Latest / Finally Get Pregnant Naturally: Holistic Fertility Support To Conceive Naturally and Stay Pregnant After Miscarriage / #263 | 5 Fertility Red Flags You’ve Been Calling “Normal” That Explain Why You Can't Get Pregnant Or Have Experienced Recurrent Miscarriage

Transcript

#263 | 5 Fertility Red Flags You’ve Been Calling “Normal” That Explain Why You Can't Get Pregnant Or Have Experienced Recurrent Miscarriage · Finally Get Pregnant Naturally: Holistic Fertility Support To Conceive Naturally and Stay Pregnant After Miscarriage

• 0:00
  Katie: In this episode, you will discover the five symptoms you've been calling normal are actually fertility red flags your body has been trying to show you why getting and staying pregnant has been harder than it should be
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  Welcome to the Finally Get Pregnant Naturally podcast, the podcast helping women identify the real reasons you haven't conceived or stayed pregnant so you and your partner can finally grow the family of your dreams.
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  I'm your host, Dr.
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  Katie Wood.
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  Let's dive in, shall we?
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  Katie: Three things you'll gain in today's episode: why the symptoms you have been told are normal are actually your body's way of communicating that something is off, the five specific red flags, and what these five red flags are quietly
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  Katie: pointing towards underneath the surface, and how the fall fertility reset will help you decode them.
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  Katie: So let's talk about why normal is not the same as optimal.
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  Katie: Now, if you have been a listener of the podcast for any amount of time, I'm sure you have heard me talk about this, but it is so, so important to really distinguish the difference between what's labeled as normal
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  Katie: and what's actually optimal.
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  Katie: Because at some point in your life, someone, whether it was a doctor, a friend, the Internet, told you that what you were experiencing was, quote-unquote, "normal" or just part of being a woman, or my favorite, it just runs
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  Katie: in your family.
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  Katie: And so you accepted it.
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  Katie: You stopped mentioning it at appointments.
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  Katie: You started working around it.
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  Katie: Uh, you actually built your identity around it without even realizing.
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  Katie: I hear so many women say, "Oh, PCOS just runs in my family."
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  Katie: You built your whole routine and identity on the assumption that this is just how your body is, and maybe even worse, that there's nothing you can do about it.
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  Katie: But here's what I really, really want you to hear and get from this episode.
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  Katie: These symptoms are common in today's modern world, and since they're common, they get labeled as normal, but they certainly don't mean optimal and that it's not affecting your fertility.
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  Katie: Some of the most significant root cause fertility drivers I see in women that I work with are things that were waved off in a standard fertility workup because they are common, because they passed a very wide conventional reference
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  Katie: range on your labs, and because nobody connected them to your bigger picture.
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  Katie: And here is the part that nobody will tell you.
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  Katie: When your doctor says your labs are normal and they basically send you on your way, they're actually comparing your results to a reference range built from the general population or the population that has been tested at that specific
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  Katie: lab.
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  Katie: So this includes people who are sick, who are unhealthy, who are not trying to conceive, and these people and their numbers are simply average or actually not very good rather than optimal.
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  Katie: That range was never designed to answer the question that you are actually asking, which is, "What does my body need to get pregnant and stay pregnant?"
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  Katie: Because if you're listening to this podcast, then I know that that is a question that is on your heart and on your mind.
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  Katie: A number can sit so comfortably inside the normal reference range, but be nowhere near what your fertility actually requires.
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  Katie: And that gap between normal and optimal is where so many answers for your fertility has been hiding.
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  Katie: And it's not your fault.
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  Katie: It's just simply not what the conventional system was built to look for.
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  Katie: But now you know.
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  Katie: So these five symptoms are ones that I see most consistently as dismissed.
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  Katie: And most also consistently connected to why getting pregnant is harder and why miscarriage keeps happening.
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  Katie: And I'm not sharing them to give you five more things to worry about because I know you have enough on your plate, but I'm sharing them because they are clues, and you deserve to know what they're pointing toward
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  Katie: and what you can actually do about it.
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  Katie: 'Cause at the end of the day, that's why we're all here.
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  Katie: So let's dive into the five flags.
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  Katie: Red flag number one: fatigue that does not resolve with sleep.
