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Improve Fertility Naturally and Overcome POF: A Story of Hope

Lately, we've gotten loads of messages telling us how much you love hearing stories of hope- in this video I talk you through a case where a patient overcame a POF diagnosis and came home with her baby!

I am going to be coming to you live and sharing with you my clinical stories of hope. These are stories of women who have overcome the odds, and were often told that they either could not have children or would have a very hard time having children, or have had several failures with assisted reproductive techniques like IVF or IUI. And they began working with me. We tweaked things. We worked out the kinks in their system. We got them to the right doctors and guess what? They got pregnant either naturally or with assisted reproductive techniques.

I don't really care how you do it. I am just here to support you on doing it, because if you have the desire for a child, there is a child that is waiting for you. That is what they say in the spiritual world, in the spiritual realm. I have the tools and the tips and the strategies to help you get there. I did write the bestselling book called Yes, You Can Get Pregnant: Natural Ways to Improve Your Fertility Now and Into Your 40s. I, myself, got pregnant naturally and quite easily in my 40s. So I know what works. I know what I need to do to help you achieve your pregnancy. I'm also a really good detective. I help my clients figure out what are the missing pieces and how can we help you get there?

So the case I want to share with you today is a case of a 32-year-old woman who by the way, is also in the medical field. I'll read you right from her case notes. These are my notes from her. She was a coaching client. I never saw her actually in my clinic. We worked tele … We did telemedicine, so via Zoom. So on my intake form, I say, “What is the main reason you are seeking treatment?” “Hope to have a baby soon as I was told three weeks after my husband and I got married, I was a virgin until we got married, that I was in premature ovarian failure. That was in June, 2017. And since that diagnosis I've had no menstrual cycles for six months.”

So backtrack prior to her getting the diagnosis, her periods were normal. She just went in for some standard workups on her hormones because she was going to start to try to get pregnant, and because she was a virgin and because she was in the medical field and it was easily accessible to her and her FSH came back extremely high, like, above a hundred. So premature, ovarian failure. That was her diagnosis. And so she got the diagnosis. So think about this, talk about trauma. She gets the diagnosis and her periods stop completely.

So it's not like she had irregular periods or anything of that nature. She was normally menstruating, and so she thought ovulating and then she gets a diagnosis and her periods stop. So first thing I think of right away is trauma. Significant emotional trauma is what she needs to be working through. By the time I had done my first intake with Elizabeth, she had already started working with a fertility mindset coach as well, give a shout out to Rosanne Austin, that's who she was working with.

So, what she came away with, with this coach, it took them, let's see. I think by the time her and I had talked, she had been menstruating for about three months on her own. She was having … Sorry, two months. She had a 25 and a 27 day cycle. And then her and I did our first talk. She told me that she had PTSD after the doc gave her that diagnosis. She stopped tracking ovulation because it was causing too much stress for her. So she was like, I'm not going to track ovulation. I'm just going to work on this mindset piece.

So her and Rosanne got her to this place where the first time we spoke, she said to me, “I'm confident I got this. Like, my body knows how to do this. I've got this part down. Now I need you to help me tweak diet and lifestyle and supplements and all of these things. And I'm going to get pregnant. I have premature ovarian failure. I'm still ovulating and having periods, but my estradiol is 15 on cycle day three. My doctors want me on HRT. What would you suggest, Aimee?”

I do think in this case specifically to the mindset was tremendous and I have another premature ovarian failure case, which the mindset is tremendous for her as well, because the diagnosis just knocked her off her feet and was just so devastated. Like, okay, so basically I'm never going to get pregnant. Is that what you're telling me? And that was horrific.

So she stopped tracking ovulation, threw away every ovulation stick. She does see signs of ovulation. She's been trying to conceive. But then one thing that came up as we were talking was she's in the medical field and she was completing her residency and she was working insane hours. We're talking like 70, 80 hours a week. Let's see actually what she wrote on here.

