Infertility Success Stories with Fertility Coach and Author Erica Hoke

She's known as the infertile mom of 4, a woman who was told she had little to no chance of ever conceiving and is now helping other moms beat the odds just like she did. Joining us now is the author of "Infertility Success: Stories of Help and Hope for Your Journey," Erica Hoke. Erica, it's great to see you again.

Thanks for having me, Gayle.

So Erica, talk to us a little bit about your backstory and what happened to you personally.

Right, so I knew that I was gonna have infertility problems, or I expected that I might, because I had 7 different reproductive diagnoses. I had endometriosis, I had uterine fibroids, I had PCOS. I had a lot of things going on, going not right for me, and so I expected that I might have some trouble, but my backup plan was always IVF. And then it wasn't. I was told that I was already hyperovulating, I couldn't do IVF because of that, and that I would need donor eggs and had less than a 1% chance of conceiving on my own.

But you beat all the odds, and 4 kids later, you have an incredible story to share that didn't involve IVF.

That's correct. I, like I said, was not able to do reproductive endocrinology, and so I set to work finding out what impact affected my fertility and doing everything that was in my control to change that, including diet and lifestyle changes, traditional Chinese medicine.

And so you did all these things, and along the way you decided, hey, you know, I can use everything I learned on my own personal journey to help others and, and help them understand their fertility status. How does a woman do that?

Yeah, I would say if a woman is going to delay her fertility because by choice, meaning past 30, that she should get some baseline testing because if you're gonna delay it and then you find out that maybe you have diminished ovarian reserve, then it might change your plans, right? So it's really an informed decision at that point instead of waiting until it's time to try and then trying and then finding out that you've got these complications that, you know, are going to prevent pregnancy.

Now, are there certain tests that women should be asking for?

Yes, absolutely. You know, if you're going to delay pregnancy, you know, you could get a baseline hormone from your, your OB-GYN, and you can make sure, you know, depending on your symptoms, you can make sure that your symptoms are not something more than what a normal menstrual cycle would be.

And are there lifestyle changes that women can do to make themselves themselves more fertile?

Absolutely. There's so much that's in our control, but it all centers around reducing inflammation, right? So simple things that people often neglect are hugely impactful on hormones. So things like water intake, you know, a lot of us walk around dehydrated, and so that impacts things like progesterone, it impacts cortisol levels, and all those impact your fertility. And your hormones. So sleep also dramatically affects hormones. So there's little lifestyle changes that are free and easy that you can really hone in on. And what I like to say is overall health is the goal, fertility is the outcome, pregnancy is the outcome. So do the things that you know are the right things for your body to reduce inflammation, eating a low-processed food diet, adding things in like, you know, rich leafy vegetables and berries and that sort of thing that are going to reduce inflammation, reduce oxidative stress and free radicals in your body. All the things that we know that maybe we don't prioritize.

Yeah, you mentioned free radicals and oxidative stress, things like that. How do we eliminate those? Or I guess we can't, but how do we help avoid them?

Yeah, well there's things that you can do to avoid them like eating whole foods and non-processed foods, drinking filtered water, Addressing stress in your life reduces oxidative stress. So, and just, yeah.

And what about supplements?

Yeah, I'm so glad that you mentioned that because supplements are something that, you know, it's hugely talked about. Take this supplement to get this result in your egg quality. Take this supplement to make this change in your life. But this circles back to hydration. If you're doing that and you're not properly hydrated, you're taxing your liver and your kidneys, which is where all that is processed. If you're doing that and you're not buying good quality supplements that are food sourced and they're synthetic, you're taxing the very thing that you're trying to fix. So it's so important to source good quality supplements from food sources and where you know, where you can trace, trace the origin of the supplement.

So through your book, and, and do you help women one-on-one?

I absolutely do. I have individual private coaching. I have coursework that someone could enroll in that is self-paced. It's an online program that's a 12-week boot camp. I have free products too that I'm able to help. Today is the launch day. It was really good timing for a jump— a free Jumpstart Your Fertility 5-day challenge. And we talk about a lot of these things and the importance of them.

And then I know just hearing other women's stories are very inspiring for those trying to conceive. And you share those in your book.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, the women that wrote this book with me, it's 20 women's stories. We each authored a chapter, and we each said that if we want, if we could only help just one woman with sharing our story, that we would have written the chapter again, done the whole project all over again. It's such a lonely process, infertility is, and we really just want people to know that they have choices and that they're not alone.

Well, Erica Hoke, thank you so much for joining us again on Bloom Today. It's been great Great seeing you.

Thanks so much.

Absolutely.