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  Katie: So not the type of tired that just comes from maybe a busier week than normal, but like the chronic type of tired, where you wake up, maybe you slept for seven to eight hours, but you are still just
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  Katie: feeling unrefreshed, where you have normalized functioning at 60% because that is just your baseline now That's just what you've been living with.
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  Katie: This pattern almost always points to adrenal dysfunction, thyroid under-function, iron depletion, or a cellular nutrient picture that is running on empty no matter how well you eat.
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  Katie: And these are not separate issues from your fertility.
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  Katie: They are the internal environment that your eggs are developing in and your early pregnancies are trying to implant and hold in.
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  Katie: And a standard fertility panel will catch almost none of them at the level of detail that actually matters for your fertility.
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  Katie: So red flag number two, skin that has changed or breaks out cyclically or is just generally reactive.
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  Katie: So if you experience breakouts along your jaw, chin, or neck that show up like clockwork with your cycle, or skin that has suddenly just gone dry, dull, or just seems to be super reactive in a way that it
• 6:32
  Katie: never used to be, or maybe you've lived with that for most of your life.
• 6:37
  Katie: That I've also seen that, um, pretty commonly as well.
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  Katie: You've chalked it up to stress, to hormones, to getting older, or just one of those things that you have to deal with because you've had it all your life.
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  Katie: But your skin is your biggest organ and also one of your innate detoxification pathways.
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  Katie: Cyclical breakouts are often an androgen and estrogen clearance signal.
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  Katie: Dry, dull, or reactive skin points toward thyroid involvement, inflammation, or nutrient depletion.
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  Katie: This is not solely a cosmetic issue you have to deal with and can just, you know, layer on skin products and makeup.
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  Katie: It is your body showing you on the surface that something deeper is out of balance Red flag number three, moods and anxiety that feel hormonally driven.
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  Katie: So the anxiety that spikes at specific points in your cycle, the irritability that arrives like clockwork, the emotional flatness in your second half of your cycle that feels more like a hormonal imbalance rather than a situational thing.
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  Katie: And these are not personality traits, right?
• 8:00
  Katie: But they're also not something that you should have to white-knuckle through every single month.
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  Katie: These are hormonal patterns, and specifically patterns that a standard blood draw at a single point in time, like s- cycle day three or seven days past ovulation, is not going to catch.
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  Katie: Your full hormone story plays out across your entire cycle, across the day, and in how your body metabolizes and clears the hormones it produces.
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  Katie: So this is a story that you wanna see the full picture of and it is not the one a standard workup was ever designed to tell.
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  Katie: Red flag number four, recurring UTIs or vaginal infections.
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  Katie: So if you have a history of UTIs that keep coming back, maybe bacterial vaginosis that has cleared but then it returns, maybe a history of yeast infections, symptoms like odor or itching that shows up cyclically around your period
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  Katie: or ovulation, and you've treated each one individually and never connected them back to your fertility.
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  Katie: But a pattern of recurring vaginal and urinary infections is one of the clearest signals that your microbiome is chronically out of balance, and that imbalance is not staying contained to where the symptoms show up.
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  Katie: When that balance is disrupted chronically, the environment your embryo is trying to implant in is already compromised, even when your lining looks perfect on an ultrasound and your hormones look beautiful in range.
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  Katie: This is one of the most direct and overlooked connections in the fertility space.
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  Katie: Last but not least, red flag number five, bloating and digestion you just stopped noticing because you've been living with it for so long.
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  Katie: So if you experience bloating after meals, digestion that is unpredictable, right?
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  Katie: Maybe you go every day, but maybe you also experience constipation and also a little bit of diarrhea.
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  Katie: A gut that has never quite felt settled, right?
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  Katie: Maybe it just has always felt a little off, and that you've normalized so completely that you stopped mentioning it to anyone years ago, or you don't even notice it yourself anymore.
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  Katie: Here is what nobody has told you.
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  Katie: Your gut is directly responsible for how you clear estrogen And how you absorb the nutrients your eggs and your progesterone depend on, and how much systemic inflammation your reproductive environment is sitting in.
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  Katie: The bloating you wrote off is not just a digestion issue.
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  Katie: It's a signal from one of the most upstream root causes in your entire fertility picture, and it is one almost nobody connects to conception until someone like myself finally connects the dots for you.
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  Katie: So let's talk about the thread that is connecting all five of these red flags because here's what I want you to notice.
