150: When Should I Consider IVF?

Artwork for podcast Natural Fertility with Dr. Jane

Episode 150 • 8th April 2025 • Natural Fertility with Dr. Jane • Dr. Jane Levesque

Dr. Jane Levesque:: 00:00

You're still going to have to work very hard to optimize the environment, to keep the inflammation down, to keep the nutrients level, where they add and support the digestion and do all of that. But you can have a little bit of planning, right? And I know that a lot of things don't go to plan, but in reality, that is what IVF is good for, is that family planning compartment portion. If you're over the age of 35, you should give yourself at least six months. And I say six months because, you know, there's a month of, like, getting rid of just general inflammation and increasing drainage. And everybody's inflamed. Everybody has some, like, so many imbalances, if you will. Pregnancy is a natural process, so if it's not happening or if it's not sticking, something is missing. After having a family member go through infertility and experiencing a miscarriage myself, I realized how little support and education women have around infertility. I want to Change that. I'm Dr. Jane Levesque. I'm a naturopathic doctor and a natural fertility expert. Tune in every Tuesday at 9am for insightful case studies, expert interviews, and practical tips on how you can optimize fertility naturally. If you've been struggling with infertility, pregnancy loss, women's health issues, or you just want to be proactive and prepare yourself for the next big chapter in your life, this show is for you. Hey, ladies. A topic that's been coming up this week in the membership in my fertility 101 membership and even in my one on one one is figuring out when is the right step to go through ivf. Is IVF ever a time that we should consider it and when is that time? So this is what I want to explore on the podcast today, because to be honest, IVF is a pretty new topic to me from a perspective where I'm actually walking patients through and helping them go through the process. It's something that I've just been doing over the last year as I started working with Dr. Leah Hechman. Again, if you haven't heard me talk about her a lot, she's one of my mentors. She's out of Australia. She's a phenomenal practitioner, a researcher, and provides really fantastic mentorship. So if you're a practitioner listening to me and you want to specialize in fertility, I highly, highly recommend checking her out. But essentially, when I took her advanced fertility certification, she goes through the IVF process and helps us understand what is actually going on. The pros and cons you know, all the side effects that are associated with it. And what are some of the most common things that the conventional system is doing. And the reason that she covers it into the program is because it's a rising need for couples, because we are having babies a lot later in life. So whether you're, you know, closer to 35 versus you're closer to 45, it's. There is a time and place where we absolutely need to implement art advanced reproductive technology in order to help us get to our family goals. And I think that we have kind of swung too much the other way, where we're just relying on IVF and hoping that it's going to work without doing any preparation, without doing any digging and really, truly understanding the root cause of fertility struggles. And when I say that, I mean, if you have endometriosis and someone's like, well, that's why you can't get pregnant, I want to know why you have endometriosis. I want to know why you have pcos, why you have autoimmune disease, why you have insert the disease or the diagnosis that you have been given. It is the reason why you need ivf, but it's not the root reason. We still don't know why your body body is growing endometrial tissue outside of its uterus or why you have cysts on your ovaries or why you have this insane level of inflammation in the body. And so the conventional system is very compartmentalized. This isn't working. So this is the solution. They're very much trained to give you pharmaceuticals and medical procedures. They're not trained to treat the root causes. And so as I was going through this, you know, advanced fertility certification, and we get to jump on office hours. And now I have patients who have been working with me for, you know, close to a year and optimizing everything that we know, doing all the testing, and they still can't seem to get pregnant. And unfortunately for some, or fortunately, I'm not sure, to be honest. Like, I just think everyone's journey is what it is. When I asked Dr. Leah, like, how do you know if they're going to make it or not, if they're going to end up having a child, what differentiates? And her answer was so simple. And I made a couple of pieces of content around that on my social media where she says, well, if you want to have a baby, you'll have a baby. Like, we'll figure out a way for you to parent. It's just going to look different than what you thought, you know, and don't get me wrong, because she's a naturopathic doctor's voice. Like, I'd love for everyone to have a natural pregnancy, but in reality, sometimes there's been too much damage or we're too late. Meaning, you know, you're 45 and the quality of the eggs is not there. It's not where it used to be