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FERTILITY
My Fertility Story
By Dr. Nashat Latib • Nov 2021
Vulnerability is so difficult, but also incredibly powerful…that’s why I want to share my own battle with infertility.
Hopefully my story will resonate with you and you’ll know with certainty that not only can I relate to what you’re going through, but that I will also 100% have your back.
I went through 12 years of training to become an ER doc….which means that by the time I was actually working a “real” job, I was already in my 30s and, you guessed it, single.
It felt like everyone around me already had a partner but I struggled to find “that” person and had basically resigned myself to being single forever (I justified it by convincing myself that I didn’t really want to have kids anyway.)
Magically, at 33, I met my husband. We got married within 18 months of meeting, and by that point, I was already nearing the dreaded “high risk” age of 35.
Fear set in. As a woman, I was approaching the age that had been tattooed in my brain as the day when everything. just. dries. Up. I panicked.
As a Type-A “recovering” perfectionist, I made sure that we started trying right away.
Honestly, I wasn’t concerned about infertility. I had regular 28 day cycles, never had any weird hormonal issues and could even “feel” when I was ovulating….in my mind I was a perfect set up to have a baby. Getting pregnant was certainly not going to be an issue.
Flash forward 2 years into trying…..nothing.
I had tried EVERYTHING.
Books, herbs, supplements, positions, kits from the drug store….you name it.
Nothing worked.
I had a “clean lifestyle”, ate “healthy”, was at my ideal weight, and exercised 4-5 times per week….
I was absolutely heart broken. It had never dawned upon me that conception would be so challenging. Why me?
After 2 years of trying, I went through several rounds of IUI at the age of 36 and was finally able to conceive my eldest son. The pregnancy was hard but I was blessed with a healthy baby boy.
Given the challenges I had faced thus far, when my son was 5 months, we decided we wanted to try again. I was certain that a few rounds of IUI would do the trick since it worked the first time. My body had done it once, it would do it again swiftly and easily.
No luck.
By this point, my whole life revolved around spontaneous doctors appointments based on unpredictable cycles and hormone surges. It was disempowering, depressing, and infuriating all at the same time. I was used to being in control of my destiny.
After 4 failed rounds of IUI, we resorted to IVF.
I’m not going to sugar coat it at all – IVF was TOUGH. The daily injections, mood swings, weight gain, tears, uncertainty, and stress from having to find last minute coverage at the hospital to make doctors appointments and ultrasounds was exhausting.
There were times when I truly thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown. I was told that I was depressed and needed to be on medication. The labels were endless and depleting.
After an arduous round of IVF, I was able to retrieve only 4 eggs. Two of them are my amazing boy/girl twins (isn’t that weird and wonderful?!)
But holy crap, that pregnancy was HARD.
I was on bedrest for the last 13 weeks of my pregnancy, my ribs had dislocated because the babies were so big, I couldn’t drink/eat anything after 4pm because it would come back up, and then I hemorrhaged after my delivery requiring an emergency transfusion with 4 liters of blood.
BUT…..my babies went straight to regular nursery and we were all blessed to be home together in 3 days.
Here’s the craziest thing though….had I known THEN what I know NOW….NONE of these fertility treatments were necessary!
When I look back, there were clear biochemical blocks keeping me from being able to conceive naturally, I just didn’t have the education or insight to recognize them.
As a traditionally trained physician, I learned NOTHING of what I now know about natural reproduction in medical school. I was taught that fertility PLUMMETS at age 35, and that if things don’t work, you resort to IUI or IVF. There was nothing in between. There was no talk of how gut health, stress, food, nutrition, sleep, thyroid, inflammation, and much more…. affects fertility. Everything was black or white. A fire lit within me…one that drives my mission and passion today.
The good news? I am now able to share my 4 Step Fertility Formula with women across the globe. Our protocol has a greater than 85% success rate in women who meet our fertility criteria.
Sign up NOW to get on the waitlist for our upcoming online Reimagined Fertility program. We will work together to help you build the family of your dreams without endless doctors visits, harmful hormones, or painful injections.
