Podcast EP 32
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[00:00:00] It took me over four and a half years to get pregnant, four and a half years of 2:00 AM Google searches of opks of BBT of peeing, on sticks of watching my food, of not drinking, not partying, doing nothing, and not living my life because I wanted to bring my baby home. The toll, the struggle, the impact man.
If I could share with you, or if there was a hidden camera in some of my dark days, they may look eerily similar to yours. Today we're gonna dive into the five things that I wish I knew at the beginning of my journey that would've helped me along the way. So if you've been trying to conceive and you wanna make sure you're checking all the boxes, then don't worry, sis, I got you.
Here are the five things that I wish I knew before I started. Let's go.[00:01:00]
Hi, I'm Sophie Byfield and when I decided I was ready to be a mama, I thought it would be so easy. Get off birth control. Baby dance, like no one's watching. And poof, I was pregnant. But like many of you, that wasn't my story. After months of negative tests, endless treatments, and more supplements than you can count, I realized that getting pregnant isn't about fixing one piece of your fertility puzzle. It's about bringing your whole body. Back into balance so it feels safe enough to conceive. And this is where we focus on what really matters. Healing your whole body so that you can see those two pink lines. Welcome to the Heal to Conceive podcast.
When I first started trying, I'm actually a little bit ashamed to say this. I thought it was going to be easy. I thought it was like the movies, you just go off birth control and you get pregnant. I did not know that there was so much to end, and the truth of the matter is. For some people it is that easy and it is that simple.
And for some of us it takes a little bit more. Now, I was on the journey for a minute, sis, more than a few minutes, to be quite honest, and there was so much that I learned about my body, about fertility, about health that would have made the journey so much easier if I had known it in the beginning. So these are the top five things that I have pulled together, compiled the most important things I [00:02:00] think that you should focus on.
Do, understand, and take in. If you were trying to get pregnant, and I'm not saying this to you as someone who has read it in a textbook, I'm saying this to you as your sister who has lived it. Who has cried, who has begged, who has prayed? The person that avoided baby showers because it hurt too much, or I felt like I got stabbed in the gut when someone else told me they were pregnant.
Yeah, I'm excited and I'm happy for you, but at the end of the day. Why can't I get pregnant? Why can't I bring my baby home? And these were true feelings and emotions that I felt on the journey, and I know after implementing these with my clients and the people I work with, that when we start looking at these five things, it excelled their journey so much faster.[00:03:00]
It gave us so much more information in order to springboard her towards her pregnancy and springboard her towards her baby. These five lessons changed how I approached to trying to conceive and helped me end up getting pregnant. It's also what I use almost daily with my clients to help them get pregnant.
By the end of this video, we are gonna dive into sperm health cycle health, understanding your body, emotional health. We're gonna be talking about all the things. So without further ado, let's get into it. And number one, sperm. Sperm, sperm. A lot of us go into trying to conceive and only think about our eggs and the female body and just assume everything is okay with the male partner sis.
He makes up 50% of the journey. You hear me? 50%. So why wouldn't we make sure that his swimmers are as [00:04:00] strong as possible? I had a client that came to me and she's been trying for over. Two years. Two years. And the very first thing I said to her was, let's get a sperm analysis done and a DNA fragmentation test.
Let's figure out the health of our sperm. I, and you know what happened? It came back that the sperm was the challenge. It changed the way that we approached fertility. It changed what we did next. It changed everything for her. And once we started focusing on sperm health, sis was able to get pregnant. So just don't focus on the female body.
Let's get a clear picture on the health of your partner. And the truth of the matter is 50% of the fertility challenges are due to the male factor or sperm health, but we carry all of the [00:05:00] burden like it's our fault. Getting a clear picture of both partners on our journey to baby has to be one of the very first things that you do, because that gives you time to get on the right supplements, to eat right, to change diets, to get off bad habits, to get as a partnership, to bring that baby home.
So if you haven't dove into sperm testing, that is your step number one. Number two is all about your period. Girl, when I tell you that, when I learned that when you were on birth control, you actually do not get a period. You only get breakthrough bleeding. My mind was blown. Blown. See your period actually bleeding for the amount of time, and then the whole entire menstrual cycle is a clear, vital sign of [00:06:00] your health.
I. And when we take birth control, we mask what is happening within our bodies because we are taking the artificial hormones to stop ovulation, therefore giving us breakthrough bleeding. When you cannot see a vital sign, clearly you can miss things that are going on. Sis, I was on a IUD. Okay, and I was still getting a very faint but light period.
It wasn't until I took my IUD out and my periods were insane that I got diagnosed with having a few fibroids, a few fibroids that wouldn't impact my chances of conceiving. You see, those fibroids had the ability and time to grow because I was on birth control for so long and didn't know any better.