at 20. And even though we've done all the prep work, we can only rewind a certain amount of time. And so there is absolutely a time and place where, if you truly want to have a baby, still, that we need to implement these technologies, because that's why we have them, right? That's why we have the advanced medical procedures in their conventional system, has done some wonderful, beautiful things to help people have healthy babies. And I'll say healthy because there's ways to do it that can create a lot of issues for both the mom and the baby. And then there's a way to do it well. And when she said that there's a few people, you know, a few of my patients that I worked with right away popped into my head, which means, hey, they're probably those people who actually need some art, some sort of art. And whether it's just a time cycle with some letrozole, maybe it's letrozole with an iui, a mini IVF or a full blown ivf. And it's not that what I had to wrap my brain around, it's not that your body has failed. It's not that it's not working anymore. And then, you know, you're just broken. It's that sometimes the timeline, like in general infertility time is not on your side. And if you're over the age of 35, it's still absolutely possible to have babies at the age of, you know, after the age of 35 and even into your 40s. But the preparation that you need to do is so, so, so different if you were just to have a baby at 25. And so IVF, and I mean any of the art, so whether it's a time cycle or a full blown IVF is there as a tool that we can use when we feel like we've, quote, unquote, maxed out everything from the natural perspective. And the pros are no longer outweighing the cons in a sense that if I keep doing some detoxing, if I keep doing some X, Y and Z and, you know, biohacks and really trying all these rejuvenating therapies. The fact that that is just going to continue to take more and more and more time. The aging process is not on our side because ovaries are, you know, the first organ to age. They're very sensitive to oxidative stress. And so there is absolutely a time and place that you're going to consider ivf. So let me walk you through that process and kind of keep in mind that I'm new to this, meaning it's only been in the last year that I started walking people through ivf. Obviously, I've been aware about it, but I kind of assumed that the experts knew what they were doing. And when you're going to a fertility specialist, AKA an IVF specialist, is that they personalize things and they would take control and they would do the right testing and they would, you know, walk, individualize the process for you. And unfortunately, that's not the thing that's happening at all. And I learned that from Leah, and I learned how she walks people through in the testing that she looks at and how she helps to navigate the IVF cycles with her clients. And so essentially, I knew that I needed to start doing that if I truly wanted to help my couples who want to have a family to make sure that we can actually do that for them in a way that's safe and in a way that is not going to hurt, you know, the mom or the babe, because we're just being kind of sloppy as we're going through the process, AKA pumping people full of drugs, no matter who they are and what they are. You just have the same protocol that you run everyone through because you don't want to do retrievals on a Sunday or because that's just what it works for you. IVF is a very individualized process, and it needs to be individualized if we want to be successful in the least amount of drugs we can use, the better. And I think that before you do any ivf, it doesn't matter how old you are, you need to do some prep. And so if you're 45, you have a lot less time to do prep than when you're 25 or 35. Struggling to conceive. If you're, let's say, 30 to 35 and you're struggling, struggling to conceive, you should give yourself a minimum six months, but ideally a year, because chances are there's some oxidative stress. If there's things like heavy metals, really deep rooted infections, or other industrial toxins and, you know, parasites, fungal, bacterial, viral Infections like, the whole system is a mess. It's going to take time to revamp your entire microbiome to then get rid of some of these really deeply rooted metals that are stored in your bones and your cartilage, in your skin, in your hair, like literally everywhere, to pull them out really safely and then to optimize the nutrients. Because let's face it, when we're doing detoxing, when we're doing key leading, you're going to deplete some nutrients that is normal because it's a lot of energy for the body to do that. You just have to give the body time to replenish after. And so can absolutely take a year, and it can even take longer than that, especially when we're talking about some really nasty industrial chemicals, whether it's something like atrazine or glyphosates, really nasty herbicides and pesticides or heavy metals. Right. Heavy metals can be stored in the bones. They are stored in the bones. They're stored all over the place and can cause a lot of issues. It's. We cannot ask the body to dump a lifetime worth of heavy metals in six months or in three months. So it is definitely something that will take time. If you're younger. So under 35, you could easily take a