Alright everybody thanks for tuning in, this is Allison Catburn, this is How Not to Be a Mistful Cow podcast. I'm here with the lovely Ashley. Hi guys, badass rockstar extraordinaire. We actually grew up together in this girl, and it's probably since we were maybe eight.
Probably eight years old-ish. We even were in the same family for a while. Mm-hmm, that's true. I keep forgetting that fact.
So she's my ex sister-mom? I think that's how you tell Sam. We actually know each other the way longer than that whole scenario ever happened. And she's doing some pretty awesome stuff in her life.
I wanted to tell you a little bit about her life story and how she got into what she's doing. But this podcast is specifically about fertility and IVF. Yep, IVF. Conception, dealing with all the different issues that go along with fertility for male and female.
And I wanted to talk about it because I've just seen such an increase in my own groups and friends and circles that are people who are dealing with infertility and not understanding any idea of why the hell we're dealing with it. Especially at R-A-D-S. Yeah, I'm 34, 34. Yep, Sam.
And I'm watching it happen all around me. And I'm like, there's got to be something. Yep. So tell a little bit about yourself and what it is that you do.
Okay, so I have been in the infertility business for 10 years now, which is crazy. That went my way too fast. And unfortunately, being in this business so long, there's such a bad stigma that goes around just infertility and needing treatment and needing help. But the truth is, there are more people that you even realize that need help to conceive.
And that's for many, many different reasons. Unfortunately, a lot of it now, they're thinking as environmental as far as what we're drinking out of plastics, deodorant, and all that good stuff. So that's messing with your hormones. Yep, stuff that's messing with your hormones.
But then there's also, you know, age factor, same sex couples. There's, you know, vasectomies, people have vasectomies that we married. Poor A-Health, you know, the big thing is, women are born with the amount of A, so they're going to have for the rest of their life. And sometimes they're just not good quality or a man's sperm is not a good quality.
And you don't know that and you're trying and trying and trying for all this time without getting any results. So that's kind of like the cool part of what I do is we go in there and we do some investigating to see if exactly what's going on. And I'm fortunate enough to work in one of the top fertility clinics in the world. So we get a lot of people pregnant, which is very exciting.
Not everybody gets to say that. I get a lot of people pregnant. I've gotten so many people pregnant. It's very true.
That's awesome. Well, and you yourself, you have four kids. Yes, I have four. Kind of spread out.
Yeah, spread out. You're two, because I mean, I don't know what I want to share, but like two when you were a teen, you were basically young and you were a baby. And we were all really young. And then two kind of as an adult.
Kind of even just that experience probably plays into a little bit of understanding where all these people are coming from, whether it's like, I know a lot of my girlfriends who maybe had kids young, and then they do get remarried later. And they're like, okay, I have no idea where to begin with all this stuff because I don't really know what I would. I don't even know where to start now that I'm 35. So for people dealing with stuff, you were kind of telling me earlier.
Because I know like, so for me and my second husband, we tried for probably eight, nine months to conceive. And I think there's a lot of factors that played into that right timing. Maybe it wasn't the right person. Maybe my body was just like, this is not going to happen for you.
Big warning thing. Yeah. Some like big indicators that maybe it wasn't going to happen, but like, you know, it was like one of the most stressful times of my life because we were just like obsessing over it. So, and I remember thinking like, I'm never doing this again.
This is like the most like, I've never felt so powerless in my life. Yep. So for people who deal with that feeling like, what's the timeframe that you should deal with that for you? Check out your fertility.
Sure. So we recommend if you're not getting pregnant between six months to a year. So by a year, if you have been tracking your ovulation, taking your vitamins, going to your OB to just do regular checks, making sure that you're, you know, doing all the right things a year is one that you should really see for fertility specialist. So, but I mean, all those things you just even named, I did not do any of them.
Yeah. Just start with. Right. So like start first things first.
People who are like, oh, we've had sex a lot of times and it's been unprotected and I'm not pregnant yet. Like, so I would first recommend you can go to any sort of grocery store, Walgreens or whatever, and you can buy an ovulation kit and that checks your, it's a hormone called your lute nizing hormone and you basically pee in a cup, put a stick in it and that will track your ovulation. And when the sticks turn positive, just like a pregnancy test stick, that is when you know that you're ovulating, you've got about a 48 hour window-ish to have sex. And that's where I would start out first.