Yeah. Actually I'm wrong. She was working like 50 hours a week, but just like these insanely long shifts, which can definitely impact ovulation. When you work those night shifts, you're not getting the melatonin stimulation and you need the complete darkness in order to complete ovulate. So I do think some of that was impacting her cycle as well. Her period cycle day one was light with spotting. That was it. Cycle day two and three, usually a heaviness, but only two to three pads a day, bright red, no clots. Cycle day four brownish. So she didn't have a significantly heavy period.

She would get PMS of breakouts, acne, bloat, breast tenderness, grumpy, irritable, and during she would feel very bloated, breast tenderness as well. She was also diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and that had been going on for about three years, super mild case. She had one bout of blood and mucus in her stool. But for me, my antennas went right up when I heard that, because I was like, okay, something is going on in her body. There's some sort of inflammation that's going on. Ulcerative colitis is an autoimmune condition. Autoimmunity can definitely impact fertility. It definitely also impacts premature ovarian failure because there could be ovarian antibodies. So it actually looks like you have POF, but you really just have an autoimmune condition.

And then, so I started asking her about her digestion. Normal stools, one to two days … One to two times a day, but she's extremely bloated every day and always by breakfast. So, I immediately went to her diet. So no matter what she eats this happens, this is what she said to me. So initially I thought she might have SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, right? So she said, there's no gas. She just feels really swollen and inflamed. And she's gained weight too.

So history of being 115 and now she was 145. So she'd gained about 30 pounds. So to me there was definitely something going on. So, the first things I recommended right away was I wanted her to do a food diary for me, I wanted her to completely avoid gluten, dairy and soy, like a hundred percent. I tried to get her to go autoimmune paleo. She was completely overwhelmed at that thought. So I just started with gluten, dairy and soy. I also wanted her to get blue light glasses because some of her shifts were running late into the evening and she's in front of the computers at the hospital. So I had her start wearing blue light glasses at the hospital so that her body could start regulating itself from a light perspective, which really impacts ovulation.

Okay. So hair, skin and nails healthy, her sex drive healthy, no pain with sex, her sleep seven to eight hours on average when she's on a normal schedule. So that hospital schedule was really impacting her sleep as well. But since she's been working through the mindset stuff, so now at this point, she's read my book. She's been doing my Body Belief Meditations, my fertility meditation. She's working with the mindset coach. Her sleep has gotten better because now she's working through her anxiety and her stress. So she's journaling, she's meditating. She's trying to do less screen time when she's home, right? So she's really prioritizing her sleep and her mindfulness.She started taking melatonin. She said, oh, I'm taking it on and off. And I recommended definitely take it on the nights that you're at the hospital late because we need that melatonin to help induce regular ovulation. Energy she said pretty good. She did have a transvaginal the year before and they couldn't see her ovaries, but the uterus looked healthy. So I thought that was curious too. So, there was some relationship strain, but they were working through it. She meditates, she journals. She has a gratitude list every single day.

So after our first call, I immediately, again, she's medical so these tests were easy for her to do. I wanted her to get a thyroid panel done immediately, vitamin D done immediately, homocysteine done immediately too because I had a feeling that inflammation was playing a role. So by the time we talked the second time, she felt like, okay, my mindset is now … Because we did a lot of mindset work as well, which I do with my clients. So, she had her mindset coach already. And then she had me doing lifestyle and diet and mindset.

I had her cut out nuts. That was another thing. So I did gluten, dairy, soy and nuts. I took them out of her diet because of that incredible bloat. And she was eating a lot of nuts. So it was one thing I noticed. And then she said that she was thinking about it. She said, I've always had some level of bloating my entire life. So we made the dietary changes. The bloat got a little better, but not at all significantly better. Her labs came back. Let me see, I'm going to … I have this in another note over here. Right.

So let me just go through it again. Her FSH was 115 when she was first diagnosed and her AMH was 0.03. Okay, guys. So when I first started working with her, so then we got our labs back, right? So I had her test her thyroid and her TSH came back at 3.35, which is, doctors usually don't flag it until it's above a four. Fertility doctors will flag it around the two, anything higher than a two or a two and a half. I definitely thought that was significant, and I urged her to get on medication right away.

