Hear the story of how one woman took control over her health and fertility and took home her baby after recurrent miscarriages by following The Egg Quality Diet.

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See full transcript below.

Aimee Raupp:

Hello. How are you guys? If you haven't had the opportunity … I'm going to move these things around, to see my new book, look at that beautiful baby. Oh, there it is again. Do you see that? Look at that beautiful baby. Here she is. The Egg Quality Diet. And we have a special treat for you. I'm going to pull on one of my clients that I've worked with, she was I think, one of the first to really go through the entire egg quality diet as it is in its state now in the book. So it kind of started from my book Body Belief, and then we've rolled it into now what's called the egg quality diet, made some tweaks for fertility. And I'm going to pull on Laura because she is going to tell you all about her story of hope. It's a story of hope from a beautiful soul who followed out in this book and has a beautiful baby to show for it now. Hello.

Laura:

Hi. How are you?

Aimee Raupp:

How are you? I'm good.

Laura:

Good.

Aimee Raupp:

Good to see you. How are you?

Laura:

Likewise, it's great to see you too. I'm fine. Thank you.

Aimee Raupp:

Good. Good.

Laura:

Little tired, but I'm okay.

Aimee Raupp:

I know, I'm a little tired too. We had a bath last night and that was fun.

Laura:

No thank you.

Aimee Raupp:

No. Anyway, let's share with everyone. First, thank you so much for coming on. I mean, I know it's a huge part of, I think your story and your mission now to really inspire and empower women who have gone through the trauma of fertility challenges, especially to the extent that you went through. But why don't you tell everybody a bit about your story and then I'll kind of chime in where I want to.

Laura:

Sure. Yeah, yeah. I'll just kind of, in a nutshell, I had my first pregnancy in 20 … I gave birth in 2012 to a healthy, perfect, amazing girl. Shortly afterwards Clay and I, my husband, decided that we wanted to try for number two. I think we were probably about a year and a half after I gave birth to Jolene. We had four subsequent miscarriages back to back, over the course of about eight years.

Aimee Raupp:

And how old were you then?

Laura:

I was 26 when I had Jolene. So I was between 27 and let me think, how old am I now? I don't even know how old I am now. I'm 34 now, so I had Isla 14 months ago. So early, I mean mid twenties, early thirties.

Aimee Raupp:

Seven years, yeah.

Laura:

So yeah, four miscarriages, obviously all super, super traumatic. They seem to get …

Aimee Raupp:

Remind me or just for everybody to, were there ever any tissues analysis on any of the losses?

Laura:

Yeah.

Aimee Raupp:

Yeah. And they were all, tell us they were all …

Laura:

With the exception of my fifth pregnancy, everything was chromosomally normal. So essentially what was happening is my immune system went into overdrive and was attacking the embryos. I had an astronomical level of inflammation in my body, which obviously you helped me tackle. So, but I just had Isla, my what we call rainbow miracle baby. She's 14 months, so I had her in April of last year.

Aimee Raupp:

It's amazing. And she's so cute.

Laura:

I know, it is.

Aimee Raupp:

It is amazing. And so tell us, you saw 11 specialists and had five surgeries during that time. What were the diagnoses? What did they range from? What were people telling you was the issue? Because you were so young, right?

Laura:

Literally no diagnosis.

Aimee Raupp:

They weren't telling you age. Yeah, there was no diagnosis, right.

Laura:

It was consistent messaging of, you're healthy, you're young, this is normal, your labs are perfect. Everything is fine, it's bad luck.

Aimee Raupp:

And then you found Dr. Braverman was one of those specialists, right, at some point.

Laura:

Yes. So after my third loss, I started working with a reproductive endocrinologist. He just blindly put me on progesterone, didn't even test my levels, that still resulted in miscarriage. And at that point I started looking for support in online support groups and I was directed to Dr. Braverman who, he passed away, but he was the specialist in New York doing reproductive immunology alongside Dr. Vidali.

Aimee Raupp:

Yeah. And he diagnosed you with endometriosis at that point, right?

