Latest / For the Love of Hormones- Miscarriage, Hormone Balance, Progesterone, TTC, Cycle Tracking, Conception, Holistic Health / 205 | Top 3 Low Progesterone Symptoms To Watch for When TTC
Transcript
- Bekah: We're not obviously visibly sick in bed with a fever. it's it like hormone imbalance is not a visible, life disruption, right? But it is visible by our symptoms. And so when we have that pot of boiling water and the lid just gets thrown off, you know, that's a problem. Bekah Yawn: Hey sister, welcome to For the Love of Hormones. Have you been trying to get pregnant and are struggling to trust God's timing? Has a miscarriage made you question if you can carry a healthy pregnancy? Hey, I'm Becca. I'm a wife, stay-at-home mom, and daughter of God. I have four children here on earth and three babies in heaven. After our third miscarriage, I left the doctor's office feeling hopeless and really helpless. Until God revealed what I was missing, understanding my cycle and his design and how to support it naturally. Since my healing journey, God has blessed us with two more healthy daughters. In this podcast, you will find answers to your hormone, cycle, and holistic health questions so that you can get pregnant naturally with God and the driver's seat. So for the love of hormones, put that pregnancy test stick down because it's time for a come to Jesus in hormones meeting. Bekah: Thank you, Ashlyn, for your review. Ashlyn is a dear friend of mine and what a joy to have journeyed with her and in many different phases of her fertility. So thank you for your review, Ashlyn. and I'm also going to read a review that was left on Apple Podcasts. I have been loving reading these reviews every week. if you have not left a review, on Apple or Spotify or wherever you're listening. If you would take a quick minute to do that, it encourages me to keep recording for you. But more importantly, it helps the show to be seen by more people and more women are getting really hopefully really good encouragement in their journeys. So please take a minute to leave a review and I am going to read Anna's review. She just left this one recently. She said healing in the waiting Ever since I found Becca's podcast, I have been so blessed. Truly, I am incredibly grateful for her words of wisdom and comfort in my infertility journey. Her gentle reminders of God's sovereignty in this season have lifted me up more than once from a lonely place. She always goes back to prayer at the end of every podcast, and that routine is something my husband and I have begun every night, praying and trusting God with our desires and infertility. Truly, Becca's words have brought so much healing in my waiting. And I know this podcast can help other women like me too. Anna, thank you so much. I am praying for you and just praying that the Lord would continue to grow your faith and to grow your trust and strength in him in this waiting season. And so just praying for for his favor on you, sweet friend. thank you for leaving that review. guys, before we get into today, if you are here listening to this episode because the Title Drew You In. We're going to talk about low progesterone and what to watch for when you're trying to get pregnant. but I promise you you want to sign up for my boot camp that is coming up really soon. You'll go to Becca Yawn, B-E-K-A-H, Y-A-W-N, Beccayawn.com slash boot camp. And I have planned a hormone reset boot camp where the goal is to help you to understand what's going on in your cycle and how to support your cycle naturally. With the hope and prayer to prepare for pregnancy, all within God's design. So if you have been trying to get pregnant, if you're not sure about what's going on with your ovulation or with your hormones, or maybe you've recently experienced a miscarriage, this camp, this class is for you. It's over two days in early October. go to beccayon.com slash boot camp, get signed up. it's going to be A wonderful extension of the stuff that you hear in the podcast and we get to hang out face to face on Zoom. I get to encourage you and meet you and get to know you. And it's a really fun and special time. I don't I do not do these often. and so I would love it if you can join us. sign up even if you're not sure if you can attend live with us on the calls, but sign up because you will get the replays. And I always do fun giveaways on those calls and so you'll get access to that as well. So again, go to Beckyon dot com slash bootcamp, get signed up and and I I know it's gonna be a huge blessing for you. Okay, so let's get into today's episode. The top three low progesterone symptoms to watch for when you're trying to get pregnant. So I am gonna go into the physical stuff. Okay. We're gonna talk about that in just a moment. but the thing I wanted to jump off this episode with is how low progesterone impacts our faith. Because it really does. man, I'm so glad we're here today. I don't know if it's The coffee that I'm drinking, or we're just like getting to talk about faith and hormones. It is my jam, y'all. Okay, but I'm I'm really excited to talk about this because our our spirituality is so connected to what's going on physiologically. So I'm gonna hit on two points on the spiritual aspect of low progesterone, and then we're we are gonna talk about the top three. symptoms to watch out for and what what should we do about it. But we cannot ignore our faith. We cannot ignore our soul and our spirit as we're walking through this journey of desiring to conceive, desiring to be pregnant, stay pregnant, and deliver a healthy, beautiful child into this world. Our faith is it's connected. If you didn't listen to last week's episode, Please do. Like it is my heart and soul when it comes to why we might be dealing with difficulties in fertility and how that's connected with what the Bible says and with our faith as Christian women. Really important. So if you haven't listened to the last week's episode, like please go back and listen to that. so I'm gonna kind of give