She was extremely resistant to getting on the medication, even though she's in the medical field, which I thought was really interesting. It really upset her that there was something physically wrong with her body. I just said to her, for the sake of your fertility, I urge you to get on this medication. She listened to me, her vitamin D came back very low at 28.7. So same thing. I increased her vitamin D. I urged her to get on thyroid medication. She was also taking Garden of Life prenatal, spirulina, cod liver oil, Methylfolate liver capsule. She was doing bone broth five times a week. And she was doing dairy, gluten, soy and nut-free diet. Okay. So this is over the course of now probably five weeks since she's been working with me.

Then our next call, she actually pulled all her labs from previous years because she wanted to see what her thyroid was doing. It basically was creeping up a little bit every year. It went from a two to a two, six to the 3.3 and then this recent one was yet to the 3.35. The vitamin D she was negative for the MTHFR. And then she went ahead and cut out night shades as well, because she was like, I got to figure out this bloat. Sauerkraut bloated her incredibly. So we had to pull that. She couldn't do fermented foods, which made me think again that she had SIBO.

But again, keep in mind, she's in the medical field. SIBO is some doctors really believe in it. Some doctors don't. Her doctor did not believe in it. Her GI doc was like, that's a far city. There's no such thing as SIBO, blah, blah, blah. So she didn't get it tested. Fine. Someone told her to take ashwagandha. I said, no. I took her off of that. We spent a lot of time on that next call talking about her need to control things. She was very, very structured and stressed about like the thyroid medication really threw her for a loop. We had to really work through that.

I talked about how she needed to become more flexible in her mind. So I want to read to you. So over the following few months, Elizabeth stuck to the diet mostly and the supplements. And she added in the thyroid medication. She didn't see as many shifts in her red flags as I had expected. So her red flags being her digestive symptoms. Her period didn't fully regulate, right? Nor did her bloating completely go away. So her period was still jumping around like 25, 27. And she had like a 30 something days, a 39 day cycle.

So we jumped around a little bit. So the period didn't completely regulate. I think a lot of that was the lifestyle. I had a hard time controlling her lifestyle because of those long shifts in the hospital where they were overnight shifts. I see it over and over again, those night shifts or those people that fly internationally a lot, really hard to regulate because they're constantly like breaking their time zone patterns. So the best thing you can do for fertility to recover is you've got to sleep from 10:00 to 6:00 or 11:00 to 7:00 and you need a lights out time. You need 20 to 30 minutes of downtime before you go to bed. No screens.

So I had her do the blue lights. She was doing like the happy light in the morning. She was sleeping in complete darkness, even if she was sleeping during the day. So we were doing our best. Okay. Okay. And then, so her bloating and her period kind of didn't totally improve, which was surprising to me and frustrating, equally frustrating. So I started to think it was a little more of the emotional piece. So our regular coaching sessions continued to keep our mindset in an easy peaceful place.

And then in January of 2019, so this past January, she decided to do my 30 day Reboot and Rewire program, which is an elimination diet. It's all based on my teachings from my latest book, Body Belief. And so she did that program and on February 15th, so again, that was a 30 day program. It ended the first week of February. So within that 30 days, she started first week of January, ended the first week of February. On February 15th, I woke up in the morning and realized that I hadn't heard from Elizabeth in a couple of days or maybe a couple of weeks. I hadn't seen her since the group ended and I sent her a quick email and this is the response I get.

“Hi Aimee. So nice for you to reach out. Was actually going to email you this weekend after I surprised my husband at our Valentine's Day dinner. I just found out that I am pregnant,” and she was actually like six weeks pregnant at that point or closer to seven weeks, I guess, because her last cycle was so, or previous two cycles were on the longer side. Let me just see that, 39 days cycle was in November. Right. I think she had another longer cycle. So then she was not expecting her period, and then turns out she was actually further along in her pregnancy.