Just because you're ovulating, you're going to be yourself the best opportunity. So, and then if you're not after a year, like going into getting like checked up with what you're going to call it, yeah. Uh-huh. And then you can run tests on you from that point, just like you know what limiting factors are kind of a thing.
Exactly. So, they'll probably do like a, like basically just blood work to make sure that your hormones are in check and they can kind of get a good sense of if something is going on through blood work actually. Wow. So, tell a little bit if you don't mind of why specifically like this means so much to you and what kind of got you personally into taking better care of yourself and wanting to like make this like a healthy lifestyle.
Sure. It's like everything from, from people who are interested in doing this to kind of like set standards and then what you've had happen to you with all the process. So, I just have a love for this now after being in this industry for so long and I was fortunate enough to have all of my babies without help. I didn't need any help.
So, I wanted to help out another family who had been trying for many, many years to get pregnant through IVF, doing this whole process. They had been doing it for four years and she was unable to get pregnant herself. So, we got matched with this beautiful couple and I decided to be there surrogate and within the course of about 15 months we did three different cycles with me and getting pregnant with their embryos and then unfortunately every single time ended in miscarriage which was devastating for me. It was devastating for the family.
It was devastating for my poor husband who just had to watch me go through all of this and there's a certain amount of depression I think that comes along with this naturally because it's so stressful even if it's not yours. Yeah, even if it's not working in your life, in your body. It was horrible. It was horrific.
It's like the work, the best word I can describe it. So, through this, started drinking so much more. I just tried to like get through it in between cycles. I really, you're not supposed to drink while you're in it.
So, I waited and then just to cope with everything I was just eating like crap. Like we, but that was the way that I was coping with everything and didn't even realize that I was doing it until the very last time when they told me that the baby's heart had stopped beating and we went in for a DNC. It was my last surgery and they make you stand on the scale and I looked down and I was like shocked. I was just blown away by how much weight I gained, how horrible I felt.
All of that kind of like came crashing down in that moment and I just looked at my husband and I went like, I'm actually gonna take control of our lives and like stop letting these circumstances rule that. So, we made a decision that day to get into shape. So, from that moment on we started eating clean, exercising. I probably have a problem going to the gym now, but it's the best decision that we've had a good problem.
That could happen. Yeah, it's a good problem. Yeah, but it just, it made it, I've never felt so good in my entire life and I'm wanting to set a good example for my kids and then just knowing how I felt, how I feel now as opposed to when I was going off through all of that. I wish that I would have been doing this and been eating healthy and going to the gym and using that as an outlet instead of focusing on my misery and you know.
And using things like food and alcohol to take care of it. And it really goes along with like, so in my book that I wrote, How Not to Be My Book I was like one of the top steps, like as you're processing anything that you're dealing with, the number one thing that I like to ask people is like, well what are you doing for a workout? Because there is nothing, I don't care if you're huge, if you're small, if you're you know, people are like, well she's tiny, it's like, it doesn't matter if you're tiny, like it doesn't matter, like how do you feel and how do you, like what are you putting your body through? It's gonna affect your mood, it's gonna affect everything you deal with every single day.
So it's like, whenever anybody tells me, well I don't have time or a while I don't, I'm a for kid, okay, for kid. There's time. I promise there's time. So the biggest thing is like that can change everything for you and I love that, like just even watching your stuff on Facebook and on like keeping up with your social media, I love seeing that because it's like, I know what it did for me, like turning my life into like that becoming like almost religiously, wake up and not something, because it is in a sense, you're dealing with your own spirit, you're dealing with everything, like bringing up your own like chemical level of happiness and boyfriends.
Yes, so it's so huge. So with that, like that kind of got you out of a slump and got you through some stuff. Yeah, it's a fertility though. How does that play into fertility?
Like what is something that you tell people with like dealing with this stuff? Sure. So our clap, when you first start out, if you're ever going through this, we put you through a class and the biggest thing that we stress is like clean eating and exercise. Not unfortunately you won't be able to do any like heavy lifting during the actual process, but being in the best possible shape that you can because it is so stressful, it's just a stressful process.
