Ep 293: The IVF Blueprint, Part I: Laying the Groundwork for Success

Fertility Docs Uncensored is hosted by Dr. Carrie Bedient from the Fertility Center of Las Vegas, Dr. Susan Hudson from the Texas Fertility Center, and Dr. Abby Eblen from the Nashville Fertility Center. Today’s episode is EXTRA SPECIAL — it’s release day for our brand-new book, The IVF Blueprint! We’ve spent several years putting this resource together for anyone considering or going through IVF, egg freezing, or embryo transfer, and we’re thrilled to finally share it with you. In this episode, we’re diving into the first half of the book: Part I and Part II. In Part I, “Laying the Groundwork,” we walk through everything to know before treatment begins — from deciding if IVF is the right path, to understanding stimulation medications (and whether they’ll actually make you “crazy”), to making healthy lifestyle changes that benefit both you and your future baby. We also discuss supplements that may play a helpful role during your journey. In Part II, we move into the nuts and bolts of the IVF process itself. We cover what to expect at monitoring visits, take a detailed look at the egg retrieval, and introduce you to the key people you’ll meet along the way — from embryologists and nurses to anesthesia staff and physicians. Plus, we break down pre-implantation genetic testing and explain what happens as embryos grow and develop in the lab. This episode is Part I of our book discussion — stay tuned for Part II coming soon! This podcast was sponsored by Shady Grove Fertility

Transcript

Abby Eblen MD (00:01)

Hi everyone, we're back with another episode of Fertility Docs Uncensored. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Abby Eblen from Nashville Fertility Center. And today I'm joined by my co-host and friends, Dr. Susan Hudson from Texas Fertility Center. And Dr. Carrie Bedient from the Fertility Center of Las Vegas. Yay, and we should have horns and like, we should like, it should be like New Year's Eve. Today's the day, our book's coming out.

We're so excited. It has been so long in the coming. And so we're going to spend some time and we're going to do this as a two part series. Actually, we're going to go through the first half of the book on this episode and kind of talk about points that we want to make that we think you might be interested in. And then we'll do a second series, a second part on this as well. ⁓ But first, we're dying to hear about Carrie and her kickball experience last night. She played adult kickball. So fill us in, Carrie. Tell us how that went.

Carrie Bedient MD (00:55)

Well, it was a birthday party for two friends. so Each of them was the captain of her team. And they handed out little jerseys. And so we had, or the pennies, I think they're called? I don't know. I'm not a sports person. The little things that go over you that have your number. And so It was fantastic because they were all exactly the same size. So the women looked like normal human beings. The men looked like they belonged in a Vegas review show because it was so tight, and ⁓ it was kind of like dusk twilight so that it was pleasant temperature but still wasn't super bright.

Susan Hudson MD (01:34)

Did you all have to line up and gradually get picked like you did in elementary school?

Abby Eblen MD (01:39)

I hate it. I never got picked. I never got picked when I was a kid. ⁓

Carrie Bedient MD (01:39)

No, and I was really worried that was gonna happen. yeah, was mentally prepared to be the last one picked, although I was playing with a bunch of other physicians, and so all of us were mentally prepared to be the last one picked.

So fortunately they just like handed it out because each each person had had a bunch of people she invited and so it just kind of naturally divided along those lines, which was good. 

Abby Eblen MD (02:05)

So was this at like a center that did this or was this just your friends came up on with it on their own and how did everybody know the rules? Because I mean I played kickball when I was about the fourth grade but I don't really remember the rules.

Susan Hudson MD (02:16)

You just kick the ball and you have to run to the bases? That's all I remember.

Carrie Bedient MD (02:21)

Yes, yes. So The organizer's dad was the referee. And so this, you know, sweet little, I don't know, 60s, 70s, some odd year old man was the one who like, he got the bases, he made sure we had the ball, and it was the old school red rubber ball. Uh-huh. And ⁓

Abby Eblen MD (02:22)

Okay. Yeah, I do kind of remember that now.