“I'm still in shock. I was super nauseous and had food aversions, which was so weird. I thought it was my work schedule. And then I took a test after a seven day work stretch.” So she still was working insane hours, and guess what? She was pregnant. So she did an ultrasound the next day. So the baby heartbeat, the whole thing. And then based on dates, my baby is a Christmas miracle. So, they think that she got pregnant probably sometime towards the end of December, early January and doing the Reboot and Rewire program, I'm sure really helped because she actually didn't ovulate until January.

So yeah. Beautiful story. And again, FSH of 115, guys, AMH of 0.03. So I just hope you can take that into account knowing that these numbers are not set in stone and they don't mean that much because this girl was able to completely regulate her cycle. I mean, not entirely, but regulate her cycles, work on her mindset, and even her red flag symptoms, all her inflammatory symptoms didn't completely go away, but she still was able to get pregnant.

So here's the timeline again. June 2017, she was diagnosed with premature ovarian failure. Her periods were completely absent once that happened. October 2017, she began forming her Bump Squad with her fertility mindset coach. January 2018, she added in regular acupuncture, Mayan abdominal massage, and Chinese herbs. March 2018, she read Yes, You Can Get Pregnant, and she started following my guidelines. July and August, she had 27 day cycles. September, she started working with me one on one. October, we started the thyroid meds. We started making the shifts, increasing the vitamin D. January, pregnant naturally.

Take that in, a year and a half after a premature ovarian failure diagnosis, the girl was pregnant naturally and she just continued to get older in those year and a half. You guys know that part.

So here we go, guys, okay. This is overcomeable. Your health, your fertility are interrelated and health is mental. It's emotional, it's physical. It's nutritional. You got to look at every single aspect. Okay. You can do this. You can totally do this. An FSH of 115, and she got pregnant naturally a year and a half later, guys. An AMH of 0.03, and got pregnant naturally a year and a half later. Let's take that in. Okay. Let's take that in.

I hope some of this helped you. I really think that's the starting point. I think I recommended this to you before the Body Belief diet, but that's really where I would go because that is around the timeframe. So she was slowly doing it. I had her pull nuts. Then I had her pull night shades. Then she did the Reboot and Rewire program. And basically in that first or second week of the Reboot and Rewire program, she got pregnant. She was ovulating and she got knocked up. Yeah.

But I do think it was the work prior because we started … What's the timeline again? She started coaching with me. So she read the book in March, but then September, when she coached with me, she wasn't really strict with the diet. I got super strict with the diet. Then we added in the D and the thyroid medication, and then within literally September, October, November, December, within five, four cycles, four months, five months, she was pregnant. That's incredible, guys. You can do this too. Okay.

So I have a gift for you if you want to take this another step further, if you guys are currently trying to conceive, I have a beautiful two week wait meditation that people love. They love it. So go to aimeeraupp.com/tww. Am I saying that right? Yeah, two week wait, aimeeraupp.com/tww for a free meditation from me. And of course, if you want more information on how to work with me or tons of ways that I can help you, check out my books, of course go to my website aimeeraupp.com.

Also on the site, I have ways for you to get a lot of free information from me. So head over to my site, check it out, and I look forward to serving you, and I look forward to sharing another story of hope with you guys next week. Thank you so much for being a part of my life and for allowing me to be a part of yours. Have a wonderful, wonderful day. All right. Bye, Facebook.

About Aimee Raupp, MS, LAc

Aimee Raupp, MS, LAc, is a renowned women’s health & wellness expert and the best- selling author of the books Chill Out & Get Healthy, Yes, You Can Get Pregnant, and Body Belief. A licensed acupuncturist and herbalist in private practice in New York, she holds a Master of Science degree in Traditional Oriental Medicine from the Pacific College of Oriental Medicine and a Bachelor’s degree in biology from Rutgers University. Aimee is also the founder of the Aimee Raupp Beauty line of hand-crafted, organic skincare products. This article was reviewed AimeeRaupp.com's editorial team and is in compliance with our editorial policy.

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