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Happy 4th of July: Finding Freedom on the Fertility Journey · Love and Science Fertility

• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Hello, my loves, Welcome back to episode 16 of the Love and Science podcast.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Happy 4th of July.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: In honor of today, we are going to talk about freedom and the fertility journey.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: For me personally, freedom has been probably the guiding force of every single choice I've ever made.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: It guided me when I broke free of a terrible eating disorder that started in high school.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: I found a very beautiful community of women at my college and the song by Jewel just really, really struck me.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: The quote is no longer lend our strength that which we wish to be free from.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Fill our lives with love and bravery, and we shall eat.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: A life uncommon, and actually our group name was named after that quote.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: It was called a life uncommon.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: And so I think, as we think about navigating this fertility journey, as we think about navigating this fertility journey, I really want to think about what an uncommon life would be.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: I think that most of us at Love Science are physicians not everybody, but most people and I think we're used to a certain amount of power and control in our daily existence.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: We can all talk about administration and loss of autonomy and those sorts of things, but in general, we are in charge, we are the healthy ones.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: We are the ones making the decisions about people's care.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Many of us are surgeons and I think you know, in terms of power and control, you know it can feel pretty powerful to be in situations where we really do save lives, affect lives in a beneficial way.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: And you know, if we find ourselves in a situation where we are on the fertility journey, it's like a complete 180 from that.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: You know, it's like wait, I thought I was in the driver's seat in most of my life and I'm not, and I feel like I should be right.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: It's like you know, I think I should know the evidence and what I'm supposed to do, but I'm on PubMed and I'm down this Google rabbit hole and I don't even know which way is up anymore, and I'm so afraid that if I make a wrong decision it's going to ruin my chance of a successful outcome.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: I think I see so much fear and self-doubt in my patients and my clients just because it's not natural for us to cross that fence and be on the other side.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: And many times, not only do we not feel free, but we feel completely imprisoned by the process.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: We feel completely stripped of our power, stripped of our agency and just the complete opposite of what it's like in our role as physicians or other professionals.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: I know many high-powered lawyers who feel this way too, or people in other high-powered professions.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: So what I wanted to talk about today is just to kind of brainstorm and to do your own inner work, and you can pause, you can journal about this.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: I think usually these are not things that are top of mind.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: They usually take some introspection and some digging.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: But ask yourself the question what is tethering me right now on my journey and what is keeping me from feeling free?
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: And maybe it's that you and your partner if you have a partner are not on the same page about this.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's that you're out of insurance coverage and you're not sure what to do next.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's that your own ovaries don't seem to be doing what they should be doing and you're faced with the question would I consider an egg donor?
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's a family member who's opposed to IVF and has some judgment about that, and not only are you afraid to bring it up with them, but you're also concerned if they found out you were doing IVF.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: What would that mean for your relationship?
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: And for many people who are listening that may not resonate, but I do have a whole bunch of friends, clients, patients, for whom that is their reality right now.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: So think about that question.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: What would freedom look like on this journey and what is tethering me?
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: And maybe it's not one big thing, Maybe it's like you know that movie up where there was like a million balloons and basically you know the main character takes the scissors and like cuts every little string as needed to make the structure go where it needs to go.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: I think about that.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: But as I think about myself and my own life and really holding freedom sacred, I want you to do the same thing and think about like to live my truest, freest life.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: What would that look like and what might I need to let go of and what might I need to take on right To make that happen?
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: So many of you know this.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Many of you might not know this, but I was actually a great books major, which is kind of like a philosophy major, but it's a little bit more expanded than that.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: It's like English humanities, arts, all the things, because I'm just a super nerd and I've always just loved to learn.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: I love books, I love learning, I love music, I love all of it, and so when I was in college, I learned that there's two different types of freedom.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: There is negative freedom, which is freedom from something, and there's also positive freedom, which is freedom to do something or have something.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: So I want to kind of brainstorm for a few minutes, like on the fertility journey.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: What might we want to be free from?