It kind of takes over your whole life while you're in it. So being in the best possible place that you can, not only physically, but mentally as well because that all ties in together is going to give you the best possible chance of having a healthy pregnancy. So it's just important being in good shape is important, having healthy BMI as important, eating clean is important for your body. So you're optimizing all the things that go into getting pregnant like you're uterine lining and your hormones and your egg health, all of that.
So it's a big deal. So if anybody's dealing with this stuff, because I just know like, you know, I've dealt with it personally, I've had friends that I've seen that have dealt with it for years and watching them go through the whole process, seeing them like change some of their lifestyle changes and like, okay, I'm going to stop drinking, okay, I'm going to stop drinking caffeine, okay, I'm going to do all these things. What are some of the other main things to get you started with changing your fertility name? Sure.
So vitamins are always a good thing. Taking your vitamins, prenatals are just good all the way around. If you smoke, try to stop, that's just horrible things here. Big quality, limiting alcohol, limiting caffeine, like you've already said, like I said, just eating clean and doing your research, like really doing your research about what you can be doing before starting this process.
And then for everybody who has no freaking clue, maybe they've lived in Iraq, look at the talking about it and they're like, what? Yeah, it's true. What is it? What is IVF?
And what is it doing that it's like, what are the changes that have, how far are we come with it? It's incredible. We have, like I said earlier, I'm very fortunate to work in a facility that's ranked top in the world. Like we have the most amount of live births coming out of our, and this is per the CDC, I'm not just saying this, healthy live births we have the most.
And we were even talking in the lab the other day, I was joking with one of my doctors, how they used to do like mouth pipetting with like blood samples and like, just, it's crazy and how everything was kind of barbaric in the beginning and very, they used to call it test tube babies. Now it's this like beautiful science, it's like this beautiful dance that they've really honed in on and that's exciting because now we have, I'm trying to think I think that our success rates for live birth for this year was like 65% which is pretty incredible. Yeah, so it's fun to see the science change. It still blows me away after 10 years.
So basically what you're going in and doing is you're taking, you're basically pushing the female to produce as many eggs as possible. Correct, yep. And we do that with drugs, we do that with hormones that you inject into your stomach and then into your butt. We inject all those hormones into you.
We get your body to hopefully produce a large amount of eggs for a cycle before you ovulate and then we give you something called a trigger shot before your surgery which tells your body that it's time to ovulate and then we do the surgery right before you ovulate and hopefully get as many eggs as you can. And then you actually fertilize them with whatever specimen, whether you've got just like a donor or your spouse or your partner or whatever, you fertilize the eggs outside of the body. That's correct, which is crazy. It's just crazy to me.
And then at that point the embryologist will watch it develop and of course you've got your cells that need to divide properly and so they'll watch that for five days. And if everything has divided properly in that five days, if the couple has elected to, and I highly recommend this even though it's a little bit more expensive, they will take a very small biopsy of the good embryos and send that off for genetic testing. And that, with the genetic testing, you can also find out gender, which is a big ethical thing I know, but it's just you're going to get the best, you're doing this anyways, you're spending all this money anyways, like why not make sure that you have all the necessary information and the best possible thing for the reserve pregnancy for a healthy person. Which I, as much as people want to argue the whole planning guide debate, I think it's still funny because I have like two couples that I'm friends with now, very close friends with, and I've tried to like, okay, I'm going to have a boy and girl like put it.
And then no matter what, like you can say you're playing God, but it still sometimes does its own thing. And like, well I had two different couples where they like maybe lost one of the babies and then had an explode off and still had two babies, but one was like set up for two twins. It's not what they put in there. And another one put in one egg and came out with two babies.
It's like, still don't know what's going to happen there. And I just so cool. It's crazy. And I just, I don't know, I just don't feel like this is playing God.
I feel like there's a reason why this medicine exists just like treatment for cancer, you know, any other sort of medical thing that's going on. And it's just, I just think that it's really cool that we have this technology now. It's freaking fascinating. Yeah.
And we do have the opportunity to have a 65% you know, like life-perfect. It's just crazy to me. So, it's amazing man. And I think like, here's the biggest thing.