Susan Hudson MD (02:40)

The big red ball.

Abby Eblen MD (02:41)

Cool! That can hurt if people really like kick it hard and hit you or something. It hurts.

Carrie Bedient MD (02:47)

Yeah, my big play of the night was that I caught one. And then let's, we're gonna use the term caught very loosely here because I caught it for 0.2 seconds before it bounced right out of my arms again. ⁓ no, no, no, I bumbled it. ⁓ It was an unforced error. 

That was my big moment of the night, but I also kicked and got to second base. But apparently I illegally got to second base with whatever the rules of kickball were because the ref came over and he said, okay, well make sure that when it goes up in the air in a pop fly like that, that you don't start running until you know that.

Abby Eblen MD (03:24)

Because if you catch it, then they can throw you out. They can make a double play on you.

Carrie Bedient MD (03:30)

Exactly. And I realized like, oh, I'm a doctor for a reason because I don't.

Susan Hudson MD (03:37)

Did Mark play?

Carrie Bedient MD (03:39)

No, he stayed home. He was not feeling super great. Yeah. ⁓ probably. He did a lot of baseball, so at the very least he knows rules. Yeah, I mean, I've got longer legs, so I can move a little faster sometimes, but even then that doesn't totally count because he's the better runner than I am anyway. and so...

Susan Hudson MD (03:44)

Too bad. I want to know if he was better than you.

Carrie Bedient MD (04:11)

Yeah, I after the game, like when I made that dive for that ball, I landed hard and it wasn't I didn't land weird. I just landed hard. And so last night after I got home, I stretched really well and used my little massage gun thing. And then this morning I got up and I went, I am old. ⁓

Abby Eblen MD (04:31)

There's a reason you don't play kickball all the time is what you're saying.

Carrie Bedient MD (04:34)

⁓ 100%. There's a reason that I like martial arts. There's a reason I like running. There's a reason I like ⁓ being a bump on a log. Like those, I'm better at those. I'm much better at those.

Susan Hudson MD (04:45)

I was never good at sports where there were flying balls because inevitably they were going for my head and I just didn't like that.

Carrie Bedient MD (04:52)

Yeah, I instantly place myself in the far outfield.

Abby Eblen MD (04:56)

Yeah, I was always the right fielder in softball too. I was like, don't come to me. ⁓

Carrie Bedient MD (05:01)

Yeah, at one point, like I said, it was dusk. And so at one point I see this little thing floating above me and kind of look at it flapping around and it was a bat. And so I watched this bat and I was just kind of twirling around, watching him float around. And I'm like, yes, I am totally the kid in the outfield picking daisies and watching bats.

Yeah, I have no remorse. No remorse whatsoever.

Abby Eblen MD (05:25)

Well, I'm glad you're intact. No bones broken. No, no ER visits or anything after that.

Carrie Bedient MD (05:30)

Amen.

We all made it through. Although one guy, the very first kick he took, he pulled a muscle.

Abby Eblen MD (05:35)

Hope he didn't tear anything.

Carrie Bedient MD (05:37)

Nah, he's fine.

Abby Eblen MD (05:41)

All right, so we are going to turn and talk about a subject that Carrie and Susan and I have been talking about a lot for the last year and a half or so. And we're just so excited that it's finally coming out. So we're just going to start and go kind of chapter by chapter and talk about things that we think are important points to make in each chapter, things that you really want to focus on. So chapter one, what you need to know about IVF before you start. 

Susan Hudson MD (06:10)

I think the important thing about chapter one is that understanding that even though you've gone to see your doctor and they've talked to you or you've been on Dr. Google, which always Carrie says went to a very questionable medical school, that there's so much to the IVF process and there's so much noise out there and some of that noise is good, some of that noise isn't so good that really this book was set out to help you go through your personal journey and really for you to carry along with you and be jumping around from chapter to chapter. What do I need here? What do I need there? Or to use the book for other uses like if you have a friend or family member who wants to know what you're going through and you're just like, ugh, I just do not have the emotional capital to be able to explain it to you. Here you go. And so I think that's one of the most important things about chapter one.