Because it masked the symptoms. [00:07:00] PMS, painful periods, bloating, all of that may be symptoms that your period is off and that your menstrual cycle isn't as healthy as possible. Your hormones are clues to what is going on. Your body is all about equilibrium and balance, and when your cycle is off, it won't allow you to get pregnant.
It is protecting you. It's like, we ain't healthy enough. We ain't strong enough to get pregnant, so I'm not gonna let you, you just cool and chill, just cool and chill. But you see if we can get that cycle as healthy as can be and as possible, and we can start seeing those period regularly, we can start getting our hormones into whatever balance that we need.
We can start to create magic. So don't think of your period as just something that shows up, that shows you you're not pregnant. It actually shows [00:08:00] you how healthy your body is. So key things to look for. Are you bleeding for three to five days? Are you ovulating at about the midway point in your cycle? Is your LT phase 11 days at its shorter.
At its shortest or longer? All of this gives us information about our health and our body. So what is your period telling you? Number three, you only have a 20 to 25% chance of getting pregnant any given cycle. When I say that this stat rocked me to my core, rocked me to my core. 20 to 25%. So if everything is healthy and everything is perfect, only 20 people out of a hundred actually have a chance of getting pregnant.
That [00:09:00] cycle actually mind was blown because I had fibroids. So does that decrease my chance? My periods were super heavy. Does that decrease my chance? I was on birth control for such a long period of time. Does that decrease my chance? Even with perfectly timed sex, most couples do not get pregnant right away.
Society has lied to us. Sis. When they say you just have to baby dance one time and you getting pregnant, or you sit on that toilet seat and you getting pregnant, that's not really the case. Yes, it does happen, but not as often as they make it sound. So this taught me that I wasn't broken. It taught me that a perfectly timed healthy couple without any challenges will really only get pregnant within six months [00:10:00] to a year.
But you see, I wasn't taking my cycle into account. And many of my clients don't take their body and their unique cycle into account and expect it to happen right away. If I told you that when you start trying to conceive, it could take you up to a year, would it change the way that you think about it?
Would it change your perception of this whole entire journey? Because I expected it to be super easy, so then I made it 10 times harder on myself emotionally. My body was failing. I'm not good enough. Something I did means I'm not meant to be a mom. Maybe I don't have the right partner. Maybe I am a disastrous human being and just never gonna meet my dreams.
But if I knew that I only had a 20% chance, if not lower because I had my fibroids, would it have changed the mental struggle or the mental game for me? [00:11:00] And does it change the mental struggle and the mental game for you? But I do wanna normalize negative tests and negative cycles because that is actually more of a reality than the positive.
And number four sis, it feeds right into that. And it was the hardest one for me to connect with, believe. Understand your girl's. A little bit of a type A personality, just a little bit. If you asked my sister or my husband, they'd probably say a lot, but I would like to say just a little bit, you can do everything right and it's still not work. That is number four. You can take all the supplements, you can follow all the trends. You can do everything right, but your body is still outta whack. It's still outta balance. It's still missing a [00:12:00] piece, and it still won't work. That was so hard for me and for many of my clients.
I actually had a call with a client this week, um, where we were discussing doing everything. She was on about 10 different supplements, baby dancing at the right time, peeing on all the sticks, doing everything she could even Mucinex, which I am not against, but. Not four in the same sense. She was doing all of the things and it wasn't working.
We were now rolling into year three and it wasn't working. The thing about fertility and the thing I explained to this young lady is fertility is very unique to your body. What works for one person and their body isn't necessarily gonna work for you and your body. I. [00:13:00] Each supplement, each trend, each thing does something different, and you need to look at if your body needs the thing that it does.
So that means researching and understanding before adding it to your fertility journey. Fertility isn't a math equation. It doesn't equal on both sides. Our bodies are not machines. And they require a lot to fall into balance. And their main desire, mechanism drive is survival. And if we understand that, we can start looking into our body for the missing piece, the missing supplement, the missing next step that's gonna bring our baby home.
Sometimes it's not about adding more and doing everything, it's more about taking away. For example, I spent four years [00:14:00] doing everything, sis. When I say everything, I mean everything. And I finally stopped. It was December of 2022 when I said Enough, I am just gonna go on a healing journey. I cleaned up my diet.
I completely changed my diet. I changed the way I exercised. I went from 20 supplements down to eight supplements. I really focused on listening to my body and discovering what it needed, and in that process I was able to get my two pink lines in 12 weeks. It wasn't a matter of trying everything or doing everything or implementing everything.
It was actually a matter of slowing down and listening, which can feel so hard when you just wanna bring your baby home. I hear you sis. I totally [00:15:00] do. But sometimes adding more is actually blocking your blessing. So yes. Number four is feeling like you're doing absolutely everything and it's still not working.
