Ep. 188: Advocating for holistic PCOS care with client, Lexi

NOTE: This episode is appropriate for all audiences.

GUEST BIO: Lexi is the wife to her husband, Brandon, whom she's been married to for about 10 years. And she's the mother of two children, ages three and three months.

OTHER HELPFUL RESOURCES:

Ep. 178: Dealing with PCOS as a single woman, with Jen

Ep. 152: Do PCOS cycles work with fertility awareness methods?

Ep. 128: Healing irregular cycles and reversing PCOS -- Emily's story

Ep. 20: Nutrition for PCOS with Tracy Mann, RD

Ep. 19: PCOS 101

Infertility 101 Resource Guide (Scroll down to find this resource)

Advocating in the Dr.'s Office: Tips for Asking Good Questions (Scroll down to find this resource)

Transcript

Caitlin Estes (00:25)
Welcome back to the Woven Well podcast with so many experts that we invite here to talk about great information on women's healthcare, restorative medicine, maybe the most common underlying reproductive health issues. You know, it's a great place to come to get information, but sometimes the most helpful thing that you can hear is the story of another woman going through something similar to what you're going through right now.

So each month I get the honor of interviewing one of our clients at Woven Natural Fertility Care about their particular story. So today I'm talking with client Lexi. Lexi is the wife to her husband, Brandon, who she's been married to for about 10 years. And she's the mother of two children, ages three and three months. She began working with me a few years ago as she was struggling to conceive, she and her husband. And I'm really looking forward to you hearing her story. So Lexi, welcome to the show.

Lexi (01:19)
Hi, I'm really glad to be here.

Caitlin Estes (01:21)
I'm glad to have you here too. I think starting maybe from not the beginning, but going back a little bit to hear maybe what led up to you working with woven in the first place. So how long have you been trying to conceive? ⁓ What had things been like for you up until that point? And then we'll kind of go from there.

Lexi (01:43)
Yeah, sure. So I'd say it all kind of started, we decided to start having kids about 2019 or trying to have kids. And we, guess I kind of thought it would happen pretty fast. I didn't ever think, I actually didn't even know at that point. I don't think that I had PCOS, but ⁓ I, we just started, I thought maybe it would take six months, but a year went by and then another year went by and I had been put on medication and

Caitlin Estes (01:52)
Yeah.

Lexi (02:12)
⁓ kind of doing lots of different ways of tracking and trying to figure out my cycle and when I was ovulating and whatnot. And ⁓ I kind of just got to a point where I was like, I'm really, I'm really like, you know, this is really hard. I want to give up. And so we kind of took a break and that's actually, we got pregnant and funny enough. And so ⁓ had our beautiful son and who's three now. And then, ⁓ you know, he got to a certain age and we thought, let's have another kid. So ⁓ we tried and stuff like that, but I definitely wanted to be a little bit more intentional about making sure I knew what was going on with my body. So I have a sister-in-law who did Creighton and she's the one who introduced me to it. And so I was like, I'm definitely gonna look into this because I wanted to do the more natural way of things, and not the medications and not kind of forcing my body to do anything. that was what got me into Creighton and that's how I found you.

Caitlin Estes (03:17)
I really love when I hear how people got connected with Woven because it's almost always a friend or a family member. You know, maybe you found the website or the podcast or Instagram or something like that, but most of the time it's somebody who had a good experience or knew about it, who uses it themselves, et cetera. And they told a friend about it, which is great. And I just want to say listeners like your voice matters. So sending people a podcast episode or telling your friends about what you're learning may have a huge impact on their life and you don't even know it yet. So I love that your sister-in-law shared it and so you mentioned in there that you didn't know at the time that you had PCOS. At what point did you receive that diagnosis over the years?