you two points here on the spiritual side of things as it relates to progesterone. The first point I'm gonna give you. it's it's the harder point to give. It's also the lesser likely scenario that I want that you may relate to, but it can be a reality for you. So I'm not saying this is why you're having low progesterone. I'm not saying this is why you're having difficulties getting pregnant, or difficulties staying pregnant. This is the lesser likely scenario, but it is one that I have seen some women deal with. I've worked with lots and lots of women, hundreds and hundreds, and I've maybe seen this a handful of times. So this is more rare, but it's something that in the same way that David did, when he said, Search me, God, and know me, test me and know my anxious thoughts. That's not a direct quote, but we I think most of us are probably familiar with that passage. Where David is asking the Lord to reveal, you know, is there any offensive way in me, God? Please reveal that and reveal it to me so that I can deal with it and and I can get rid of that through your grace and and move forward with my life. So this first thing that I see, I I do see this with low progesterone, especially, Is that the question to ask yourself is is there any area in your life presently where you're not fully surrendered to God? So this could be something physically that you're not fully surrendered to God on this thing. Maybe you're obsessed with chocolate, maybe you're obsessed with coffee, maybe you're obsessed with exercise and the way that you do it and how long you do and how frequently you do it, maybe you're obsessed with how you look. And your image. maybe there's something spiritually that is not fully surrendered to God. maybe you're harboring some kind of unforgiveness towards someone. Maybe you're carrying a great amount of anxiety and desire to control the situation, and you haven't fully surrendered this spiritually to the Lord. this one's this one's a tough one and it's very rare, but it does happen. maybe there is hidden sin within the marriage. something that there there is something going on, either from you, from your spouse, where there's not honesty happening towards each other within the marriage or to God or both. and sometimes we could see outward physical things manifesting from spiritual brokenness, and sin. very rare, very rare, but it it that can be a thing. and or maybe there's something emotionally that is not fully surrendered to God. So so when I see low progesterone, I'm I'm gonna kinda jump around a little bit. When I see low progesterone, a lot of times what women experience physically is especially in the last week of their period, they You might feel depressed. You might feel like you're just not yourself. You might feel really grumpy, irritable, and and angry, like irrationally irritable. Like you're driving along the road. Someone comes, cuts kind of in front of you. Usually you'd be like, whatever. Or it doesn't even bother you. But this time you're like, are you kidding me? And you're just kind of like reacting. rather you're reacting irrationally or irritably and you're not responding. so other things you might see is you just have these mood swings, you might be a lot more anxious, like I said, you might be pretty low or depressed, you might have a hard time sleeping, you might get headaches or migraines, your breasts might be tender, and you you just might be tired. You might be really tired. And this is all about the week before your period, give or take. So if you're kind of experiencing these things on a consistent basis, the week ish before your period, That's a huge sign that you might be dealing with low progesterone. So I went ahead, I just gave you one of the big signs. and here's the thing, when we're experiencing these things, like that's really, really hard. It's really hard to live our lives out as a Christ follower when we are having mood swings, when we're exhausted, when our head is throbbing, when we're not sleeping well, when we're just irritable and grumpy, and maybe we're treating our spouse with. disrespect and we're not being nice. like kind of hard to live out our faith for the Lord when we are experiencing these things. so going back to my first point is just asking the Lord that question. And this could look like you know, praying at church, could look like praying in your room, like wherever you like to pray and really connect with Jesus and surrender to him. And and just asking him this question, Lord, is there any offensive way in me? Am I harboring something? Am I control trying to control something? Am I not surrendered to you in some area of my life, physically, spiritually, emotionally, in my marriage? Is there something, Lord, that you're trying to get my attention on? and then just wait and and see if anything comes to mind. the Lord is really kind. And he's not overwhelming. he's he usually just you know speaks in that whisper kind of tone. And he just so gently and sweetly brings something to our attention that you know, That he wants it, that he wants to work with us on. So that's the first thing. It's always good for us to do that, no matter what. So that's the first thing if you're if you think you're dealing with low progesterone, that's the first thing I would encourage you to do. The second thing, and this is the way more common one. is if after you've sought the Lord, you've asked him to reveal in you anything offensive, if all checks out and you're like, no, like I don't think there's some kind of like I don't think there's some kind of stronghold here. Like I really, I really am surrendered to the Lord physically, spiritually, emotionally, like I'm good. the reality is, even if you're fully surrendered in all of these areas in your life, it is still very challenging to live peaceably for Jesus and to live out our faith while we're dealing with hormonal imbalance, especially low progesterone. Makes us crazy. it's not easy to demonstrate and to bear fruits of the spirit when