Overcoming Infertility: The Secret Role of Urea Plasma — Erin Banks Interview Update

and just understand what your options are. So, Erin, thank you so much for, um, for being here today and talking to us about this, this journey of yours and all the personal details of it.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, of course. So, um, had you ever heard of ureaplasma before you started this journey? Like, when you were having your UTI symptoms, had you ever heard of ureaplasma?

No, nope. And I want to say first, if you've tuned in and started watching with us, thank you for being here. And if you're not having UTI symptoms, don't let this turn you away. Most women, their only symptom is infertility. For me, it caused me to have the UTI symptoms, but most do not have any except the main reason you may be watching, which is infertility or pregnancy loss, right?

Yeah. So I think that that bears repeating. You can only— I'm going to read what the symptoms of ureaplasma are here in a second, but your only symptom can be primary or secondary infertility, right?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Okay. Louder for the people in the back. Right. So, you know, we all know what UTIs feel like. So some of the other symptoms of ureaplasma are painful urination, unusual or unpleasant discharge. Abnormal vaginal discharge, and lower abdominal pains. But once again, one of the primary and only symptoms can just be infertility. So it's a form of bacteria that kind of gets off track, right? And a lot of people will ask, and I don't know if this was ever a concern for you, Erin, but a lot of people get really worked up that this is some kind of sexually transmitted disease or that it is that kind of thing. And that's not the case at all, right?

No, no. But if you have it, your partner is going to get it as well or vice versa. But whether you got it from a partner, it does not mean they weren't Yeah, yeah. I, you know, many doctors will say ureaplasma lives in your body. Everybody has it, but it should not be in the genital tract. So it's a common form of bacteria that can just be in your urinary tract. And for me, I had an IUD, and I think when I had that first UTI, IUD string bacteria had gotten into the genital tract and then caused all this havoc. I've, through research, have seen that you can get it through from a child, from your own kids. So I don't know the exact basis on how it— if it always is in the body, if it's always in the urinary tract, and if it gets to be unbalanced, then you have a problem. I'm not sure, but it's not one that someone was being unfaithful.

Right. Absolutely want to highlight that. So also want to make it crystal clear that This is a very known entity. This is a very known thing in the reproductive community, the reproductive endocrinologist doctors community, that it's known and linked to reproductive disease and conditions, right? Also known as infertility. So this isn't, um, this isn't some like super rare off-the-wall, you know, nobody knows about it. I mean, a lot of people don't know about it, but that doesn't mean that it's not It's not common, right? So if you, if you leave it untreated also and you get pregnant, if you happen to get pregnant, then it can also cause miscarriages at any stage. Early, you can have a miscarriage. Late, because you can spread it to your baby. You can also— it can, if left untreated, can cause disease in other parts of your body. So Like Erin mentioned, your partner needs to be treated, and we'll get into her story here in just a minute. But you and your partner need to be treated. So, so speaking of that, Erin, you were treated early on for— you were treated early on with like a broad spectrum antibiotic, right, in this journey?

Yep. So I work for a high-risk OB-GYN specializing in maternal medicine. I have worked there and been in that career for over 15 years. I'm an ultrasound tech. Trust the doctors that I work with very, very, very highly. I had started telling one of them about my story and what was going on and my symptoms, and they had called the OB-GYN who I saw at the time and said, you test her for everything. No, she did not test me for ureaplasma. Um, sorry, are those notifications popping up for you on my phone?

They're not. No, I don't see anything.

She did not test me for ureaplasma. She tested me for, you know, every STD, bacterial vaginosis, all kinds of things that could cause burning. Of course, UTIs. Everything was negative. So the doctor I worked for said, call her in doxy doxycycline. Let's just knock whatever this is. If it's atypical, knock it out. Just do around a doxycycline. Well, not knowing what it was, they did prescribe me doxycycline, not my husband. My symptoms— now, not the symptom of infertility, but the symptoms of what felt like a UTI got better for about 2 months, and they came right back. He was never treated, so he still had that bacteria in his genital tract as well.

Right. So this is the very beginning of your journey, and you went to— can you name all the, all the different kinds of doctors that they ended up sending you to? You went to what, a urologist?

