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Story of Hope: How one woman got pregnant with Hashimotos after too many miscarriages

I have another BRAND NEW Story of Hope for you! In this video, I talk through a case and share how we got to the root of my patient’s red flag symptoms, worked with her autoimmune conditions, and assisted with the emotional heaviness of this difficult journey to a healthy pregnancy.

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SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW.

Hello. Welcome. I know I'm a few minutes late. My computer is not cooperating so I'm not going to stream this live to Facebook today, we're just going to have to wait and then upload it later. But thank you all for joining me. I am Aimee of aimeeraupp.com, women's health and fertility, guru expert. I've been practicing as a clinician for 17 years. I've written three books. I have a bestseller called Yes, You Can Get Pregnant written books on auto-immunity, et cetera, et cetera. All about helping women live their best life possible. All about helping women step into their true power, reawaken their health on every level, mentally, emotionally, physically, and nutritionally.

And yeah, as a side effect, a lot of women get pregnant when they're trying to achieve pregnancy. And that's what women tend to come to me about. And so once a month, we do my story of hope live. And this month… I deal with a lot of auto-immunity, this main reason why I wrote a book on autoimmunity. I guess I can lower my laptop now because it's just not working, but I see a lot of women that are dealing with fertility challenges that typically have undiagnosed or mismanaged autoimmune condition. So I talk about this in my book, Yes, You Can Get Pregnant. I also talk about how polycystic ovarian syndrome has auto-immune characteristics. Endometriosis, it's an inflammatory disease but it looks a lot like an autoimmune condition and in my clinical experience responds really well when you treat it like an autoimmune condition.

So in, in the celebration, if you will, of auto-immune awareness month and bringing awareness to that, I want all of you guys to know that. That if you are dealing with unexplained fertility challenges and no one's done thyroid antibodies on you, or like dug deeper to see if you have any inflammatory markers, it's really important to look into that. And also what I say to a lot of my girls is if you've been trying and you haven't had success and maybe you're following my Yes, You Can Get Pregnant diet and protocol, maybe you need to up your game and follow my Body Belief protocol, or we're going to make it very easy for you, I have a book coming out that's called The Egg Quality Diet, and it's literally the diet that I want everyone to follow.

So it's a little like Yes, You Can Get Pregnant, it's a little like Body Belief tweaked with fertility food recommendations and a couple other things and it's awesome. It's a hundred days of a diet. If you want to be like the very first to know about it when it's going to be available, get on my email list on my website, aimeeraupp.com, but let's get into it. So this is a story of hope that I think is very helpful. And on the younger side, if you will, for a client in my clinic, she came to me, let me just refresh this page. I'm having all sorts of technical difficulties today. I'm having technical difficulties with my contacts, with my computer, my laptop drowned the other day when James' water bottle exploded in my purse or my bag and my laptop was in there. So I lost a laptop. Very, very, very sad. And I'm using my old laptop right now which is just, she's old. She's doing her best. I love her. I'm happy she's there for me, but I couldn't connect to Facebook. Anyway, technical difficulties today.

But I'm going to pull up this patient's paperwork and we're going to go from there. Let me see if I put it here. Can I read it better? It's blurry for some God forsaken frickin reason. Maybe if I download it. Let's try that. I'm going to download it. Then I'm going to open it here. Let's see how that looks. Because I like to read directly from the paperwork so I can give you all the details. Yeah. Larry is here.

36 year old female coming to me to improve autoimmune conditions. She has Hashimoto's and celiac and she wants to improve her fertility. So, yeah. So she… My God, I can't freaking read this. Okay. Let me just see what I can do here. Sorry guys. This is again a computer issue. Let me just expand this see if that works. If I open it in a different page. I don't know why. Okay. I'm sorry guys. Sorry for the delay.

36 year old female with… Maybe I'm just going to go to her notes. I'm just going to go to her notes because I can read those. 36. Celiac was diagnosed 10 years ago and Hashimoto's was diagnosed about a year before she started working with me. So she started working with me September 4th, 2020. Hashimoto's was diagnosed one year prior. She's on levothyroxine, she had a miscarriage in May. After seven months of trying to conceive naturally, at eight weeks there was no heartbeat and the sac was empty. She also has in her own research and I think through reading Body Belief discovered that she has leaky gut. This is what she's telling me as her diagnosis of herself. Leaky gut, brain fog, and she's not sure if she has the MTHFR mutation, but I'll tell you right now, with Hashimoto's and celiac she has MTHFR. If you guys don't know what MTHFR is, just quick Google Aimee Raupp MTHFR, and you will see information on it. I covered a lot.