Lexi (04:04)
⁓ That was, think, when we started to try, like in the beginning, and they were like, ⁓ you're missing a period every month. It was like every other month, I was basically having periods and they were just very all over the place. And then they did some testing and found out that I had PCOS. And so I had to deal with that, but no one actually ever taught me how to deal with it and how you can help with that. And ⁓ honestly, a lot of what I saw was, well, you basically are your chance of getting pregnant are low because you have PCOS and or it's dangerous for you to get pregnant or you need to be on birth control or you know, whatever it was. I just kind of got a lot of not so positive feedback for it. And it's like, you're gonna have a really hard time. that kind of was all mentally pretty intense when I found that out. So, ⁓ but I didn't feel that way once I started Creighton. I felt like it was kind of a breath of fresh air, like, I have a way through even with PCOS and a way to, I mean, it also helped me kind of you know, get past it and be able to get pregnant and heal. I don't think you can heal it, but ⁓ you know, get through it and still get pregnant and be healthy, even with PCOS.

Caitlin Estes (05:15)
Well, and you bring up really good point because in the first scenario you were given a diagnosis and then no real hope to go with it. You know, it's just like, okay, you have this thing and this is going to make your life hard. It's going to make trying to conceive hard. Things could even be dangerous, which I'd love to hear about that sometime. And, you know, and we're not giving you any tools to incorporate this new information into your life. And improve it or live with it but thrive with it, you know, like it's just sort of giving you a label and then saying, hey, your life's going to be hard because of this. Well, that's not helpful. That doesn't help anyone. You really said it well when you like mentally, what a burden to bear about this physical thing about yourself. I think a lot of times like our identity starts getting really wrapped up with these experiences. Like we are women. And so trying to conceive or even just dealing with irregular periods or that sort of thing can be really challenging and can sometimes get into our sense of self and burrow down in there.

Lexi (06:26)
Absolutely.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, totally agree.

Caitlin Estes (06:30)
Yeah. So you started working with us, we taught you Creighton and you said that that was like a breath of fresh air for you. I know that you also, we got you connected with ⁓ like a restorative reproductive physician, someone who's trained in napro technology. Tell me a little bit about the difference going that route versus the first medical route that you went with your first child.

Lexi (06:56)
Yeah, so when I found out that I had PCOS and then I was like, how can we work through this to get pregnant? ⁓ They didn't really give me a whole lot of options. I mean, it was like, I think I got an ultrasound to like confirm it and then ⁓ medication. That was the kind of only route that was given to me. And they were like, we're gonna give this synthetic hormone and then you gotta take this a certain time of day. And so on top of already struggling to get pregnant, I had to also keep up with medication and that was...very, very hard and just added to, like I said, the mental burden of it all and probably didn't help us in actually relaxing to try to get pregnant. And so when I found out about Crete, my sister-in-law told me about it and I was like, that sounds amazing because yeah, you have to, you have to, you know, do like a chat, like, you know, do the sticker every day and it takes a lot of intentionality, but it was, it was not so invasive. Like I was like, I don't have to take anything and I don't have to like, you know, take my temperature every day. I had tried everything. I had tried the all the methods you could probably think of and all like the new things that come out and, ⁓ that guarantee a lot. And it just, nothing worked for me. And I thought it, I thought something would work. And so was like, I got to try this. I know it'll take some work to learn it, but I was like, this is worth it because it's so, it's such a natural way of, of learning thing or of doing things. So, that was why I was really excited about it. And then I found a doctor as well to help me along with the more holistic side of it. So let's actually find out your real problem and let's heal that so you can have an easier time getting pregnant. And if that includes surgery or whatever, then we can talk about that. But let's try all these other methods first before we just do some other things.

Caitlin Estes (08:44)
Yeah, and you had done your homework. I mean, you had tried, you were interested in a more natural holistic approach. And so you had already done so many things that you can kind of learn on your own, which is a great first step, really good to ⁓ learn, educate yourself on a lot of those things, basal body temperature, OPKs, those can be really helpful, but...
Creighton is a little bit more advanced. It does require a learning process. You do have an educator like myself who walks you through that process. So you're right that you kind of had to be committed to that. Like, okay, it's gonna take at least these four sessions to learn it, but it's gonna be worth it because it does have that medical component too. So you knew that not only were you going to be empowering yourself with knowledge, which by the way, Creighton works so much better with PCOS than basal body temperature or OPKs or anything else, which are always gonna frustrate you. Creighton is so much better for that. ⁓ But you then also had that medical component to partner with so that you had all this knowledge, but then you could actually pass it on to them. They could use it to interpret it, to help diagnose you, to treat it. ⁓

Lexi (09:44)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, right.

