Latest / You Call This Normal? The Root Cause Fertility Podcast / Episode 15: "This Should Be Working": Trying for a Second Baby When It's Harder This Time

Transcript

Episode 15: "This Should Be Working": Trying for a Second Baby When It's Harder This Time · You Call This Normal? The Root Cause Fertility Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Before we start, a quick note: if you're trying for your second and you want someone to look at your body the way it is now, not the way it was the first time around, that's what a first move call is.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's 60 minutes, one-on-one with me.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to prepare anything.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: I record it, I send you an email summary afterwards, and you leave knowing either where to start or what the next step should be.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's$250.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: If you DM me the words first move on Instagram at Neurashista, I will send you the link to book your call or I will pop the link down in the show notes.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, today's a little bit different.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: If you're trying to get pregnant and you already have a child, let's start with something that you might not hear very often.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: And this is real.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: The grief is very real.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that very specific loneliness of struggling to get pregnant when you're already a mom, that's real too.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Even if the people around you have had a hard time making room for that.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Having a child doesn't make this easier, it just makes it different.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think different means smaller in any way.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you've been collecting sentences from people like, at least you already have one, or well, you know it's possible for you, or it'll happen.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: It happened before.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Then the next 20 minutes or so, nobody's going to say any of those things to you.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just talk about what is going on.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I will say that my last cohort for one-on-one coaching, 60% of the women had secondary infertility.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: So it is very common.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: From what I've seen, secondary infertility, it usually doesn't start with a breakdown.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's not some like awful phone call from a clinic.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: It starts as something very quiet with a thought that almost feels embarrassingly simple that this should be working.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's how it starts.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because the first time you were trying, there wasn't a history yet.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't know what your body could do.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: You weren't comparing this month to some past success.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And now you are.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that proof, the proof that this is possible for you, you'd think would be reassuring in some way.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: And instead, it's the thing that makes this so damn confusing.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: So when the months start stacking up and nothing's happening, it doesn't even feel like fear so much.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: It just feels very disorienting.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's like being in an earthquake and the ground is moving under you, and you just can't quite get your bearings, and you're the only one that notices this is going on.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: This part has its own kind of grief, too.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of women, they don't feel like they're allowed to feel it as much as it's deserved to be felt, especially with secondary infertility.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: The first time, the fear was pretty simple.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: What if I can't have a baby?
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: People understand why you're devastated.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: The second time, it's just messier.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: You're grieving and you're also making lunches and you're falling apart in the bathroom for five minutes, and then you're walking out and reading a bedtime story.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the grief comes with this asterisk that everybody else adds for you, but you already have one.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: So quite plainly, having a child doesn't shrink this grief.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: If anything, it layers it, it makes it more private and more isolating.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it deserves to be treated like it's real because it is real.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's a sentence that comes up over and over from doctors, from family, from that little voice, even maybe in your own head, trying to talk you out of worrying, but it worked before.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, that voice is supposed to be comforting, right?
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: But what it does is close the door on the investigation before it's even started.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Underneath that comfort, it's assuming nothing important could have changed.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like your body from two or three years ago and your body right now are the same body living in the same conditions.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And they absolutely are not.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Your ovaries aren't looking back at your first pregnancy and going, okay, let's do this again.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Ready?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: They're responding to what is happening right now, what is available to them right now, what your nervous system is signaling right now, what your hormones and metabolism and your nutrient stores all look like in this season of your life, which is a different season.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: So all of that's changed, even if you can't see it from the outside.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the part I think is that's missing from most of this conversation, even from the people that look at the whole body, is this motherhood is biologically expensive.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just gonna say it because I think women deserve to hear it straight.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Motherhood is biologically expensive.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Pregnancy pulls from your stores of iron, zinc, magnesium, iodine, choline, DHA, the list goes on.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: And those need to be rebuilt on purpose afterwards.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: If you breastfed, that kept drawing on some of them.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of women never fully rebuilt.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: So usually not for a lack of trying.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody told them what got used up.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: The whole postpartum system is built around the baby and not so much around mom's recovery.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: And life with a newborn is not set up for focused nutritional repair.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: You're eating whatever you can eat while breastfeeding or bottle feeding or however you fed your baby, and you're grabbing a snack or a bar with the other hand.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of women walk into trying for their second already running on a foundation that got drawn down and was never restored or repleted.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe your iron never bounced back from that time.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe your magnesium has been low for years and you just haven't had it tested.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: And a standard blood test is not great at catching it until it's actually pretty bad, like disease status.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: And none of those things are announcing themselves.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: They're not getting on the loud speaker.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: It just makes everything harder in a way that's so easy to write off.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm just a tired mom.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's sleep.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to be careful here because sleep deprivation with a little kid is not your fault.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: It is not something you can control.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's just the reality of it.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: But years of broken sleep, that adds up.