The day I talked to her, September 4th, 2020, she actually just got a positive pregnancy test that morning. So this is now going to be what would be her second pregnancy. So that day, we're kind of excited. So we get into it. She had just gone dairy free a few weeks prior. So mind you, she's had Hashimoto's for a year. It was found at the urging of her with her doctors to test for it because I think she had read, Yes, You Can Get Pregnant, but she wasn't getting pregnant. And she had already cut out soy after reading Yes, You Can Get Pregnant, but she hadn't gone completely dairy-free. So she just started reading Body Belief. So she's usually constipated, goes daily, tiny pieces, doesn't feel complete, has gas, has bloating, gas every day, all day long, diarrhea once a week.

When she started following the Yes, You Can Get Pregnant diet, she got on the supplements, she increased her amount of protein, prior to that, she was almost vegetarian and eating lots of vegetables and fruit. So she cut sugar, increased protein, cut out soy completely, and then recently cut out dairy. Did notice that when she cheated on dairy she got more of a runny nose and congestion. She also went organic. So ever since reading, Yes, You Can Get Pregnant she's made these changes. But mind you, that was only within the last couple of months, right? She was drinking coffee every day as well. It wasn't organic.

So she has brain fog. It's not a daily thing. It's super frustrating. 50% of the time she gets it. If you guys can relate. And then over the past few months, periods were weird since the miscarriage. So mind you, she had a miscarriage in May after seven months of trying. So she read my book and then got pregnant pretty quickly thereafter making some of the changes. Right? But again, it wasn't 100% dairy-free on that last pregnancy. Sadly had a miscarriage. So over the past few months periods were weird since the miscarriage, all thick and brown. The last period was nine days. It was super clotty. So, good ovulation, slight pain after ovulation. And then no major symptoms of pregnancy except for some breakouts, nipple soreness, light cramps. And so then she was slowly making changes on her bath and beauty products. So it kind of caught her in the middle of really fully adapting to my program.

She was having hot water with lemon. She was eating an hour after waking because of her thyroid meds. She was doing a protein smoothie in the morning. Salad. So a lot of cold raw salad with spinach, tuna and some beans. And then I said I would recommend blanching the spinach for the smoothie and then also the salad, like letting it sit out, not being cold. And she would snack on fruit or nuts. Sometimes a protein shake. Sometimes just have macha. So I gave her a macha recipe that I have that adds coconut oil and protein to like, we really needed to get more protein in her. And then she was doing protein, vege and fat for dinner. So the big things I stressed to her, [inaudible 00:09:42] raw, add in bone broth. She wasn't doing bone broth yet. And maybe no beans or bell peppers or nightshades because of that brain fog. So she does have autoimmune.

She has two autoimmune conditions, Hashimoto's and celiac. And then she's also had this miscarriage. So my antennas go right up. And she's still dealing with GI issues and the brain fog. So I don't want to change too much because she just found out she's pregnant. Right? So I want to really support that pregnancy but at the same time, I'm worried about the pregnancy because she did have a miscarriage, she's young, but yeah, I've been to this rodeo before. How about that? And so I urge less [inaudible 00:10:22], add in the bone broth and then try to cut out beans and nightshades. Because she was eating bell peppers every single day and I was like… And she still had as far as her red flag symptoms, which is what I can't see on this freaking new patient paperwork. But I think I can. Here.

She had… You guys know me and my red flag symptoms. She had a lot of red flag symptoms still. She had dry eyes, ringing in ears, dry skin, dry scalp, gum problems, cold hands and feet, asthma allergy, strong appetite, indigestion, gas, belching, diarrhea, constipation, and some of these on a scale of one to three or threes. Like they're intense for her. Frequent urination, nighttime urination, urinary tract infections, high libido, joint pain, stiffness, to hot cough. So to me when I see that and like she's eating a pretty clean, in my opinion, generally speaking, she's eating well. And I think you guys would agree. She's eating healthy. Smoothies and salads and some protein and some vegetables. She's suffering though. She's got a lot, a lot, a lot of symptoms. And her periods even though she just got pregnant, aren't super healthy to me. Like nine days of brown, clotty, chunky period. That's not a healthy flow.