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: So certainly freedom from fear, freedom from uncertainty, freedom from separation from ourselves, freedom from ruminations.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: I hear this so commonly and those of us who are maybe a little bit more anxious, maybe a little bit more type A, we get into these rumination loops that are just so hard to break and they don't go anywhere.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: It makes us feel powerful, but it's almost like being on a stationary bicycle it stays in the same place even though we're exerting a super amount of effort.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: So, freedom from ruminations.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: I like to break those loops, I like to help people break those loops.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: It's one of my ninja skills.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: In terms of other aspects of negative freedom, we want to be free from self-doubt.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: We want to have freedom from self-judgment.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: We want to have freedom from panic attacks.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: I just saw Inside Out 2, which I thought was just the most accurate, wonderful description of anxiety that I've ever seen.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: I won't.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: I won't blow it for you if you haven't seen it, but once you see it, send me a message.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: I'd love to talk more about it.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: I'd love to geek out about inside out too.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: You know, we also want freedom from long-term disconnection from our partners, if we have a partner.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: So I will say these sort of micro disconnections.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: Every relationship has arguments and brief periods of disconnection.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: But it's really in the micro repairs and how we repair that really defines the strength of the relationship.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: I cannot tell you how many times I've seen infertility drive a wedge between two people in an intimate relationship and even end up in divorce.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Like for a while and I haven't had one of these, these calls, thankfully, you know, in a fair amount of time, but for a while, like every single week, I got a call like this couple is getting divorced.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: You know what are we doing with the embryos?
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Like it's just so, so sad and it was like you know, is it the chicken or the egg and what's going on.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: So that's why I say freedom from long-term disconnection from your partner, because these, like temporary disconnections are very normal.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: But if we can't find a way to repair and get back on the same page, it can just feel very much like a prison.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: In my ideal world, I would help everyone have freedom from confusion.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: My goodness, I hate confusion.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: My yoga teacher once said, Erica, you look like you're confused but you're not confused.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: And that was like talk about freedom.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: I was like I'm not confused, I know what I'm doing.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: This is wonderful, and I think sometimes we just get so overwhelmed by the evidence and the options and the next right thing and what if this doesn't work?
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: And what if I make the wrong choice, and all of that that it feels like we're confused.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: But sometimes we just need a little bit of a shift to clarify our values, to make values-based decisions, to realize that in fact we're not confused and we know exactly what we need to do.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: And again, that's another one of my ninja strengths is helping people go from confusion to clarity.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: I think in an ideal world we would have freedom from access issues to IVF.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: We would have freedom from insurance, you know, not covering medications or procedures or all those things.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: That is a constant struggle.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: I talked about this last week with the pride episode.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: We have significant advocacy work to do, but, you know, freedom from financial worries about IVF.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: That would be my dream for every single person, and not just IVF like all fertility care whatsoever.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: I'm sure we could spend even more time generating a long list of all the negative freedom things and maybe we could start a discussion I would absolutely love that on our social media page.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: But let's think for a few minutes also about positive freedom.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Like what is it that we want freedom to do?
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Some of the ideas I came up with are freedom to love fully and that includes another person as well, as you know, a little embryo that is implanted as well, as you know.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: Loving ourselves, loving our partner, loving our best friend.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: All those things encompass lovingfully.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Freedom to have self-compassion in any situation.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Say, we gave ourselves the wrong trigger or didn't do it correctly and something really terrible happened with the cycle.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: There are so many things we have to do in the context of fertility care and it is impossible to get it right all the time and it feels like this enormous amount of pressure.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: Gosh, I get calls all the time.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: I forgot to take estrogen, I forgot to take progesterone, I forgot to do X, Y, Z.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: We all do it.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: So self-compassion in the face of any situation, because we are all human and there are so many darn things to do.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Ideally we would all have freedom to move forward with clarity and confidence.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: I talked about this a little bit, you know, in the freedom from section.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: But I think that if we envision what we want to do in an ideal situation, we will be clear on what we want.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: If it's becoming a parent, it's becoming a parent.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: If it's doing reciprocal IVF, maybe that's it.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: It's really hard to say for each person what their strong plan A is, but I think understanding what the values are, what decisions are available, and then trying that, and if something doesn't work, then make a strong plan B.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: You know that's all part of of freedom and I think a good REI makes a big difference in that equation and I firmly believe that having a trusted coach like me, I think that could also make a big difference as well.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: How about freedom to trust the process?