Laura:

Within two minutes on the phone, he was like, you for sure have endometriosis based on your history, your family history. And he's like, basically I need you to come up here. I want to put my hands on you, my eyes on you, see what's going on here, do some ultrasounds. He's like, but I can almost guarantee you, you have endometriosis, inflammation and probably PCOS.

Aimee Raupp:

And did you have any signs or symptoms that are obvious to endometriosis or PCOS even?

Laura:

No. I mean, I have a pretty high pain tolerance. I thought that my menstrual pain was just normal. I did have, when I would have internal ultrasounds, it would be kind of tender. Other than that, no, not really. Other than miscarriages, that was my number one symptom of endometriosis.

Aimee Raupp:

And so you worked with Braverman and so those five surgeries, those were hysteroscopy and then laps, that kind of stuff.

Laura:

Yes. And DNCs, tons of DNCs.

Aimee Raupp:

DNCs.

Laura:

Yeah.

Aimee Raupp:

Miserable, miserable.

Laura:

I know. They were.

Aimee Raupp:

Because what was the furthest along that you made it, in those five pregnancies?

Laura:

My fourth pregnancy, which was my third loss, 12 weeks, so.

Aimee Raupp:

That sucks. That sucks.

Laura:

Yeah. I literally announced it, we announced her pregnancy and the next day I started spotting. So it was really traumatic. And that one we had shared with our family, our friends and also my daughter, so it was awful.

Aimee Raupp:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then, around what time did you find me?

Laura:

Dr. Braverman recommended that I start working with you. So that was, gosh, what year would that have been?

Aimee Raupp:

2019?

Laura:

That would probably have been 2019. Yeah.

Aimee Raupp:

Yeah. I think 2019.

Laura:

So right away, I flew up to meet with him and we talked about lifestyle and diet and he automatically was like, you got to call Aimee Raupp. He's like, she's an expert in diet, mindset, lifestyle, all of these things. He's like, it's a missing component, he's like, I can manage your immunology and I can manage your inflammation from a medication perspective. He's like, but it's bigger than that.

Aimee Raupp:

Yeah.

Laura:

It's so much bigger than that.

Aimee Raupp:

And then, so you started following me and got my books, right? And then …

Laura:

I stalked you.

Aimee Raupp:

… you stalked me. It worked, it worked. Here we are, look at this. And did you start with, Yes, You Can Get Pregnant and then go into Body Belief? Or what was the …

Laura:

No. I went straight into Body Belief because it was targeting autoimmune issues. So I started with Body Belief, but I also was hyper involved, I watched all of your YouTube videos, I watched all of your Facebook lives, I would catch you live here on Instagram. And I just followed, I implemented everything you suggested.

Aimee Raupp:

And so tell us about, because, so it's also obviously Body Belief kind of, and Yes, You Can Get Pregnant birthed this baby, which we have to get you a copy. Not that you need it, because you could have written it probably yourself at this point, but …

Laura:

I'm so proud of you though. This is amazing. This is, I'm so excited to get my hands on that, book because I feel like it's going to just … it just takes it to another level. And it probably, I would imagine, is very direct and specific to …

Aimee Raupp:

Yeah. It's very direct and specific, whereas Body Belief, we were piecing it together with, I mean, do you even technically have autoimmune. You had endometriosis, which I think personally, clinically responds really well when I treat it like an autoimmune condition, but Dr. Vidali and, and Dr. Sally will get on me if I call it an autoimmune condition, because it's really an inflammatory condition. Which I respect them, they're the smarty pants here.

Laura:

Well, you're pretty darn smart yourself.

Aimee Raupp:

It's all good. PCOS similar, I think, but. So you dove into Body Belief, but I want to talk about too, because I have it in the Egg Quality Diet, it's a little different, a little more focused on fertility, and I think the word you used direct. But we have the symptom questionnaire in here as well, that we call it the kinks in your body questionnaire. I think there is about 80 or so listed in here. Here it is.

Laura:

I am familiar with those.