Caitlin Estes (10:04)
So way to go because a lot of women will be in that situation and they're like, okay, I've been told I have PCOS. I'm told that it's gonna be difficult to get pregnant. And they immediately are referred to an assisted reproductive technology clinic, you know? And so they think, okay, this is my only option, but that's not the approach that you wanted to take. So you went out there and tried to look for like, what are the alternatives? And did you know that there were alternatives

Lexi (10:31)
I never wanted to go down the route of like, ⁓ IVF or anything like that. I just didn't feel comfortable with it. And I just was like, if this is, if I have to go down that road, then I think it was kind of like, I don't think maybe this is the Lord telling me I shouldn't have any more kids. I wanted to heal my body. I was like, I know that there's something wrong with it, but I also want to do what I can to help my body the best I can.

And like, I think that went back to being on birth control pretty young too and how it affected me. It was just very negative. And I just like, I had issues and I I mean, you hear that a lot is women are like, their physicians just say, go on birth control. And so that being the narrative for so many women, it's like, I was like, I don't wanna keep going down the same kind of road. I want something different. And so, that's why I was just chatting with my sister-in-law and she told me about it and I'm glad she knew about it. Because I even today, I asked my friends, have you heard of Creighton Method? And they have no clue. No one has heard about it. I even just talked to my friend who's a doula and has been in the birth kind of area and she has never heard of it. And then she was very curious and I told her I was recording this podcast and she was like, I'm really excited. Send me the info, send me the podcast. I really want to hear about it. ⁓

Caitlin Estes (11:35)
Yeah.

Lexi (11:44)
I'm excited for people to know about it hear about it. So I was really excited to hear about it.

Caitlin Estes (11:49)
Yeah, man, I'm that same way, by the way. Like when I was learning creating for myself, I would be telling all of my friends about it. like I still today will say like anytime I tell somebody what I do or back at that time, like what I was learning, people's eyes light up. They're just like, what? I want this. I've been wanting this my whole life. You know, of course we do. Women are left in the dark about how their bodies work.

Caitlin Estes (12:15)
Either it's suppressed through birth control or it's manipulated through technology without first like ever understanding what's happening. How can I support this process? How can I, you know, naturally nurture it? How can I care for it? How can I respect it in the way that I live my life and understand what's going on in my reproductive health? And

Lexi (12:31)
Yeah.

Caitlin Estes (12:38)
So that's what was important to you and that's what you wanted to do. It doesn't mean that you didn't still have to advocate for yourself. So if I remember correctly, you still had to find the right medical professional for you. And that's so important Lexi, because I may talk very highly about NAPR technology and restorative reproductive medicine, but you still have to find the right physician for you. And it doesn't mean that the first person that you work with
⁓ or just because they have Napper technology after their name, that's going to be the right fit. ⁓ So did you feel, how did you feel, I guess I should say about still having to advocate for yourself or finding that right person? How did you know that it was the right fit?

Lexi (13:21)
Yeah, it was pretty surprising because you think going to like a more natural minded doctor, you think they all would be like a certain way. But even in that kind of world, it's still like, you know, you kind of don't mesh with people or there's people that you just, you know, don't click with or you're just not getting exactly what you really want. And so I went back and forth on it. But the first doctor that I met with, just didn't, I didn't mesh well with her. And, I just felt like I wasn't being heard. And I was like, I have these ideas that I really want to try. And, you know, can I do that? And she was just kind of telling me, no, like you need to do this first. And so I was like, I want to listen to you, but I also want to listen to my like, like what I, what I'm convicted about and what I want to do. And so I just switched to another in the practice and she was great. And she did hear me and it wasn't like she, the other girl was terrible. It was just like, I just didn't quite click with her. So, I did have to advocate for myself and just be like, I'd like to switch over. And I don't think the other doctor had an issue with it. I think it happens and, she was great about it. So the place I went was amazing. All of them were great. And I've seen multiple people in that practice and, I think they're the only NaPro doctor kind of near me. So, I'm definitely not bashing them at all or anything like that, but yeah.

Caitlin Estes (14:34)
Absolutely.