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: I think that gosh.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: There are so many steps and so many possibilities and sometimes we get so like lasered in on the trees when we know that, for instance, people who have three Upland embryo transfers have a 95% chance of success.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: But after that first unsuccessful cycle it truly feels like the world is ending.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: And hey, I know there are people who have had three UPLA transfers, who are not yet pregnant, who have had miscarriages.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: There's all sorts of situations that I think that sometimes we focus on the things that aren't working instead of the things that are working and we kind of put ourselves into our own prison by the thoughts that we think and our notion that nothing is going to work.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: And the reality is most people who stick with the process are ultimately successful with fertility treatments.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it's not exactly how we envisioned it initially, but people who are open to various possibilities, who are open to more than one cycle, who talk with their REI and possibly their coach about thinking outside the box, those people tended to do well overall and so really trusting the process, knowing that not every step forward is a step Sometimes it feels like three steps forward and one step back, or maybe even a different ratio, but overall, this sort of notion of always moving forward, making the next right choice for you and having a vision of where you're going, I think those are all really important things, Other ways to be free.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: So you know, I think that feeling our feelings is one of the most important things we can do.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: No-transcript feelings we realize that no feeling is going to kill us.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: The emotions will pass, actually even in a couple of minutes, and then we'll be able to move on.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: So if we can feel our feelings and let them go, then we are not at the mercy of those feelings and we realize that we, as the wise inner self, are actually running the show, Not all the little sort of internal family systems, little people who have something very important to say.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Other ways we can feel freedom to do something, so freedom to experience joy.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: I think that so many of us on this fertility journey are so mired in the uncertainty and the possibility of things not working and the beta hell, as I so affectionately call it, where it's a low first beta and then the repeat happens two days ago, and maybe it's normal and maybe it's not.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: All of these things that feel so drawn out and out of control.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: I think that sometimes it can feel very like, like you know, impossible to experience anything that is on the spectrum of joy.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: It's like I have to stay on guard, I have to stay focused, I have to stay vigilant.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: If I, you know, do something frivolous or joyful, then you know, then I'm letting my guard down.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: So actually, when I work with my clients, sometimes I actually give assignments to maybe go to the botanical gardens and talk nothing about the fertility journey.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: It's like off limits, right, Because it's like I'm going to get into my body, I'm going to smell a flower, I'm going to take off my shoes and feel the grass on my feet, I'm going to ground myself on the earth and I'm going to be free to experience nature and to experience pleasure and to have a moment of freedom that is not focused on the fertility journey.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: So that is something I love helping people do is experience joy on a daily basis.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: Freedom to set boundaries so many of us, this is a new word in the vocabulary, a relatively new word in the vocabulary, and I've learned a lot over the last few years.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: I really thank Kavita Sun, who is my mentor, one of my mentors who really helped me understand that boundaries actually improve relationships.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: They don't take away from relationships, as long as they're healthy and loving and flexible.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: I've learned that.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: We can talk about this another time and I know I already have a podcast on this, but there's so much more.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: We could say that the hardest part about setting boundaries is not setting the boundaries but holding the boundary and if the other person is not in favor of it, just understanding that they can have the reaction that's their responsibility, but that sometimes we need to set boundaries to be able to preserve ourselves, to preserve our freedom and to really save ourselves, right?
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Sometimes, if we don't have boundaries, then we can truly lose ourselves and that can be very scary.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: So, freedom to set boundaries and hold them and have that give way to something that's even more wonderful and hold them and have that give way to something that's even more wonderful.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: I also really much, very much believe in having work-life integration, which supports this process and so and that's a freedom, right?
