Episode #110: PCOS Fertility Solutions: How to Boost Fertility

4:31 – 25:35 Episode #8: Getting Pregnant with PCOS

How can I get pregnant with PCOS is the number one question that I get asked, and in this episode, I will do my best to answer that question for you.

You’re listening to the PCOS Repair podcast where we explore the ins and outs of PCOS and how to repair the imbalances in your hormones naturally with a little medical help. Sprinkled In Hi, I’m Ashlene Korcek and with many years of medical and personal experience with polycystic ovarian syndrome, it is my joy to watch women reverse their PCOS as they learn to nourish their body in a whole new way. With the power of our beliefs, our mindset and our environment, and the understanding of our genetics, we can heal at the root cause.

Welcome back to the PCOS Repair podcast where we’re going to be talking about getting pregnant naturally with PCOS. This is the number one question that I get asked and I’m going to do my best to answer. It makes sense. This is a very common question because PCOS is the number one cause of female infertility, but the good news is that it is also one of the most treatable causes of infertility. During this episode, I want to focus on the practical actions that you can take to improve your chances of getting pregnant. So I’m going to try to keep the medical info brief and simplified so that I don’t go off on tangents today. But before we can really dive in, it is important to understand how PCOS is affecting our fertility. There are three main ways that it is keeping us from bringing home a healthy, happy baby. The first is that it messes with ovulation. We think about our period as the main event of our monthly cycle, but the truth is, the main event is ovulation. Our body’s entire focus on the rise and fall of hormones is to prepare an egg to mature it, to release it, to hopefully get pregnant.

And if it doesn’t happen that month, then it signals our body to release the endometrial lining, have a period, and then prepare for another chance the next month. The problem with PCOS is that we have an imbalance in hormones that doesn’t lead to the maturing of an egg. We may halfway mature a follicle, and that’s where sometimes we will see a bunch of cysts looking halfway mature follicles on ultrasound on our ovaries. But we don’t mature that egg fully, we don’t achieve ovulation and we are not able to get pregnant. So clearly the first step is that we need to make sure that population happens and that we know when it happens. The second way that PCOS affects our fertility is that it is not uncommon to have low progesterone. Low progesterone can have many problems, one of them being that it can make it very likely or high risk of an early pregnancy miscarriage. At some point, usually around twelve weeks of pregnancy, the placenta is fully formed and takes carrying the baby, but in the beginning, our endometrial lining carries that role. And if our progesterone is too low, it can’t sustain a pregnancy and the risk of miscarriage is higher.

And the third way that PCOS can affect our fertility and chances of carrying a healthy baby to term is it carries risks during pregnancy. So higher risk of pregnancy-induced hypertension, to name one, preeclampsia or gestational diabetes are three really common ones that we see with PCOS. They are not only seen with PCOS, but we definitely have an increased risk of those if we’re not caring for our health throughout pregnancy. So the typical series of events that occurs is we’re not able to get pregnant. We seek medical attention to figure out why we receive a diagnosis of PCOS, some sort of variant of this scenario, and we’re then offered infertility treatments. Now I want to say loud and clear that infertility treatments are amazing. I have always been completely odd. When I was in school, it was some of my favorite things to learn about. The fact that we are able to assist in reproduction and do so much to combat infertility is incredible. The issue is that when we look at the three ways that PCOS affects fertility, our cycles and ovulation, low progesterone, and maintaining our health throughout pregnancy to reduce risk of other complications, it’s important to realize that medical treatments don’t address all three of these very well.

The other thing that I see happen a lot is that we have to look at what toll, what side effects are infertility treatments having on our bodies, just going through all of the testing and the side effects of medication or the stressfulness, scariness, unsurely, anxiety, and hope let down of all the fertility treatment that takes a huge toll on our physical and mental and emotional health. All of which, when we look at the root causes of PCOS, create more chaos in our bodies, on top of the fact that the medications do mess with our hormones. While I think that medical treatment is extremely valuable and can be very helpful for women with PCOS, it may not be the first place you want to start when we understand what the diagnosis is. So in an ideal world, we would know we have PCOS, and as we approached wanting to start trying to have a baby, we could really set aside some time to invest in our health and get it to where we can. That’s going to be different for every person. We have different barriers standing in our way. We have different scenarios, we have different other health issues.

There’s not a one-size-fits-all here, but any amount of really caring for and nurturing those root causes of PCOS, which we talk about more in episode three. So I will link to that in the show notes below, as well as just getting ourselves mentally geared up for potentially needing to have an infertility treatment. For me, I found it extremely helpful to kind of know what my next step would be if this didn’t work because it kind of gave me this peace of mind or I didn’t feel like all my eggs were in one basket. I didn’t have all of my hope writing on one thing so that I could step back and take a deep breath. So to say, I never had to get to the point of actually following through with infertility treatments. And I’ll share a little bit more about that in a moment. But it’s important to realize that infertility treatments, although wonderful, are not benign. They definitely have a strong impact on our body, our physical body, our emotional body. And that is the next step that the medical community has to offer us. It’s also important to realize that it’s your choice when you are ready for it.

And I found it hugely supportive and hugely relieving of my anxiety to know that that option was there when I was ready for it. And I also know that when you are ready to have a baby, you want to find out you’re pregnant yesterday. And so when someone offers you some medical treatment, it’s like, oh yeah, sign me up for that, because I want this to happen now and I just want to offer a full look at everything. Medical treatments are amazing. They can work very well. They don’t have as high a percentage of success as I would like. I remember when I was looking at that for myself, I remember thinking, oh, man, like, still not that great. Now, most people repeat them a couple of times and that’s where overall they find success. They’re also not cheap. Some insurance plans cover them. Some insurance plans cover a certain amount of them per year, but there’s definitely a lot of out-of-pocket expenses there, and again, a lot of expenses on the toll of our body. So that brings us to the actual topic of today’s episode, and that is, what do we do to boost fertility naturally?

So the best thing that happened to me during my journey to get pregnant with PCOS was that there was a four-month wait to see the infertility specialist. Similar to like I mentioned above, and similar to how I hear so many women discuss their beginning of trying to get some assistance with trying to get pregnant. I was given the diagnosis by my gym physician and they referred me to an infertility specialist to kind of go through more extensive treatments. I was at a University hospital and so everybody is very subspecialized and so some gyms will get started with some infertility treatments, some family medicine doctors will get started. There isn’t necessarily one doctor that you go to for this depends on really what your doctor’s experience with it is. But I was referred to an infertility specialist when I called to make an appointment. I was told the soonest appointment was four months away, which, of course, was devastating news because when we want a baby, we want it now. But during this time, I felt really stuck here. I’d been given this diagnosis, and I had this weight, and I’m like, what do I do?

I was just told I’m not going to get pregnant without the infertility center’s assistance. And so what do I do? I’m like, well, I can’t do anything right now. And it gave me this forced break, if you will. It wasn’t like I was going to stop trying to get pregnant, but all of my hope of getting pregnant on my own has been taken away by my gynecologist. And now I was left with this four months of empty space trying to distract myself. And so I was like, you know what? This is going to be hard and scary. As I read more and more and I read there’s no guarantee it’s still a fairly low percentage of people that get pregnant with each round of any sort of infertility treatment. And so I was like, okay, this is going to be stressful for my husband and I. We both have very busy careers. So taking off the time for infertility treatment will be stressful. Figuring out the finances and insurance, covering or not covering of this is going to be stressful. And the treatments are going to be hard on my body. They come with side effects.

And so there was a lot of things that felt daunting and made me nervous. I mean, I wanted to be a mom. And so I was willing to forge ahead, but definitely was nervous about what was ahead, what this would look like. And I knew that once we got started, even if you start with a couple of blood tests and a prescription of some pills if that doesn’t work, it doesn’t end there, and you get more and more invested in this process. And at what point do you have to make some hard decisions? And so I knew that going into this, I wanted to be both physically and emotionally as strong as I could be. I wanted my emotional and physical health to be at its height. And so while I sat there feeling like I couldn’t do anything for four months, I put my focus on finding mental and emotional calm around the situation, clarity of what my next step would be in my next step, and how I was going to just focus on the step ahead. As in these four months of wait, my focus was to eat food that was going to prepare my body to be ready for what was coming, that my physical movement would assist my body to be strong and to feel good ,and to have the energy that it needed, that my mind wasn’t going to just run the hamster wheel over and over and over.

