Struggling with infertility, miscarriage, or loss is incredibly difficult, and feeling isolated can often compound those difficult feelings. While it’s so important to have a support system, it can be hard to reach out to those closest to you, especially if they have not dealt with the same issues. Elyse Ash, our guest today, and founder of Fruitful Fertility is working to create connections to help people struggling with infertility. The platform pairs mentors, who have come out the other end of an infertility struggle, with mentees who are currently struggling with the issue. In this episode, we learn about some of the benefits of using this platform. For mentors, it gives them a chance to pay it forward and share their story, while for mentees, they can connect with someone who is not going to judge them. Elyse sheds light on how her own infertility struggles were the catalyst to create the platform. As an extrovert, she felt isolated, so she couldn’t imagine what others with less of a support system must have been going through.
Struggling with infertility, miscarriage, or loss is incredibly difficult, and feeling isolated can often compound those difficult feelings. While it’s so important to have a support system, it can be hard to reach out to those closest to you, especially if they have not dealt with the same issues. Elyse Ash, our guest today, and founder of Fruitful Fertility is working to create connections to help people struggling with infertility. The platform pairs mentors, who have come out the other end of an infertility struggle, with mentees who are currently struggling with the issue. In this episode, we learn about some of the benefits of using this platform. For mentors, it gives them a chance to pay it forward and share their story, while for mentees, they can connect with someone who is not going to judge them. Elyse sheds light on how her own infertility struggles were the catalyst to create the platform. As an extrovert, she felt isolated, so she couldn’t imagine what others with less of a support system must have been going through.
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Speaker 2:Hi everyone. We are Rena and Dara, and welcome to fertility forward. We are part of the wellness team at RMA of New York, a fertility clinic affiliated with Mount Sinai hospital in New York city. Our fertility Ford podcast brings together advice from medical professionals, mental health specialists, wellness experts, and patients because knowledge is power and you are your own best advocate. Elise Ash is the founder of fruitful fertility, a free mentorship program that connects those struggling with infertility. With those who have been through it firsthand. This idea of mentorship started back in 2014 when Elise was struggling herself to conceive along with her husband, Brad, fast forward five years, this company has grown and evolved into something so much more. In today's episode, we discuss this platform and how it has helped those struggling to conceive. Hi everyone. It's Rena and Dara here with fertility forward, and we're so excited today to have on the lovely Elise Ash from fruitful fertility. Thank you so much, at least for joining us today. So excited to have you guys thank you so much for having me. Can you tell our listeners where you're calling from? This is our first ever Skype podcast, and so we have you remote. Oh my gosh. I feel so honored. I am calling from Minneapolis, Minnesota, so right in the middle of the country, ah, a little further away than just New York city. Yeah. That would be quite the commute. Totally. So I'm so excited to tell our listeners about fruitful fertility. I know I refer all of my patients do when they come back and tell me they've made these amazing connections and have braided is so let's tell everyone first what fruitful fertility is, how you got started. Um, and I have so many questions for you. I know Dara dads too. Yeah. Great. So fruitful is a fertility mentorship service. So we connect people who are struggling emotionally as they navigate in fertility miscarriage loss with a mentor. Someone who's been through it before, but is now on the other side of that experience. So our mentors are usually people who have gone through infertility themselves, whether that's, you know, IUI or IVF, holistic options, whatever that looks like. And now they want to give back to the community. They want to support people. One-on-one so it's a really great tool for people who are maybe exhausting, their personal network of people don't want to necessarily hear about the nitty gritty stuff of infertility or who don't really get it. You know, this is really based on a problem that I saw when I was going through in fertility with my husband. And I realized that my regular support system who was awesome through so much stuff through job moves and drama with my husband and all kinds of stuff, they were so
Speaker 3:Great. But with infertility, they just really struggled to empathize. And so I found that the people who were really the most helpful to me emotionally were people who had been through it before, but were no longer actively going through it. So while it's great to, you know, have support groups or cycle buddies, I'm a pretty competitive person. And I still left those conversations feeling a little bit like, Oh, well we only had seven eggs and she had 14 eggs or, Oh, she got pregnant after this long and we're still trying. So there was still always a slight competitiveness that I didn't like, but when I could talk to someone who was a couple years removed, they had a bit more perspective and they could help, you know, really support me in a present way that didn't feel as tense that you said that, that I think