Carrie Bedient MD (07:05)

I think the first section in general, because the book is divided into four parts. The first section is the getting ready section. And this part, even though the book is called the IVF Blueprint, it applies to anybody who's going through this fertility process, where you know you're at a point where, I probably need some additional help. This applies to all of the things that anybody really should know as they're going through the early parts of fertility care. And so. This first part in the getting ready is just thinking about all of the basics.

Susan Hudson MD (07:39)

And when Carrie talks about the first part, in case you don't have the book already, this first section is the first hundred or so pages of a 300-ish page book. So it's a big, There's a lot of information. So even if you aren't going through an IVF journey right now and you're just doing a fertility journey, that there's a lot of good stuff in there.

Abby Eblen MD (07:48)

A lot of information.

So first part also has some little snippets of just things like if you're just perusing the book and you're like, I don't know if I really want this or not. There's lots of There's a list of different things that we talk about snippets of things that are all throughout the book. But we put it in that first chapter just so you can see if this is something that you would really like. I think chapter two really kind of gets into the meat of the book. And really, we put it there because, you a lot of people when they come to see us, they're like, should I do IVF? I just don't know if this is right for me. And there's really not one thing that you can say, if this, then yeah, you definitely need to do IVF or this is definitely right for you emotionally or physically. so ⁓ Chapter two goes through several questions, key questions that you may need to ask yourself before you decide if IVF is right for you. It goes through specifically about 11 questions. And so I think it may be really helpful to help you decide if IVF is the right thing or not.

Susan Hudson MD (08:56)

In chapter two, is that also where we discuss the evaluation leading up into your fertility journey?

Abby Eblen MD (09:05)

Well, it stops with the doctor asking the doctor questions, I think is where it stops.

Carrie Bedient MD (09:12)

I think It's actually chapter four, Getting Ready for IVF, where we go through a lot of the testing that we do. And before then is chapter three, which is, will the meds make me crazy? And that one, we spent so much time going through all of the different medications, what they are, how they work. Because a lot of people come to us and they're like, oh my God, I don't want to take hormones. And they don't necessarily realize that what we give, like, yes, they're hormones, but a lot of them aren't the hormones that you're thinking of. And so being able to really delineate that and talk about it and say, these are the types of meds, these are the different classes, these are how they are used, this is the set that's interchangeable, this is not, that's really what we are going through. And we include the side effects and we include the most common uses of each one. And we include the less common or more diverse uses because a lot of the meds we give, depending on how you give them and when you give them, they have a different effect. And the beauty of what we do is that those are the puzzles that we love to work out and figure out, okay, I have this, how can I best use it to serve this woman with this physiology here in front of me now?

Abby Eblen MD (10:24)

One of things too that we really tried to put in the book is we tried to put little snippets, like you can read the majority of the book, but there's side notes that we'll have about certain things that you may be interested in. In this second chapter, one of the things, and we have some side notes about this too, but one of the things that I think may be really helpful if you're thinking about doing IVF is we have a whole section on what will happen during the IVF consult. ⁓ We talk about what the realistic timeframe is. We talk about kind of your how often you'll have to come to the office. We give a description of the egg retrieval. We go through a lot of details in that first chapter. And also there's some areas that tells you the questions that you may want to ask that maybe you wouldn't have thought of on your own that may be helpful. And so Moving right along, we talk about the stimulation medicines as Carrie talked about. And then we talk about what you need to do in preparation for IVF. Because I think a lot of people don't realize that you really do need to prepare for that when you're about to start IVF.

Susan Hudson MD (11:26)

And when we're talking about preparation, we're not just talking about what you do when you go to the fertility doctor. This is really talking about your entire body and mind getting in the right space to both prepare yourself for fertility treatment as well as pregnancy. And so a lot of times people don't realize that, hey, I need to have my blood sugars under control. I need to have my high blood pressure under control.