we are overwhelmingly grumpy or anxious or we've got a splitting headache. something that I I've shared with my husband. I like to think in weird analogies. He always thinks they're really weird, but I'm like, they're really good. What are you talking about? it's kind of funny. So I have this picture. I think recently I was experiencing some a a kind of hormone imbalance. Okay. And I and I can recognize it, right? Because I teach this stuff, but it doesn't exempt me from having hormonal imbalance. But it's cool because I can recognize, like, that's what's going on and cool. I know what to do about it. But what I explain to my husband is like, okay, hey, listen, when my hormones are in balance and everything's grooven the way that God designed it to go. I am like a pot of water on the stove and we're on low to medium heat and like we're good, you know? We're good. no, no accidents, no spillovers. Like you can, you can hit me upside the head and I'm like, hey, like that wasn't nice, but I'm not gonna like yell at you and smack you back, you know. But like you're just able to to handle, you know, the normal woes of life, the normal woes of the day. that can be troublesome or irritating and not react in a bad way. But then I explained to my husband, I said, but but when I'm dealing with this kind of hormone imbalance, it's like I'm a pot of water on the stove and it and there's a lid on me, and it's this water is boiling, and all of a sudden it just blows out, and there's nothing I can do to stop it. Like it it's I can't control it. And so Yeah, like once w we're like, no, or if I'm sensing, I I'm like I just explained to him like I try to sense when my water is starting to boil and and get out of the room or I I try to retreat or like I recognize like I need to go somewhere to cool off and cool down. That way I don't spill over and react and hurt others with the words or the tone the tone that I use or the actions I do. and but sometimes, man, that water just boils over before I could even do anything about it, right? obviously this is like a spiritual discipline that I'm working out in my own life and we're all called to work out in all of our lives as Christ followers because we're just not always guaranteed having good health. Like we're going to have seasons in our life where we're going to be sick or we're going to be dealing with hormone imbalance. And we are still called to this high call of living like Jesus. And we've got to find ways to still honor him and glorify him, even when we're suffering or even when we're not healthy or if something is off. Like we still have to do that. but it's nice to be able to have our our husbands be able to understand what is going on on a hormonal basis because we're not obviously visibly ill. We're not obviously visibly sick in bed with a fever. it's it like hormone imbalance is not a visible, life disruption, right? But it is visible by our symptoms. And so when we have that pot of boiling water and the lid just gets thrown off, you know, that's a problem. And so you know, so that's how that's how I explained it to my husband. And he's like, okay, I can kind of see that. And so we can kind of connect with each other. You know, we have a lot of wonderful, beautiful little children that can be very loud in our house. And we can kind of connect if I'm having a bad day Or if I'm having, if I'm dealing with low progesterone or maybe estrogen dominance, and I can just look at him and say, like, hey, my lid is about to spill off. Like, can you handle the kids for a little bit? Can I go, you know, breathe and pray and have some quiet time? that way I can remove myself from the situation or maybe my husband's not there and and I have to deal with that. Maybe I set up the kids for some quiet space, or maybe I just model deeply breathing. If if I can't leave them for some reason, maybe I just model, you know what, guys. We just need to have a moment of quiet with Jesus and let's all breathe. Mommy's gonna pray. Mommy needs some quiet to calm my heart and my body down. So maybe I do it in ways like that. But for us as women, like whatever our season, our stage, our surroundings of life are, we are called to live out our faith, even if we're dealing with hormone imbalance. And that benefits us spiritually and it also benefits us emotionally and physically when we work to live out our faith in this way and to try to not sin or do you know not great things or responses when we're feeling this way and we're feeling the effects of this hormone imbalance. Okay. Man, that was like a whole man, that could have been like a whole episode. so so that's the spiritual side of things of when we're dealing with low progesterone, what to watch out for. Very important. I talked to you about one of the top symptoms to watch out for when you're trying to conceive, if you're dealing with low progesterone, you're gonna be experiencing that amount of PMSing, like we talked about. The second thing that is a big symptom of low progesterone is spotting or brown bleeding. I just did an episode on this in a lot greater detail and depth that you can go listen to if you are dealing with those things. It's episode 203, just a few episodes ago. And you can I encourage you to listen to that one for more specifics on what to watch for with spotting your brown bleeding. and just know that, hey, like if you're dealing with this to this kind of extent, you could be dealing with low progesterone and your body's trying to let you know and you need to listen to it and support it. the third symptom to watch out for is it's something called a luteal phase defect. So your luteal phase, you have two main phases in your in your cycle. Okay, so the first star of the show in your cycle is the follicle. So we call that the follicular phase. The follicle is the star of the show because the follicle is the wonderful little house or it's like a cell that is hosting the egg. That is being developed throughout that first part of the cycle. So we call that the