Aimee Raupp:

Two pages, right? So some of them are different than Body Belief, like I said, a little more specific and direct to fertility. But when you filled out that first kinks in your system questionnaire, you had 50% or something like that, right? Upwards of 40 some odd symptoms.

Laura:

Yeah. So the first time I filled out the form, I was not honest with myself because that was part of my healing process, right? I had to own my shit.

Aimee Raupp:

You weren't connected. That's the issue. I wouldn't, don't be hard on yourself, you had become disconnected from all the trauma.

Laura:

Yeah, oh yeah.

Aimee Raupp:

How could you have not? How could you have not?

Laura:

Yeah, I was absolutely disconnected, and I was very numb to a lot of the stuff that was going on. But yes, when I went in and really committed to being honest and really looking at it, I had 42 of those kinks, which, I mean, I feel like that might be more than 50% of them.

Aimee Raupp:

Yeah. I feel like there's 70 or 80 or something. I don't even know if I've counted them up.

Laura:

It's a lot.

Aimee Raupp:

Just list them all out. But I think it's about, I should count them up, but I think it's about 70 or 80. And so what was your diet like before and then how dramatically different was it for you to go in and change your diet like that?

Laura:

So, I was under the impression that I was eating pretty healthy. I had always, well, I wouldn't say always, but since I was probably 14, I had been eating organic foods, vegetables, fruits. I was a vegetarian for a long time, though, so I think that was the huge shift for me was incorporating more animal products and reducing my level of grain intake. I was never huge with sugar, but it was obviously ingrained, it turned into like a sugar reaction, right. So grains was my main thing. It was hard for me, I really missed pizza and toast and avocado toast.

Aimee Raupp:

Yeah. So were you gluten-free and dairy-free when you found me or no, you weren't. So, but you ate organic, you felt like you ate enough vegetables. So, it was like, and this … yeah, go ahead.

Laura:

Tons of vegetables, tons of organic, even my household products, my beauty products were really clean. But yeah, it was a big shift, it was a lot. I had to grieve a lot of the foods, I know that sounds kind of silly, but I mean, I would cry. I missed my pizza.

Aimee Raupp:

Oh. I'm sneezing, sorry. I think that's an interesting topic too, grieving the foods. That's something I want to talk about in the masterclass, when we have the book launch party, I think that's a great point. But I think it's also, this is exactly why I wrote Egg Quality Diet book. You're the exact reason, which for many reasons, but also because when girls come to us and they start working with us or they'll say, well, I've read, Yes, You Can Get Pregnant, I'm doing the diet. And then I go and I collect a food journal, and they're not eating enough protein, they're not enough vegetables or eating too many packaged, processed, organic grains, if you will, and that's still keeping their level of inflammation pretty high, right?

Laura:

Absolutely.

Aimee Raupp:

And so for you, it wasn't necessarily, maybe one of those pregnancies, impacting egg quality, but it was impacting receptivity for you and your immune system, which is coming from your gut health. So what we went to do is to heal your gut, to reduce inflammation, to make your body and your immune system more receptive. But it's, for me, when I see the food diaries and I think, okay, I feel bad on some level because I'm like, you are eating healthy and you are doing a great job, but it's not enough. We got to up the game a little bit more. And you took it to the max level, you dove in, you did all the things, and how soon into the diet would you say you started to see symptoms changing for you?

Laura:

So the most immediate change I saw, my brain fog reduced drastically, I had way more energy, my skin was glowing, my nails were growing really healthy and strong, same with my hair. So those were all really nice perks. In addition to that, things that I had been experiencing that I wasn't even fully cognizant of, I was having headaches regularly, those were gone. I had this kind of consistent post-nasal drip thing going on, that was gone. I was prone to eczema, that was gone. All sorts of issues, just totally cleared up. And I just felt incredible. I dropped probably 30 pounds of inflammation weight within about six weeks.

Aimee Raupp:

Wow. Yeah.

Laura:

But, I mean, I was [crosstalk 00:13:55]

Aimee Raupp:

Totally debloated, that's what one of your friends said. Rosie Sunbeam. You totally debloated, yeah.