I started with my OB-GYN, and then she kept telling me it sounds urinary, so she sent me to a urologist. That urologist pretty much dismissed me and told me to change my diet, which was things I was already trying. They were thinking maybe it was interstitial cystitis, and I had read up on that, interstitial cystitis, and had already done things with my diet to try to make that better. They did not test me for that. They just said, "We think it's this." I then went to see a urogyn, a urologist specializing in women's gynecology as well. Scope, and they took a clean catch urine. They said, "You don't have a UTI." The scope did not show interstitial cystitis. My bladder was completely normal. Um, that was, you know, the end of my journey with the urologist. So then I finally was referred to my first REI because we were a year trying to get pregnant.

We had— Doctor number 4, if you're counting.

Yes. One early loss. Very early. Like I had a positive pregnancy test. The line just faded away. It's like a chemical or implantation problem. So they then— my OB-GYN, so that first doctor, she did a hysterosalpingogram to make sure my tubes were clear. She also ordered an ultrasound, which I knew was going to be fine because that's what I specialize in. Ultrasound was normal. HSG was normal. She then sent my husband to have a semen analysis. His morphology was 3, but everything else was normal. And if I jump to real quick where I said his morphology was 3, ureaplasma also affects sperm health, sperm shape. They cannot swim as well. So I think that was a huge aspect as to why his morphology was 3. My OB-GYN then said, you need to see an REI because of the low morphology. I don't want to put you on Femara or Clomid and not have everything, not have the best that you may need. So I started with my first REI. Uh, that was when I had another miscarriage before I even saw them, had a positive pregnancy test. We don't need to see them. We're fine. The line just faded away. So I'm telling them at our appointment all my symptoms, my history. I was 34 then, probably. My cycles were 30 days, but I conceived my first baby with that same length of a cycle naturally. They wanted— they said I needed to do IUI to have the best outcome due to his morphology. And they put me on Letrozole to help me ovulate sooner or more optimal. They did tons of testing, you know, all the blood work, hormone levels, everything was normal. Nothing else other than low morphology and I ovulated late and this burning UTI symptom.

Yeah, so I just want you to pause right there, right? This burning UTI symptom. So the The thing that I want to point back to is you're relatively young. You have already given birth without any assistance to your first daughter, and now all of these things have been brought up to you that this is a problem— your husband's sperm motility, right? Um, and now your ovulation is being called into question because it's different than what, you know, the doctors think that it needs to, needs to be. Right. But your hormone levels were normal. So now we have this unexplained infertility diagnosis. Yes. Right. They said, yes, we're not looking— in other words, what I'm trying to say is we're not looking at hormone levels that are out of whack and your ovulation is potentially late. This is just the doctors. We don't know what else to do, basically, right?

Yes.

So we're going to try to control an earlier ovulation so that they can do the, the IUI. Okay.

So, mm-hmm. Yep. So before I started letrozole, there was another miscarriage and there was like back to back almost. I had two more early losses. So as we're gearing up to do our first IUI, I'm on letrozole, a low dose, like whatever they start you at low. I also want to say this was in 2019.

Yeah. So again, I just want to pause you because you're getting pregnant, so your ovulation is not broken, right? Because you're getting pregnant. The sperm are making it. You're getting positive pregnancy tests, right? So these are the kind of things that I— I'm so sorry. I know that you're, like, on a roll and I want to hear your story, but I want our listeners to understand that, like, This is not logical. She does not have— she does not have symptoms of poor ovulation. She's getting pregnant. She's not staying pregnant. Why is it she's staying pregnant? That's the question that needed to be asked right there. Wouldn't you agree? Why am I not keeping these pregnancies?

Yes.

Right.