So in my head, I'm concerned about the quality of that egg and I'm concerned about the pregnancy. And she's not all clean on her [inaudible 00:11:57]. She hasn't yet cut out dairy. There's just layer. She's been gluten-free for 10 years because she's been diagnosed with celiac. So that's check. She got that. Cutting out soy was new for her. Increasing the protein, all that. So emotionally… So we went into skin stuff, cold hands and feet, otherwise hot skin stuff, dry scalp, dry skin too. So joint pain and stiffness. She's getting headaches. The brain fog is like the biggest concern for her. She's very concerned about the brain brain fog.

So anyway, that's my initial, we're excited because she's found out she's pregnant, which is awesome. And so I want to just share with you… I'm going to go to emails now. So here's my follow up to her. I also, so I sent her an interesting article. So I think at this point, wait a second. So this was October 1st. I just want to go back. Yeah. Sorry. So on September 17th, she messages me that she miscarried. So I talked to her on September 4th, on September 17th she miscarries. “I have terrible news I had another miscarriage yesterday. I was five weeks. At least it was earlier. It doesn't feel as bad physically, but emotionally I'm so angry, I'm frustrated and I'm sad.” You guys can totally relate. “I wonder if you have any tips to aid in my recovery to get my period back. From my last miscarriage she still had some herbs, I guess we can discuss how to change our course of action in our next session on September 30th. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.”

So I had sent her… So first let me go back. So after that first call, I sent her my MTHFR guideline packet because I suspect strongly that she has MTHFR. She did do 23 and me so I was having her upload her genetics for me to go through. I gave her some of my smoothie recipes where I have blanched vegetables in there. I asked her to start sending me a food diary. Again, same things. Less cold raw foods, add in bone broth, try removing the beans and the nightshades, keep a food diary, begin checking back on beauty products. And then I also had recommended Lily Nichols book, Real Food for Pregnancy. But I basically sent her this email at the same time she's sending me the email about the miscarriage. So I then realized that she's miscarried. “I just sent you another email to let you know I'm no longer pregnant.”

So, “That just sucks. Rest assured I'm here to help you navigate this and heal and figure out. You will get and stay pregnant soon. Sending you love.” So she's asking me how to bring on the periods. So I have her do castor oil packs. And then she starts sending me a food diary. She's now implementing collagen, bone broth, trying to eat more warm cooked foods. She added in the methylfolate. She's trying to follow the MTHFR guides. She's added in some makka. She didn't feel awesome after it though, which is something else. Like everybody just throws in makka. you guys got to be really cautious with different supplements. I did not recommend makka. She did it on her own. So I have her take that out.

She did two castor oil packs, and then we had another session the following week. I said makka is too much right now. Don't do it. Do the castor oil packs. She stopped the makka. She's feeling better. So then we have another session. So on October 29th. So she sends me her food diary and… Okay. So I have her upload her pure genomics. I sent her an interesting article on macros for fertility, which again, my Egg Quality Diet is going to totally have your bases covered. I want her to start my Body Belief diet. This is where I'm pushing her to do. I want a total elimination diet because she still has, like I said, a lot of red flag symptoms. She's now just had a second miscarriage. And that's where I'm going to start her, is that kind of diet.

And she found a thyroid panel that she sent to me. And she was also taking like a lot of people, like a shit ton of a variety of different fertility supplements that she found online. And so I wanted her to show me everything she's taking. And then I got to sit and go through all the supplements and like, what's good, what's not, what has genetically modified ingredients? What has soy? What has gluten? What has dairy? All these things. And she also sends me a recent lab report for her thyroid panel. Her D was a 46. So that looked good to me. And yeah, everything looked good in the panel. And so we do a patient report there. I tell her, I want her to start taking a baby aspirin in her luteal phase because of some things I saw on her genetic report. Mainly the MTHFR. [inaudible 00:18:01] low dose.