year and even a bit longer to really optimize your health and get down to these deeply rooted issues that you have potentially been struggling for a long time. If you have infertility, that is a disease. So if it's unexplained infertility, there's just. We haven't put in the conventional system, hasn't put an explanation to it. But I've had couples come to me with unexplained infertility and the guy has hepatitis B. It's like, that's not unexplained infertility. You have hepatitis B and you're. There is a high infection, slow to. This is malefactor infertility. Like, this is what it looks like. So sometimes I think that they're just not actually looking deep enough or putting enough weight on the issue. I had another couple where it's like, it's unexplained infertility. She's barely ovulating. He has no viable sperm. But it's like, oh, but the sperm count is fine, but it's not alive. So if the sperm is not alive, it can't swim up there, you know, like. And they just completely disregarded that portion of the test. I don't know how, but they did it? So point being is if you have infertility, there is something that is, quote, unquote, wrong. It's not that you're broken. It's not that you're not meant to have children. It's that likely there has been a deep process of inflammation, and usually there's infection or toxin that's causing that inflammation that has been there for a long time. And so the fact that you don't even recognize it as abnormal just tells me that it's actually become part of your norm. Right? Which is part of the issue. It's part of your norm to be, quote, unquote, unhealthy. And I say that just so don't, like, don't be hard on yourself because I know I have some of you who are listening are perfectionists, and you're like, but I try so hard to be healthy, and how can I be unhealthy still if I can't get pregnant? And this person who's unhealthy, they're getting pregnant. Let's not compare ourselves to the people who are unhealthy and getting pregnant, because let's face it, that's not a healthy pregnancy or a healthy baby. And that baby is probably not going to be able to have babies. So whether, you know, a male or female baby. So let's not compare ourselves to that because it's like, well, you don't wish for that. You are that baby who potentially parents were not healthy at all and then or weren't aware of some of the issues that we're doing. And so now there is a reason why you're struggling, because fertility is a trigenerational issue, if not a quad generational issue. So there's more and more studies coming out on this, which is very, very exciting. There's, this field is exploding. It's exploding, unfortunately, because there's so many couples struggling with infertility. But there's still lots, basically, that you know, we don't know about, but there's lots that we do. Point being is that your effort counts. It's not that your effort doesn't count. You're just putting your effort in the wrong place. And so infertility is a sign of disease, and if you're older, then it's less of a sign of disease because your fertility declines as you age. But if you're younger, it's more of a concern because ideally, you know, us women would have babies between the ages of 25 and 30 or 25 to 35, like, that's the Best time to have babies. And most of us don't start thinking about having babies now until we're in our mid-30s. And that's, you know, part of the issue. So if you're younger. That was my rant. If you're younger, take time. Make sure you know why you're not getting pregnant. Make sure your inflammation is under control. Make sure your partner is on board because he provides 50% of the DNA. And sperm quality is absolutely critical for a healthy embryo, for a healthy pregnancy, for a healthy baby. Like, we just need to stop pretending that that's not the case, because it a hundred percent is the case if you're older. So if you're 35 plus and you're worried about missing your chance. And family planning, like IVF is really great for family planning. Meaning if you bank some embryos, then, you know, if you have your first baby at 37, then you can have, depending on how the pregnancy goes and the breastfeeding and when you replenish your nutrients, you can plan to have another pregnancy at 39. Or if you have your first pregnancy at 39, you can plan to have another one around 41 or 42. You're still going to have to work very hard to optimize the environment to keep the inflammation down, to keep the nutrients level, where they add and support the digestion and do all of that. But you can have a little bit of planning, right? And I know that a lot of things don't go to plan, but in reality, that is what IVF is good for, is that family planning, compartment portion. If you're over the age of 35, you should give yourself at least six months. And I say six months because, you know, there's a month of, like, getting rid of just general inflammation and increasing drainage. And everybody's inflamed. Everybody has some, like, so many imbalances, if you will. So I call it general cleanup before we can get into the needy, greedy details. And the needy, greedy details is usually treating some sort of infection. It could be vaginal, it could be in the gut. Usually it's both. It could be endometrial in the lungs, like, you name it, in the liver. Like, infections can sit