Okay. Yeah. So in my mind, I'm thinking I have an infection. My body's in fight mode. My body's fighting off these pregnancies. I'm not even getting past implantation, right? So we go to do IUI, and I want to be trustful of the REI because they're the specialist. They should have tested me for everything basic, right? They should have tested me. They should have looked more into my history, my symptoms. But they're the specialist, and they are an office that the doctors I've worked for, for 15 years refer patients to. So in my mind, I need to trust the specialist. So we do the first IUI. It was not successful. We did 3 IUIs, not successful. Now, during those 3 IUIs, I mean, here I am now. Once the IUI journey started, I'm not getting pregnant at all. That stopped. So there was something going on that I'll need— I need to talk about here too as to So why IUI as well wasn't working, but is a blessing that it wasn't working. Yeah. So each IUI cycle they increased my Letrozole and I was having great follicles, beautiful follicles over 20 millimeters, like right when I should be getting ready to ovulate. Everything was timed right. Everything seemed to be working, but the IUIs were not working. After the third IUI, they said, "Oh, we need to test you to see if your natural killer cells are elevated." And I'm like, "That was not done yet. And you just had me do 3 IUIs and you did not check my natural killer cells." So natural killer cells are something that's in our body that elevate when there's an infection, which does in fight mode and can fight, wants to fight anything foreign that comes into your body like a pregnancy. So I was like, "Oh, that's great because yeah, I probably do have that." and those were elevated. So they then wanted to put me on a steroid after ovulation. They then wanted the steroid to come in to suppress the natural killer cells to let implant. So here I am on a steroid now. My blood pressure is going up. Steroids are not healthy. You know, they, they're not good for blood pressure. Yeah, they were going to keep me on the steroid if I got pregnant throughout the whole first trimester. So at that 4th IUI, I noticed— and they're letting me do more IUIs because they missed testing me for natural killer cells. So now they're like, we have a stereo— let's do a couple more IUIs.

Yeah.

The IUI, I noticed that my endometrium, the lining of my uterus, was really thin when I had beautiful 20-plus millimeter follicles gearing up for ovulation. My lining was 5 millimeters. And my training and through at this point, 12 years I had been doing my career in OB-GYN ultrasound.

You're seeing this every day, right? You're seeing uterine linings every day.

Yes. And we did follicle studies there as well. I knew that my lining was thin and I questioned them. I said, you know, my lining is only 5 millimeters right before ovulation. It should be 8 to 10. Even more than 10 to have successful implantation. They blew me off. They said, no, like, we see women get pregnant all the time with 5mm linings. Thinner women can have thinner linings. Okay, well, that was never—

that's not your normal, right? And that's not— that's not your normal, right?

Right. So I trusted them. I did another IUI, didn't work. The fifth, I trust— I don't know why, I don't know why I trusted them for a fifth IUI with a lining of 5 millimeters. And this is just— so we did a fifth IUI, didn't work. Gearing up for the last one, I said, I'm not doing an IUI, my lining's too thin. And they said, oh, we'll throw in some estrace. I think that's a form of estrogen that can help thicken the lining. And And that did nothing. But I didn't do an IUI. We just did intercourse and did the estrace. And my REI at that first office had left, went to another office, which kind of scared me. And that was also a red flag as well. He was a very successful infertility doctor who had worked for a different practice and then came to work for this one. And he was only there for 10 months and left to go somewhere else. So I then sat down with another REI that is in their office and he is like the owner. So he's like the REI and he told— I told, you know, he had all my history there. I told him again, I'm having this burning, I'm not getting pregnant. I think it's related. No, no, it's not related. We can't offer. And then I told him about the lining. I don't like how thin my lining's been. At that point, I can't offer you any more IUIs. There's no other medication you can take. You need IVF. Showed me this graph. You are 78% chance that you're going to have a successful IVF. Mm-hmm. This point, I had another— I had a consult with another fertility office about an hour away.

So before we move on to the second opinion, I just want to speak to the women out there Um, I have a little bit different journey than yours, but I want to just highlight something that I think is common amongst anybody going through infertility, and that is the desperation. You said, I don't know why I agreed to this, right? I don't know why I agreed to that third, fourth, fifth— how many was it?

Right. 3 more.

Yeah, 3 more with a thinner lining. So I just encourage you, if you're listening, and I think Erin would agree with me, to pause when you have those stirrings in your— however you want to say it— in your gut, that inspiration, that feeling that like something's not right. This is not working. This is not logical. Don't just dismiss that, right? Like, do you have regrets about just continuing to do that?