Speaker 4:In terms of, I never thought of it that way. Cause I know Rena and myself, both struggled getting pregnant and it's true. Usually, you know, whether it's your partner, whether it's a friend or a close relative or even someone who is also trying to get pregnant the competitiveness, but also, you know, opening up, everyone has a different experience partnering with someone. And I know you had said this previously, and it's also on your site that you pair someone up perhaps based on religion, perhaps based on similar protocol, maybe both of these patients have, or have PCOS. I think it's great that you really do try to connect people based on similar experiences, but one person that's already gone through it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I think that's the real value of the program. You know, anyone can join a Facebook group or create a private Instagram account, which those are great resources too. But what we do is really match based on a variety of different data points. So how old are you? How long have you been trying? What's your diagnosis? Where are you interested in? Are you interested in nutrition or yoga or acupuncture? Are you religious? Do you like hiking? Are you looking at donor eggs? Are you a single mother by choice? Like we account for all of these different, very specific scenarios that make it hard for people to find people just like them. So we really eliminate that barrier and try to match people based on a variety of different experiences. Whenever I tell people about you, I say it's almost like a dating service.[inaudible] explain it. Yeah. It's very similar to a Bumble or match or something like that where, you know, you're really trusting the algorithm a little bit, but then we also have people on our team who review those applications firsthand so that we're making sure, okay. Everything winds up according to the way that the algorithm is suggesting. Cause I was going to ask you, you know, I started, I feel like I started working with you like way back at the beginning, right? When you started in, when I think, I don't know if it was just you reviewing the applications inside of was going to sit, are you guys using an algorithm now? How big is your database? I mean, I feel like I sent almost every patient to you. Yeah. We have a great New York cohort actually. Thanks to a lot of, you know, the word of mouth you guys helped spread, but we do still have that hand review element. Someone reviewing every single application, our algorithm is 18 point matching. So takes a bunch of different variety of data based on what people send us. So the more detailed people are in their applications, the better we're able to match them. The more specifically somebody says what they're looking for, Oh, I'm looking for someone I can meet in person. Or I'm looking for someone who has this belief system. I never want to talk to somebody who believes everything happens for a reason, whatever that is that helps us better find the match. So that's how it works. We currently have about 4,000 users all across the U S yeah, it's pretty awesome. So across the U S we have a couple of other countries as well, Canada, Australia, the UK, a couple of other places, but mostly in the U S and really it's a great community, really impact their life. Give back in a meaningful way. So people who feel like this experience changed them, which is almost everyone who's gone through this, to be honest, but it really gives people the opportunity to almost go back in time and tell younger them what they wished they had known what to ask, like how to approach going to a clinic, what to consider when they're trying to make these huge decisions. So I think that's really the value for the mentor. And mentees obviously are getting a ton of value from the experience as well.
Speaker 4:Lisa, so nice that it's not just in the U S that it's abroad, especially being Canadian. Let's say if someone wants to be a mentor for more than one person, is that one of the questions that's on the questionnaire?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So people can decide it is an option. Yeah. So mentors can decide if they want to only mentor one person or mentor more than one. The relationships really differ based on the individual match. So if the mentee is someone who needs a lot of support, the mentor can decide, okay, this is kind of like the max that I'm able to give right now. Or if they, their mentee is, you know, not very active or doesn't really need that much. Other than the occasional text, they can volunteer to help more than one person. So, yeah, that's all asked through our application.
Speaker 2:I love that. And you know, I love that you touched upon that these are people who have done it in the past, and they're out of the process because I always, I mean, for myself when I went through it, you know, I always found that finding other people who shared the experience was really such a strong connection and a strong bond, but it often did feel, as you said, very competitive. You know, people started talking about numbers and you know, of course you want somebody to have success. You want them to get pregnant. You want the process to work for them, but then it sort of feels like they're on the other side and you're not in that really is then a divide between the two of you. And so I do love that this is something where people have had success they're done. And there is, it takes away that competitive edge. I think that's, that's hugely important.