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: So, and that goes hand in hand with boundaries, Sometimes, if you're expected around a certain time and you have to get in for your you know, expected around a certain time and you have to get in for your IVF monitoring or your morning scans, labs, all those sorts of things, I always say, if you had an appendix, if you had an appendectomy, you'd be out for two weeks.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: That's the same amount of time as an IVF cycle.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: So we all have to help each other build our families, and I'm passionate about helping each person build a truer, more beautiful, more free world from a systems level to allow ourselves to do this.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: Because, like I said, like, think about the appendix, think about some other thing that might happen.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: A gallbladder surgery, like all these things take us out and somehow those are deemed more acceptable, but it's not.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: You know, family building is a right, is a time-sensitive endeavor, and we have to make this possible for each other.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: My last thing that I brainstorm about is freedom to find your tribe in a supportive community.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: I think one of the hardest parts about the fertility journey is that it's so darn isolating and you know, we feel we're the only ones.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: We feel that nobody else understands what we're going through, Especially if we're in medicine.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: It's like you have to be strong, strong, strong and don't show weakness and don't cry and don't ever take a day, and all these different things we've been taught our whole training, our whole lives essentially.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: But there are people who understand.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: There are people who are nonjudgmental If infertility is one in four female physicians, there are people who understand.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: It's just that people are not connected to each other, and so the way that I combat this, the way that I create freedom in this way at Love Science, is that we have.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: Every other Friday night, we have support groups.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: These are the most powerful times.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: People show up, they share their journeys, they support one another Even if, when one person is talking in the Zoom room, I see so many heads nodding because people see their experience reflected in each other.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: People can offer words of wisdom and support depending on where they're at in the journey, and everybody walks away feeling a little bit more whole, a little bit more supported and truly not alone.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: And so we need to be free to have community, to have safe, supportive spaces where we can talk about what it's like to be a physician patient, to talk about what it's like to have the bad news, to talk about what it's like when people ask you when you're going to have kids and be in a busy ER and try to come up with a quick answer and move on.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: We talk about all these things at Love Science, and so I'm so proud of the free, beautiful, safe community that we have, and if you'd like to be a part of it, definitely send me a DM book, a free call with me.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: I'd love to hear your story and see if working with me, working in our program, would be a good fit for you.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: So, lastly, what I will say is the beauty of coaching is that we realize that we can find our agency right.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: And what does agency mean?
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Agency means basically power.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: So many of us have just had our power taken away, or maybe even given our power away, depending on the circumstance, at various points in our lives, in our fertility journey, to the point where we just feel like we are on this path that the fertility clinic is sort of telling us what to do but we don't even really know if that's the right thing for us, but like we're so exhausted and depleted that it's just like going through the motions.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: This is what I want to try to combat, and I do this at Love and Science all the time.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: And this is not to say like you don't do what your fertility clinic is saying, that's not that at all.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: But it's saying, if you have a question, you have the power, the empowerment, to ask that question and get your question answered.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Of the power, the empowerment to ask that question and get your question answered.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: If you are feeling imprisoned and not free, maybe part of that is due to the thoughts that are sort of swirling around the rumination loops towards this journey and towards this process.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: And so what coaching does is and this is to nerd out again a little bit there's coaching models.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: I learned this in coaching school and we always start with the circumstance, because the circumstance is neutral Anybody in a court of law would agree to that circumstance and then we have certain thoughts about that circumstance that then dictate our feelings right.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: So our thoughts create our feelings, our feelings create our actions and our actions create our results, which is how we show up in the world.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: So, if we can go from what's called an unintentional model, which is basically what we do automatically, 95% of what we do is dictated by our subconscious.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: But we can shine a light on those thoughts and feelings and say like wow, isn't that interesting?
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Say like wow, isn't that interesting, Do we want that to be our working model?
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: If we want to choose to be free, we can do that even when the circumstance doesn't change.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: So, even if the circumstance is the same bad news even if the circumstance is, the journey just got a little bit longer.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Even if the circumstance is.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: My partner and I are not on the same page about this right now.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: We get to choose how we think about that.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: We get to choose how to feel about that and we can actually dictate how we show up in the world and what our results are.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: Not necessarily that this is going to work right, but that I can feel free in the context of my next fertility steps, that I can feel empowered, that I can feel that my journey is guided by evidence and data.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: And when there aren't data, biological plausibility and a strong relationship with your REI and your coach right.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: All those things matter.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: And so the question is how can I help you choose freedom?
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: And may we all be free.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: May we think about on this 4th of July, like how we can be free to do certain things, how we can have freedom from certain things, and what is that mix going to look like for each of us, and how can we take just even one step closer to experiencing that freedom in our lives, and particularly on the fertility journey.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: So if I can help with any of that, any of this resonated today, please do book a free discovery call with me.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: I would absolutely love to get to know you and your situation and figure out how I can help.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: But, man, freedom there is nothing more important than freedom and I think it's not this like staunch, you know, hyper-independent notion of freedom.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: It's really like we are freest in our authenticity, we are freest in community and I believe we are freest at Love, Science, where we face the hard things and we choose to be free together and with that I will say goodbye.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: You know I love you.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: I'll see you next week.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: Bye.