And I don't think you are either, but I wanted to bring that up because that's real. Like just because they have the approach that you want to take doesn't mean that the personality is going to be the best fit. And I never want somebody to feel stuck. Like who you are as a person matters.

Lexi (14:49)
Right.

Caitlin Estes (14:55)
And so a part of that is your physical existence and a part of that is your personality and like all three of those sides, because spiritually it matters to you, is a part of what makes you who you are. So if you feel like, yeah, they're giving you good care, but they're just not the right fit, then it may be worth looking into someone else. I've got lots of names, lots of people I've worked with over the years, but you having the best experience as possible is really important. So.

Well, you began that process working with NAPR technology. You found the right medical professional to support you in that journey. But it's not like it was just super quick. I mean, it takes time to identify the underlying issues that are going on. It takes time to then treat those, trying to restore those to whatever your individual optimal health is.

Lexi (15:36)
Yeah.

Caitlin Estes (15:49)
How were you feeling? What were you thinking during those months of that process?

Lexi (15:55)
Well, I'd say we tried for a little while ⁓ before I really dove into Creighton. I think I was thinking, everyone tells you, you're really fertile after, and what if it happens right away? And so we gave it, I think, like six months. And then I was like, that's it, I'm doing Creighton. I was like, it's not working. It didn't happen right away, like everyone told me. And ⁓ so I was very afraid that it was gonna take two years again. And I was like, I really don't want that to happen, was terrifying to think about that. And I was like, because the waiting and the trying and the, you know, all that stuff was just, it gets exhausting. I mean, as people probably know, but ⁓ so I was like, I'm doing Crayton, I'm going to go all in on this and really try. And, ⁓ and so that's when I just dove right in. And it was really exciting to like, kind of put all of my like, energy into that.

Like I was like this new thing and it's got great success rates and my sister-in-law was successful with it. so I was like, I just felt peace about it. And I was like, I really think this is gonna work for me. And even if it doesn't happen right away, I'm okay with it because it's gonna tell me more about myself either way. And it's gonna help either way. yeah, that's how I felt during that time.

Caitlin Estes (17:15)
Yeah.

And you know, it's a good reminder that the months go on. This is not a quick fix, but it's not like there is a quick fix out there. I think a lot of times we think, an IUI or IVF, that can be done quickly, first of all. No, they're not quick. ⁓ But second, ⁓ you know, you want to be able to really look at what's going on and then treating that underlying condition specifically. And so that takes time. It's not just like a snap your fingers and here we go.


Caitlin Estes (17:46)
In the midst of that, think a lot of ladies start wondering like, am I going to get left behind? Like, is everybody else going to conceive and I'm going to be the one that doesn't? Is everyone else going to conceive more quickly than I am or something like that? I think we can a lot of times get stuck in that mindset.

Lexi (17:46)
Right.

Yeah.

yeah. The comparisons are real.

Caitlin Estes (18:04)
Yeah. Well, do you have any advice for ladies who may be listening about ⁓ just from your journey, maybe about how they approach it or getting the diagnosis or the treatment they deserve? What's your advice for them?

Lexi (18:18)
Yeah, I'd say, trust your gut and advocate for yourself and definitely try Creighton. because it's, it's going to tell you, you're going to feel a lot more in tune with yourself. And I was just telling my friend today, I just felt like I finally understood my body. Like I finally understood my cycle and my body and what was really going on. And I got, I felt like I got to the root of it and you feel so much more connected to yourself when you do that, like, you feel very grounded and like, oh, I know myself a little bit. So yeah, that's what I'd say.

Caitlin Estes (18:48)
Yeah, that's beautiful. Well, thanks so much for taking the time sharing some of your story, Lexi. I appreciate it. Listeners, if you're facing maybe unexplained infertility or a difficult diagnosis like PCOS and you feel like you haven't gotten to that underlying reason, you're struggling with this or what to do, how to respect, nurture, support your own body and your own reproductive health.

Lexi (18:54)
Yeah, of course. Yeah, thank you.

Caitlin Estes (19:15)
I want to recommend some of our resources that are free on our website, including our Unexplained Infertility 101 resource. I'm going to make sure to have that linked in the show notes for you. As always, thanks for listening as we continue to explore together what it means to be woven well.