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sleep is where your body does the repair work.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's when a lot of hormone regulation happens.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's when your nervous system resets.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's when all of the garbage in your cells and your brain and your whole body get cleaned up.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: So interrupt that night after night for years, and your body builds up a recovery debt.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: And by the time a lot of you are trying for your second baby, that debt's been building for at least two years.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's your nervous system.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: I keep going back to this one because it reframes so much.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Becoming a mom changes your nervous system.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't mean in some soft, poetic, I just look at my baby and my heart's full.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: When you become responsible for keeping a tiny human alive, the part of your brain that scans for threats, it gets recalibrated.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Your baseline alertness level shifts completely.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: You develop this background hypervigilance that doesn't turn off.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Not even when you're sleeping, not when you're on vacation, not even when you know everything's fine.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: It just doesn't turn off.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's just part of you now.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't feel like stress.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's what makes it so hard to see.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like responsibility, like being a good, present, tuned-in mom.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it's all of those things.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: But your body doesn't file it under responsibility or just being a mom.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: It files it under load and load, even load that you love, still shows up in your stress chemistry.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: So you can be handling it.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Just because you're treading water doesn't mean your nervous system is fine.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of moms trying to conceive again are running on a nervous system that never fully came back down to where it was before kids.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's totally normal and fine.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Different cortisol pattern, different sleep.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: And remember from the progesterone episode?
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: Cortisol and progesterone, they come from the same building materials.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: And your follicles are sensitive to the environment they're developing in.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: So what does a calm nervous system even look like for a mom of a toddler?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what are we defining here?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it looks like never being stressed.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's just that's not an actual goal.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think it looks like having moments in your day where your body gets to come down, even little moments, those all count.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: There are two things that I want to name because they are true and I don't think they get said.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is guilt, not just the grief of wanting another baby, but the guilt of wanting one means you're not grateful for the kid you already have.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you're stuck in that loop, please, please, please tune in and hear me now.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Wanting another child is not a statement about the one you already love.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: They're not in competition.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the second one is his side.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: It worked before applies to him even more.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Sperm reflects roughly the last 74 days, not the last pregnancy that you had.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: So if his stress or his sleep or his health has shifted in any way in the years since, that means his sperm has shifted too.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: And secondary infertility almost never gets a second look at his side because that first baby feels like it should be guaranteed.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it isn't.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: We did a whole episode on this.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: So if that's your situation, go back and listen to the male factor one.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was just an episode or two ago.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: So the way to keep coming back to thinking about all of this is that your body is updating its terms.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's reading the environment that it's in right now and it's making its calls from there.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's its whole job.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Ovulation is not something that just happens on day 14, no matter what.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's your brain deciding there is enough margin to spend on reproduction.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: And when the answer to do we have enough is a little uncertain, even a little, your body can hesitate.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: And the hopeful part is that none of this is fixed.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Your mineral, your mineral stores can be rebuilt.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Your nervous system baseline can shift.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Sleep usually gets better as your kid gets older and you get more support.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: But it means meeting your body where it is now, not where it was the first time.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be realistic about where you're at now.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, what does that look like?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: It looks like asking some brand new questions.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: What does my iron look like?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean ferritin, not just hemoglobin.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: What does my thyroid look like?
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: A full panel, my friend, not just TSH.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't count.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: What's my nervous system running at most days?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: And this is so hard to get honest about.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: And this almost feels like catch 22 or a double-edged sword.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, cool.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: What am I supposed to do about this?
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: I can't get more sleep.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: I can't, you know.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, what do his numbers look like?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you can pull them out of the drawer you closed a few years ago, no, those don't count.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you're driving, don't worry about remembering these.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: I did put all these questions in the show notes.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: They're not scary questions.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: They're just there to orient you into the now.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: And once you start answering those questions, the ground moving starts to feel like it settles a little bit.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing's guaranteed, but finally you have kind of a map to start with.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: If rebuilding is where you want to start, the minerals, the protein, eating like someone who's recovering and repleting and not just getting through the day, that's what Nourish Esta helps with.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: You tell it where you are in your cycle and what your labs show.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: It remembers everything and it builds your meals around that and around your family.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's 67 a month for founding members.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you either DM me Nourish on Instagram or I will pop the link in the show notes, you can get started right away.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: And if this gave you words for something that you've been carrying quietly, send it to someone else who's in round two.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll see you next week.