I do. Yeah, I have regrets. And then a lot of times I tell myself my babies wouldn't be who they are if I didn't. So. Right. But yes, it was harmful to my body. It was harmful to my marriage, our bank account. Our—

I was going to say, and there's no refunds. Right? There's no refunds for those 3 IUIs that they did and your lining was way too thin, right? So I think it's really important, you know, to trust yourself. You have to believe in yourself, right?

Absolutely.

This doctor does not talk you into IVF?

No, I— so my daughter at home was 3 and I'm thinking I started trying when she was 1 and a half. What changed in a year and a half? Not that much could have changed. Like, this is not— the IVF was not an option for us either. There was no insurance coverage, um, for fertility. And not knowing that it was going to work, and me knowing my body doesn't feel right. Yeah, I can't do this. Um, So I had the appointment made with another office, and one of my friends who went through infertility around the time of my third IUI, she was like, why don't you go get a second opinion? She said something, right? Right. So she, she caught on much earlier than I had. So it's just hard when you think I'm at a place they've been with me now for so many cycles. They've got to know more about me. We've got to be getting closer. And we were just—

You get really invested in the process, right?

You do.

You know, just one more, just one more. It'll work this next time. And you might not be getting personalized care, or you might not be really, you know, comfortable with what's going on, but, you know, the known is better than the unknown, right? So we kind of stay where we're comfortable and I think that the industry makes it easy for women to do that too, right?

Yes. And, you know, back to the lining, I, you know, it— what, what— that wasn't working for me. I wasn't getting pregnant with the millimeter lining. So why didn't we change something?

Right.

In the process? Now, that wasn't the main problem, but that wasn't helping, you know, that, right? That was kind of, I think, God for what needed to be done first.

But right, so we go for your second opinion.

Yes. Before that, I changed my OB-GYN. So I had a new OB-GYN come in who had a background in infertility. He was 70s and he used to practice infertility, but as he got older, he scaled down to just doing OB-GYN. He delivered my daughter because he took call for my doctor, but he had his own practice. So I had started him and talking to him about my history, and he had brought up this doctor I was getting my second opinion with. He said, why don't you see him? You know, I, I trust him. And so I went to see him, and he— I took all everything to him, all my ultrasounds, my history, my lab work. Of course, the first thing he said when he reviewed the images before that, you know, before the IUIs, the ovulation time when they did an ultrasound, um, He said your lining was too thin for any of these IUIs. I would not have done one of them. He said, maybe the— he said, what surprises me is they just kept increasing the letrozole. They didn't change anything in your protocol except increase the letrozole. Well, the letrozole was having you ovulate too soon. Your lining didn't have time to catch up and build up to be ready to sustain a pregnancy. I I truly believe that first office did not want me. They wanted me to do IVF. They wanted me to believe I needed IVF. They know better. I knew better. I knew that lining was too thin. Clomid can also do this. I think Clomid is more common to do this to your lining, but Letrozole can do it. Now, I asked that first— or the other office if there was any other medication I could take. They said, "No, you need IVF." My second opinion at the new REI's office, he said, "I want to try tamoxifen." Tamoxifen can help with ovulation, but it also helps to thicken the lining. It doesn't have that negative effect on your lining. And I said, "Okay." And I said, "I want to just do timed intercourse, though. I'm not ready to do IUIs." I had left his office, and it was right around that time I had done some research online and found through a blog, infertility Facebook page, you know, thankful to other women who tell their story.

Yeah.

A woman wrote, I had this infection, and they won't check you for it unless you ask. I was treated and I got pregnant. I'm actually friends with her on Facebook because I reached out to her and thanked her because she said it was ureaplasma. And tons of women started commenting, I had this too, I got pregnant once. So I then searched and started researching ureaplasma. What is this? How do you get it? Well, how do you treat it? Um, I came across another woman's story. She wrote an article and Her story was similar to mine. She had been gearing up, getting ready to do IVF, and she met with an acupuncturist who told her, you need, you know, you might have Ureaplasma. And I don't know the outcome of her journey. I've tried to find her. I haven't been able to find her. Yeah, but symptoms were my symptoms, her everything. And I knew and I cried because I knew in that moment, this is it. This is it and it's not anything else. So I called the new REI and I said, I think I have this. Can you test me? And the nurse said, oh, she's like, if you think you have that, you need treated. But I don't know if we can test for this. And I was like, okay. And she's like, I'm going to talk to your doctor and I'm going to call you back. And she called back in a few hours and she said it is better. Just to treat you for it than try to test and diagnose. She said it's very hard to diagnose it. So we're just— we're calling you on an antibiotic. It was azithromycin.