Laura:

I did, yeah.

Aimee Raupp:

You totally debloated.

Laura:

I did. I did. I was swollen and that all disappeared. And I just felt better in my skin.

Aimee Raupp:

And now, what about inflammatory markers? Because I know Braverman was measuring them and he said something like you were in the 95th percentile on inflammation. Did he remeasure them at some point and say that they went down? Yeah.

Laura:

Yeah. Very regularly. In the beginning, I didn't test again because what I wanted to do was really focus on the healing and shifting everything. And then I spoke with you and I said, here's where I'm at. And you were like, all right, let's run an inflammation panel, essentially. So we started testing it again and we tracked it down to so minimal. And at that time, both you and Dr. Braverman said, let's do this, you're ready.

Aimee Raupp:

Yeah. And then an IUI is what worked for you, right? You did and IUI? Yeah.

Laura:

Yeah, IUI. And it was super quick. I got pregnant pretty much immediately. The pregnancy itself …

Aimee Raupp:

And you did his autoimmune protocol with the Plaquenil, prednisone, Lovenox, Intralipids, right. And then all of our supplements, too.

Laura:

Yeah. All of the supplements that you recommended. And I was doing acupuncture, things like that with my dear friend, Sima. But the levels, when we tested from when I first started working with you to when I started trying to conceive, it was night and day. Dr. Braverman could not believe it.

Aimee Raupp:

He couldn't believe it. I remember that. And that's the thing too. That's what he said to me originally. It was a couple of girls before you that it was similar, their levels were so high, he was recommending surgery. And I put them on the diet and it was, I don't know, a month or two in, where I remember one girl, she fell actually pregnant right before the surgery. And now, she wasn't getting pregnant, she was diagnosed with premature, ovarian failure, she was like 40. She wasn't getting pregnant, had one diagnosed autoimmune condition, but she finally found her way to Braverman, And he was like, I think this is endo, let's do surgery. Anyway, we put her on the diet, and then she fell pregnant and she had a healthy baby boy. She carried him to term, she's done the stories part with me too, Danielle. She's not as active in the group anymore.

Aimee Raupp:

But he called me, because he was like, I don't know, I've never seen inflammation drop like this. He's like, this was not anything I did. He's like, this was you. And so he was like, can I put you on the website, can I refer people to you? Whatever you're doing diet wise, it's dramatically impacting. And mind you with her, if she tried to do IVF, she wasn't either getting embryos or they weren't making blastocysts and nothing was good quality. Everything was blamed on her age, so slightly different case in that sense, but still, similar diet, same results, reduce inflammation, improve pregnancy outcomes. Right. Yeah.

Laura:

And I mean, the pregnancy itself was so much better. I wasn't on any medications leading up to trying to conceive, because I was simply doing your protocol. I was doing your diet, your supplements, your recommendations, as far as acupuncture, mindset, et cetera. When I got pregnant, which was pretty immediate, my body, had I not reduced the inflammation, I would have had another miscarriage. There's no doubt.

Aimee Raupp:

Yeah, I know. Well, and I've had girls, same thing. They come to me, they're working with him, they're half in on the diet, if you will, and they miscarry again. And so then it's like, okay, we've got to up the game. I mean, I also just had a girl recently who is all in and still miscarried, and we're trying to, I'm wrapping my head around that. I don't know what the F happened there, sometimes it just … It's not usually the norm, but sometimes it is, and there's something more we have to uncover and we will. It's my mission.

Aimee Raupp:

But most of the time, you see the two work really well in conjunction, or even, I have a girl right now who, she's 46, wasn't ever getting any PGS normals, was having multiple early losses, would get pregnant, early losses, always genetically abnormal, did IVF, it never worked. So she kind of gave up, 46, but she's still following the diet and all the things, because she feels so much better. And she found out at like seven and a half weeks that she's pregnant. This is the furthest she's made it since she's trying. She just had a nine weeks sono, everything looks great.

Laura:

Amazing.

Aimee Raupp:

I mean, I'm in shock. So now we just put her on the meds …

Laura:

That's exciting.