I was born with a heart defect and I haven't seen a cardiologist since I was a teenager. All those things need to be Is dotted, T's crossed because we don't want to, ideally by the time you're going through this, we don't want to have to put on the brakes and be like, ⁓ no, your blood sugar, your hemoglobin A1C is eight, that's not safe for you and baby. We would like to have some of these things at least being worked on while we're doing the evaluation. So ideally if you end up having to go through IVF, we can go full throttle.

Carrie Bedient MD (12:28)

This is all the homework that we have people do. It's definitely all the homework we have people do because by the time you get into the IVF cycle, fertility centers are pretty well self-contained. And this is true of a lot of obstetrics in general. Like Nobody else wants to be dealing with pregnant women and babies because it's two patients at the same time. Fertility docs do not like anyone else messing with our patients. But this is the stuff that's got to be straightened out and ready to go before we are able to really start and take over because once we take over, we very much want to control everything and we want it to be laid out cleanly beforehand.

Abby Eblen MD (13:04)

And so really any medical condition, rheumatoid arthritis, liver disease, kidney disease, Susan did an excellent job of writing that chapter and she went through every organ system you can imagine. Because people a lot of times just don't think, you know, even though I've had kidney stones, do I need to really worry about that when I'm about to get pregnant? Well, you probably need to be checked out and make sure you're not about to have another kidney stone or have some problem. And so I think it's really beneficial to think about those things ahead of time and even simple things like, have you had a pap smear done in the last you know, a few years, if you had a pelvic exam, if you're over 40, if you had a mammogram, those are all things that we're gonna want you to have had before we get you pregnant. We wanna do these things before you get pregnant, not after you get pregnant. ⁓ And so we then go on in the book and talk about lifestyle changes. So we talk about medical conditions and then we talk about lifestyle changes. So what are some lifestyle changes that we always talk to patients about before IVF?

Susan Hudson MD (13:58)

No nicotine. None. It doesn't matter how you get it. Whether it's gum or vaping or patches, nicotine is nicotine and it's bad for eggs and it's bad for sperm.

Carrie Bedient MD (14:09)

So When you think about the sex, drugs, and rock and roll theme, we're good with the sex, much as you want, go for it. I mean, we will tell you when not to have it. And I don't care about the rock and roll as long as you're not in a mosh pit jumping up and down in the midst of a retrieval, but you can do that in advance as much as you want. What we care about are the drugs, and those are the legal and illegal kinds. And so the illegal ones, it goes without saying, none of them are beneficial. We don't know if any amount is safe.

Even marijuana can have a negative impact. so yes, we all pitch a high holy fit about nicotine in any of its forms, but alcohol, other drugs, those all have an impact too, as do your general, the other meds that you can take that don't require a prescription, know, Ibuprofen, Tylenol, your sleep aids, those types of things. We want to know about all of them. We want to make sure that you are in the best place possible so that you're not on something going in that you think is totally innocuous, even if it's just like a supplement that's going to have a negative impact.

Abby Eblen MD (15:16)

One of the other ones is weight. So Some centers actually have a requirement that you have to be below a certain body mass index, a certain weight for your height in order to do the egg retrieval. Well, and that's not punitive. It's just that we're gonna put a really long needle in your body to get to your eggs. And there's lots of other important organs there that we don't wanna injure. And so the heavier a patient is, the harder it is to see your bowels, your bladder, your blood vessels. And so it makes it much safer if you're closer to a normal body weight.

And so we also talk about that in that chapter about you know, kind of the requirements for that. ⁓ And Susan has several sections on, has at least had a good section on GLP-1 inhibitors. So you may want to mention those as well, because we have lots of patients on those.

Susan Hudson MD (15:58)

Yes, so we do talk about GLP-1s. What are the benefits for them? When should you potentially stop them? Because at this point, we don't think they're great during the immediate baby making time.

