What's Wrong With Traditional Fertility Care
The easiest way for me to share my grievances about the traditional fertility care model is to share my own story. The picture above was my ultrasound from when I was about 10 weeks along. Everything was going so well. I was now 17 weeks pregnant with my second child & gloriously naive about what could go wrong.
It was the day before Thanksgiving & we were planning to host both sides of our family at our house the next day. We were going to get the gender in an envelope & find out along with our families the next day. I was in a celebratory mood. We went for our anatomy scan around 9am & things turned from celebratory to the worst day every very quickly. I saw the fetus on the screen, the look of concern in the tech’s eyes – “I’ll be right back, I need to go get the doctor”. I knew right then that life was forever changed. That my fairy tale of easy pregnancies without problems was over. I was barely able to stand from that ultrasound table and walk out of the office. You know when tragedy strikes & it seems so odd that the world around you is just going about life like everything is normal? And you are screaming on the inside that life is not normal & you are not okay & nothing around you seems important? I had that sense for days and weeks after this.
I had a D&C that night and woke up with the worst nausea of my life. What a cruel side effect. My baby was gone & I felt like I had morning sickness all over again. I was shaky & emotionally broken as I got dressed and we left the hospital. I cried myself to sleep that night & for many nights in the coming weeks. There was no Thanksgiving celebration the next day. I laid on the couch ignoring the world around me.
I was young & seemingly healthy & I wanted answers. Weren’t they going to do any testing on the baby? On me & my husband? NOTHING?!? I had a hard time accepting it. But I channeled my grief & frustration into trying to get pregnant again as soon as we were cleared. I’d gotten pregnant twice very easily, so I assumed it would happen again. Nada. Six months in I begged my OB to run tests & see what was going on. Nope.
Finally at the one year mark of trying again we were referred to a fertility doctor. I was so hopeful that we’d find an answer & move on from this nightmare journey. We both went through all the standard testing & it turned up a big fat nothing. Literally nothing. We looked unremarkable & healthy. We were told the next step was treatments. We went through Clomid, failed IUIs, etc. It was exhausting & the drugs made my anxiety 10x worse. I knew in my heart of hearts there had to be an answer. A reason that we weren’t able to get and stay pregnant this time. But none of my providers were helpful with this & I hadn’t been through my training yet.
I know now that I had multiple biochemical imbalances in my body that were impacting my fertility. When I was trained as a practitioner years later a light bulb went off. It didn’t have to be this way. If I’d have known all of these things were bubbling beneath the surface & contributing to my infertility back then my story might have looked a heck of a lot different. I would have been empowered with knowledge and the ability to take charge of my journey. It still breaks my heart that I had to go through that journey without the knowledge & support that I now offer my own clients. But it’s what drives me everyday. I get to provide for other women what no one was able to provide for me back then. I get to help them make their fertility journey look very different than my own. And there’s really not much in the world that compares to that feeling.