Of all the what-ifs and the anxieties and the fears and the anger at times of why am I having to go through this instead putting the thoughts that I wanted to think in front of myself so that my focus was on I’m growing in health, I’m growing in confidence in my body. I am caring for this body so that it is creating a space for this baby that we want. And I don’t know what path lies ahead at this point. These are the thoughts that I’m putting in my mind and saying over and over throughout the day. And as you begin to do that for yourself, you begin to believe it. And I’m not just doing the thoughts, I’m also doing the actions. And when you combine all of that, it was powerful. And I have seen this in my journey where it went really exactly how I wanted it, where I never had to start fertility treatments. I found out literally the night before I took a pregnancy test, my appointment to start lectures all was the next day. And I found out that I was pregnant. And so I was able to not have to go through all the fertility treatment.

But I’ve also worked with women who are either currently going through fertility treatments or who have been through fertility treatments and are planning to start them back up again or are spending some time preparing their body and then go on to do fertility treatments. And the big difference here is that when we prepare our bodies, when we have these mindsets, when we’re taking the actions, we set ourselves up for a higher statistical chance of getting pregnant, for sure. But we also set ourselves up to maintain a different level of peace, comfort, and, in a sense, enjoyment of the process. We each have our own story of how our children are born. We all have our own story of how we get around to actually deciding to start a family and how that family comes into being. And this is your story. And ideally, it can be as pleasant as possible. And a lot of that comes down to the thoughts that we feed ourselves and then the actions that we take. And there’s no one size fits all of this. It has to be what resonates with you, what feels in your heart and your gut, what feels like the next right step for you.

And again, that’s where the PCOS repair podcast comes in. It’s not about choosing only medical or only natural or even always just knowing the right steps, because there aren’t right steps. It’s about listening to your body, your body’s symptoms, your physical symptoms, your body’s emotional symptoms. What are you up for? Sometimes we’re not capable at this moment of going through infertility treatments for whatever reason, whether it’s financial or emotional or time wise, because of what’s happening in our careers. But having all of these pieces, we can take the steps that we can in this moment, and we can stop feeling as stuck and as helpless. Okay, so I digress a little bit because that four-month shift of what happened in my mind and in my heart, while I actually took the physical actions was huge for me. And the reason I say it was the greatest gift because not only does it lead to becoming a mom, but it was one of the best things that could have happened to me because it grew my confidence in my ability to have better health. And it allowed me to experience a level of better health that I hadn’t before so that I knew that that was possible for me and how amazing I feel.

And yes, it takes some work to maintain and to get back there and things after pregnancy, but to just have an experience that was life changing. And it’s something that I have fallen back on many times to invest in myself and value my health and be able to enjoy life at a different level. And so it was a huge gift that went way beyond my three kids, who are definitely three little blessings, but also a look into what the infertility journey could have looked like if I had not become pregnant. I had been to the fertility specialist. He had run all the tests that he wanted. He had actually confirmed on ultrasound that I was ovulating at my first appointment with him. So he had said, you know what? Fingers crossed. I’m going to schedule you back and go over your blood work, and we’ll start lectures all at that point, or I’ll give you the prescription and we’ll start at the beginning of your cycle. But he’s like, but you are ovulating. And that is a good sign. And that was at the end of the four months. And so I had not been ovulating when I saw my gynecologist.

And here four months later, he confirmed on ultrasound that I was indeed ovulating. And then two weeks later, prior to going into my appointment to start letrozole, I found out that I was indeed pregnant by a home pregnancy test. But if I had not become pregnant, the next step would have been to start letrozole. And if I had not had a period, because my period had been very irregular prior to the four months that I spent on my health, I would have possibly been giving Provera. Provera has the medical necessity for some people, because Proevera can definitely be important. If your uterine lining is getting too thick, there’s some long-term risks of that. And it can be really helpful because you do need to kind of have a start of things to start some of these infertility treatments. But for Vera in and of itself, it’s one more way that we kind of don’t honor our body’s natural rhythm or honor the fact that our body is currently out of rhythm. And in some ways, it helps us to maybe, I think, in the medical community’s mind it helps us to maybe create a starting spot.

Like maybe it’s like a jumpstart to getting back. And for some women, that does work. For some women, though, it’s just one more way of creating chaos in our cycle. And so again, this is not a cookie-cutter approach. It’s not the same for each person. And so it’s really about choosing what you feel most comfortable with. I’m not giving you straightforward answers if this is the way to do it, but it’s important to really look at all of these choices and not just blindly plow ahead and follow what others have done, but to look at what feels best to you. So I would have possibly taken for Vera would have started on laptops all it would have had side effects. Perhaps it would have worked. If it hadn’t, then I would have been moving on to IUI. If IUI hadn’t worked, I’d be moving on to IVF. And again, any woman who has had to deal with any level of those infertility treatments will tell you it takes an emotional toll. It takes a financial toll. It can be hard on a marriage. And if we can avoid it, amazing if we can’t, I’m so glad it’s there.

So the best advice that I have for women who ask the question, what can I do to get pregnant when I have PCOS? Start with a deep breath. Think about, given the situation, what feels best to you. My recommendation would be to take a few months to invest in your health. I’m not going to go into all the steps there. You can listen to episodes three and four. They go over more of the root causes of PCOS and how to approach them. But to take that time to invest in your health. And then as your health begins to improve, you may see that your period returns, the ovulation returns. Maybe that’s enough by itself. Fingers crossed, right? If it’s not, your body is in a better place. If you’ve been doing the mind work and the emotional work alongside the physical work, then you’re in a better place to take on infertility treatments. If you are already in the midst of infertility treatments and feel like they’re not working, I can’t tell you how many women I’ve talked to her in the midst of it, and they just feel like I feel like my body is worse off than it was.

And that’s not to say that infertility treatments were bad. Not at all. But it does take a toll on us. And so sometimes finish maybe the phase that you’re in, maybe talk to your doctors, definitely, because they may say, like, look, there’s really no harm in taking a break right now or Ashley, I really think this next thing you’re all set up, let’s go ahead and just do this and then take a break. But if you’re feeling worn out by the infertility process, there’s no harm in stepping back and taking a break. Take a look at what your insurance situation and all those things would be. There can be some outside factors that also help us decide what the next step would be. But there’s no harm in taking a hiatus and just saying, Look, I’m going to give my body three to four months to just recalibrate, to let go of some of the stress, to not have to deal with some of the side effects, and to really focus on my health, on nourishing, through food and through movement and through some self-care. And I’m going to see where that takes me.

And if needed, I will come back to the infertility treatments because this is my dream. But fingers crossed, it happens without needing that again. And so these are all ways that I find really help women to create their own story and follow their own journey to PCOS, improved fertility, to getting pregnant, to sustaining a healthy pregnancy, and to ultimately meeting their first baby or their second baby, wherever they’re at, third baby, wherever they’re at in their family. But the bottom line is realizing there are many approaches to stay in touch with the bigger picture. I know that our emotional side gets carried away with I want this baby now. I want this baby now. Maybe it’s your second or third baby and you don’t want it to be so much younger than its siblings. There’s all these things that make us frantic to get a baby right now but to just take a step back, to take that deep breath, and to look at all of your options in which one really feels better. Because at the end of the day, where you’ll find peace, which finding peace helps our fertility. It’s not about relaxing or not stressing.

It’s about truly finding an inner calm with the choices that you’re making doesn’t just make the journey more enjoyable, it really does actually help our hormones. It helps our body feel like they can do this. Like it’s safe to do this because it’s being cared for. It’s environmental bubble that you’re creating for your body. It has the ability to do bigger things. And so with that, we’ll close for today. And my hope for you is that this episode helps you to find the clarity of how your journey to getting pregnant will go. And if you have any follow-up questions, I would love to connect with you over on Instagram. Send me a DM. I am always happy to answer more questions in my Instagram stories or to answer questions about the specific topic or point you towards other episodes that fill in some of the gaps. Because the point of this episode was really more to lay a path forward of what it looks like, to navigate all of the options and decisions that we face when we were trying to get pregnant with PCOS, and to find calm instead of concern and anxiety and to rekindle the hope that this can happen.

There is a statistic and I would have to find the Journal article of this but there is a statistic that most women and I forget the exact number but it was in the 90%. Most women with PCOS do eventually have a baby. So on that hopeful note, I will say goodbye for today.

Did you know that studies of PCOS epigenetics have shown that our environment can either worsen or completely reverse our PCOS symptoms? I believe that although PCOS makes us sensitive to our environment it also makes us powerful when we learn what our body needs and commit to providing those needs. Not only do we gain back our health but we grow in power just by showing up for ourselves. This is why I’ve created a guide for you to get started. My PCOS fertility meal guide can be found in the show notes below. I want to show you how to create an environment that promotes healing while still being able to live a life that you enjoy. This guide is completely free so go get your copy now so that you can step into the vision that you have for your life and for your health.