Carrie Bedient MD (16:11)

Exactly.

Abby Eblen MD (16:13)

So then our next chapter talks about supplements and we get lots and lots and lots of questions about supplements. So we broke this chapter down because it was so complex for the three of us. We had to go back to school, back to the library and do lots of research to figure out kind of what the latest research was with a lot of supplements that patients were interested in. So Carrie, what did you glean from this chapter when you were doing your supplement part?

Carrie Bedient MD (16:36)

So my term papers, because that's really what these were, and don't worry, we distilled it down. We made it so that our superpower, which is taking really technical information and turning it into something that's digestible for any normal human being. ⁓

We turned it into a much easier to read section, but I did the myo-inositol section and the DHEA section. so myo-inositol, I think, is really the big takeaway here that it can be very beneficial, especially for patients with PCOS. We think that it's unlikely to cause any negative impact, but that's something that especially our PCOS patients can be really beneficial and fairly easy to take without much in the way of side effects. So that was my little corner of this chapter.

Susan Hudson MD (17:20)

My corner that I think I dove in and learned more about was folic acid, folate, all of the variations of those things and all of the very complicated names that go along with folate metabolism. And so if you ever really wanted to know truly what are the differences in these, what are the food sources of these things? When do you actually need to take more or less than the average person? This is the place to look.

Abby Eblen MD (17:33)

And then there's also a part at the very end that talks about your male partner and how supplements could impact him as well. And so, that's something we don't talk a lot about when we're in the visit. We primarily focused on the female patients. So you may be interested in kind of looking at that part as well. And then we start to move on and get into closer to the egg retrieval. We talk about kind of what to expect and what are some of the things that patients need to expect Susan when they're getting ready to do IVF, when they're preparing for it?

Susan Hudson MD (18:18)

Right. So One thing that they need to be prepared for is that they're going to have to take injections and those are going to be on a daily basis for usually a period of 10 to 12 days. But there's a lot of different ways for us to do that. And you'll also have to have a number of visits at your doctor's office during that week and a half time period. And during this chapter, we really talk about what to expect in those office visits, what are we looking for? Why are we looking at follicles? What are follicles? Why are they growing? How does all of those things relate to each other?

Carrie Bedient MD (18:59)

Looking at the course of time that this all happens in and just what to expect from some of those office visits and who you will and maybe won't see during them. know, this is IVF is a team sport and being able to go in and talk to not just your doc, but the ultrasonographers and the front desk people and the nurses and the MAs and everybody, kind of knowing some of the expectations of this process because yes, your doc is driving the boat, but there's an awful lot of people who help us get through as well, which is particularly important when you look at our next chapter, which is the insider's view of the egg retrieval that Abby did a really fabulous job in providing the original outline for because it goes through every part of that retrieval from top to bottom.

Abby Eblen MD (19:47)

Yeah, and I think one of things to know about this chapter too is that the flow for every office is different. And I think, you know, I think it's really good that we mentioned that your doctor may have you come in early for an estrogen level and then come back to the office or come to an office later on for ultrasound. You may have to go to different places for those sorts of things. We try and prepare you for that, but the workflow of every office is different. And so throughout the book, if there's anything that your doctor's office does differently and you don't understand why we said it one way in the book and they did it differently, just know that there's lots and lots of different ways to do things. The way we put it in the book is not the perfect right way to do it. It's just kind of what we're used to, but there's different ways to do different things and accomplish the same goal at the end. And so In preparation for that, the next chapter is about the egg retrieval. And so we try to go through all the details of who you're gonna see and what happens with the egg retrieval. Anybody wanna give us a little scoop about that?

Susan Hudson MD (20:44)

To give a little shout out to Abby because Abby was our illustrator in the book and one of the best pictures of being able to see what exactly is happening in an egg retrieval is on page 132. And she just did a really great job of visually conceptualizing what we see in our brain, but you're asleep. And so you don't really understand what what's going to happen, but really to be able to get an idea of how that egg retrieval is going to happen while you're under anesthesia.

