Thank you for joining me for another episode of the Finding fertility podcast. I want to remind you that every Tuesday I relaunch one of my favorite episodes that we've done in the past. So if you hear any funny dates offers or even the podcast being called the infertile diagnosis. This is why I hope you forgive me for this and enjoy the amazing content we're putting out here on the podcast. And whenever you're ready for more guided support, make sure you go over to the website and check out the fertility formula. This is where I take you through the six vital steps you need to overcome your fertility issues. The formula is an exclusive 10 week online program packed full of everything I did to get pregnant naturally. Using science backed functional medicine, you'll discover the methods I take with my 1 to 1 clients without the high price tag. Start boosting your fertility naturally by maximizing all areas of your health. Today, the monthly membership includes special access to me, your fertility health coach.

So check it out over at the website www dot finding fertility dot co backslash fertility formula. Hello, beautiful people and welcome to another episode of the infertile diagnosis. I'm your host Monica cox along with Sarah Clark and we're here to support, inspire and educate those who are all consumed with the label of infertility. We totally know how you're feeling Both Sarah and I were diagnosed with a form of infertility. Before we hit our thirties we let the fertility experts dictate our past and ignored what our bodies were trying to tell us for far too long. So here we are helping you take control of your infertile diagnosis. Today, I'm going to be talking about some of my top five mistakes. Um if I can get five, I'm pretty sure I have five mistakes um that I made during my journey. Um As you know, my journey was pretty long.

Um Nine years is a really long time to be dealing with infertility issues. And I hope this podcast and everything else that I'm doing is supporting you to make your journey a little bit shorter and a lot more joyful. So my top mistake that I did for probably the first two years, maybe even three was to think that um my unexplained infertility was just one of those things. I definitely listened to the doctors a lot. Um even outside of like infertility stuff, you know that my I. B. S. And my gut issues were normal, that my tonsillitis when I don't even have tonsils was normal. Um My dry skin, my you know lack of sleep, my anxiety that these things were just all normal. And um I used to even get like cysts on my ovaries and I remember you know at the very beginning of my journey, me telling the doctor about it and I'm like oh that's normal women get those and now in hindsight I can look back and just think oh that's ship is not normal, it is not normal to have all these elements and it's just crazy that we've you know developed the society that we think these are normal and obviously all my normal health issues were adding up to a pretty big issue of unexplained infertility and no one was thinking these and it was incredibly frustrating.

I don't know when the penny dropped that not getting pregnant wasn't just one of those things. And unexplained infertility was not a very good answer. Um I know I've talked a lot about picking up um is your the book is your body baby friendly. And that definitely sent me on a big path of figuring out why I was having unexplained infertility. Now this book definitely wasn't anything to do with diet and nutrition but it was um a big wake up call for me to say like look no this is an issue, we definitely need to figure it out. And um yeah super grateful for that book. My second mistake that I did during my infertility years was look for all the crappy. My second mistake that I did during my infertility years was doing all the quick fixes.

Um you name it, I tried it and probably twice, probably three times. Um These were such a big mistake for me because they weren't addressing the root issue of my infertility. Now I'm not saying that some of these weren't beneficial to maybe my overall um my overall health or my well being but just focusing on them alone, you know like taking hand flow loads of supplements or getting reflexology, you know, anything you can think of that, you know is like technically a quick fix. Um It just was never ever on its own going to help fix the root cause of my infertility. And once again we're just in the society that um you know, we want this quick fix, right, we want to be able to just lie on a bed and have someone massage your feet or take a bunch of supplements and not going to improve our a quality um You know, if you've been listening to me for a while, you know, there's a lot more things you need to do to, you know improve your situation no matter what your infertility issues are.

So just focusing on those quick fixes um or maybe even like the holistic support that you can give yourself. It was just a big mistake and I think a lot of people fall into those traps as well. My third um mistake was probably listening to anyone who, I don't know if they were calling themselves experts or you know, people who were you know, meaningful and wanted to help you um but really had no clue what was going inside um what was going on with my body and just gave me a very cookie cutter cut out of what I needed to do. Um I would say hands down everyone except the functional medicine practitioner um basically gave me a sheet of paper and said do this and I did it and it didn't work and I don't know if they have success with other people, but for me it just wasn't ever gonna work that way.