anywhere. We're all walking microbes and the bugs, when they're imbalanced, we're all connected. It's all connected. It's all traveling. There's blood, there's lymph, there's right. We're not just here's the gut. And the gut doesn't impact anything else. You have to treat the infections. You have to get the microbiome in the right place, if you will. Where when your microbiome is functioning well, not only are you metabolizing nutrients better, you're absorbing those nutrients better. You're getting rid of stuff that you're not supposed to keep. But then now your hormones are metabolized different the way that the neurotransmitters that you produce. So your mood, like literally everything changes when your microbiome changes. And three to four months at least, is what you need to get rid of the first line of infections. I'm not talking about getting to the root cause of all the biofilm things. And if you have, I'm talking about switching the microbiome to a place where there's more beneficial bacteria than pathogenic, where the immune system is strong and resilient enough to keep the pathogenic bacteria at bay, as opposed to, you're going to be this clean sleigh and there's never going to be. That can take years, it can take seven years, it can take eight years. It depends on the person, if they even want to change and go that far. Because sometimes these bugs have become part of our identity. It's who we are. We can't let them go because we've always been this way. And so there is an energetic component to every bug. And I find that my job as a practitioner is like, can I at least get one layer off and see that transformation where the person doesn't feel as heavy, as stuck, as negative, as, you know, as anxious as anything. Like that prime emotion and that prime feeling. Can we at least get it down to a neutral level before we go into deeper things? So if that's one month of just general formation, then we have three to four months of killing an infection. And then you're going to need a couple months to optimize nutrients and optimize methylation. Now, methylation is something that I started testing just about a year now and again, something that I learned from Dr. Leah Hetchman. It's a process that happens in every single cell of the body. I think if you're practitioner listening to me and you have no idea what it is or, you know, but like you just have been avoiding it because the MTHFR gene lectures have been too much. MTHFR is one gene part of the methylation, but there's like 13 other genes that are involved and there's a lot of nutrients that are involved in making sure that that process works the way that it should. Methylation is how our body repairs DNA. So if you're talking about egg quality, it's a necessary process to optimize. If you're talking about SPE and DNA damage, it is a necessary process to optimize. So if your practitioner has no idea what it is, that's okay. I'm educating and I'm speaking louder about this because the more practitioners know about it and the more we start to educate and actually fix these processes, the more successful we can be as practitioners. And because we providing results for our patients, our patients are actually feeling better. One of my couples that I'm working with, they're young, they're 30, and they are being very proactive because they both feel really unhealthy and they want to have children, but they're scared to have unhealthy kids. And I love that. I love how proactive they are being because now we don't have this crunch time issue. We're like, let's take a year, let's take a year and let's do heavy metal detox and let's do. And they've already been doing so much stuff because they've never done this much testing though, right? So they've done all the supplements before, They've done all the detoxing before, but they've never done all the testing. So it's. A lot of it has been like, okay, symptomology, maybe it's energetics. Muscle testing. This is what I think it is when you and I love muscle testing. And I've done muscle testing and I still do it, but I still run all the tests because the tests help guide the muscle testing. Otherwise it gets very confusing. You don't know what you're looking for. Point being is the only. Because I knew they're used to, like, you know, higher doses of supplements. There wasn't a lot of general inflammation. We had to get down. We can just go right into the pathogen. And there was a lot of Candida, a lot of parasites for both of them. And the methylation for both of them was just such trash. Like, it's crazy. You could see it, like, how many B vitamins she was missing and what was causing how that had a trickle effect on her mood and her neurotransmitters and, like, the anxiety that she would experience with her cycle every. Like, there was zero resilience in the body and her body had such a hard time repairing. So it wasn't rocket science. It's not like I fixed a whole. Like, they were already used to taking the Supplements. We cleaned up some of their diet. We did get them an air filter where they felt like a huge difference, actually, because they were in the apartment. They're in an apartment, so they don't have control of like, how many times filters get changed. So like a Jasper in their bedroom made the biggest difference. It's crazy, but just starting a few of the supplements