Abby Eblen MD (21:14)

Thanks, Susan. But I think also too, just knowing all the people that are going to be there is really helpful too, because you just, you're nervous. You don't know what to expect. You know, I think a lot of people want to be in control. think We all want to be in control and the thought of going to sleep and somebody putting this large needle in your body and you don't understand how it's done. It's just really scary. And I think the more information that you can get about it, the better. So kind of the first people that you see when you walk in are generally nurses in the pre-op area. They have you sign consents,  you may have done that ahead of time, but that's some of the things that they'll do. They'll get your IV started and then you'll go back for the actual procedure after that. The procedures may be 30 minutes or so and then you go back to the recovery area. And so the chapter just kind of goes through all the things that you will encounter, all the people that you'll encounter as you go through that process.

Susan Hudson MD (22:02)

We also talk about the immediate time after the egg retrieval. So the afternoon afterwards and kind of the next few days thereafter to understand what's normal, what's normal, what are things that we're worried about and what are the things that you should be kind of keeping an eye on.

Abby Eblen MD (22:21)

And then the big thing after that, hopefully, is the embryo transfer. And so Carrie did a really good job talking about why you might want to choose a fresh transfer versus a frozen transfer. And what are some nuggets from that, Carrie?

Carrie Bedient MD (22:36)

So a lot of people come in having really strong opinions about a fresh versus frozen transfer. And a lot of those stem from my mother's sister's aunt's grandmother's daughter did IVF in this year. And this is what she did and it worked. And a lot of what people know is based on historical data, which is great, but not necessarily representative of what happens today. And so the next segment really looks at Okay, where did fresh transfers come from? Why did we used to do those? How did frozen transfers arise? What's the difference between a frozen transfer 15 years ago versus maybe today? And what are the pros and cons of each? So for example, anybody who wants PGT, pre-implantation genetic testing, that's a frozen transfer because that doesn't happen fast enough to be able to do a fresh. The reasons that you wouldn't do a fresh include, some of the endometrial preparation points, what are your progesterone levels? What's your risk of hyperstimulation syndrome? How can we minimize all of the problematic effects that we do have control over? Because there's so little that we control in life in general that you wanna seize the opportunities to get the best you can.

Abby Eblen MD (23:50)

So chapter 10, I think, has a great title, IVF. It's a numbers game. And that's really important to talk about because expectations for everybody. It's important to set those ahead of time. So Susan, tell me what readers are going to learn from chapter 10.

Susan Hudson MD (24:06)

Well, readers are going to learn from chapter 10 is really how to set expectations for what's going to happen the week after retrieval. Once we know how many eggs you have, what happens on day one? What happens between day one and day five, six and seven when ideally you're going to have embryos that get to an advanced stage embryo?

The most important thing to understand in this process is we have what's called attrition. So you're going to start off with a certain number and as we go over those days, those numbers are going to get smaller and smaller. That is very normal. It is what is to be expected. We try to give you some of the information of why is this happening and what are the ⁓ kind of benefits of being able to make it to that advanced stage embryo. We also have a good little section in that chapter all about sperm because it is, it's a great section and talking about needing millions of something to do one job. I mean, those little guys don't stop and ask for directions. So we try to explain a little bit of the method behind the madness there as well.

Abby Eblen MD (25:07)

Was just gonna say that, yeah, that's a great section. It's actually several pages.

And also in that chapter two, we talk about embryo biopsy. Wanna say a little bit about that, Carrie?

Carrie Bedient MD (25:32)

So embryo biopsy is not just about sticking the needle in, taking a couple of cells out and sending it off. It's about which embryos should get biopsied because you can have the external structure of an embryo, but if you don't have the internal structure, you don't have what you need. And so embryo biopsy is putting a discerning eye on those embryos and saying, okay, this not only has the external structure, but it has the internal parts like the inner cell mass that becomes the baby and the trophectoderm, which is what becomes a placenta because you want all of those parts down the line in order to make that biopsy information valuable. Because it doesn't matter if you've got perfect biopsy results for an embryo that just flat out doesn't have the intercell mass and so it doesn't contain what it needs to get to your end goal, which is being awake all night with a little baby.

Abby Eblen MD (26:20)

And that kind leads into the next chapter in the final part of section two of the book. It talks about a lot of genetic terms. And I think when patients come in to see us, we have to cover everything in 30 minutes, including all this genetic information. And we throw out terms like chromosome, aneuploidy, gene, balance  translocation, unbalanced translocation. All those terms are talked about in the book. There's a definition of each one of them. And we kind of go through what's the normal process in terms of reproduction if you didn't have to use IVF, and kind of what happens to women's eggs as they age and why that's a factor in doing IVF maybe sooner rather than later. And we kind of close in talking about the different types of genetic testing. think You guys mentioned that earlier, but anybody want to mention sort of the different types of genetic testing that can be done on an embryo?

Susan Hudson MD (27:12)

So we have pre-implantation genetic testing or PGT. And then after that, we have all kinds of initials. So I'll start off with A, aneuploidy. Aneuploidy is looking to see if we have the right number of chromosomes.

Carrie Bedient MD (27:29)

There's PGT-SR, is making sure that those chromosomes are structurally arranged. So SR is structural rearrangement, that they are arranged appropriately. So this applies to people who have the normal number of chromosomes, but they're stuck together in a funny way.

Abby Eblen MD (27:29)

We also have PGT-M, which stands for single gene traits. So cystic fibrosis would be an example of that. With those traits, it's a problem if both partners have that same abnormal gene. The child has about a 25 % chance of inheriting that gene and actually having that condition. And so by doing PGT-M, it's a way of preventing, or not having a child that has that condition, basically.

Susan Hudson MD (27:48)

And then we also have PGT-P, P stands for polygenetic, and that's kind of the new kid on the block. That's where we're looking at multiple genes, which may have an impact on risks of getting medical conditions like type 1 diabetes, schizophrenia, heart disease, melanoma, all kinds of things.

Abby Eblen MD (28:20)

So that kind of wraps up the first half of the book and just we've given you just little tidbits because there's a lot of information. Our book we feel like is packed full of information and even after we wrote the book our editor came back and said aren't there more things you can add? So we like racked our brains to think of things that maybe we didn't add the first time around. So hopefully you'll find this really helpful and you'll find some information that you can use and utilize and will help you in your IVF journey. Any last thoughts that you ladies have?

Carrie Bedient MD (29:05)

Part of the reasons we wrote the book include that no matter how good your doctor is in your offices, they just flat out cannot get all this information to you in the limited amount of time that we have. And so what this book is very helpful for is not only filling in the gaps, but helping you know what's going to be said so that when you're applying it to your specific case, you can ask good questions and you can be informed and you feel less overwhelmed and so you're able to absorb more with your doctor for your personalized care. So grab a copy, shove it in your purse and bring it with you to your appointment so that you've got some little light reading to do while you are waiting for your ultrasound and whatnot so that you can.

Abby Eblen MD (29:47)

No! No more Dr. Google. Dr. Google's gone now.

Susan Hudson MD (29:54)

and Dr. TikTok.

Abby Eblen MD (29:55)

and Dr. TikTok. All right, well to our audience, thanks for listening and subscribe to Apple Podcast to have next Tuesday's episode pop up automatically for you. Be sure to subscribe to YouTube. That really helps us spread reliable information to help as many people as possible.

Carrie Bedient MD (29:56)

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Susan Hudson MD (31:10)

As always, this podcast is intended for entertainment and is not a substitute for medical advice from your own physician. Subscribe, sign up for emails, and we'll talk to you soon. Bye!