25:38.5 – 40:32 Episode #15: PCOS & Ovulation

PCOS is the most common reason for women of reproductive age to not be ovulating. The hormone imbalance of PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome, leads to irregular cycles and not ovulating, known as ovulation. This makes it hard for women with PCOS to get pregnant. I thought getting pregnant would be easy as soon as I had my IUD removed. But six months later, I had only had three periods and I still wasn’t pregnant. What was going on? Ovulation problems in PCOS are what today’s episode is all about. So let’s get started.

You’re listening to the PCOS Repair podcast, where we explore the ins and outs of PCOS and how to repair the imbalances in your hormones naturally with a little medical help. Sprinkled in. Hi, I’m Ashlene Korcek, and with many years of medical and personal experience with the polycystic ovarian syndrome, it is my joy to watch women reverse their PCOS as they learn to nourish their bodies in a whole new way. With the power of our beliefs, our mindset, our environment, and the understanding of our genetics, we can heal at the root cause.

Welcome back to the PCOS Repair Podcast, where today we’re talking about all things ovulation. And before you tune out because you aren’t currently trying to get pregnant, let me just say that ovulation is important for conceiving, but it is also a really important health indicator of how well your PCOS is being managed. So this episode will be helpful whether or not you are currently thinking about trying to get pregnant. All right, let’s start with what is ovulation? Ovulation is the main event of your cycle. I know maybe you’re like me and you thought that the period was the main event of your cycle, but no, it’s ovulation. In fact, your period won’t even happen a lot of times when you’re not ovulating, because that’s the hormone that your body’s waiting for. It’s waiting for that LH surge in order to say, okay, did we get pregnant? And then if we didn’t, then it has a period. I was wrong all those years, but when I started learning about PCOS, I learned that no, it’s ovulation. That’s the main event in our cycle. So during the first part of your cycle, FSH, your follicular stimulating hormones, rises and prepares a follicle into a mature egg.

Then our body releases LH and we have an LH. Your luteinizing hormone, surges, it spikes, causing your body to release that mature egg, aka to ovulate, and then it is ready for fertilization. If fertilization happens, then your body will hopefully implant that embryo into the uterine wall where it’s supposed to go, and conception occurs and your body will start to create all of the necessary preparations for a healthy pregnancy. If fertilization does not occur, or any of those other steps following it, then our body will say, all right, let’s prepare for another month. We have a period and we try again. Your fertile window of ovulation lasts only about 24 hours before the egg degrades and your body prepares for your next period. So without ovulation, you first of all can’t become pregnant, and also without knowing when that 24 to 48 hours window of ovulation is each month, you’re not going to have a very high success rate of getting pregnant. But it goes further than that. If you’re not ovulating, something is out of balance with your hormones and it’s a key indicator of your PCOS health not being well managed. And your periods are likely going to be problematic as well.

So this leads us to what are some of the signs and symptoms that you may not be ovulating and then we can talk about what to do about it. So the signs and symptoms of ovulation include your cycle lasting more than 35 days. While some women do ovulate and have a 36-day cycle, the percentage of women that are ovulating and having a cycle more than 35 days goes down significantly. So if you’re having a cycle that’s more than 35 days, it may be a sign that you’re not ovulating and you’re going to want to look into it further. Having irregular cycles or no cycles at all can be an indicator absence of any cycle symptoms. So maybe not having sore tender breasts during your cycle. Now, if you don’t have them and you have other signs, then I wouldn’t get too worried. But if you’re not having any of these signs of maybe some possible cramping around mid-cycle, some soreness of your breast, like we said, lack of cervical mucus. So like no cervical mucus changed throughout the month, you may be charting your body temperature. And if you’re not seeing any change in that pattern, you may not be having any sort of hormone fluctuations, or you may not be having enough hormone fluctuations to really have an ovulatory cycle.

And then also just not getting pregnant for several months after trying to conceive is a really good indicator that something is not quite right with your ovulation. So how do you know when and if you are ovulating? Unlike your period, ovulation is easy to miss. Very few women even pay attention to it unless they are trying to get pregnant and having a hard time. In fact, the first time you might even realize that something isn’t quite right might be when you’re trying to conceive. It’s completely natural to become a lot more aware of your cycle when you’re trying to get pregnant. And the extra interest and attention in your monthly cycle is really the first step of starting to reverse your PCOS, whether or not you’re trying to get pregnant. But definitely becoming more and more aware of what’s going on in your cycle is very important if you’re trying to get pregnant with PCOS. So with a hormone disorder such as PCOS OPK or Ovulation, predictor kits are really not useful. In fact, I highly recommend not using them. And the reason is that this is where you test your urine with like a hormone test strip that you can do at home.

And what it’s testing is the LH in your urine to determine if and when you ovulate. The problem is that for women with PCOS, LH is often abnormally, already elevated. And so usually what’s going to happen is you’re going to get a low positive all the time, and you’re not necessarily going to get you’re not going to see on the test a slow rise and then a peak in LH denoting ovulation. You’re just going to see a high fertile day, but never a peak. Notice anything that indicates that ovulation actually happened. I recommend tracking your basal body temperature, or BBT for short. BBT is the best at-home method to determine if and when you are ovulating each month, but it is a pain in the butt. It’s something that you have to do every morning. At the same time, there are things that can affect the accuracy of your measurements, and you kind of need to do it for a couple of months in a row to really get a view of the rhythm of what your cycle is doing each month. And most women who are trying to get pregnant don’t want to wait a few months to figure out what’s going on before they can start really addressing it.

So there are things like the obvious sense that can really be helpful in tracking, but any sort of temperature tracker is going to be a lot better than trying to measure your hormone levels with LH. There are some at-home hormone ovulating test strips that are looking at more than LH. If they have information on how to interpret the test for PCOS, that may be a way to go. But as far as I have seen, working with your temperature, your basal body temperature is a lot more accurate. And you’re not going to get all of these false positives that almost mess you up more because you think maybe I ovulated here and you didn’t. And a lot of women with PCOS when they do start to ovulate later in their cycle, and so those LH hormone tests can really mess you up. You think you already ovulated. You have not actually ovulated yet, and your timing is all off, and so they can actually make it a lot harder to get pregnant. In the Show notes below, I will link to a blog article that walks you through each step of how to track your BBT and how to interpret it, and what you need to do there.

So it’s a process, and I will link to that in the Show Notes below. Okay, so now that you’ve determined that you’re not ovulating each month, why is this the case? Well, there are several reasons for not ovulating. You may have skipped a month just due to some environmental factors such as lack of sleep, stress, or other short-term factors. And this is really a little concern. Everyone misses a cycle of ovulating here and there, not a big deal. The problem comes when we are consistently skipping ovulation throughout our cycle. There are reasons outside of PCOS that can cause an ovulation, but roughly 70% of cases are due to PCOS. But the good news is that with just a little assistance, most women with PCOS get pregnant and have one or more children, even without fertility treatments needed. But first of all, we need to know what to do about an ovulation. If you have recently stopped hormonal birth control, it can take some time to recover. Your doctor may have even told you that it can take three to six months for your cycle to become normal again. However, I don’t recommend just sitting back and waiting and hoping for the best, because a lot of times with PCOS that’s three to six months and your hormones and your cycle is still not normalized.

In fact, sometimes it gets worse and worse and worse because as we’ve talked about in other episodes he sees it as a spiral. You can either start to make some positive health changes and see a really positive spiral in your symptoms. But each of your symptoms and the root causes of PCOS really play off of each other. And so as one improves, it improves the other ones and vice versa. As one gets worse, it gets worse and worse and worse. And so if you go off of birth control and you don’t address the irregularities and repair your cycle, you may find that you start to a downward spiral in your symptoms. So this is a really good time to recognize that your body is struggling to find its rhythm. You can help your body with some tender loving care through giving it the proper nourishment, removing any stress as possible, getting quality sleep, and that will all help to repair and create that conceivable cycle again, the cycle that’s ready to conceive. So your period is considered the fifth final sign by gynecologists, which is amazing because finally, the medical world is recognizing that your menstrual cycle tells us so much about your health.