Aimee Raupp:

… because we just found out she's pregnant. But so she made it further than she's ever made it without the meds, just on the diet. And I think the emotional inflammation, which is not as … it's discussed in here, but I send you to the resources page for the book that where I go into all the mental, emotional component, which I think for her was a game changer. But yeah, it's kind of interesting because it's like, does everyone need the meds with doing the diet? I think in your case, and I have many cases like yours, where I don't think it's worth the risk. I still would want you on the meds, because we're not going through another loss. So it's like, do it all, we just do it all. We throw it all at the wall, we see what sticks, right. Because we're taking this baby home. And we did, which is great.

Laura:

Yeah. The risk is just too great. And I think, one thing I wanted to mention about the client that you were just talking about, she didn't realize she was pregnant. She probably didn't have any sickness symptoms, because I literally, I had hyper …

Aimee Raupp:

Her magnesium levels were so balanced, that's why. She's eating enough minerals.

Laura:

Yeah. I had hyperemesis in all five of my pregnancies, before. And when I got pregnant with Isla, I threw up a handful of times, but I mean with every other pregnancy, my hyperemesis was so bad that I was in and out of the hospital for IVs, and it was horrible hyperemesis, throwing up 25 times a day kind of thing. And I didn't experience that with this recent pregnancy, and I really, truly believe it's because you helped me get my blood sugar so in check and all of my minerals were so balanced that I was just really ready.

Aimee Raupp:

Yeah. Oh, I love it. I love it. So we have a couple of minutes, but, I guess, what else do you want to share? I mean, I think we should be honest too, about the intensity of the diet, and why don't you talk to that part?

Laura:

Yeah. I will talk about that a little bit, because it really truly is very hard. And for me, a big part of it was mental. Really, it wasn't, I was able to commit to it, that wasn't my problem. I'm the type of person who, I make a decision and then that's it. However, going out to eat with friends and family was really challenging, because you're on this limited diet and you feel almost like, well, what the heck? This person sitting next to me at the table is pregnant and she's eating a hamburger, why can't I have a hamburger? But I will say that there is a shift …

Aimee Raupp:

Well, you can have a hamburger, no bun, right? No bun. Depends on the restaurant.

Laura:

Right, right. Just the burger part. Put it on lettuce. There was a really beautiful shift that occurred for me, and it was kind of this sense of like, I don't know if you've read this anywhere, but this sense of, if you can control what you're consuming, whether that's social media, food, water, whatever it is that you're consuming …

Aimee Raupp:

Relationships, yeah.

Laura:

Yeah. Well, it kind of is like a shift in your whole ability to do anything. It kind of made me feel like, all right, if I can do Purify for a year, I can do anything.

Aimee Raupp:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Purify, for you guys, it's phase two in this book, I changed it to phase 1, 2, 3, 4, just made it easier.

Laura:

Okay. Cool.

Aimee Raupp:

I agree. And I also think too, that touches upon something we talk about a lot in our group of, how you live your life right now, how is that serving your end goal? Are you on your own team? And I know it's a lot and it's shitty to be dealing with fertility challenges to begin with, so it's not saying, you created this or you deserve this. It's more like, well, you're in this right now, and you have this information, so we might as well just give it a shot and see what happens, and at least try. And you learn so much about your body and have you really ever gone back to the old way of eating?What's different now in your life, post … I know you're maybe thinking of …

Laura:

Postpartum is like, in the beginning, even during my pregnancy, I very much stayed in the Body Belief world. I did reintroduce foods in the late third trimester, we did dairy, beans, et cetera, we even did gluten, which was scary, but we did it. And I did that with Aimee's guidance, by the way. So don't just willy nilly that, work with somebody.

Aimee Raupp:

Yeah. And I have a very clear reintroduction guide in here now, which again, is hammered out from Body Belief, so. It is important, yeah.

Laura:

Awesome. But I will say, so now I'm 14 months postpartum, I'm still breastfeeding. I tried to go back to full Body Belief and it was really challenging for me, so I'm kind of like in an 80/20 place where I'm 80% what we consider paleo and then 20% kind of just whatever I want.