Speaker 3:And our mentors, most people have become parents one way or another, but not everyone. We really value the experiences of everyone who's gone through this process. And we really value all the different ways that things can shake out. And some people want to talk to women or men who have decided to deliver child-free. They want to hear those stories. They want to hear from people who had a lot of failed rounds of IVF or who had a lot of different transfers or who had a bunch of different outcomes. So that's really important as well. Okay. So you do have an authenticity match with someone that has closed the chapter on having children and men, and they're living a child's life and willing to talk to other people about that. So it doesn't have to be someone that's had success. Exactly. Yeah. And we really want to make this an environment where everyone feels included and like their stories matter. And so we really want to make sure everyone feels like they can pass on what they learned from their story. Really, the only criteria we have is that you've made peace with your story. So, so our mentors have a diverse assortment of how comes and things that have happened to them and experiences. So we try to make sure everyone is represented and can help share their story. There's value in all those different outcomes. And we have different mentees who have been trying for really long periods of time who want to talk to someone who decided to live child-free or who want to talk to someone who had maybe five failed rounds of IVF and these, all these different experiences matter and all of these stories matter and can help other people. Oh yeah. Totally. For sure. So let's talk about
Speaker 2:Some of your highlights of your job.
Speaker 3:Absolutely love. And then on the flip side, maybe some of the hardest parts of what you do
Speaker 2:Your day basis.
Speaker 3:Sure. The great parts are really hearing the stories of people who have connected through the platform and who now have genuine relationships and connections with their mentor or mentee. I never get tired of hearing those stories. They're so fun. I actually have one mentor who had two or three different mentees, and now they're all friends. They've all kind of come together and created almost their own little support group of sorts. So those are really great stories to hear. I love hearing from people who live somewhere a little bit more remote and might not have access to a lot of the awesome services that people in New York or even Minneapolis have people who have access to resolve support groups or great therapists or acupuncture. People who, you know, might live in a really small town, might have a lot of siblings might be going to church every week and hearing, you know, when are you having kids take talk? This might be really their only chance at having someone who really understands who they can be a hundred percent authentic with about their story. So those are really like the highlights where I think, Oh my gosh, this is just creating such a value for some people and really helping them feel less alone during a really dark time. I'd say the most challenging components are reading some of these applications and reading people's stories because not everyone has that happy ending and not everybody has a really great, amazing experience or ending. And those can be really hard to read because you want everyone to get the family that they deserve and what they're working towards. You know, nothing makes somebody one person more worthy of a child than somebody else. And those stories can be hard. Hear when you're looking at people who might not be able to afford treatment or who might not have a partner who's open-minded or might be stuck somewhere. Those are the people that I just really, really want to find other ways to help. I can only imagine seeing them listening to that is challenging. Yeah, for sure. And even just on a personal level, for sure. You retraumatized from my own experience in fertility.
Speaker 2:So this isn't a, you started because you went through infertility yourself.
Speaker 3:It is. Yeah. So I started fruitful because when I was going through and fertility, I just felt really unseen and unsupported, which was surprising because I'm a really extroverted social person. And I was just thinking, wow, if I don't feel supported, I can't even imagine people who have a lot of shame around this or who don't want to talk to their friends and family about it. They must feel really isolated. And so I had this idea when we were going through infertility and my husband and I, we went through three years of endometriosis diagnosis, two rounds of IVF, genetically abnormal embryos, all this kind of stuff. And that was, yeah, there was a lot of trial and error through this whole process. And I was just really surprised at how hard it was defined information, how hard it was to find people who had been through something similar and how I was actively looking. And I was really trying to be proactive with like the self care stuff and building my community. I was trying to do everything right. And I still was struggling. I thought, God, this is so needlessly isolating. I know there are people who have gone through this. I know I'm not the only one, but where are they?
Speaker 2:Oh, wow. That's a powerful story. Right. Very powerful. I love that you turned this into, you know, making something good out of your struggles. And I think that's so powerful and strong and brave and how selfless. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well, thank you. I mean, I'd say it's a little bit selfish too, just because it was so cathartic. We started fruitful while we were still very much in the middle of our story. So we didn't have like the happy ending yet when we started it, we didn't know what was going to happen. And that was kind of the scariest part was it's one thing to be honest about, you know, your story and what you're going through with your best friends or your family. But once we launched for, and we had to start promoting it and talking about it, and then all of a sudden I knew what was going to become part of my identity. And I was worried I was going to make people sad, but I think I was also just really surprised by how people really do, just want to support you, even if they don't know how they want to. And so giving them ways and opportunities to help support you is awesome too. And it was just a cool experience working with my husband. He's a sophomore engineer and a computer programmer. And my background is in advertising and marketing. So we both had 12 years of experience in our respective industries and really just like mashed our heads together to try to solve this thing. And it was just a really beautiful cathartic experience for us.