To repair your cycle and ovulate monthly, it’s really important to just lean into your health to care for your body and to not just turn to medication, supplements, and fertility procedures because they’re all kinds of quick fixes bandaids for only a portion of the problem. So of course we want to start with nutrients, providing your body with all the nutrients it needs. Because in order to produce healthy hormones, your body needs to be supplied with adequate resources. And those are the nutrients your body needs. Plenty of vitamins, proteins, and healthy fats, while limiting the inflammatory foods, stress, and perceived stress. Anything your body can view as a threat to its survival can have a detrimental effect on your hormones and especially your fertility. Our bodies kind of almost put up a wall against conceiving if they feel like it’s not a safe time for us to take that project on. I mean, it’s a nine-month commitment. And then even after the nine months, our body has a significant role to play in caring for this new baby. And so our bodies really want to make sure we’re in a stable place. And so, on a very primal level, if your body perceives the stress, it can put up a wall against fertility.

Now, stress is a normal part of life and we cannot remove it entirely. So it really isn’t about removing the stress, it’s about how we manage it and how we care for our needs in the midst of it. Again, it’s really more how our body feels like. It’s not that there can’t be stressors in our life. It’s if our body feels like we have the capacity to take on this project of pregnancy and motherhood, whether or not it feels like it’s a safe time to be fertile. So our stress can have either a damaging and detrimental effect to our hormone balance, or, depending on how we manage it, we can still thrive in the midst of real life. Moving our bodies regularly helps to restore and promote healthy, balanced hormones, especially after coming off of birth control. Exercise reduces our inflammation, it helps remove toxins, and it helps lower the insulin effect. Consistency matters more than the specific type of exercise that you perform. So just get out there, have fun with it, get your body moving, get your circulation up and create the habit of it. And don’t stress too much about what type of exercise you’re doing.

Creating a conceivable cycle doesn’t happen overnight, but a little progress each day, it adds up in a big way. So you do not have to be perfect. Just get out there, get started and stick with it, and do your best. So when should you get help for your an ambulatory cycles? So, while getting pregnant can take time, I recommend seeing your doctor any time that you feel like something isn’t quite right. So if your cycles are irregular, it does not hurt to run a few tests and check your hormones, especially if you have not been formally diagnosed with PCOS. If something feels off, by all means to your doctor. But I also recommend deciding when and if you’re ready to have infertility intervention. It is its own cycle of insanity to go through infertility treatments. They are emotionally draining, they are costly, financially draining, and they kind of work against naturally balancing your hormones. Now, I am all for infertility treatments, but I do recommend giving your body, as you’re learning about all of this, give your body a few months of really doing the things that it needs to be cared for to nourish it, to really provide a safe place of health for your body.

First, see how far you can get it and continue that if and when you decide to do infertility treatments, because you can really get yourself in a pattern of just forcing your body, forcing your body and your body just is crying out for help and needs the support of health and care. And sometimes just jumping into the next thing can lead us to a place where we’re just less successful, there’s more cost, more anxiety, more stress than was needed. And this is where I also recommend seeking the help of a PCOS specialist who understands the lifestyle changes for PCOS that are necessary in order to make it more likely to conceive naturally or to help balance your hormones naturally. In my experience, doctors don’t have a lot of assistance to offer in this area. I know my medical training and all of my friends and colleagues that have gone through we know so much about the medical world and the medical treatments that we can offer that we really don’t have the resources or the time to really provide much to our patients in a 15 minutes appointment. So, other than recommending weight loss for anyone who has a BMI over 25, doctors just don’t really have a lot to give.

And there are so many nuances in lifestyle that they just don’t really have a lot to add and they’re not equipped to help you with that in that 15 minutes appointment. So if you are ready to balance your hormones naturally again, start by taking the PCOS Root Cause Quiz. It will give you a lot of insight into where your body is currently struggling and it’s a fantastic way to start discovering what your body needs to reverse your PCOS and balance those hormones. And it will help you to improve your chances of getting pregnant, even if you do choose to pursue infertility treatments. And there you have it, my friend. All the things ovulation and how to listen as your body communicates to you through the health of your monthly cycle. There are several additional resources for you waiting over on the episode page, so make sure that you go and check those out in the show notes. And if you haven’t already, be sure to hit the subscribe button because we have some really great episodes coming up about PCOS during pregnancy and how things change there, as well as what does PCOS mean for your children, do you have a daughter?

And all other great topics coming your way. So make sure you hit that subscribe button. And until next week, bye for now.

Did you know that studies of PCOS epigenetics have shown that our environment can either worsen or completely reverse our PCOS symptoms? I believe that although PCOS makes us sensitive to our environment, it also makes us powerful. When we learn what our body needs and commit to providing those needs, not only do we gain back our health, but we grow in power just by showing up for ourselves. This is why I’ve created a guide for you to get started. My puzzle Fertility Meal Guide can be found in the show notes below. I want to show you how to create an environment that promotes healing while still being able to live a life that you enjoy. This guide is completely free, so go get your copy now so that you can step into the vision that you have for your life and for your health.

40:36 – 1:10:39 Episode #16: PCOS During Pregnancy

The interesting thing about infertility is the inability to get pregnant and that desire to become pregnant that consumes us in a way that we forget to think about what happens next, what happens once we get that positive pregnancy test? Once you finally get your positive pregnancy test, or several, just to make sure that you’re not dreaming, a new wave of emotion begins to take over. Excitement, a feeling of surrealness, some anxiety and nervousness, and concern that everything will go smoothly and that your baby will be born healthy. The good news is that the same recommendations that they make for getting pregnant naturally or natural ways to boost fertility hold true for having a healthy pregnancy. But in today’s episode, I want to walk you through a few considerations, trimester by trimester to optimize your PCOS pregnancy health.

You’re listening to the PCOS Repair podcast, where we explore the ins and outs of PCOS and how to repair the imbalances in your hormones naturally with a little medical help. Sprinkled in. Hi, I’m Ashlene Korcek, and with many years of medical and personal experience with polycystic ovarian syndrome, it is my joy to watch women reverse their PCOS as they learn to nourish their body in a whole new way. With the power of our beliefs, our mindset and our environment and the understanding of our genetics, we can heal at the root cause.

Welcome back to the PCOS Repair podcast, where today I’m going to be discussing how to optimize your PCOS health during pregnancy. But before you tune out because you’re not currently pregnant. Let me invite you to continue listening. Because a lot of what we’re going to be talking about today. You’re going to want to know before you get pregnant. And it continues to enhance your knowledge of PCOS and how to improve your health in general. Because it’s going to really dive into what your body needs at different stages. All right, so let’s dive in. For some women, PCOS actually improves during their pregnancy. Their symptoms and hormones begin to balance and they find that staying healthier is easier than normal for them. I really hope this is you. It was not the case for me, but I still loved being pregnant and I loved the experience of each one of my pregnancies. My second two pregnancies were easier and had a lot less complications with my first. My doctor hadn’t informed me of all the things that were going to happen and change throughout pregnancy and all the things that I’m going to share about today.

I had to learn them from experience. I had to learn them the hard way. And that led to a lot of research in preparation for baby number two and three. But throughout this episode, I want to remind you that knowledge is power. We do our best until we know better and then we can do better. Well, I want you to do your best to support a healthy pregnancy. Our best will always be all we can do and it will never be perfect. And that is okay. The cool thing about health is just making even small improvements actually has an enormous impact and we can see a huge shift in the trajectory of where we’re headed than if we had continued on the path that we were on. So there is no perfect, it’s just understanding the concept here in today’s episode and then doing the best you can to implement what you can, knowing that it will make a tremendous difference. The good news is that women with PCOS are not considered high risk pregnancies. Now, there are certain things that PCOS creates in us, perhaps being quite a bit overweight or having other health considerations, like already being insulin resistant and so forth, that can lead to us being high risk.

But just the diagnosis of PCOS does not mean that we are a high risk pregnancy. And that’s really cool because that shows that a lot of people with PCOS go on to do just great during pregnancy. But like with anything, PCOS can make us a bit more sensitive to our environment and pregnancy is no exception. That is why I recorded this episode, because I get a lot of questions on the topic and I wish someone had told me all these things. So we’re going to cover them today. First, there’s the preconception phase. This is where you’re seeing an infertility specialist. Perhaps you are trying to naturally optimize your fertility, which I highly recommend. And this is where you’re preparing and doing everything you can to be in your best health for when you get that positive pregnancy test. Now, a lot of times our mindset is we’re doing everything to make our health the best so that we can get that positive pregnancy test. But all of these things are going to carry on throughout your pregnancy. And the reason that I love a natural approach to optimizing your fertility, even if you’re also working with an infertility specialist, going through medication treatment or procedural treatment like IUI or IVF, the natural approach is going to help prepare you for that moment when you get that positive pregnancy test.