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  Katie: Not one of these red flags is random.
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  Katie: Each one is your body pointing towards something specific happening underneath the surface, something that has a root cause, and something that can actually be understood when you know where to look.
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  Katie: The fatigue is pointing somewhere specific.
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  Katie: The skin is pointing somewhere.
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  Katie: The moods, the recurring infections, the bloating you stopped noticing.
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  Katie: Each one is a thread, and each thread leads to an answer that your standard fertility workup was never designed to find.
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  Katie: And also, these are not five separate problems.
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  Katie: They are five windows into the same body, into the same fertility picture, and you deserve to finally see the connection because they actually are all connected.
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  Katie: Now, your doctor is an expert at ruling out disease, and that matters.
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  Katie: And I don't want you to hear anything that I'm saying as a reason to walk away from your medical provider or anything like that because there is always a time and a place.
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  Katie: But the absence of disease is not the same as the presence of optimal fertility.
• 12:35
  Katie: And when it comes to finding the root cause of why this has been so hard for you to get and stay pregnant, you have more options than the ones you have been offered.
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  Katie: You always did.
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  Katie: It's just the system you've been leaning on for answers only looks at putting a Band-Aid solution on symptoms, not resolving the root cause of the symptoms.
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  Katie: So that's exactly what I'm walking you through in our upcoming fall fertility reset.
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  Katie: It begins on September 22nd, the fall equinox.
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  Katie: And I chose that day on purpose.
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  Katie: The equinox is the moment of perfect balance when day and night are equal, and the exact turning point where one season turns into the next.
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  Katie: It is the day the Earth itself stops and rebalances before moving forward.
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  Katie: And this is what this reset is, a turning point, A chance to stop pushing forward on an incomplete picture and instead intentionally pause to rebalance, look clearly at what your body has been telling you, and walk into the
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  Katie: end of 2026 with real answers instead of more guessing.
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  Katie: It is totally free.
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  Katie: It starts on September 22nd, right here on the podcast, a mini episode is gonna be dropped every single day for seven days.
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  Katie: And if today's episode made you feel seen and heard for the first time in a long time, then it was built for you.
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  Katie: So I really look forward to seeing you at the fall fertility reset.
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  Katie: And if you're listening to this and you're still not pregnant, or you can't stay pregnant, and you've been told everything looks normal or that you're running out of options, it's because your doctor can only give you the conventional
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  Katie: range of tests, which totally miss most of the underlying causes blocking your fertility.
• 14:39
  Katie: Meaning, the longer you go relying on your doctor and traditional lab tests to get answers, the longer your fertility will be stuck and lower your chances become.
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  Katie: That is exactly why I created Decode Your Fertility, my fertility root cause testing framework that shows you how to go beyond the guesswork and conventional labs to finally find out what your body specifically needs to get pregnant.
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  Katie: So click the link in the show notes to claim your spot on the waitlist now for early access.
• 15:13
  Katie: So let's recap today's episode.
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  Katie: The five red flags that you've been calling normal: fatigue that does not resolve with sleep, cyclical skin changes, moods and anxiety that feel hormonal, recurring UTIs or vaginal infections, and bloating and gut symptoms that you just stop noticing.
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  Katie: These are not just inconveniences of being a woman.
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  Katie: They are your body's most consistent signals that something in your fertility picture is off.
• 15:45
  Katie: Five clues worth noticing, and the fall fertility reset is where we decode them together starting on the fall equinox, September 22nd.
• 15:56
  Katie: Follow the show so you don't miss it because you deserve real answers.
• 16:01
  Katie: And I just wanna thank you so much for listening and tuning in today.
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  Katie: I hope you have a beautiful day, and I'll see you on our next episode, released every Tuesday and Thursday.
• 16:10
  Are you ready to finally discover why you haven't been able to get or stay pregnant?
• 16:15
  The Ultimate Fertility Blueprint is a quick, insightful quiz designed to reveal your overall capacity to conceive and help you discover potential root causes and areas to address to improve your fertility so you can finally get and stay pregnant.
• 16:33
  You'll find the link in the show notes.
• 16:35
  As a quick reminder and disclaimer, this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice.
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  Always consult your doctor or healthcare provider before starting any new supplement or protocol, especially if you're actively trying to conceive or undergoing treatment.