I definitely needed very specific things that I needed to do and just being in, you know the public pool was not going to work and that included IBF, you know, doing a round of IVF was not the answer to my infertility and even just doing um you know, once again taking supplements or you know like going and getting acupuncture, it just wasn't enough to reconnect my fertility links. The 4th mistake that I did was probably doing medical treatment to somehow fix my infertility. Um I've talked about this before maybe on some other podcasts, but you know me doing a round of IVF and it being a super complete shambles. Um and if I would have maybe been in the lead of like the treatment that we were doing, I felt like my husband kind of take like to control with it and he was very like patient and calm and never jumped into anything, but I think if I was in the driver's seat, I would have jumped into treatment after treatment after treatment just to feel like I was doing something and the reality of it was that I probably would have never got pregnant with my own eggs.

If I would have just done IVF after IVF after IVF, you know, maybe there was a chance of numbers that you got the golden egg and it would have worked, but I really truly believe it would have been like five plus IVF for that to happen, so you know, taking steps back which maybe feels like you're not doing anything or you're taking a break is um so completely important during this process and you know really giving yourself time to heal and recharge, especially if you're doing IVF or I u I s give your body that break and um I think that was ultimately what sent us on the path of success was we took time in between all the medical treatments to figure out what the next step was going to be. Um we didn't jump into things. Um but it was a mistake for us to do IVF, it wasn't the answer to our unexplained infertility and it ultimately cost us a lot of money and a lot of mental and emotional stress and if I had my time to do it over obviously with my hindsight, I would have never even thought about it, I would have just kept going with my diet and lifestyle until it worked whether that took you know, three months to a year and a half um knowing and believing that these changes do have a massive impact, I think I could have saved myself, you know, a lot of money, time heartache, My 5th mistake um probably has to be not believing in myself.

So I've said this before that I pretty much geared myself up to believe that it wasn't going to be easy for me to get pregnant because my mom had a hysterectomy at 32 and she was just lucky um to get knocked up really early and have two kids really easily. Um but she had a lot of issues after that, like I said how to hysterectomy. So in my mind I just didn't believe um and myself that I could get pregnant because my mom had these issues and it all like sends back like we think that we are the product of our parents, but the reality is and we know this now through the study of epigenetic says that we have way more control to change the narrative of our genes. And um you know, having that knowledge now could have set me on a completely different path when we started trying to conceive because when we started, I just assumed it would be hard and I had those limiting beliefs in my subconscious and I think that's what really put me on this path of um self destruction during the early years.

Because obviously the frustration and the anger and the bitterness gets like thrown on top of all those other emotions that you've put into your subconscious and so not believing in myself from the very beginning and not having that self love. I think definitely set me up for, you know, just a longer harder journey, especially in those first few years, especially after the first failed IVF. That took a lot of hard work to dig myself out of the infertility stuff and then start working on this stuff that was already there, that was already, you know, layered up through the years. So believing in yourself and having confidence in your body is so important. So you are able to do all these hard, necessary changes that you're going to have to make to improve your fertility health. And I know it's frustrating is, you know, these mistakes are you know, they're not huge mistakes.

It's not like I ruined anyone's life or ruined my own life. These are just hindsight mistakes that you know, I didn't have this knowledge, I didn't have this community, I didn't have you know what you guys have now. So I don't beat myself up over these mistakes and they are easily made. But I wanted to bring them to light to help you to maybe see if you are holding on to any of these and you can change them quite, you know, not quickly. I mean, they're all going to take time. They're all mental emotional and physical that you are going to have to take time to build yourself up. But there are mistakes that maybe you don't realize you're doing right now. So those are my top five mistakes I made during my infertility journey. And I truly hope that you can take some inspiration from them and learn from my mistakes. And until next time you guys have a beautiful week and we'll see you soon.

A few more things before you go. You can find all the links to anything talked about on this podcast, especially how to connect with our special guest while you're down there, make sure you leave us a rating or review. It would totally help this podcast out if you would like to connect with me more. Head over to the website. It's my mindful me dot com. There's a free membership over on the website where you can connect with like minded people and really push your journey forward. We also have all the videos that I do up there for you. And the newsletter goes out about 23 times a month. And we also have pre registration for the fertility reconnect course. It's a six week course to help you really dial in what's going on your body, what foods you can and cannot eat. And we're going to dig deep into the mental blocks you're having and how it could be affecting your fertility health. So that's it. Thank you once again for joining us on the infertile diagnosis and have a beautiful day