Erica Hoke, an infertility mentor, explains when to switch fertility doctors. Look for providers who explain their reasoning and answer questions. Demand upfront diagnostic testing instead of jumping to expensive procedures, and avoid anyone who repeats the same failed protocol twice.
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Happy Friday. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Erica Hoke. I'm an infertility mentor and empowerment coach, and I want to talk to you today— want to get right into it. Um, I want to talk to you about how to know when it's time to get a second or a third opinion or move on from the doctor that you are working with, or at least explore your options. So I get asked this question a lot, and people feel really hesitant to go and get a second opinion or a third opinion or transfer doctors if they're not getting the care that they need, and they almost feel like they're going to hurt the doctor's feelings, I think. And I want to encourage you with these 3 tips that if that's how you're feeling that you need to feel empowered in your choices, and you for sure are not going to hurt that doctor's feelings. That doctor actually might not even know that you left the practice, okay? Let's just be real here. So the number one thing I would say is, and I actually have a fourth bonus one for you, but the number one thing that I would say for you is if you have a doctor that you're talking with, whether it's a reproductive endocrinologist, or an OB-GYN and they are not collaborative with you, meaning they're not willing to have a dialogue. You know, a lot of times people see the white coat and the white coat is the end-all be-all authority on a subject. And honestly, you live in your body and you've been in your body all these years and you know your body best. So in that, you should feel empowered to have a conversation about your healthcare and about what's going on. With the process and be able to ask questions. If you have a doctor that's not really willing to explain a process to you, answer questions so that you understand, ask, you know, entertain your questions about additional testing and that sort of thing, then I would suggest to you that you need to have a better relationship with your doctor than that, especially because lots of times here in the United States especially we're paying them out of pocket. Sorry guys, I'm a little congested still this morning. Okay, so the other thing, number— point number 2 is if you have a doctor that only suggests additional testing or extended testing after a failed procedure. So if you go through that first round and they say something to you like, Okay, well, the IUI or IVF didn't work, so let's do this testing now. They're not going to give you a refund on that first round. Why didn't we do the testing for that up front? Okay, I am not a pro— I'm not an advocate for waiting until something fails that costs somewhere between $15,000 and $30,000 to do all the testing afterwards. Yes, the testing might be expensive, But we shouldn't be waiting for failure or miscarriage, especially to do testing that could have been done upfront and prevented both of those things. So if they also, after that first failed IUI or IVF, don't change the protocol and want to do it exactly the same way again, I would tell you very strongly to find another practitioner, get another second opinion. Because, um, even though some people will tell you it takes up to 4 times for IVF to work, um, you want to make sure that you're maximizing. And who wants to spend, um, the heartache, the time, and the money that it's going to take to get to 4 times just because? Okay, so if you're going to your doctor based solely on location, meaning your reproductive endocrinologist is the only one in town or you're going to that reproductive endocrinologist because you have a referral from a friend and you didn't really do any research, but it's who your friend used and it worked for them and they just love that person. I would suggest to you that you probably need to do some investigating on that, investigation on that doctor yourself and kind of vet them yourself and see what you think about them and form your own opinion. And this is not something that you wanna just take a friend's recommendation. I see on our local moms' posts on Facebook all the time, people love one of our local practitioners who I would not recommend. And I have my reasons and I'm sure that they have their reasons for loving them, but I would recommend that you do your own research, okay? Sometimes success is the only reason that they love that doctor because they feel so connected to them because they gave them family of their dreams, not realizing that some of the things could have been adjusted or done differently. So the fourth thing that I would say to you is if you're working— here's my little bonus content for you today— if you're working solely with an OB/GYN, I know a lot of my authors talk about this too in Infertility Success: Stories of Help and Hope for Your Journey. I know a lot of the authors talk about this as well, where they They were— spent a lot of time, and you know, we in hindsight can say we can accept our journey and we can embrace our journey, but we all would have liked it to have been shorter, and we want it to be shorter for you too. So spending a lot of time with an OB-GYN who's not trained in reproductive endocrinology and may in fact actually be giving you misinformation and delaying the timeline for you to be able to get treatment and get help is not in your favor. So if you are not seeing a reproductive endocrinologist and you have the instinct, you have the nudge in your heart to— that you're gonna be having problems or that something's wrong, you need to go ahead and move forward and not just blindly take that practitioner's recommendations so that you can get the help as as quickly as you need and move forward. That's what we're here to do, right? We're here to move forward and get the results, which is a baby and a pregnancy, pregnancy and a baby in your arms as quickly as possible. So that's what I have for you today. If you happen to be watching on Facebook and you wanna get notified when I go live Monday, Wednesday, Friday from 9, I'm sorry, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, um, at 12 AM— 12. I gotta get— something popped up and I got super distracted. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 12, I'm here. Um, go ahead and hit that like and subscribe. I'll catch you next time. Health and blessings, guys. Bye-bye.
