a sense of safety. We need to work with our body to provide foundational resources that signal safety and allow our biology to slowly return to homeostasis, which by nature we are designed to do. Along this same train of thought, we want to overall minimize biological stressors or things that signal to your body that it needs to activate a fight or flight response. So, you know, we think about, okay, stressors, right? A fight with your partner, a work deadline, your if you have children, your kids, you know, refusing to put their shoes on or not brushing their teeth or throwing a tantrum, whatever it is, right? But there are actually biological stressors happening deep within the body that we may not even be aware of. And these could be things like blood sugar swings or unintentionally under-eating any food group, or keeping carbohydrate intake too low because carbs have been demonized by diet culture for a long time, or getting poor quality or quantity of sleep, or really just never allowing yourself to rest or slow down no matter how tired you are. These are all things that are setting your body up to feel unsafe and stay feeling unsafe, and healing doesn't happen there. Now, as your body returns to a cyclical hormonal rhythm, it's important that you do your best to try to be patient with it. I personally noticed lots of jawline acne after miscarriage, and you know, I didn't love it, but I just really didn't make it mean anything. I knew that that was evidence that my body was working its way through processing and clearing pregnancy hormones, and I knew it would run its course. It can be common to experience all kinds of funky symptoms like night sweats or headaches or changes to bowel movements or digestion or feelings of fatigue or heaviness or emotional numbness, irritability, lots of crying, sleep disturbances. But the most important thing here is to give your body grace. Keep supporting the strong foundations through everything we've just talked about: nutrition, hydration, gentle movement, etc. And if you're feeling the need for support, this is a place where I would highly recommend acupuncture as a tool to gently help your body regulate and find balance. Now, let's circle back to movement because we haven't really touched on that yet. So, movement in a post-loss season should happen only as energy returns and only in ways that feel nourishing rather than depleting. So, this is not the time to just keep doing your HIT classes five days a week or you know, train for a half marathon or whatever. This is the time to walk and do Pilates, yoga, maybe weight training a couple days a week if that was like already in your practice and only as it feels right. We're not pushing, pushing, pushing. We are looking at, you know, to what degree there's a sweet spot, right? Our bodies need rest and sometimes they also need some movement, right? So it's finding that balance and noticing where you are feeling inclined to push past tiredness and kind of holding yourself back from doing that, but also allowing yourself to move in ways that do feel nourishing. So this is gonna look different for everybody, but it's just so important not to try to jump right back into business as usual because in your body, it is not business as usual. All of this that we've talked about is absolutely crucial to rebuilding resilience and setting up your body for a future healthy pregnancy. In the first half of this episode, we talked about the mental and emotional side of this resilience building, and pairing that with the strong physical rebuilding strategies will set your body up to feel safe enough and well-resourced enough to get and stay pregnant from a place of internal overflow rather than depletion. To add further nuance and depth to this time of replenishing resources, it can be incredibly helpful to run labs to get a clear read on which specific nutrients may need extra attention or which organ systems could use some support, where things are, you know, where your body might be struggling with inflammation, etc. etc. So in the next episode, I'm going to list in detail the exact labs I recommend ordering and what their specific significance is to your fertility. Spoiler alert, I'm putting together a bundle of labs based on everything we're going to talk about next time that's specifically tailored to both preconception and post loss. And you can hop on the wait list to get all of the details via the link in the show notes, and we'll talk more about this in the next episode too.