Mm-hmm.

Oh, they did not call it in for my husband. And this is another part where I'm like, did they want me to believe I was fully treated and we just dismiss it all?

Mm-hmm.

So I got my azithromycin. I then called my new OB-GYN. Who did. I had seen him in my field of work, how he interacts with patients. And he's old school. I mean, he's older and he, you know, the way he used to practice is different than how most offices practice now.

Yeah. And I probably takes a little bit more time with his patients, right?

Yes. Oh, absolutely.

Yeah.

And he, he couldn't believe some of my journey so far as we had talked about things. But I was mainly working with the fertility office and I think he maybe thought that they had done the things they were supposed to do or the way things used to be practiced. I'm not sure. But he— his nurse called. I talked to his nurse and she called me back. She want to talk to him. And she said, yes, he can test you. But he said you should have been tested for that in the beginning of your journey when you had trouble conceiving. So 2 years ago you should have been tested for this. And I wasn't, of course. So she said, I need to schedule you at ovulation and you need to have intercourse 4 hours prior to ovulation or 4 hours prior to your, your appointment with us. Right. And she said, we're going to do a post-coital test. So I went into the office normal OB-GYN office. I wasn't going to have surgery. We had had intercourse and my doctor did it, took a swab of cervical mucus and he left for— he went to look under the microscope and he came back in and he said, you have great cervical mucus, but it's filled with white blood cells. And I said, what does that mean? And he said, Mycoplasma ureaplasma infection. He said, "I would send this to the lab, but there's no reason to." He said, "It may not even grow on lab, but I know that when a woman has a lot of white blood cells in her mucus, that she has Mycoplasma or Ureaplasma infection." He said he could see the sperm under the scope, not able to swim through that mucus because of the cells, and that they just swam around like they didn't— they couldn't get anywhere. He said, "You know, if they had gotten to the egg, it wouldn't fertilize well." Problem, those early, you know, before we were doing IUIs, I kept having those early losses because I had no lining. My lining back before IUIs was normal. Um, so I—

Say that again.

My lining before IUIs was normal. Yep, yep. And I'm, you know, being an ultrasound tech, this was something that I could watch and I knew that it was 10 to 12, the time of ovulation. But when I was under the IUI care on letrozole, it was 5.

Yeah.

So my doctor said, you, you know, I'll treat, you know, azithromycin will work for this, but your husband needs treated too, or you're gonna get it right back.

Okay, so let's put a pause here. You have a new obie, Jen, and you have a new reproductive endocrinologist. Yeah, your reproductive endocrinologist, your specialist, only wanted to treat you.

Mhm. It took—

somebody said nothing about your husband. So this is a super important point. It took your obie, Jen, your new one, taking the time doing that post-coital test and looking on, looking at the cervical mucus under the microscope in order to get this diagnosis. And then he treated your husband.

Yes, we had— so he had to go to his primary because my husband wasn't a patient. But of course, yes. Yeah. So because, um, You know, he said, you can keep trying, you're fine to get pregnant on azithromycin. If azithromycin doesn't work, then we need to try doxycycline. But you cannot conceive on doxycycline.

Right.

So, but back to the, you know, when I was diagnosed in his office, he said, I have been doing this for a long, long time and helping tons of couples who have struggled with infertility get pregnant because I have diagnosed this infection in them. He said, "It's a $10 antibiotic." And I think my jaw probably dropped down to my feet because I was just shocked that I didn't have to have a surgery to diagnose this. He did it in a couple of minutes in his office. He didn't even have to send it out to the lab. He told me that ureaplasma usually will not even grow in lab. If it does, it takes time. So I said, why?

Say that again, Erin.

Um, he told me in the sending that off to lab that ureoplasma can take a very long time to grow in a lab, if it even does.