Speaker 2:Wow. And now is this something you guys are doing full time or are you still have other jobs? Um, my husband
Speaker 3:Is still at his job full time. I actually just went full time on fruitful about a month ago. So thank you. Yes. I'm really excited about that. We're making some really awesome changes. We're going to be launching a new app, which people are going to be able to connect through in the next month or two. So that's exciting. Yeah. We have a lot of cool changes coming up, which I think our users are really going to like. So I'm excited to add some new features, change a little bit and keep helping the community.
Speaker 2:So besides the app, what is the best way to get started? Anyone on either side, whether it's a mentor or a mentee, what's the best way to,
Speaker 3:Yeah. So you can visit our website, fruitful fertility.org, or just Google fruitful fertility, and then it'll pop up and you can pop on. And there are two different registration forms, one for if you want to become a mentor. So if you have made peace with your fertility journey, or if you are in the process of wrapping up your family, so to speak, and you think that you have some empathy and time to give to somebody else to help them please sign up. We're always looking for awesome mentors who want to help other people and share their story and connect authentically. Or conversely, if you're someone who's still very much in the muck and in the middle of trying to navigate things and you are just like dodging those baby shower, invitations and crying in the baby section of target. I see you. I feel you. I was her and we're here to help you so you can sign up, you can click, find a mentor on our website and that'll take you through the application process. Okay.
Speaker 2:That's so easy. And we'll definitely put all of that out on all of our information and everything too. And then before we wrap up, though, I wanted to go back something that you said, you know, struck me and I think is so important to share with listeners. You know, a lot of times my patients come to me and they say, you know, my parents aren't supporting me and my friends aren't supporting me and my partners in supporting me. And I always say, okay, you know, we have to set those people in your life up for success. You know, you have to give them the tools to help you because a lot of times people don't know how to respond to what you're going through since at the end of the day, what you really need is a healthy live birth. And nobody can give that to you. And so I think as you kind of touched upon it's, it's hard because it involves being vulnerable and asking for help and doing some soul, searching to figure out what you need, but it's giving people the tools and setting them up for success so that you can be supportive.
Speaker 3:I think it's a two sided issue where it's on our friends and family to dig deep and try to empathize and not solve our problems. Not troubleshoot, not share success, stories of that friend from work. They heard about who, the second, she just relaxed and they went on vacation. She magically got pregnant. Like I think[inaudible], we want to help. Oh my God. Yeah. Yep. Great, cool advice. Thanks so much. When I told my grandma that we were trying and struggling, she said, Oh my gosh, I wish I had that problem. I had the opposite problem. She had five kids in seven years. I was like, thanks, grandma, two story. You know, I think I tried,
Speaker 2:I think at the end of the day, they're coming from a good place and they just don't know what to say. And I think also everybody needs something different. And some people like to hear that totally people don't want to talk about it. Some people want to be checked up on something, you will want to share their friends and family, and then don't want them to ask questions. And so that's why I think communication is so important. And you know, it goes back to setting people up for success on both sides so that you can figure out how to best help each other through it. Because I do think as much as it affects the individual going through it, it does also certainly affect those close to them too, in a different way. Of course, totally. And I think also not only do the needs change per person, your needs could change by the hour. Like some days I was like, God, I just want to like talk about this for four hours and get really into the nitty gritties and talk about like egg, quality and embryo grade. And like, I just really want to get into it. And some days I'm like, I don't want to talk about this at all. Can we please just watch friends reruns? So I think you need to know yourself and you need to know like where you are in the process and it's okay to set up your boundaries. Even if you told, you know, when's your retrievable, how's it going? It's totally okay to be like, you know what? I don't really want to share about that today. Can we actually just go out to get ice cream? Or can we go to the movies? Can we just be distracted for a little bit or to say, Hey, can we like get into some Googling right now to figure out like, no, stay on the internet. It's funny that you said that that's totally fair.