follicular phase. and that's all that's going on there. Once ovulation occurs, that follicle releases the egg. And then the follicle is transformed into this thing called the corpus luteum. And the corpus luteum is what produces progesterone. So we call this second part of your cycle the luteal phase, because the corpus alluteum is the star of the show. So if our corpus or if our luteal phase is too short, that means that for some reason, and of course we want to find out why, but for some reason the corpus luteum was having a hard time producing the amount of progesterone for the length that it typically should produce it for. So with luteophase defects, we'll see the luteal phase be for a shorter length of time than it typically should be. for you guys to learn more about this. Again, all of these things come to the boot camp. You're gonna learn more about how to track these things in your cycle, how to understand what they mean, how to understand if, you know, what parts of your cycle might be unhealthy or abnormal or irregular and what parts are going great and you want to keep it up, you know? So you can learn those things and then we can also learn like, well, what do I do if I have a luteal phase defect or what what are those physical things that I can do to help support my hormones? Come to the boot camp. Beccayon.com slash bootcamp, sign up for it. so you know, you'll learn like what the what the length, the luteal phase lengths are that are appropriate and healthy. When you learn those fertility awareness methods, I can throw out some general ones, but if you're not charting accurately, you might not be counting your luteal phase day length accurately. So You know, there's two schools of thought. One of them, FEM says allluteal phase of nine to eighteen days can be normal. But then when you kind of move into Femme Medical Management, they're looking for closer to eleven to sixteen days of allluteal phase length. And this is just from the time that after you ovulate until the day before your next period. And so that's kind of what you're looking at. So if you're having you you might be able to tell if like if if you are doing some kind of LH testing or you can tell when you're ovulating, maybe you have middle schmirts, which is ovulatory pain. you know when you ovulate and then you know like your period comes five or six days later. Yikes like that's a big sign that your body's having a hard time. and it could just be kind of on that shorter side too. So or you know the closer to the eight or nine days or something like that. so those are the big three signs to watch out for when you're trying to get pregnant. come to the boot camp to learn about how to figure out what's going on with your cycle and how to support it naturally, beccayan.com slash bootcamp. And then your homework for today, obviously after you sign up for the boot camp, is to have that meeting with Jesus and just say, Lord, search my heart and know me, see if there's any offensive way in me, and and see if anything comes to mind. And if not, get that spiritual encouragement. you know, from your husband, maybe you talk to your mom, maybe you have a really close friend in this journey and and start talking with them about, okay, I I feel like I'm I'm good. Like I feel like I am surrendered in all these areas of my life, but I know I'm dealing with this physical issue and I'm having a hard time living peaceably for Christ with it. So part of that is just talking with someone about it because it brings it it does something in our heart when we share it with someone and And it also brings awareness and then it brings some accountability and and then just asking for that support of like, hey, I'm sorry for you know, smacking you upside the head when you looked at me the wrong way or something. Hopefully you didn't do that. But I'm sorry for that. Like, but and this is what I'm dealing with. Like, can how can, you know, can you help support me with thinking through some different ideas or strategies for how to live peaceably, even when my body is just it's not having a good time? So, so you know. work that out with someone close to you in your life. So okay. you guys, thank you so much for listening today. Don't forget to leave a review, sign up for the boot camp. and I am going to pray over you. Lord Jesus, we come before you. God, living in this world, it's it's hard sometimes. It's hard living in bodies that are dealing with some imbalances and brokenness from the way that you've designed them. It's hard. To be fully spiritually, emo s emotionally, physically surrendered to you, Lord, every day. but this is what you ask of us. And honestly, it's such a small thing that you ask of us, God, with how much you have given us in eternal life through your son. so Lord, would you would you just gear up in us to humbly seek you and to humbly ask you, Lord, is there any offensive way in me? reveal this to me, God. Help me to To work this out, help me to turn away from this. help me to address it. Whatever it is that needs to be done, would you guide me, Lord? and Lord, if we if we are living completely surrendered to you, and we're still dealing with these kind of gnarly symptoms of of some imbalances in our body, would you help guide us to still live for you and live peaceably and still even bear your fruit? even when we are. Even when we were broken, God, you are so good that you can do that through us, Lord. You are so amazing. So thank you, Lord. Lord, I just pray for I pray for understanding and knowledge for my sister in Christ on what is going on with her body and what she can do to support it and where you are are guiding her, Lord. Would you please reveal that to her? Would you please bring bring healing and restoration and health and good fruit to her body, fruit in her womb, Lord? Would you give her and her husband life? to be carried full term and for a child to raise up for the glory and furthering of your kingdom. Lord, I pray all these things in your holy name. Amen.