Because at that moment the situation has changed. We’re no longer trying to promote ovulation, we’re no longer trying to promote pregnancy happening, we are trying to sustain a healthy pregnancy. And at that moment things are going to shift so we want to make sure our progesterone levels are high enough. We want to make sure that our body is ready to really take on a pregnancy and so that it can get through that first trimester, which is always the most bumpy trimester. And then from there, as we enter our second trimester, our placenta is fully formed and the risk of miscarriage goes down drastically. The goal here is to set yourself up for the best chances of success through nourishment movement mindset and stress management. We’ve talked about these in previous episodes. So I’m not going to go into each one of these, but basically you’re going to be taking care of your physical and mental health the best you can as you go along this journey of trying to get pregnant and become a mommy. This is a lifelong process, so the good news is that you don’t have to get it right away. It’s not a diet or a quick fix, so don’t worry about being perfect all the time.

If you’re doing this, the majority of the time, you’re going to see progress, you’re going to see slow improvements, and you’re going to see a huge impact on your health, your hormones and your PCOS. So then as soon as you get that positive pregnancy test, you enter your first trimester. I strongly encourage you to contact the OBGYN that you want to go to. It can take a little while, especially right now. I don’t know if it’s a backup from Covet or what it is, but it seems like wait times are extreme and it can be difficult to get into your first trimester appointment, especially as a new patient. So I highly recommend back in that preconception phase to already have a doctor established and so that you’re not a new patient and have them be aware of your PCOS. Even if you don’t necessarily need labs run or any sort of assistance from them at the moment with your PCOS. Make sure that they are aware of that and talk to them about what concerns they would have as you get pregnant so that it’s already in your chart. That way, when you get pregnant, you can call even just have a nursing call where they can call in something for you, like a progesterone supplement if needed.

Okay, not everyone needs it, but hopefully they have tested your progesterone or they have records of your recent progesterone labs on file. That way they can decide if they worry about that being an issue for you. All women increase their insulin resistant tendency during pregnancy, but for women with PCOS, this is even more prevalent due to already having that tendency towards insulin resistance. The concern here is that you may gain weight faster during pregnancy and that increases your risk of gestational diabetes as well as pregnancy induced hypertension or preeclampsia. And these also carry risks not only to the mother, but to the developing baby. So we want to try to keep these cravings and keep our nutrition in check so that we can slowly get through this process. I remember feeling during my pregnancy that I was really glad it only lasted nine months. Not because I was just done being pregnant, because I felt like there was a ticking time bomb ready to go off. Like my health could only sustain so much. It’s kind of like when you’re carrying something heavy, you’re like, OK, I can do this for so long, but at some point my muscles are just going to give out.

It’s like at some point my body is just going to give in and this is going to be too much for it. So what we’re trying to do is kind of take the marathon of being pregnant for nine months, but also just try to slow down the inevitable of our body kind of moving towards giving in. And so that’s not only true for people with PCOS, it’s just that pregnancy is hard on the body. That’s why if everything doesn’t feel right in the body, your body will naturally reduce your fertility because it doesn’t feel up to the task of carrying a baby to term. And so the goal here is just to support your body and making it as far as it can without complications. Because eventually someone who’s pregnant long enough, like if we somehow didn’t, the longer you go, like if you start going past 40 weeks, your risks just go up because your body starts wearing out. These are all just normal things, but maybe I didn’t really think it through, but I felt like in the beginning I just didn’t realize, oh my God, being pregnant isn’t so bad. I’m excited, I feel pretty good.

I have some morning sickness. I’m definitely tired, but I didn’t really think about the long haul that your body has to go through. And so continuing that wonderful nourishment and care of your body in the first trimester, even though you’re tired, even though your cravings are worse, even though you have some food aversion which can make it hard, do your best to keep your nutrition as clean and as protein rich as possible. So what kind of ways can we nourish our bodies to help reduce these risks and feel better so that you can enjoy this exciting time of finally being pregnant? First of all, listen to your body and what it’s craving and then choose healthier options. So for example, if you are craving something sweet, a really good option would be something like apples and almond butter. They’re going to provide a fair amount of nourishment as well as assist that sweet tooth craving. And all cravings in our bodies do stem from actually wanting certain nutrients. So eating things that are nutrient dense, like apples and nuts, are going to be better than eating something that is top of mind when you’re craving sweets like a candy or a dessert.

But it leaves your body void of nutrients and your body continues to crave. Or if you’re craving something salty, one of my favorites when I was pregnant was to air popcorn and then toss it with a little bit of olive oil. I would get like olive oil and a spray and I would just toss it with a little bit of olive oil and then I would sprinkle a little bit of nutritional yeast and sea salt and it really helps that salty craving. Or I would eat it while they drink plenty of water to kind of combat having too much salt. That brings me to drinking plenty of water. If you are nauseous throughout the day, it can be hard to drink a fair amount at one time if your stomach is already feeling a little queasy. So just make sure you’re constantly sipping water and you could try something sparkling. Some women find that sparkling is great if you have heartburn or reflux during pregnancy. You may not enjoy the sparkling as much, but make sure you’re getting enough fluids to help your body. Your body actually is increasing its blood flow tremendously and increasing your blood volume to accommodate the baby.

And growing up placenta, it’s really important to make sure it has plenty of fluids in order to do that. The next really important nutrition consideration is protein. Don’t skimp on the protein. If you get plenty of protein, especially early on in the day, it can help tremendously with your cravings, your energy, and really help support a healthy pregnancy. Protein is the building blocks of all cells. And so when we start thinking about building a baby, having enough protein is vital. Now with my third baby, my little boy, I liked protein, I loved eggs. I grew up a vegetarian and I have transitioned to eating healthy forms of meat because I think that it’s a cleaner way to go. But oh my goodness, with my girls I could not do protein. The smell of eggs made me nauseous. Any thought of meat and anything made me nauseous. Just the texture, I just couldn’t do it. But with my boy, all I wanted was coffee and protein my entire pregnancy. So there are variations on how you’re going to feel. Everyone’s different, every pregnancy is different. But don’t skimp on the protein. Find ways to sneak it in however you can, whether it’s a protein shake, if you can stomach a smoothie, have several throughout the day.

You can vary the flavors, the fruits that you had with them, you could sneak in some vegetables with them, but don’t skimp on the protein. It’s so important for a healthy pregnancy. And then make sure that you’re getting a prenatal vitamin. Ideally, we should start this in the preconception phase and you may also want to make sure that your prenatal has folate in it instead of folic acid. Some women with PCOS have a genetic tendency to not convert it very well inside of our bodies, and so the folic acid can be problematic and the folate is better. So go with the natural folate form when it comes to your prenatal vitamins and supplements. And if you’re having a hard time, like if you’re really nauseous, make sure that you are getting adequate amounts of at least nutrients through your vitamins and so forth. So the weight goal in the first trimester is basically to try not to gain hardly anything. Now, women who are super nauseous, this is easy for them because they almost can’t keep anything down. Unfortunately, it’s easy for them. It’s not a fun thing to have to go through. But if you feel like you had weight that you could lose prior to getting pregnant, you really don’t need to gain any weight during the first trimester.

Now, if you gain a pound or two, don’t stress it, okay, you’re going to gain weight during pregnancy. We just want to slow roll it at the beginning. There’s really no need to gain any weight except for that extra blood volume. And so we’re talking minimal weight gain needed as the baby starts to grow. Then definitely we are adding weight to our bodies. And so then there is a reason for the scale to go up. But also if you were needing to lose some weight prior to pregnancy, then you can actually gain weight at a much slower rate and slowly actually be reducing your body fat even while pregnant. So those are all things that you can kind of keep in mind on. But I think it’s important to realize, and I wish I had realized this, that there really isn’t any need to gain weight in the first trimester. There’s a tendency to be like, oh, I’m pregnant, I’m going to gain weight, what’s an extra pound or two? But towards the end it really does start stacking on and to try to keep the weight minimal so that you don’t have to lose a lot afterwards, lose all the baby weight afterwards in the first trimester.

There’s really nothing that makes us need to gain hardly even a pound. All right, so that brings us to second trimester. For most women, second trimester gets so much easier. The morning sickness calms down, the hunger and cravings become a lot easier to manage and your energy generally starts to return. This is the time to get out and move more in a way that feels good to you. It’s also a really fun time to start to prepare for the baby’s arrival because you have the energy to do that. Again, you may need to start buying some maternity clothes so that can be fun. There’s a lot of excitement that returns in the second trimester. You’re over the stretch where most of the concern of miscarriages and so there’s some stress relief with that. And again, whenever we feel better, everything just becomes easier. It’s like the whole day becomes brighter. Ideally, during the first trimester, you continue to exercise and move as well. Throughout pregnancy, all of this will become harder and harder. And so the more we keep up with it as we go, the better. But if you weren’t feeling great in the first trimester, you may have not been able to do as much as you wanted.