Speaker 4:It's funny that you said it. Cause for me, I think this is such a great resource. A lot of times we Google and we can get down that black hole of negativity and yes, a lot of our experiences have a negative component to it, but in some ways this can give people hope and more positivity of at least hearing experiences that have some glimmer of hope to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I think even like, Oh my gosh, in Google, the worst part is just, you're on these like random forum sites from 2007, like reading these weird, I hate don't live in two ago. Don't you think
Speaker 4:Most are negative, not the positive.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And people are all just projecting their own trauma and their own experience onto the internet, which is why it's such a deep dark place and can actually make things so much harder. I think about that a lot, especially with Facebook groups. And I think about that a lot with fruitful too, is how can we help protect people who are feeling really vulnerable from seeing photos, you know of, Oh my gosh, is this a positive pregnancy test? When I like very clearly is like go away with that stuff right? Where we can just support each other and be a hundred percent honest and not have to worry about like our personal brand and all this crap that's going on. As soon as I tell everyone, stay off the internet and I had my own harsh reality the other day, I haven't been on dr. Google in a really long time, probably three years. And then I had some weird exercise injury. And so I Googled what the doctor told me. I went on this dark hole and you know, five minutes and I was convinced I had kidney failure and my lungs were bloated. I had to take a step back. Whoa, Rena stop. What are you doing? But they actually have totally stuffed back away from the computer.
Speaker 4:Well, for me, the idea of like human contact speaking, and it's one thing typing and emailing, it's another thing actually hearing someone's voice, there's something, you know, spirit human about that, which is great that this is an Avenue to give it.
Speaker 2:Totally. That's great. I think, and I also think like you can be a hundred percent honest with somebody anonymous. I think a lot about like alcoholics anonymous and how you can roll in and really just share your deepest, most private, crazy story. And people are going to support you in. Sure. You want to not judge you versus, okay. I have to like give a press release to my best friend about how I'm managing my expectations for this thing. Because if I am really honest about how I'm feeling, she might judge me or I might be misunderstood. And so if you can talk to someone and just be a hundred percent honest about what's going on, that is such a huge value. Oh yeah. And you know, the people that are anonymous, so you come in as a blank slate, you know, no one knows you from before or with all the stuff you carry with you, you're a blank slate. There's no judgment. And sometimes it's easier to share with strangers because you're not worried about any of that.
Speaker 4:And also getting more of an objective point of view.
Speaker 2:Yes. I think that's a huge point as well. I think that's something that we miss a lot is that kind of perspective or someone to ask us questions that we might not be asking ourselves about what's actually happening versus the narrative that we've told ourselves. Yeah. And I think with this too, you know, sometimes it's all that aligning energies and you're aligning people who want to be helped and who want to help. Yeah, exactly. And it's cool. Every mentor that we have either has shared one of two stories when they've heard the idea, they've either said, Oh my gosh, I could never have gone through infertility without my network, without my mentor, without my sister in law who also went through IVF, I can't imagine what that would be like. And then you have the other people who said, I didn't have anyone and I wish this had existed. And I just loved this idea so much. And so that's really the inspiration for this altruism. People want to give back. They want to help other people. It's really beautiful. Okay.
Speaker 4:I was just thinking least, I'm sure you see quite a number of people who have been a mentee and then gotten pregnant and then want to be a mentor. Do you have the stats on that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we do. So now that we've been up, we launched in April, 2017. So we've been up for about two years now and now we've had about, I'd say 50 people who've converted their accounts to now be for, so those are, those are awesome. The numbers I'm sure going to go up. Yeah. I think there's going to be an exponential component to that as well. It's just a really exciting, cool experience to see people who got so much out of the program wanting to give back. I love that so much. I think this is so powerful and I'm so, so happy. I have this as a resource to Sarah, my patients, I can't even tell, I love sending people your way. Everyone always comes back to me. Oh my gosh. I made the best connection. I love my mentor. This is so great. I can't wait till I can become a mentor. You know, they're already thinking forward. So I'm so grateful that I was able to connect with you. You started this. I think it's fantastic. I know you have it. That's great.