So the powders that she sent me, all these fertility powders that she was buying from certain sites that are organic and all the things, none of them were free of… They all had nightshades, grains and lectins in them. And so in order for us to figure out her auto-immunity and her brain fog and all these things, I want her to cut out all of that. So I said, “You can do them right now, but once you hit the purify phase, once we go completely eliminate, you can't do these powders anymore.” So mind you, she'd been doing those.

Okay. So then we go back. I put her on the Methyl-Guard Plus just one a day. And then I had her get a miscarriage panel from her doctors as well. And her fertility numbers were great, if you will, by the books. So that wasn't a reason that she was miscarrying. Her vitamin D then drops. So I have her up that. And her doctors tell her they did a clotting factor panel, a miscarriage panel, but they did not. So I wanted her to get a complete panel done. Let me just go back to notes here. Since our last call two weeks ago, she thinks she might've gotten pregnant again. She's not though. She felt like a chemical pregnancy. So many of the symptoms. Started taking the baby aspirin. Then on last Thursday started spotting, spotted on the cloth. She was really upset. She decided to go to a fertility clinic to do day three testing. And then she's going to do all of the clouding factor tests now with this fertility clinic, which I'm really happy about.

Supplement wise I now have her on, she was taking the Baby & Me prenatal. Thought that was fine. Methycal plus one a day or one every three days. Sorry, because she was really, really, really sensitive. She has two copies of the MTHFR mutation. Vitamin D, Floradix, Cod liver oil, Anasedalsystine. Still has lots of constipation gas. Is it too many nuts and beans? I said, probably. Flow feels clotty and thick. Stress levels, frustration around all of this emotional rollercoaster. Went back to acupuncture diet. Ready to start, but feeling some feelings of like, “Damn, why am I so fucked up? Why do I need to do these things?” I know you guys can relate to that. Everybody says that to me like, “Why do the crackheads get pregnant? And I have to cut out gluten dairy and fricking nightshades and beans.” I get it.

So it's feeling unfair. So we talked a lot about that in this conversation. Talked about slowly making changes. About like slowly taking things out. Giving herself grace and space. So the big things that came up in that conversation, frustration, anxiety, and she was just generally pretty pissed off. And I get it. And so we go, after that call… So she sends me a food diary in advance of that call. I just want to go through it with you guys. So she's still doing her smoothie, raspberry, banana, avocado, chia seeds, protein powder, coffee. She gets a headache and jittery from coffee. So we noticed that. Sandwich, egg avocado, fermented cabbage. She gets a headache after the sandwich. It was gluten-free bread. So you guys also always have to watch those breads.

Water with spirulina. Then the whole day is shot from this. I think the coffee and the sandwich. She's just shot. Headache all day, brain fog, feels terrible. She has this mellow yellow powder latte, which again, I think has the lectins in it. So she's not really following everything that I'm asking her to follow. Getting better. Like she has her smoothie the one day short ribs, mashed potatoes, but again, they're white potatoes. Those are nightshades. So I have to do some more tweaking with her. And we do. And so then I also urge her to get on the N-acetylcysteine. She didn't yet start that.

I put her in the Facebook group. She hadn't yet joined that. So now she's in my eCourse group. She's getting more support. And then she sends me an email October 21st, they did an HSG, found some uterine scarring and she's really upset about this. My gut tells me to try to get pregnant this cycle to see if it works out. But knowing that there's a risk for another pregnancy loss, do you have any thoughts on this? They suspect it was from my IUD years ago. But I also think it could be from the miscarriage. Right? And so I recommend for her to continue doing castor oil packs, Maya Abdominal Massage, or acupuncture and herbs. So she says, you mentioned herbs to clear out the scarring. That sounds amazing. If I don't get pregnant this month, it sounds like it's something I'd like to try. I'll definitely do the castor oil packs. And then she was now asking questions in office hours too, which is where a lot of my girls get support from me every week.