And so now is the time to really start getting back into that. During pregnancy. I mostly just did walking prior to pregnancy and a couple of months following pregnancy. I like to include some running, but I really did very minimal of that. I didn’t feel comfortable. Everything kind of just didn’t feel quite right when I would run. Some people love it, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but just do what feels good to you and keep doing it. Stick with the healthy eating. And if you slipped a bit because of how cravings and energy and everything was in first trimester, this is a really good time to get back on track. Otherwise, just enjoy your second trimester and continue with your doctor’s appointments. They will continue to monitor you for any risks, but as long as you’re eating healthy, moving, getting enough sleep, taking care of yourself, second trimester is a pretty easy one. So as you get to third trimester, it starts to get really exciting because you’re finally in that home stretch. But this is also where you may start having to consider or look at the potential risk of complications. And your doctor is going to do some tests.

They’re going to test your blood pressure every time you come into the office. You start going into the office more frequently in third trimester, as well as they’re going to check urine tests every time to make sure that there’s no protein in your urine or glucose in your urine, signs of either gestational diabetes or also looking for signs of preeclampsia. So the other big test that you get right about the transition of second to third trimester is the glucose tolerance test. And this is one that’s not not a fun one to do. But it’s really important because they’re going to make sure that your body is responding well, your insulin is responding well, and you’re not kind of inching towards gestational diabetes. Now a lot of times, even if you start to show signs of gestational diabetes, they’re going to just recommend that you manage it with lifestyle recommendations, such as eating less sugar, eating a kind of a diabetic diet. So going to be really cutting back on anything that’s sweet or is going to spike your blood sugar as well as getting some movement into your day. All the things we’ve already been talking about.

So that’s why these are so important. Do your best to gain weight slowly and steadily during this phase. It’s very common to really start gaining some weight because this is where the baby is really growing these last couple of weeks. The baby is just packing on pounds, which is great. It’s going to be cute and chubby when it comes out. And make sure you get plenty of rest. It can be a lot harder just to pick things up off the floor. And so pace yourself. If you have a really demanding job, maybe plan on taking a little bit of extra time off. I know you’re probably trying to save up for once the baby is born, but pace yourself. Third trimester goes on a lot longer than it seems like it’s going to. Walking is still an excellent way of getting your movement in every day and getting some fresh air, and then just continue with the healthy eating, like we said. So if you notice any changes in this trimester, such as reoccurring, headaches, vision changes, this is where you want to call your doctor’s office right away. Leave a message for the nurse.

They’ll call you back pretty quickly. Make sure you get a hold of someone that day. Having worked in a doctor’s office, it can be really hard to field all the calls if they come in too late, so don’t wait till the end of the day. If something is concerning you in the morning, go ahead and call them. They usually take a couple of hours to get back to you anyway, and by that point, you can either be like, oh, it went away, it’s no big deal, and they’ll be great. Let us know if anything concerns you in the future. Or you’re like, yeah, it’s getting worse throughout the day, and now it’s 03:00 when they finally get around to calling you back, and aren’t you glad you didn’t wait till 430 to call them? Because you’re like, It really is getting worse and they’re about ready to close, and then it’s hard to get a hold of someone that day, so call early if you’re all concerned about something. I remember with my first, there was just a morning that I woke up and I just felt, like, heavy. Not just very pregnant, because I was very pregnant.

I was about ten days away from my due date, but I felt like she had dropped, but it wasn’t comfortable. Everything just felt heavy. My legs felt heavy, my shoulders felt heavy, my head felt heavy. Not a typical headache, but kind of a headache heavy. I don’t know a better way to describe it. And my mom was already there because we were expecting the baby to be born sometime that next week, and so she was there. She lived long distance and did not want to miss a thing, so she was already there. We went to breakfast together and I was walking slow the day before. And this is extremely late, you don’t have to do this. But I was really done being pregnant and I was off work and I was ready for this baby to be born. We had gone on a walk in the morning and I’d been walking a lot, so it was a five mile walk and we weren’t walking super fast, but my mom said I was hard to keep up with, even though I was basically nine months pregnant. And then towards the evening, we didn’t have anything else to do.

We’re just sitting around kind of staring at each other, wondering when the baby was going to come. And I was ten days early, so we were both expecting this baby to be early, and then we were like, well, let’s go walk again. So we went and did our five mile loop again. So maybe that’s why I felt the way I did it, because I had walked 10 miles the day before. And again, I don’t necessarily recommend that unless you’re really walking a lot and you keep it up, there’s no reason you have to cut back. But that was a bit extreme. Anyway, I just felt and so I had a doctor’s appointment that day. I had a little bit of high blood pressure on and off. And my fluid in my uterus was low and so the placenta was showing signs of reducing activity and kind of what they call giving out a little bit. And so they had me on regular monitoring where I would go in and they would monitor baby’s movements and fluid levels. And so I had one of those appointments and then they decided to go ahead and have me go and see the provider because my blood pressure was just kind of unstable.

It would have a normal blood pressure and then a high blood pressure. I was having contractions every two minutes, although they were very mild contractions. And then after they monitored me more at the hospital, they’re just like, you know, you can go ahead and be induced because you’re definitely close. Like, I think your body is getting ready to start labor or we can have you come back and monitor you every day. And I was just like, I was done being pregnant by that point. And to me, any sign of risk when they start monitoring me, it kind of made me nervous to go home. Sitting there, like counting baby movements and worrying that everything is okay here. At the last little bit, I’d rather just babies totally cooked. I’d rather just get her out and safe and where I can watch her and take better care of her than not knowing what’s going on inside of me. So that to me felt more comfortable. So I chose to be induced. I couldn’t pinpoint what it was, but I noticed a difference one morning when I woke up and something was different. And if you feel that way, call and talk to your provider.

There’s no harm in going in and getting checked out. Chances are they’re just going to observe you, maybe have you come in more frequently, depending on where you’re at in that third trimester. But I encourage you, don’t sit on it. Just call, getting reassurance or having them take a look or whatever needs to happen is way better than just waiting and hoping it’s okay. So then thinking towards in that third trimester, preparing for babies, there’s all the fun things, getting the nursery ready, making sure you have enough diapers, setting up the baby’s room. And your house starts to look clean because you haven’t started using all the things yet. But it starts looking like there’s going to be a baby living there and it gets really exciting, but you don’t make sure you’re taking care of and setting yourself up to be supported in that postpartum or fourth trimester phase. So here, make sure that if family or friends are offering to bring meals, make some suggestions of what you like to eat as far as things that are filled with nutrients. Again, you’re going to want lots of protein because that’s going to help to have better milk supply.

You could definitely eat carbs, but choose healthy carbs, fruits and vegetables, less processed carbs. And if you ask friends and family to bring things that are rich in protein and have some vegetables with them, that’s wonderful. Also stock up your own freezer with plenty of options that you can quickly grab that are protein options that you like, even if it’s just frozen vegetables, to have vegetables on hand so that it may be difficult to get to the market for a little while. If you’ve had leftovers the last couple of weeks of things that you like, freeze the leftovers. That way you can just quickly kind of grab something out and not go to more processed freezer food options. Make sure you have a big water bottle close by or two big water bottles close by that you can just fill up during the day and keep with you when you’re nursing or rocking the baby. Great time to just sip on water. Make sure you stay really hydrated again to keep up your milk supply. And then as the delivery date approaches, just keep fresh food in your fridge because you’re not going to be at the hospital likely for that long.

Usually they’ll keep you overnight or maybe two nights, but for the most part you’re back pretty quickly and you’re going to not want to go to the grocery store right away. So that way you have fresh things on hand for when you get home. If you can line up friends and family to come and help you get a nap. Recovery after I’m having a baby can be difficult. Your sleep is going to be all messed up and you’re going to be excited and emotional and all the things, but if you can just get a little bit of uninterrupted sleep, it’s amazing what it does to your mood, to your emotions, to your outlook on life and your ability to enjoy this postpartum newborn phase. I remember distinctly with my first one, it was harder with two and three because there were just more children. But I remember with my first one. My mom and dad were there the first week after we had our first baby. And I would get up with her during the night and feed her. But at five in the morning or any time after five. Depending on when she woke up for her feeding.