Aimee Raupp:

And how do you feel though? Because I also think, what is it almost two years of following the plan. You did a lot for your gut health, so I feel like that's the whole beauty of an elimination diet, like that's in Egg Quality Diet and in Body Beliefs, that eventually you should be able to have these foods, and your body should be able to them in moderation. So do you have similar reactions or have all the red flag symptoms come back or you feel pretty good?

Laura:

No. So almost all of my food I can now tolerate really, really well.

Aimee Raupp:

Yeah. That's amazing.

Laura:

It's funny though, there are occasional foods, I was chatting with Beth. And for those of you listening, Beth is on team Aimee, she's Aimee's right hand. And Beth and I are really close.

Aimee Raupp:

And my left hand.

Laura:

Yeah. All your hands. So Beth and I were chatting the other day, and I had eaten something and I was like, oh gosh, I have this red flag popping up. I had this, I think it was a headache or something. And she was like, that's so incredible though, because you know exactly what caused it.

Aimee Raupp:

I agree. I agree. Yeah, I agree.

Laura:

And I do. I know if I eat tomatoes, I'm going to regret it, but I sometimes eat them anyway, because I love them.

Aimee Raupp:

That's how I am with white potatoes. I'm the same way. I'm like, all right, I'm having these white potatoes and I'm going to have gas in about 30 minutes, heads up everybody.

Laura:

Right? Back up.

Aimee Raupp:

Back up. But that's how it's going to roll. Yeah, I was at a friend's the other night and she had these Korean barbecue sauce, she's Asian and she wanted to cook with it, it was all organic, but she was like, there's a little soy in it. And she forgot about how my soy reactions until like we got there for dinner. And I said, it's okay. I'll manage. And the next day, if I tell you, I felt like I drank two bottles of wine. I was hung over from a smidgen of this organic Korean, basically homemade soy sauce or barbecue sauce. So same thing, it's like, I'm so in tune, but sometimes it's worth it. I wanted to just have a nice meal with my friends and I'll deal with the consequences the next day. I drank a lot of bone broth, coconut water, had a good sweat, felt much better. But it's that being in tune is the power, I think that's where the power lies.

Laura:

For sure. 100%. And just being aware and being able to make decisions that are empowered, rather than struggling in this fog and not knowing. You don't know what's causing it.

Aimee Raupp:

That is the goal with this. It's to simplify it for you guys, because it's a hell of a ride and you want valuable information from, I think, trusted sources, and I do believe I'm one of them. And to simplify it, it's literally 100 days is mapped out in here. And I don't know, every woman I meet, and I know you felt the same way too, of any time they went to eat something, is this is good for my fertility, bad for my fertility, going to affect my egg quality, do I feel guilty about this? Should I not? So it's layered with all this emotion, so just take the guesswork out, right?

Laura:

Oh, yeah.

Aimee Raupp:

Let's just simplify this, take the guesswork out. Okay, and I have to hang up on you because I have to go live in Dr. Murphy's group in three minutes.

Laura:

Okay.

Aimee Raupp:

So, but I love you and I love you for coming on again and again and again-

Laura:

Anytime.

Aimee Raupp:

… and just support. Thank you. And if you guys want to watch, Laura has done another story of hope with me. So we're going to post that, we'll put it in the comments. You guys can watch that too. And then I did a story before, if you have any questions for me or for Laura, I can get them to her, post them and we'll answer them and get on pre-ordering this book, because it comes out June 13th, but the pre-order gifts are awesome. One of them includes a five-hour digital fertility retreat with yours truly, and then another one is an invite to the virtual book launch party, where you are going to get an egg quality diet masterclass led by me, and some awesome giveaways are going to happen in there too. So pre-order the book, we'll put the link in the comments and yeah, thank you again my love.

Laura:

Love you.

Aimee Raupp:

Love you.

Laura:

I'll see you soon.

Aimee Raupp:

All right. I'll talk to you guys later. Good bye.

End transcript.