made like she just like every day she sends me a win. I'm like, I have time to do my exercises, I have energy, I'm in the second half of the cycle, but I don't have any anxiety. I actually feel incredible. I can't believe that I'm starting to go to the gym again. It's like, it's crazy, you guys, she's done all the stuff before, but we just fixed this one process, you know, so sometimes people are like, do we really need to do all this testing? Like, do we need to really spend five grand or eight grand on the testing? So it depends how much money and time you want to spend trying to guess what's going on. And so if you don't want to try to guess, that's your time, right? You can guess, you can figure. And I've made estimates for people all the time, but at the end of the day, I'm like, if you do the testing, that's the only way that you're really going to know. So if I don't even remember, this is the rant. But basically this is what's coming up in practice and coming up for some of the questions that you guys are asking. And I just really want to educate on this because I do not have a magic ball. I don't know what's wrong with you. I actually just sit down with my patients and I get to know them and I look at all their lab work and then I run more lab work and I get them to collect data. And then I say, this is what I think is wrong. And then I prioritize it based on what I'm finding in the test and then what your timeline is. So if your timeline is, I'm 43 years old and I want to have a baby and I've been. Or I'm 40 years old and I want to have a baby. And like, I've already tried X, Y and Z. Well, listen, we need to take six months to get rid of general inflammation, get rid of infections, and we're going to use some big hitters. You're likely going to need an antibiotic or an anti parasitic or an antifungal. Something to help get that load down as quickly as possible. And then we're going to repopulate the gut and we're going to basically boost your nutrients and make sure that the methylation is working well. And then we kind of give the body a couple of months to try on its own. Because I'm always going to be hopeful for my patients. And I've seen wonderful, miraculous things where people are told they're never going to have babies, and they were able to have a baby and they were able to do it really well, as opposed to, like, no complications, beautiful, healthy baby, all that jazz. Like, I've seen some miracles, and I've seen my mentors create miracles. So I'm always going to have that hope for my patients. So we give the patients a couple of months to try on their own, and then if nothing is happening, or let's say they're miscarrying, then we go to other options and we can list it out based on what the patient is comfortable with. So if you are 40 and you're just looking to have one baby, then doing something like timed intercourse with letrozole, where you could actually look at it on the ultrasound and see how the follicle is growing, is maturing, might be a really great option for you. We don't have to go through ivf. You could just do five days of leol, do the ultrasounds and make sure. Obviously make sure that the sperm quality is there, there. And I have a couple who it worked wonderfully for. Fantastic. You know, struggled for so long, so many issues, and now it's bam. And it just goes. But obviously they've put like a year of work for that. And I do hope to have them on a podcast to share their story, because it is a very wonderful, inspiring story. You might need to do an IUI if there's some male factor issues. So potentially the male factor stuff, what I'll say is, when you're optimizing your stuff, your male partner should be optimizing his stuff. I probably see the biggest difference in male factor fertility in a shortest period of time. So three to six months, we can make tremendous jumps. It very much depends, though, why that sperm isn't good in the first place. So, you know, I've had a patients who had had b. This is a chronic. Like, he was born with this infection. He had such a high viral load. It was such a pain in the butt to get the proper testing from his doctor to get him the proper antivirals. We did a lot on the nutrient component and the detoxing on all of that. But it's the heb b was the main thing, and it's like he just needed drugs. And it was so hard to get to the doctor and to convince them. And as soon as we did, there's a lot of markers that improved. But, you know, I don't want to say, like, that's an outlier. That can happen sometimes. There's deeper issues that will take time to fix. Still, in three to six months, if the Mayo is compliant, we can make tremendous impact on their health. And that is going to come from, you know, the diet, the lifestyle, the supplements, doing the detoxing, all of that stuff. Yeah. And then essentially you. Then you can consider doing mini IVF or you can do ivf. And what my recommendation is to make sure that you're working with a clinic that's going to personalize it for you. A lot of the times what I'm seeing is, oh, you're going to go on birth control for the first month, and we're going to put you on growth hormone for seven days, and then we're going to do. And it's like, well, growth hormone doesn't really work unless you're on it for three to six months. And then if you do that, a lot