I would feed her and then give her to my dad and he would take her downstairs and rock her in the Lazy Boy. Chair we had downstairs and just kind of enjoyed some quiet time with her because of the time she would go back to sleep still at that point. And he would just enjoy getting to have newborn baby snuggles. And I can’t tell you what that kind of sleep did, knowing that I was no longer the one that needed to listen to if she was stirring or waking up or needing me because you’re kind of on edge just constantly listening. I was able to just get this deep, deep sleep knowing that if she needed me, my dad would come and wake me up, but that I could just be like, off duty and totally let down and sleep. And it was only like for an hour and a half to 2 hours because then they wake up and they want to be fed again. But that sleep was incredible. So if you have a friend or family that wants to come and rock the baby and get morning snuggles, it is glorious. So I highly recommend that if you have someone that would be willing to figure out like a front carrier that works for you so that you can get out and gently do some walks.

The goal here isn’t hardcore exercise. It’s just to stretch, to get some fresh air, to begin feeling less pinned down. Like, even if you just figure out how to get outside and walk, like your block, it feels so good. It changes your outlook on your day. Baby loves it. It’s a great thing. But it can be a little daunting to figure out how you’re going to do that. The baby doesn’t always love the stroller. At least none of mine did the first couple of months. None of them like the stroller, but they liked the front pack and it allowed me just to kind of get out, get some sunshine on my face, get some fresh air, feel a little bit humid and not just like stuck in the house. So I recommend preparing yourself, getting those kinds of things set up, because once they become, it can start to feel like a little bit of a blur. So that brings us to the postpartum phase and what a lot of people now call the fourth trimester. And I like that fourth trimester because I never heard about it before I had baby number three. But I love the idea because the first three months of a baby’s life, when we think of them in a fourth trimester standpoint, it just helps us to realize that our body is still going through so many changes.

And not just our body, but ourselves. We’re taking on new roles and it can really throw a roller coaster with our emotions and realizing that big things are happening here in our life. It makes it easier for us to give ourselves some grace as we make this transition. You’re learning how to breastfeed, you’re learning how to deal with less sleep. I mean, there’s a lot of things that are going on here. And I remember in this phase being on cloud nine and then an emotional wreck and feeling peaceful and content and just like glowing and happy. And then also feeling overwhelmed and exhausted and just wishing that my husband and my mom could just think for me. Like. Figure it out for me. Because I just felt like my brain was in the fog. And yet at the same time. Everything was great and then I couldn’t handle everything. It was just a little bit disorienting, and yet I remember really fondly it was a special time. But the more that you can just clear your schedule and accept help from others and realize that this is the fourth trimester of becoming a mom, give yourself some grace, take it easy, be patient with yourself, and I promise you it all gets easier.

But this is why I recommend getting set up towards the end of your pregnancy to care for yourself. Asking for help is great, and I hope you do that. But sometimes it’s hard to even know what to ask for help with. And we do have to do some things ourselves, and so keep it simple. Savor every moment. Because even the hectic ones, you’ll look back on it as a special time as you got to know your baby and as you went through this transition so really quickly. As far as eating to nourish, you’re just going to want to try to have as many fresh things, whole foods as possible again, drinking plenty of water so that you have good milk supply, get a little bit of movement and fresh air. This is for your mental health. It’s not so much for exercise, so if you kind of keep that in mind, it doesn’t feel like, okay, I’m not even doing good at this now, just getting out there and feeling some sunshine or getting some fresh air, it’s good for your mental health. And that’s all I want you to focus on. Fourth trimester. Savor those moments.

Laugh at the ones that go crazy when everything goes wrong. Remember that this is going to be a good story someday and that take it lightly where you can try to eat as many whole foods as you can. You’ll feel better, you’ll have more energy. Sleep when you can get help so that you can sleep, get some fresh air, don’t worry about anything else. You can clean your house later. There you have it. That is the four trimesters, the considerations of health plus the preconception phase, the considerations of health there that you want to have to maintain a healthy pregnancy, and you do your best to enjoy the process. I know there can be a lot of anxieties that come up with it and acknowledge them and then set them aside the best you can as you care for your physical and emotional health. As we walk through each trimester. I hope you noticed how important the natural approach is to PCOS. Whatever other medical care you need or want to incorporate in this is great. But realizing that the natural approach can encompass so many more layers and aspects of your PCOS is really important.

And just because now you are pregnant, the need for that natural health doesn’t go away. Each phase of life, just like all of these trimesters, will be better if you can create a PCOS friendly environment and lifestyle that works for you. So with that, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope that it gave you kind of an overview of what’s coming if you’re trying to get pregnant. The considerations and the approach to have that can be both enjoyable as well as impactful to your health. So there you have it, my friend. It remains so important to continue to care and nourish your body during pregnancy. And if you enjoyed this episode, make sure you hit the subscribe button. We have some really other great kinds of specific topics coming up for PCOS health in the next few weeks. And until then, bye for now.

Did you know that studies of PCOS epigenetics have shown that our environment can either worsen or completely reverse our PCOS symptoms? I believe that although PCOS makes us sensitive to our environment, it also makes us powerful. When we learn what our body needs and commit to providing those needs, not only do we gain back our health.

But we grow in power just by showing up for ourselves. This is why I’ve created a guide for you to get started.

My PCOS Fertility Meal guide can be found in the show notes below.

I want to show you how to create an environment that promotes healing while still being able to live a life that you enjoy. This guide is completely free, so go get your copy now so that you can step into the vision that you have for your life and for your health.

1:10:43 – 1:24:01 Episode # 34: How to Stop the PCOS Infertility Cycle of Insanity

While infertility treatments can be just the modern medical miracle, a couple needs to grow their family, they can also lead to an enormous emotional and physical, and financial toll as well. In today’s episode, we are going to explore some of the considerations of when and what infertility treatments for PCOS might be helpful, and most importantly, how to avoid the PCOS infertility cycle of insanity. So let’s dive in.

You’re listening to the PCOS Repair Podcast, where we explore the ins and outs of PCOS and how to repair the imbalances in your hormones naturally with a little medical help sprinkled in.

Hi, I’m Ashlene Korcek. And with many years of medical and personal experience with polycystic ovarian syndrome, it is my joy to watch women reverse their PCOS as they learn to nourish their body in a whole new way. With the power of our beliefs, our mindset, and our environment and the understanding of our genetics, we can heal at the root cause.

Welcome back to the PCOS Repair Podcast, where today’s topic will really help you navigate your fertility journey, what treatment options and timing, and hopefully reduce your struggles of infertility in regards to treatment. So let’s go ahead and dive in. First of all, let’s do a quick recap on what is the deal with PCOS infertility. So typically for PCOS, this is the number one cause of female infertility, first of all. And it is typically due to a hormonal imbalance that is leading to a sub ovulation or no ovulation at all and we often see this by longer than normal cycles or absent cycles. And so this is why when we are looking at PCOS, it’s important to realize that’s pretty much where the issues lie. Now, women with PCOS may have had some ovarian cysts. You could have had a cyst that ruptured and caused some fallopian tube damage, or you could have some other infertility issues going on. Maybe your partner has some fertility issues, maybe you have issues with the mechanics or the anatomy of your reproductive organs and so that falls outside of your typical PCOS. So in other words, if you had a fallopian tube injury due to an ovarian disruption, that would be kind of a secondary problem and not necessarily what we’re talking about today.

So I want to just say that not that those things are insurmountable at all, those issues may do better with infertility treatment, but all the things that we’re going to talk about here today are still relevant. But I just want to denote that really the lifestyle approach is going to adjust the hormones. They can’t change a mechanical problem. If your spouse or partner is also contributing to the infertility, that will also need to be addressed in its own way. So with that, why does your doctor recommend infertility treatments when they diagnose you with PCOS and you’re trying to conceive? Well, this one’s pretty simple. They don’t have anything else to offer you so the way that the medical model is set up is that if you go in to see your doctor, basically they have procedures, medications and counseling. That’s all they have at their disposal as far as what to offer you. Your doctors care about you, they mean well, they want to give you the best care that they can. And it’s really frustrating as a provider to have a patient come in and not have a lot to offer them. So what we have is we have birth control.