So if you're somebody that's dealing with anything like this, if you've tried to conceive, if you haven't even tried, because you know there are issues like I've had a lot of friends that are dealing with some things I've got a friend that's. You know, it's like a big one. You're like, well you could, but you also could, you know, have a baby that has it. And then what do you do?
Exactly. And then I have another friend who has a lung disease and she's like wanting to do this, but I'm like, okay, I need to do a surrogate and I'm, you know, at least different factors. But it's amazing that we're able to like create and help, like this, I mean, we don't create the life. We help it to become de-fruition, I guess.
All we're doing is like science is just pushing it into what it needs to be. And that's it. And then hopefully, you know, you're, you take over as the woman and your body takes over and then there's a healthy baby at the end. And I see these babies.
Like, this is not just like some crazy test tube, like science. Like I see these babies at the end of this and it is, it is honestly, it's mind blowing. And it's so cool. And it's just to be ashamed of, like it's nothing to be embarrassed of.
Sometimes you can have an issue. You just don't even realize that like I've had, you know, women who come in with, you know, no, like they were born without a uterus or they're ovarian reserve, their, their egg quality is horrible or they don't have a whole lot left. And genetics, I have a good friend of ours who had, they had had several miscarriages, figured out why they did the genetic testing and he had something that would basically, in like the fifth week of pregnancy, cause everything to, to just disintegrate. How would you know that without doing all of this?
And then they had their embryos tested and they took care of the embryos that were afflicted with this and then they are now pregnant with their second, with their second and it's a little girl and totally healthy babies. And so they never would have gotten to this point or I would have taken a lot more heart break than they needed to go through. The other thing is kind of like it's diagnostic. So it really won't know until you try.
Exactly. Exactly. And we are there, the fertility clinic is there for one reason and that's to get you a baby. I know that it's like overwhelming.
You kind of get into your own head, but we are there for one reason and that's to get you, get you a baby, get you your dream, help create your family. Yeah. Yeah. That is, I love my job.
That's so cool, man. So tell everybody where they can find you or where they can ask questions or where they are more information. If they are interested, if one, either they don't know like what's wrong with them. Sure.
Trying to switch this out or two, they just want to understand better what it is that they might need. Sure. Do you have any resources like that? Absolutely.
So you can always contact me on Instagram. My name is Ashley McCarge and hopefully you can add that on there. You can always contact me and then the facility that I work for is called Conceptions Reproductive Associates. We are based in Littleton, Colorado.
We're a fantastic clinic. All of our physicians are fantastic. One of the doctors I work for, her name is Dr. Natalie Grindler.
She is also on Instagram and that's all her Instagram posts are about is Fertility. She hits on every single thing you can possibly think of. She's a wonderful resource. I would see her away from going online and just looking up for an interview.
Don't do all stuff. It's really freakin scary. I can promise you that. Yeah, don't do that.
That's never a good idea. But you can always go to my clinic's website and then I would just say, I'm going to go to an actual clinic website to get the information that you're looking for and they should have hopefully a wealth of knowledge for you. It's pretty cool. Amazing man.
It's amazing. Thank you so much for sharing all that. Yeah. I just want to encourage everybody too because I watch this happen so much lately with a lot of my good friends.
I've seen this come to fruition in their lives and it is a long process and it takes a huge commitment and it is a whole thing about life. Life is life. It's the coolest thing ever. You go to school for four years.
Yeah, I know it's so true and guess it takes over. Every single one of my patients when they come back and they bring their babies back and they always do a big barbecue for the people who it's been successful for. It just blows me away like this is life. It's not some crazy science test tube.
Anything to be ashamed of. It's pretty incredible. And we are here for you. This industry, you're not alone.
That's the biggest thing. There's a reason why I have a job. It's because stuff happens and we don't get to choose whether or not we have problems with getting pregnant or your life changes if you're remarried. Exactly.
No, whatever it is. Whatever it is. There's a reason that there's a good industry for it and we're here for you. So cool, man.
Thank you so much. And everybody again, I'm going to link all of her links in the actual description so you're just going to find out more. Yes, absolutely. I'd love to help you with any questions, concerns.
I'm going to be here. Awesome. Yeah, we did it. Yeah, we did it.