of the times, it really screws up the hormones and it's really hard on the female after. It's like chances of your hormones coming back to neutral is going to be like, it just takes months to get it out of the system, and you have to do a lot of work. Do you need to be on birth control? Well, I don't know. It depends on the person. But usually my patients, by the time they're ready to do ivf, their hormones are regulated. They're as regulated as we can get them, so they don't need to go on birth control. The only reason that IVF clinics will do that is because they want to time all the women to do retrievals on the same day. So that's a great business model, but from the way that the body works, you can't do it. I just had, you know, in my private fertility support group, one of my old clients jumped on, and she's doing ivf, and she has a question, and it's like, man, I didn't get any mature eggs. Like, what do you think think happen? And it's like, I think. And she already had that feeling, but they triggered her too soon. So they went in for a retrieval, you know, two days earlier than they should have. And so none of the eggs matured. And so then they had to do Ixi. And then that didn't work anyways in the embryos. Just like, there was no. They were all really poor quality. That's a big, expensive mistake. It's a huge, expensive mistake, not just financially, but, like, on your body. She was just two days away, you know, and so if we could just watch it and know that I'm always ovulate on day 14 or 15. Why did you trigger me on day 12? It doesn't matter that I had an insane amount of drugs you can't override. Your system has been ovulating, you know, on day 14 for the last 20 years. You can't override that natural process with just one round of drugs. So the way that I like to counsel my patients here is that the drugs should be working with your body to help support the process, to give it a nudge versus completely overriding it. If the drugs are used to completely override it, it tells me that there's still work to be done on your end. And whether that's gut infections, whether that's liver metabolism issues, thyroid issues, whatever, like, the inflammation is still too high, the hormones are still super dysregulated, and now you're just using the drugs to help fight that as opposed to working with the body of, okay, this is when I usually ovulate. We're going to start with a lower dose of drugs. We're going to pay attention to what the follicles are doing, and then we're going to pay attention to all the hormones and all the testing that they're doing. And then we're going to do that again. And you just literally watch and see what the body does. There's not a single cycle that can be the same for a single woman. And so a big red flag for me is when fertility clinics are going, hey, like, we don't want to do retrievals on a Saturday or Sunday. So we're just going to go ahead and make sure that every woman is on the same cycle as she goes through the clinic. Like I said, that's a great business model, but that's not how nature works, and that's not how your body works. So picking the right clinic, picking the right doctor is going to be really, really important. Where you feel supported and you feel, you understand the process, you understand exactly what's happening and when it's happening and you feel in control of the process as opposed to they're just gonna do it, you're still the woman, you're still the body that they're doing this too. We need to advocate and make sure that we're asking questions and we're understanding what's happening through the process so we can make decisions. The example that I used a couple where they said, like, she got triggered early. She had a feeling. She had a feeling. She was like, I think it's too early. But because this doctor and this authority, and I told her, I was like, hey, girl, listen, every time you have a feeling, like the big lesson here, it's probably right. And so you need to learn how to listen to that because it's never going to doubt. Like, she had that feeling that I think I'm being triggered too early. But she didn't say anything because the doctors, the authority, this is my first time going through it, right? I'm just going to listen to them because I want it to work. Our feelings, ladies, are really, really important. So I hope you guys find this helpful. The point that I guess I'm trying to make is there is a time and place where you're going to need to use art. And PRP is a big topic that's coming up as well. This has come something different and I will probably. I don't know enough about it to like, give people I don't like. I take the knowledge and the information that I share with you, I take it very seriously in a sense that I don't want to spread false information. And so if I don't know something yet, I will wait a little bit until I get a better understanding before I'll make a podcast. But from what I'm seeing, for example, prp, so plasma rich therapy, you have to get rid of infections. You have to make sure that, like, I've seen people spread infections so much with PRP because it's like they haven't dealt with it. And so now you're taking the blood and then you're injecting it into the ovaries and it's actually like, it's improving but not enough. And so it tends to make things worse. So with ivf, my