Erica Hoke, an infertility coach, reflects on her 14-year journey with stage 4 endometriosis, PCOS, fibroids, and other conditions that made pregnancy seem impossible. Her oldest son just turned 13. She shares her story as proof that what feels hopeless can change.
Chapters
Konnichiwa everybody, thanks for joining me today. Uh, I'm Erica Hoke. I'm an infertility mentor and empowerment coach, and I celebrated something yesterday that I never thought that I would celebrate 14 years ago when we were struggling with infertility. My oldest son turned 13 yesterday. Yes, we have a teenager in the house now, and I'm so happy. I'm so proud of him. I'm so honored to be his mom. And I want to just talk about how different my life could have been. Uh, if you don't know my story, there is absolutely no reason that I should have had any hope. There's no reason, uh, medically that I should have persisted. I was given a less than a 1% chance prognosis of getting pregnant, period. Um, but even then they wanted me to use donor eggs. I was recommended that I use donor eggs. So, um, if you're familiar with my story at all, I wrote a chapter in Infertility Success: Stories of Help and Hope for Your Journey, and my title of my chapter was 7 Diagnoses in 7 Years. So I had 7 different infertility diagnoses. So I'll try to remember them all, but I might miss one. Endometriosis, stage 4, so pretty bad, the worst. Uh, I had PCOS, I had uterine fibroids, a lot of them removed. Uh, I had ovarian cysts, I had, um, Factor V Leiden, which is a blood clotting disorder. I had thyroid disease. I lost track of counting. Maybe you didn't, if that's 7, um, otherwise you'll have to check the book. I forget. Um, but I had all of these infertility diagnosis and prognosis and I was told that I had less than a 1% chance. We couldn't do IVF because they couldn't harvest any eggs because I was already hyperovulating. And I walked out of that doctor's office crushed, but I knew in my heart that the desire to be a mother and the strong desire that I had wasn't just put there accidentally. It wasn't there as punishment to then just be snatched away. I just felt strongly that I was not going to receive this diagnosis that I was given. And what had happened and what happens every day is women like myself get that same diagnosis. They walk out of doctors' offices completely crushed because a doctor told them that they were out of ideas, out of resources, out of skill, out of knowledge for them to be able to help them, that they couldn't help them. So the women said to themselves, the doctor can't help me, I can't get pregnant. And it's not true. These 20 women will tell you also it's not true. Well, I'm one of the 20. Will tell you it's not true. There are things that you can do to help yourself. There's hope for you. And your future children's lives depend on you persisting. How's that for some kind of interesting thought going on? So I want you to have hope. That's what my message is today. I want you to have the life of your dreams. I want you to persist and keep digging as to what's going on in your body and what you can do to affect that. As a matter of fact, I created a new tool on my website. Um, it's an infertility empowerment plan and no matter what stage you are on your journey, whether you're going through IVF, whether you're waiting, um, because you know, our medical community asks you to wait a year to make sure that you, um, can't get pregnant on your own. So if you're on in that part of the process, this is a great tool for you. If you're doing IVF, this is a great tool for you. If you're somewhere in between, like you're in the 2-week wait, this tool is good for you too. So you can hop on my website and print that out, and it's, it's got resources for you, um, to go and, uh, create a path for yourself of health and wellness that will contribute to your overall fertility. All right, well, wish me luck with these teen— this teenager in my house. But thanks for joining me today, and health and blessings to you. Bye-bye.