So you might have to advocate for yourself with your doctor who insists on growing this or culturing this sample, right? If they swab you, they want to send it off to culture. You know your body. You might have to say to that doctor, I, I don't care if it grows or not. Like, I have all these symptoms and I'm going through infertility. So, you know, you might have to go someplace else. You might have to get a second opinion or something like that. But don't let the— don't dismiss the fact of how you feel and your symptoms just because it doesn't culture, right? Yes.

And most— so I've talked to many, several women, one being my cousin's wife. And I'm going to tell you about her story in a minute. I hope things are better now. It's been 4 or 5 years and maybe the labs, maybe things are a little bit better and how they're picking it up. But I asked my OB-GYN, I said, why? Why was I never tested for this? And he said, I hate to say that the medical industry has turned to this, but A $10 antibiotic doesn't pay the bills. $25 IVF pays the bills. And he knew. He knew that, you know, this is being dismissed by the fertility industry or not treated properly by the fertility industry. Right.

So I just want to say, too, women come to me all the time with questions and we, you know, we talk about what testing they've had. And everybody wants to— everyone wants to believe in their hearts that they have been tested for everything. And I have not worked with one single client that has been tested for every single thing. There's always gaps in, in care and coverage. And I think Erin's story is like such a great example of that, of her new doctor assuming and making the assumption that this is something that had been tested for earlier in her infertility journey. And, uh, it just goes to my point of you have to take charge of your medical records, of your infertility records, of knowing— you have to know what you've been tested for. Should it be that way? It shouldn't. Do you want results? If you do, you're going to have to take responsibility for it. I mean, that's That's literally all there is to it. And people that feel very uncomfortable with that, you know, we're not talking about, you know, being super aggressive with your doctor or whatever, but you should be able to get collaborative care, you know?

Yeah.

And nobody knows their body better than you do. Yes.

No, it's definitely— that's definitely true. And I, you know, I tell women a lot, tell them I'm your friend. Say, my friend went through this and this is what she needed. Um, right. So we did end up conceiving our daughter. It was very shortly after that. Um, so we did not need doxycycline. We both just needed azithromycin and we had successful implantation. Now I was still doing tamoxifen and timed intercourse, but that was it. So I did have been on board. But again, my lining wasn't a problem without, right, let's go. So, um, my cousin's wife reached out to me and they had had trouble having their second baby and she wanted to know more of my story. She was getting ready to see a fertility doctor. They had dismissed anything about ureaplasma as well. She went back to her regular OB-GYN and said, I want tested for ureaplasma, and she said There's millions of women walking around with ureaplasma. It's fine. It's not the reason why you're not getting pregnant. She didn't have any other symptoms. Her only symptom was infertility.

Mm-hmm.

I wanted to be like, are those other women walking around trying to get pregnant or are they all the women out there with unexplained infertility?

Right.

So my cousin said, I want tested. She tested her, but the way she tested her, she didn't tell her in the office. She did send it to a lab. And it did up ureaplasma. And this was last year, so maybe that's gotten better. I don't know. I don't know. But her doctor was not going to treat her, said, no, that's not the reason, like, you don't need to be treated for this. And she said, I want treated, I want you to treat me. And so she was— her and her husband both, he had to go to his primary doctor. They both had a round of doxycycline. 6 weeks later, they got pregnant. Wow. Healthy pregnancy. I know of another woman who's reached out who had success after treatment as well, after having early losses, years of infertility. And, you know, something I've also thought about, and I actually, I've heard of people having this, and then I actually saw it on a Friends episode when Monica was trying to get pregnant, and they told her she had a hostile environment. And I've heard of people saying they have been told that they have this hostile environment and they're not going to be able to connect. And I'm like, was that the white blood cells? Like, did they do that test back to see all those white blood cells and not understand the meaning of that? It always makes me wonder. I don't know.

The postcoital test. And right. Well, I think that the bottom line is is advocacy. Do you feel like— self-advocacy. Do you feel like if you had been tested, like done the post-coital test earlier, that you would have— the whole journey would have been shortened?