hope is that it doesn't matter how old you are, if you're considering ivf, you need to do prep work. My biggest gripe, and this is why I put out so much content about just prepare your body for pregnancy period. You don't have to start struggling. You don't have to. When people are like, but I don't want to spend five grand or eight grand on lab testing. You Know if you're working with your partner and you have to do a lot of testing, I don't want to spend that much money on testing because I don't know if I have a problem. Understand that what you're investing in is your health and the health of your future child. It's not about, well, I don't have a problem yet. It's, do you want to have a healthy baby and do you understand how your body works? And most people have no idea. You have no idea what, how your menstrual cycle works. You have no idea how many times you're supposed to poop and how light you should feel and the energy that you should have throughout the day. We've just set such a low standard for our health, and we are seeing it now in the generation of kids. Kids are sick. It's sad. Kids are very, very sick now. And we're just saying it's normal. Allergies are normal. Eczema is normal. Psoriasis is normal. You, like you mood disorders are normal. And it's like, no, it' not. None of it is normal. It's a sign of nervous system inflammation, gut inflammation, infections, a really poorly developed immune system. That's what those signs are of. And it really, truly does start with us as parents. And it is confronting to be a parent. It is triggering to just even think about having a baby and not being able to do it because it makes you feel like a failure. And so if you're anything like me, where you hate the feeling of failure, what I invite you to do is like, it's okay to fail. It's okay to make mistakes. But said, you should know deep down inside if you truly did everything that you could, because then you don't have any regrets versus, like, I should have done this, but I just didn't think it was that important. So my recommendation is always, always prepare yourself for pregnancy. Because it doesn't matter if you're 25 or 35, you're literally getting ready to pass on your genetics. And the healthier you are, the healthier the genetics that you will pass on to your future babies, and the less likely they are to develop disease. You're literally setting the foundation for them. And so it doesn't matter if you're trying to get pregnant naturally or through ivf, you should be doing a lot of prep work. And then if you've done all the work with the natural medicine and you've truly put in the effort of getting rid of infections and you've addressed all the things that, you know, you could address. And it's now time to consider ivf. Make sure you are working with a doctor that aligns for you. Make sure you understand everything that's involved and you have the long term in mind. So if you're 37 and you want to have two kids or you're 35 and you want to have three kids, IVF might be a really great option for you to do that family planning. But you should still do a lot of prep to make sure that the quality of those eggs that you get out is the best and make sure that your partner has the best possible sperm because that will literally set your kids up for success in that that you know, from the transfer to the health of the pregnancy to then the health of the baby. It truly does start with the egg and the sperm. And of course there's so many different components throughout the pregnancy and you know, to make the baby healthy. But because you now know what that foundation looks like, you can absolutely pass that on to your kids. One of the patients that I had on the podcast to share her story, it's like, it's not like you stop doing everything you've learned. You now know how to eat well. You know how much protein you need, how much cabbage you need to eat every day. You know how much hydration and sweating and you know, all those things, they're in your cells. It's not just something you forget. You don't just go back to eating McDonald's or whatever. You know, it's really, really powerful to make that investment into yourself because you are investing into the health of the future generation. When you're investing with the intention of I want to have a baby and I want to do it well. I hope you guys find this helpful. If you do have any more questions, reach out. The more that I information that I can get from you and understand what it is that you guys want to learn about and what questions you have, the more direct I can make this content. So thank you so much for being here and I'll see you next week. Thank you so much for listening. To read the full show notes of this episode, including summary, timestamps, guest quotes and any resources that were mentioned on the episode. Visit Dr. Jane Levesque.com forward slash podcast and if you're getting value from these episodes, I'd love it if you took 2 minutes to share it with a friend. Rate and leave me a review at ratethispodcast.com forward/doctor Jane the reviews will help with the discoverability of the show. And who knows, I might share your review on my next episode. Thank you so much for tuning in. And let's make your fertility journey your healing journey.

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