Okay. So, right. We talk about herbs and castor oil packs. And then November 8th she gets another positive pregnancy test. So now at this point she's two months into 100% dairy-free, soy-free. She's been playing around with the nuts and the beans and she gets a positive pregnancy test. So she's super fratal but of course I'm also super terrified. I wanted to go over what I'm taking. One teaspoon of Cod liver oil, vitamin D, spirulina, Baby & Me, Dr. Ron's liver pills, sunflower lecithin, the MTHFR stuff, and then the baby aspirin. She's doing acupuncture regularly. And so right, she wasn't on the baby aspirin in that email, I recommend getting on the baby aspirin immediately. She agreed. She's scared of taking the baby aspirin. She replies to me. “When I had pregnancy symptoms, I thought I was pregnant. I took a low dose aspirin and I'm scared. What should I do?”

And I was firm. And then she also read that eating liver and Cod liver can cause birth defects. And so she's scared and I get it. I said, that's my side of it. “I don't want you to have another loss. So to me taking the baby aspirin is a no brainer and has zero side effects and can be the missing link. So my advice is to take it daily, but do what feels best for you I'll support you either way.” And then I also sent her an article on and you guys could all go read it, the vitamin A saga that's on The Weston A. Price Foundation. So basically what I try to do always with my clients is empower them to make the decisions that feel right for them. And so she decides to do the baby aspirin and then she also goes back on the N-acetylcysteine.

Now it's November 16th, she's still pregnant. She's feeling very pregnant. Which is good. “So overall I'm feeling really good.” This is November 17th. “My body feels strong. I feel happy and I notice I have more energy in my workouts. I had my annual last week and they did the beta test, I haven't gotten the results yet. But on the positive side, my acupuncturist said my pulse last week felt definitely pregnant and she took another at home test. So she has a first Sano on December 2nd. “Also I told my gyno with my concerns about carrying out the pregnancy with the uterine scarring. She said not to worry.” She was also reading Nancy Mae's Energetic Fertility Method per my recommendation because I wanted her to do some spirit baby work. She also read Spirit Babies. And so she was really in that.

And she said she was talking to the baby and she asked the baby about moving because she felt uneasy about all the things in her life. And the response she heard intuitively from the baby was, “I don't care, mommy. I just want to be with you. I want you to be happy.” She said it felt so true to me. “Last night, I read your New Momma Guide and my hubby is reading it today. It made me very happy and filled with even more confidence. I feel so supported and it's helping keeping me calm and optimistic. Thank you again for the amazing work you do. I'm so glad I found you.”

Okay. So this is November 17th. I'm still hesitant because this is still a brand new pregnancy. December 4th. “Great news. I made to the first sonogram and heard the heartbeat. Doctor says all looks good. I'm now seven weeks three days pregnant. HCG levels rose appropriately at the beginning, except on my 10 week appointment. I had a bit of spotting, which totally freaked me out. I did a new thyroid panel test for D ferritin, everything looks great. They increased my thyroid dose. Now I'm trying to get to the end of the first trimester. I feel less afraid and more secure about this pregnancy. I've continued to take the low dose aspirin. Thank you so much for your help and support to date. This is the furthest I've ever made it in a pregnancy so far.”

And then I told her, her vitamin D is still low based on her labs. I wanted her to increase that. Tuesday, January 19th. “Happy to let you know I've made it to the second trimester. I'm now 14 weeks pregnant. I've heard the heartbeat three times now. Done all the genetic testing, which came back normal. And we know it's a boy. I'm happy, I'm excited and this is starting to feel real. I'm continuing to all the supplements the recommendation you gave me. I did start to incorporate a little dairy back in my diet because I feel okay when I'm eating it. It's about two weeks now. I noticed some lingering effects of allergy sneezy, runny nose.” I don't feel good about this. I'll tell you that right now. “Postnasal drip. I told my husband I'll eat dairy during pregnancy because I think the baby is benefiting.” And then she still had two more coaching sessions with me and she wants to use them once the baby is born. And I said, that's great.

I just said, “Those reactions to dairy are telling me that your body is not loving it. I'd still urge in pregnancy to keep it to only a few servings a week and keep it full fat and organic.” Because I know her history and Hashimoto's. Hashimoto's does not like dairy. “Thank you so much.” And let's see. “Good call on the dairy. I'll make the change now and then…” Yeah. And so as of today right now she's almost 28 weeks pregnant. So as you can see it's a great case in the sense of small tweaks [inaudible 00:28:44]

END TRANSCRIPT.

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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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