If you’re having problems with the periods where medical professionals are not nutritionists, they don’t have their schedule and the insurance reimbursement and the set up of a medical practice is not set up to spend an hour helping someone figure out their nutrition and to dive into it and medical professionals are typically not really all that informed about the best nutrition. They’re informed about the basic nutrition but the intricacies of what you need for any specific disease type or disorder like PCOS is kind of outside of their wheelhouse. Also, a lot of physicians, if you haven’t noticed, are not necessarily the most healthy. They live a very, very unbalanced work lifestyle and they oftentimes don’t have time to eat well or exercise themselves. And so they’re not necessarily ones that can give you a lot of practical advice from their own experiences either. And so the best that they can do is say, look, if you have an infertility issue you’ve been trying to get pregnant for X amount of months without success, we show that you are probably not ovulating then probably. The best thing that we can do is refer you or get you started on infertility treatments where we can try to monitor you a little bit better, give you medications that are going to force ovulation and if that’s not working, we can go in and try something like IUI or IVF and hopefully get results that way. Now, like I said at the beginning, these are medical miracles that we can even have these things at our disposal, but they are not addressing the underlying hormone imbalance. And so at the end of the day, your body is still struggling with not enough of one hormone, too much of another and it’s not creating the cycle that your body wants in order to get pregnant naturally and so it’s going to fight you every step of the way. All right, so what to do before you start infertility treatments? So everyone’s going to be at a different place in their fertility journey. Maybe you’ve had a kid before and now you’re trying for your second or your third, maybe you have been trying to get pregnant for years and you’re ready to start looking at infertility treatments, maybe you’re already booked an appointment and you’re just waiting for that appointment to come, maybe you’re in the middle of infertility treatments. I mean, it doesn’t really matter. Well, even though I say what to do before you start them. It’s really just what you can be doing on your own outside of your infertility treatments. And that is to really listen to what your body’s needing. I mean, it comes down to the same things that we’ve talked about on other episodes. But in this case, in regards to helping avoid this cycle of insanity when it comes to infertility treatments and that cycle goes something like this, you couldn’t get pregnant. So your doctor says, oh, well, let’s try some clomid. Well, it seems pretty small, right? And then, okay, well, that didn’t work. We did the three round of that. Typically after three rounds, it stops being your percentage chance of success drops off significantly. Well, maybe we’ll try some letrozole or maybe we’ll move on to IUI and you see how you kind of just enter this flow of the next thing, the next thing, the next thing. And even if your insurance covers a fair amount of it, typically nickel and dimes, you pretty good the whole way through and you are constantly taking medications that make you feel at best and your whole life is revolving around these treatments. And more than just your whole life, your relationship with your partner is revolving around these treatments.

And that creates stress on many different levels and it creates this focus of, you know exactly what day you are in your cycle, you know exactly what was going on in your fertility world or not going on. And it can be a little overwhelming and once you’re in, do you keep going? Do you stop? You kind of get in this place of what is the right next move. And that’s what I call the cycle of insanity. I have so many women that come to me when they’re in the midst of this and they are being told, this is the next step, this is the next step, this is the next step by their doctor and it’s very difficult to then get any sort of perspective of what do you need to be doing for your fertility journey, for your journey to becoming a mommy? And what does your body need? No one asks that during these fertility treatments. It’s kind of just like hang in there and take this wild ride. So wherever you’re at in your journey, I strongly consider checking in with your body. What is your body not getting that it needs?

Because that’s when our symptoms really show up, is when our body isn’t getting something it needs and then discovering that root cause, caring for that root cause, doing all the things to create a very nurturing and nourishing bubble of an environment around yourself. And then if you’re considering infertility treatments, these lifestyle adjustments can make you that much more successful. So when should you consider an infertility treatment along this path? So say you hadn’t been doing any sort of infertility treatments, you spent several months doing all the things to nurture your PCOS and use the net lifestyle adjustments to improve your symptoms and so forth, and you have your regular cycle that came back. That was good. You are ovulating, it seems like most months, but you’re still not pregnant. Should you consider infertility treatments? You should consider infertility treatments whenever you want them, okay? They are out of the hands of some people because they are just too expensive and they’re not small treatments. They are at times invasive, they are stressful, they are very emotional, they are very taxing on the body, they require a lot. And so it’s not something that’s a small decision.

However, if you are doing all of the lifestyle adjustments and you’ve seen some great improvement, but you’re still not getting pregnant, I think clomid and letrozole are not a bad place to start. Whether or not you move on to IVI and IUI, and IVF is a bigger decision, definitely. And I think that I would have gone on to do those. Okay, so just from a personal standpoint, my plan was that I was going to spend these four months waiting to see my infertility specialist and getting myself in the best health that I possibly could because I didn’t know what was coming next. And I knew that once I started one, it was going to lead into the next, into the next and into the next. And my relationship with my husband, my relationship with myself, my health, they needed to be in a very good and stable place before I took the thumb. That’s what I recommend prior to, or if you already started infertility treatments, just bracing that now it’s never too late. Life is always continuing whether we’re ready or not. And so if it is already in the process, then take a few hours to yourself, get yourself in the right mindset, reach out if you need help, you can find me over on instagram at Nourished to Healthy if you have questions about that. But I think that it’s okay to consider infertility treatments at any point. Even though I teach and talk a lot about a natural approach to PCOS health, I am by no means against considering infertility treatments. I think though, they should be entered into with all of the information that they should be well supported with lifestyle adjustments and shouldn’t be thought of as an alternative to lifestyle adjustments because that’s typically where we don’t see the success that we want to see. So why is lifestyle adjustments so important when you have PCOS and you’re considering infertility treatments without them? You don’t address the underlying hormone imbalance, you’re not protecting yourself from all of the complications of pregnancy that we can have with PCOS. You’re not setting yourself up for your body to work with you and so when we adopt the proper nutrition, when we adopt good movement habits and get our exercise, when we focus on giving ourselves the self care and the boundaries and the places to destress that our body needs.

What happens is that our cycle starts to regulate on its own. Now, it may not be quite enough to get us pregnant, but when we see that our body is starting to work with us, we can meet in the middle and we are going to be so much more successful so much earlier on in that infertility journey and what you avoid is this place of like, well, now I feel so messed up and so unhealthy from these infertility treatments, which is what I hear a lot from my private clients and women that I’ve worked with in various settings, is that they feel like it’s like two sides. If the infertility treatment works, you’re super happy about it. If it doesn’t work, then you feel like it kind of screwed everything up and somewhere it probably did some, but we feel like it did even more. And so what happens and why I call it this infertility cycle of insanity is that we feel like I’m in a worse place now with this failed fertility treatment than I would have been if I hadn’t done it. And we spiraled down in our PCOS health both physically and emotionally, where if we were to set ourselves up before or even during our fertility treatment, with the lifestyle adjustments and with the mindset of look, I am on this journey to create better health and to boost my fertility and I have this awesome medical miracle that of science that has this technology that can assist me and may get me there faster, then there’s nothing wrong with using it. Now, if you don’t have to, I mean, that’s always even nicer because you don’t have to expense both physically, emotionally and financially. However, if you’re not getting where you want to get with just the lifestyle adjustments, incorporating your lifestyle adjustments and your mindset that you learn to adopt through your lifestyle adjustments with your infertility treatments is a much better combination and a much stronger combination and a much more effective combination than just going at the infertility treatments alone. So there you have it my friend. All those different angles that I recommend when considering in regards to when to start an infertility treatment, when to take a pause from an infertility treatment, how to think about your part as you go through these infertility treatments, and how you can make the lifestyle adjustments that are going to assist these treatments in being more successful. I would love to hear more about your infertility treatment process over on Instagram because each one is so unique that I’m trying to kind of keep a broad picture here in this episode.

But we can definitely continue that conversation in a more personal setting over on Instagram, you can find me at Nourished to Healthy and it’s also a very safe place to purge and vent all of those emotions that get pent up and ask or even just ask for good vibes as you continue along your journey. You can find me again at Nourished to Healthy, where I look forward to hearing from you. So in closing, if you have found this episode helpful, please hit the subscribe button so that you are notified each and every week as the next PCOS Health topic becomes available. And also, I would greatly appreciate just a minute of your time to rate and review this podcast on whatever platform you’re listening. A good rating helps spread the awareness of PCOS and helps other women find this podcast so that they can also get the support and information that they’re looking for. And then, until next time, if you have any questions again, you can find me over on Instagram, and I would be more than happy to get to know you and talk more over there. Until then, bye for now.

Did you know that studies of PCOS epigenetics have shown that our environment can either worsen or completely reverse our PCOS symptoms? I believe that although PCOS makes us sensitive to our environment, it also makes us powerful. When we learn what our body needs and commit to providing those needs, not only do we gain back our health, but we grow in power just by showing up for ourselves.

This is why I’ve created a guide for you to get started.

My PCOS Fertility Meal Guide can be found in the show notes below. I want to show you how to create an environment that promotes healing while still being able to live a life that you enjoy. This guide is completely free, so go get your copy now so that you can step into the vision that you have for your life and for your health.