And the fix is to stop doing everything. And this is exactly what I teach you to do inside the Heel to conceive tribe, just listening to your body and really healing it from the inside out to bring your baby home. And let's dive into number five. The final thing I wish I knew when I was trying to conceive, and I'm gonna be honest, sis, it's a bit of an unpopular opinion.
Well, the action items, number five is understanding that this journey is an emotional roller coaster and it's gonna test you in ways that you ain't never been tested. At least I know it did for me. [00:16:00] The pressure, the hope, the months of let downs the cultural or family pressure as to why you're not pregnant yet, or why you're not expanding your family, or aren't you gonna give your partner a baby.
The having to baby dance to a clock, the timing, the stress on your partner. They're trying to be supportive for you, but they're going through their own journey along this too. They say that being on a trying to conceive journey is experiencing trauma month after month.
And if you've been on this for a minute, you know that because every month your cycle shows up. It's like you're punched in the gut, heartbroken, and you continue on this rollercoaster and it's almost like you try to keep hoping. But at some point the hope kind of depletes, [00:17:00] and it's not that you wanna give up, it's not that you wanna stop, it's that you don't know if your heart can handle anymore.
And I say this coming from experience. I say this from a person who sat on the ground and cried and bawled her eyes out after another negative test. Try to conceive isn't just physical and a lot of people is, but the emotional, the despair, the heartache, the hiding it, the shame. Oh my God. The shame. I remember my uncle saying to me after my sister had her first child, you're letting your sister, your baby sister, get ahead of you.
Don't she want to have a baby now? Like [00:18:00] maybe they're trying to rah rah. Maybe they're trying to be supportive, but that heartache, that gun punch. I'm trying my best.
But here comes the unpopular opinion part, that stress, that anxiety that you live in actually puts you into fight or flight. And that fight or flight can tell your body not to get pregnant. You see your brain, your reptilian brain doesn't know the difference between a saber-tooth tiger. And trying to conceive stress, it's just overwhelmed.
And it knows that pregnancy will not make you run fast away from the tiger, so it slows down your hormones and blocks your chances at conceiving. So here's where the unpopular [00:19:00] opinion counts in. Sometimes you need to take a break. Sometimes you need to live your life, enjoy your life. Go to the party, go out with friends, enjoy time with your partner, and stop putting your life on hope.
Sometimes it needs to be about something more than trying to conceive. I learned this the hard way. And I have this hard conversation with ladies in my community who I feel are being sucked into the vortex of darkness, the vortex of trying to conceive. I'm ashamed to say this well, but it is my reality.
To be honest. There were times on my journey where I absolutely did not want to go to the function or the party because I might be pregnant this time. Or I avoided trips or fun activities with my partner because we need to be safe. We need to be careful. We don't wanna be stressing too much. [00:20:00] And now I look back after four years of trying, and I look at some of my clients who are missing activities in their life.
They're making the choice to miss activities in their life because they're trying to conceive. And that pressure, the not taking a break, the not living on your journey will beat you down. So there's this delicate ba balance between trying to conceive and living while you're trying to conceive, and it takes a minute to learn how to do both.
So I don't want you to forget to live. Yes, we have to be clean eaters, stay away from toxins, endocrine spikes, change our diet. We're doing all the things, taking all the supplements, we're giving up alcohol, cutting back on coffee, doing everything we can to bring our babies home. But we [00:21:00] do not have a crystal ball, and we do not know how long that is gonna take.
So I suggest and I talk about this inside the tribe. Every three months, maybe every six months, whatever your timeline is, you take a cycle, break, put down the tracking, put down the, the, the sticks, the thermometer, and just live. Go to the party, go to the wedding, have a drink, and then pick it back up next cycle.
Because if you do not put down the mental load every so often. And take care of you on this journey, you can be left sucked into the vortex darkness and not be able to pull yourself out. Well, that was a bit heavy, but in all fairness, I am speaking to you from a place, not just a fertility [00:22:00] coach and doula, but for someone who has gone through it and lived it.
All right. Let's do a really quick recap on the ACTU items. One, get a sperm analysis done with a DNA fragmentation. Two, understand your cycle. We wanna start tracking just to understand how long our period is, how long our luteal phase is. Our cycle is a vital sign of the health of our body, and when it's outta whack, your body won't allow you to get pregnant.
Three, give yourself some grace. Sis. I know you wanna try anything and everything to bring your baby home, but sometimes it's not about doing everything. It's about discovering your missing piece and pulling it all together. Number four is get support. Whether it is a coach. Like me? Yeah, like me. Or coming into the tribe, [00:23:00] getting someone to look at the full picture and your body can help you discover your missing piece a lot faster.
And five, take a mental health break when you need it, whether you schedule that every three months, whether you do it every six months, take a break, put down the tracking and have some fun. Remember we are living while we're trying to conceive, not just trying to conceive. I want you to know that you got this.
You are gonna bring your baby home and if you don't got this, I got you. Baby dust for all.