Speaker 4:Yeah. A great Avenue in the coming mind, something to look out for. So first-line go online, Google, fruitful fertility, but in the coming minds, there will be an app, um, as another Avenue to connect. So what we typically do to end our podcast is we ask everyone what you're grateful for at this moment or today. So Elise
Speaker 2:Are you grateful for? I am really grateful that there are so many awesome women and people in the space like you guys to help shine a light on this topic and help de-stigmatize in fertility. I think we're already changing culture. Even in the time that I started trying to build my family. I've just seen so many great positive changes in activists and advocacy and people trying to make a change. So I think we're doing it. I love that. Sarah, what are you grateful for?
Speaker 4:I'm grateful for a lot of things, but especially for entrepreneurs like you, Elise, you really found a niche market, something that was, you know, not something that was in the space of fertility in the past, you realized what you needed and created something for all the other people behind you who really could use that outside support. Who've gone through it. I think it's great. It's, it's something that I'm sure arena could attest this. I wish we had this when we were struggling ourselves, but I am definitely going to go up now and sign up to become a mentor. Rena, what about you?
Speaker 2:No, I guess again, I'm so grateful for, you know, women in the space, powerful women going out there to do the dialogue. I think this is a real game changer. An activist curious, at least to what are your goals for fruitful? Where do you see this going? Yeah, I mean, I see this as really just the first product feature in a product that I think can help. A lot of people. I want to keep listening to the community and seeing how can we alleviate the pain points? How can we make this better? How can we help educate and inspire people who are going through this really traumatic time and how can we partner with clinics? How can we partner with more clinics like Rema, um, to help get patients the care that they need and the support they need because clinics are doing such a great job at that medical component and an offering a lot of different psychological services as well. But how can we add that community factor? How can we add that emotional support beyond the nine to five hours at the clinic is open? So I'm really curious about what those kinds of relationships could look like to, to best help more people.
Speaker 4:At least you, you beat me to it. I was actually going to say just, you know, usually when patients first come to RMA, they're told that Rina is available. If you want to meet with her, I'm available, if you want to talk about, but it
Speaker 2:Should be, you know, upon first meeting, this is another option that every patient I think should really be informed about, especially in clinics that don't have people like you on staff. You know, there are like Rema so far ahead in a lot of ways. And there are a lot of clinics that don't offer those services. So if you're a provider and you have, and who's having a complete mental breakdown and in the middle of your consultation, what happens after they leave? And so that's really something that I'm trying to figure out too is how can we best support these patients when they're feeling so vulnerable and alone, they have 20 minutes and it was 300 bucks. Okay, bye, good luck make this huge emotional decision. You know, I tell patients once they come to me and maybe I sit into our podcast listeners, but look, I tell people, look you either, I always talk email. You text me anytime. This is not a Monday to Friday nine to five job. It just isn't, you know, a lot of this stuff is very time sensitive. There's a lot of trauma happening. This is not a nine to five thing and there does have to be something more sustainable though, than one person who's handling all of that because that's not possible for anybody. And so I think I love what your, your goals on, you know, what is it that each clinic, you know, has sort of an on call service that you can call for mental health at any time, you know, 24 hours? Like, what does that look like? How can we change that to give people better support? Absolutely, totally. And I talk all the time about how fruitful is really meant to be one tool in your toolbox. It is not meant to replace therapy. It is not meant to replace acupuncture, support groups, anything that you're getting value from. It is not meant to replace that. It's really just an additional tool in your toolbox when you're in a place of crisis and you need someone to talk to. And I think, you know, I always tell patients, look, you need, it's not just one tool. And as you said, it's you need multiple tools, lots of other supports to help get you through this. You know, you can't rely on one person to fill every single need because that person is ultimately going to fail. That's putting too much on somebody. And so you need to get different supports from different people in different places, put together a collaborative team, put different things in place to kind of create one full picture for you. Absolutely. Well, we are so thrilled that you are such a great resource and thanks for sharing your story and what you've created. We're very impressed and we, we see great things coming your way. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me. Thanks so much for coming on, Elise. Thank you so much for listening today and always remember practice gratitude, give a little love to someone else and yourself. And remember you are not alone. Find us on Instagram at fertility underscore forward. And if you're looking for more support, visit us@wwwdotrmaandy.com and tune in next week for more fertility forward,
Speaker 1:[inaudible].