62: Is conceiving naturally with PCOS really as hard as your doctor has told you?

The PCOS Nutritionist Podcast

What if you've been told you’ve got PCOS and that you're going to struggle to conceive? But your doctor has told you not to worry because you can just get fertility treatment like Clomid. So you think “okay well I’ll just do that then.” Then you realize Clomid isn't just as easy as taking a pill and going on your way. It’s actually a really invasive hormone therapy, that makes you feel like hot trash. So you have to go back and continue to get scans to see how that follicle is growing but that’s no quick process. It takes a lot of time and when you're a very demanding job, you just can't pop out to get treatments willy-nilly.

Well, this is exactly what my guest today, Helena, had to deal with. She’s a lawyer, so her day-to-day is hectic enough as it is. She’d been told "It's fine, don’t worry - you’ll just have to use these fertility treatments." So she followed their advice but then was thinking "this doesn't work for me. I don't like this, I actually don't want to do this." So what do you then? What can you do if your doctors have told you this is the only way you’ll conceive but this doesn’t feel right for you? Surely there’s another way?

Well, this is where we can actually look at your cycles and ovulation, see what’s going on for you and getting you hormonally back on track to help you conceive. Getting pregnant naturally is so possible for many women with PCOS. It’s a common misconception that PCOS specifically makes you infertile and that you’ll have no hope of getting pregnant without help.

I can tell you from working with thousands of women that this isn’t the case, it’s all about really understanding what’s going on with your cycles and your root cause. So are you ovulating? How long are your cycles? What’s your LH:FSH ratio looking like? Do you know that root cause and are you making the right changes for your root cause?

There are so many things that we can look at and work on but it's not information you're going to get from your conventional doctor, because they just don't know how to do that. That's exactly what we do inside The PCOS Protocol and what I helped Helena do as well as helping her conceive. Because it really frustrates me when I hear that women have essentially been told that they have no choices here and that you need to take Clomid or do fertility treatments to get pregnant.

It’s so important that you make informed choices when it comes to something as major as fertility, rather than just blindly assuming that you’re on your last resort doing these treatments when really you aren’t.

I know that for a lot of you, trying to conceive starts out as an exciting process but you end up stressed, upset and frustrated because nothing seems to work and doctors say you’re never going to succeed at conceiving naturally. So I hope that by listening to Helena’s story, you can see that there is hope and that you don’t have to commit to these fertility treatments if they don’t feel right to you.

This episode is for you if:

• You’ve been told by doctors that you won’t be able to conceive naturally
• You want to know how to understand your cycles
• You’ve been on hormonal birth control for a while
• You work in a stressful industry or have a stressful job

Some things we cover in this episode:

• Using Clomid and my thoughts on its use
• The “ingredients” you need to conceive naturally
• Why PCOS doesn’t make you infertile
• Whether these fertility treatments are really your only option
• How to know whether fertility treatments or a natural approach is right for you

Resources and References:

• My Book: Getting Pregnant with PCOS

Links to our programs: