EP #8 - Baby Road Map - What are your Options? - Discussing Options
[00:00:00] Tanja: Hello, and welcome to today's episode about Baby Road Map – What are your options? Most clients we meet move from trying naturally to, “Let's do IVF.” And for some of them, they can't wait to get started with IVF. And for others, they would want to try out everything else before moving into the world of the assisted reproductive techniques.
So today, I'm going to lay out the several steps prior to IVF and share them with you so that you get to know what your options truly are. I'm so excited and can't wait to start. 3So, let's grab a cup of tea and get started.
[00:01:25] Thank you for being here and for joining me on another show here today. Today, it's really all about the Baby Road Map and what are your options. We created Baby Road Map some years back when we got similar questions from our clients over and over again in our sessions. And these questions were all around, “Yes, we understand that from the doctor, he told us that we can't get pregnant naturally and the only other way is IVF. And we seem to have tried everything.”
[00:02:04] And when we started to ask them a little bit more questions about like, what everything meant, it was like from trying for 6 months or 12 months naturally and then moving on to IVF. So, the World Health Organization recommends for couples that are below 35 years to try for 12 consecutive months before consulting a fertility specialist. And for those couples that are 35 years and above, they usually recommend to try for 6 consecutive months.
[00:02:44] If you have been one of them and you have been trying naturally for those 6 or 12 months and you haven't experienced any pregnancy during the duration of trying, then we have those clients that would go straight to a fertility doctor and then discuss the options.
[00:03:06] Now, there are maybe some steps that you can take on your own before consulting a doctor. Step number one would usually be, yes, you have unplanned intercourse, there is no tracking involved, no medication, and you are still in your 6 to 12 months. In step number two, we usually then discuss with the clients how you can start planning a little bit more.
For planning, you would need to know the duration of your cycle. You would need to know when you ovulate. And you would need to know a little bit more about the fertile days so that you can start planning a little bit more around it.
[00:03:52] If it still doesn't work, also with the help of planning, then you might want to move to step number three, which is really tracking ovulation. This is when some women would go out and buy an ovulation kit that you can usually buy at the pharmacy stores. In some countries, you get them even in a supermarket and you could really start tracking whether ovulation is taking place or not.
[00:04:26] To be 100% sure if ovulation really took place, some of our clients would even consult a gynaecologist and do a scan so that they would have more certainty about whether ovulation happened or not. That scan should ideally happen during your fertile days just before you ovulate because then the doctor can confirm that he or she can see an egg, a follicle that is growing and that is about to ovulate. And after ovulation, because that follicle should actually have disappeared then from the ovary. And that would help to confirm that ovulation really happened.
[00:05:13] If you want to go even deeper into this, you could take a blood test before and after ovulation, because that will show you clearly, black and white, that you had all the hormones before ovulation that were actually growing and going into a peak and then you’ll have the hormones slowly starting to disappear or reduce after ovulation, and others to increase actually. So that would be your ultimate test.
[00:05:49] Step number 4, is for some people who actually then find out that they were not ovulating, so the follicle was growing, but at the end, they just missed to have enough of the luteal hormone to actually make the egg to really ovulate. So, they might need to reach out to their gynecologist for some additional help to get support for follicle growth or ovulation on a medical base. And only then, if you have gone through all of this and still no pregnancy is happening, maybe that's a time when you want to engage in more testing.
[00:06:35] That would be then your next step so that you get a baseline of really like, what does your hormones look like? How does the sperm sample look like? So usually, we advise for a couple, for both of them to do these tests, because then it really would give you the correct baseline of how things look like and where are you at this moment. Keep in mind that hormones are very much correlated to brain activity. So, meaning that most of the hormones for fertility are actually coming from your brain and we want to ensure that, you know, you are in a good state, don't feel much under pressure, don't have high stress at work or in your life in general, so that it would really give you a great snapshot.
[00:07:37] If for whatever reasons you are in a phase of life where there is lots going on, besides you trying for a pregnancy, then, just want for you to know, keep in mind that all of these hormones’ reports are always a snapshot. Your hormones are volatile, that means that they can change, even from week to week, month to month. So, if you take a hormonal test in your first month and then you take another one three months later, it can look different. So, just keep in mind that hormones are fluctuating in our body, so when you go in and you take a blood test to do a hormonal test, it's really a snapshot of just now, how things are now.
[00:08:33] The last thing is the natural next steps. In some countries, they make it mandatory to do first an IUI before you move on to IVF. IUI is an Intrauterine Insemination, which means that women would go to see their doctor to scan and track their follicles and scan when ovulation is happening. Some doctors prefer to give a trickle shot, so to say, 24 hours before ovulation happens, so that they can ensure that ovulation is happening. And then instead of having intercourse, you would get your partner's sperms being injected through your cervix into your womb so that your sperms can start to travel all the way up the uterus into your fallopian tubes and wait for the princess to be ovulated and are ripe.
[00:09:34] So as you can see, we have several steps involved, and this is why we came up with this tool, the Baby Road Map, because it really lays out all your options there. People like to have options in life. Not too many sometimes because we can get overwhelmed about it, but to know that there are options here. And this is so important that you as a couple can have a really great conversation now about like these several steps until you ultimately would want to make a decision about like, “Okay, if up until step four, it didn't work out despite us taking our hormones and trying everything to support follicle growth and ovulation, shall we now discuss about IUI or IVF?”
[00:10:28] As I said, in some countries, it's mandatory to do first one to three IUIs before you can actually move into IVF. This is simply because it's either a regulatory request, or it's because maybe some of your countries are subsidizing the IVF and make it more affordable and that's why, certain steps need to be involved.
[00:10:57] So, if you have any questions about Baby Road Map or a country's regulations, or how to have a conversation with your partner, you know that we are here for you. We have been working in over 15, 000 sessions with our clients on their Baby Road Map. We have supported them to get pregnant naturally, as well as through IUI and IVF and even donor programs. So, if you want to reach out to any of us, please visit our website and make an online appointment with us today. We can't wait to hear back from you how this has been hopefully helpful to you and your journey. And as I said, we are looking forward to next week's episode to share many more tips and much more wisdom with you from our experience and knowledge from 12 years working in this field.
Thank you. Can't wait to be back here with you next week!