Yes, I do. So we conceived our second very quickly. And then after treatment, I was— he was 8 months old. I was exclusively breastfeeding her, and we conceived our third. About when our third was— she was close to 2, we got pregnant without trying. Didn't know we were pregnant. That was actually a miscarriage, but, um, we had done testing. It was trisomy 15. I'm, you know, it's— you know, as your age goes up, you can be at more of a risk for some of those chromosomes.

Yeah.

They did the testing and they did confirm that that was from my egg. And then after I had a DNC for that pregnancy, we conceived our 4th baby easy, easily. No medications, no tamoxifen. I just think that's not coincidence. 3, 3, you know, conceiving 3 healthy pregnancies so easily after going through that wicked journey to get our number 2. It's not coincidence that, that, that was Uriaplasma. I mean, it was Uriaplasma. It didn't just—

Absolutely right. So if you're watching this, um, this episode and you've gotten to this point, um, and this has helped you in any way, I know Aaron would especially appreciate it. I would especially appreciate any kind of comment or feedback if you find yourself in this situation. If you have questions, I know that we're both here, you know, to, to help you in any way that we can. But, Erin, I'm sorry for that loss. I want to say that a loss at any stage is a loss, and for any reason, it's, it's still super painful. So I'm sorry for that, and I'm really sorry that you had to go through this terrible journey to get, you know, to get to this point. But I so appreciate your passion, your advocacy, and Erin and I are friends on Facebook now, and I get to see her beautiful darling little girls. Who are just as beautiful as their mama. So thank you for being on here today. Is there anything that you didn't get to say that you want to say before we go?

Yes. In my career, I see a lot more pregnancies now resulting in IVF, a lot, lot more. And whether that's just the way things are now, women are older trying to get pregnant, or just people are jumping to IVF. I don't know. But there's been something that we kind of see frequently, that a woman did IVF, she comes in for a 20-week anatomy scan, and she doesn't have any cervix or much cervix at all. And they have to be tested to see if this was a bacterial thing that's caused inflammation of her cervix to then shorten and not want to sustain the pregnancy, or if, you know, they can put a stitch in the cervix to help the woman and help hold, you know, hold her cervix till get to term or more further along. And I've asked our doctors, those women who have a bacteria, do we know what bacteria it is? And they say, no, we don't know. And one of them said, it makes me wonder if it's the reason for the infertility. In the first place.

Mm-hmm.

VF is bypassing some of this, right? And bacteria is causing an inflammation that is not good for your body or your cervix pregnancy. So I really urge, you know, this to be ruled out, even if you don't have—

Right. Um, I, I appreciate that so much because, um, just doing my research for the show today, you know, it can cause joint inflammation. It can move to other parts of your body if it's left untreated. But say you don't have the symptom of the shortening cervix and you do IVF and you don't have the shortening symptom of the cervix shortening, you can still miscarry your baby. Like your baby can die in utero. It's, it's terrible. Like the, the bacteria can kill your baby. So, you know, just dismissing this as something that is not affecting you because you're doing IVF or that, you know, because you have gotten pregnant, it's, it's super important to pay attention to your symptoms and, you know, ask for this test. I mean, it's a super, super easy treatment. So Agree or disagree?

Oh yes, agree. Yes. For my son, they prescribed that for like, you know, and I've had some women say, surely they would know if I had this by now. And I'm like, no.

Right.

Or they're only treating the woman. And I'm like, no. Like, why put yourself through that and want to chance that rather than just have husband get treated too, or your partner that way? Do you know it's cleared? And I've been tested for ureaplasma since then. They did not test the way— so my OB-GYN did retire, my miracle doctor, he retired. But I did have a doctor who I went to that I transferred to who trained with him closely. And she didn't test the way he did. She did send it to lab and it said I didn't have it, which I mean, I haven't had symptoms, but Right. It still scares me.

An abundance of caution. Yeah. Um, yeah. So thank you so much, Erin, for having us, uh, you know, for being with us today, for sharing your story, for being passionate, and, um, for just, you know, trying to help others. So, uh, I appreciate it so much.

Thank you. And I'm wishing everyone lots of hope and success and Absolutely. Just advocate as much as you can.

100%. All right, have a good day.