How Do I Know If I Need Help Getting Pregnant?

Introduction to the fertility help question 0:00

Hi there. Mama. Welcome back to our Super Fertility Summit Mini Talk Series. This talk is dedicated to unpacking the question of how do you know if you need help getting pregnant? At what point do you say to yourself, there's a problem here, and I need to seek out some help as opposed to trying? One more thing and one more thing and one more thing and giving yourself mentally one more two week wait, and then another one, and then another one, and then another one. I think this is a really important question, number one, because there's very little guidance on this.

And the guidance that is out there is wrong. I'm going to tell you why this 6 or 12 month thing that you've heard is absolutely wrong. But also one thing that I notice is that there's a lot of hurry in the world of fertility, especially for women in their 30s and 40s

Why the usual 6-12 month advice is misleading 1:14

who feel like they're running out of time and running out of eggs to have a baby. There's a lot of frenetic hurry from here to there and there to there, but there is not enough urgency. And there's a difference between hurry and urgency. One is compulsive, the other is conscious and intentional, and with a clear direction and destination, as opposed to spinning in lots of directions and really never getting anywhere or making progress. So there's a lot of hurry, but not enough urgency. And the biological clock loves and needs speed.

The other thing that I see that there is, is that there's a lot of false hope embedded in the very nature of reproduction. Let me explain what I mean by this. What I mean by this is that the cyclical nature of reproduction creates a false sense of security and hope over and over and over and over again, because there are constant opportunities for failure. I mean, it's like every month, right? But as soon as that failure passes, there's another opportunity for success. There's another opportunity for ovulation, for conception, for the two week wait in which you keep your hopes up, etc.

and what what we see is a lot of people reaching out for help the minute their period starts again, and then and in that moment, they're crushed, they're frantic. They need they need help. And then a day or two later, they kind of gather themselves up again, and then they don't move forward with seeking that help and support that they had reached out for, because they're looking ahead to the next ovulation.

The four-month rule and when to seek help 3:28

And that's it's kind of the beauty and the curse of this, the situation, because the beauty is that there's always a new opportunity, thank God, right, that the hardship is that if you don't know the scientific data, then what you don't know is that the odds of doing the same thing and getting a different result are very low. After you've been trying for three months and you've reached your fourth cycle. So let me tell you exactly what I mean by this and exactly how and when you know, if you need to stop and pay attention and say, this isn't working as it is right now, and I need to seek answers and seek help.

So there's a common recommendation out there that if you've been trying to get pregnant for six months or 12 months, depending on your age, and you're not pregnant yet, that's when you should seek help. It's given people the message that it's normal for it to take 6 or 12 months to get pregnant, but beyond that, that's when you should seek help. The truth of the matter is that if you look at scientific data as an expert and you understand how to interpret scientific data, and you understand the nuances of scientific data, then you know that that 6 or 12 month recommendation is entirely inaccurate.

And here's why. The scientific data are very clear that those who are going to conceive easily will have done so within three months. The first three months of actively trying for a baby. The vast majority of those who will get pregnant easily will get pregnant within the first three months of actively trying for a baby. And if you listen to the first mini talk where we interrogated whether or not preventing pregnancy is the same as not trying for a baby, then you know that actually many people who are going to get pregnant easily will have already gotten pregnant even before actively trying, because they will have an unintended unplanned pregnancy because they weren't perfect at preventing pregnancy.

That's why even to this day, when fertility challenges are at an all time high and growing every day in males, females in all genders still, this is mind blowing. But still approximately or almost 50% of pregnancies are unplanned. Because of this very reason. Because most people who are imperfect at preventing pregnancy, who have powerful fertility will get pregnant without meaning to, or will get pregnant within the first three months of actively trying for a baby, almost 70% of the people who are going to conceive easily will have done so in the first, first, second, or third month of actively trying.

Once you get to the fourth month, that's where everything changes and everything goes downhill. If you have actively tried for three months and you reach your fourth cycle, so you just had your period again for the third time of trying and your fourth cycle is just begun. The odds of getting a different result get very low by that point. Let me tell you what they are. Less than one out of four. Less than one out of four will go on to get pregnant between that fourth month and the 12th month. So that means if you're not pregnant by by the time you start your fourth cycle.

So you didn't get pregnant within the first three months of trying the odds, the overwhelming odds are that you still won't be pregnant one year from now, or one year from when you started, and that is not a gamble that you want to take. So here's the fourth month for what we call the four month rule for making your baby the fourth. The four month rule has two parts. First.

Recap and next steps 8:20

That if you have reached your fourth month of trying and you're not pregnant yet, that you stop what you're doing and you assess and adjust. You ask for help. You get the help and support you need. So that you can start doing things differently, because the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. And in this case, the data are very clear that it's an insane expectation that you'd get a different result, because the odds are very low that you'd get a different result. So that's the first part.

The second part is that the answer for the vast majority of people will be to pause to take four months to Primemester, 120 days, and then go back into actively conceiving when they've primed their their cells, their DNA, their epigenome, their eggs, their sperm, their full fertility and pregnancy system, the brain, the HPA axis, the thyroid, the ovaries, etc.. Now every week, all of that is mitochondrial function. All of that is addressed in the Primemester Protocol. So the really important part about this second part of the four month rule for making your baby is that if you do this part, the Four-Month Primemester odds are that you will never experience this other part, which is that you get to your fourth month of actively trying and you haven't achieved pregnancy yet.

So by way of recap, here's the deal. If you have been trying to get pregnant for three months and you just started your fourth menstrual cycle and you're not pregnant yet, your period just started again. Or if that that milestone passed last year or ten years ago, then you absolutely need to stop and seek help and support and do things differently so that you can get a different result. It is possible to still get a different result, but you can't do what you've been doing and expect to get a different result.

And the critical thing to know is that only approximately 3% of the human population, plus or -2%, are truly infertile or sterile. So even if you're starting to think that you're infertile or you've been diagnosed as infertile, it's important to know that the odds are very low that you are truly sterile. But you need a whole different set of tools to tap into that innate fertility that you already possess. So recap if you've been trying for three months or longer and you're not pregnant yet, or you haven't, you've gotten pregnant, but you haven't stayed pregnant. Stop.

Assess. Adjust. Seek help. Seek support. All right, meet me in the next Mini Talk. We are going to be talking about. Why can't I get pregnant in the first place? What are the things getting in the way of you getting pregnant? Meet me there.