Get Pregnant and Stay Pregnant, with Kela Smith

We thought you have sex, you get pregnant. We didn't think we were going to have any issues, and we quickly learned that that was not the case.

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Welcome to another episode of the Five Journeys podcast, Live like youe Matter. We're so excited to have Coach Kayla here today. She is the CEO and program director of the Hormone Puzzle Society. That's a women's health hub for fertility, hormones and pregnancy. Kayla works with women who are struggling with infertility and hormone balance and teaches them how to optimize their bodies and hormones to. To get pregnant, stay pregnant, have a super healthy baby or a healthy super baby, and easy postpartum period, as well as eliminate symptoms of hormone imbalance. With over 20 years of experience, Coach Kayla focuses on a mind, body, spirit approach to fertility and optimized health. Welcome, Kayla.

Welcome. We're very excited to have you.

Yeah, I'm excited to be here.

So let's start this out for our listeners. What was your story? Because you started to work with fertility challenges at 40.

I did, yes. Yes. Yeah. So my husband and I got married a little bit later in life, and we thought, like most, you know, we've been taught you have sex, you get pregnant. We didn't think we're going to have any issues. And we quickly learned that that was not the case. And so we tried for a little while and nothing happened. We went to our doctor, we did all the testing, came back, you know, there's nothing wrong that we can find. We. So she was like, just keep trying. It'll happen. And at this time, I was 34 at the.

So. Which isn't even that late.

Yeah, yeah. Not really. But, you know, they say 35 is advanced maternal age, and they scare the crap out of you.

Really old.

I'm like, oh, great. I feel like, oh. And then they call it a geriatric pregnancy. And I'm like, great, so I'm a grandma. This is awesome. So. So we went to her, she ran all the tests, told us we had unexplained infertility and to keep trying. So we did and tried for a couple more months. So, long story short, we went down this long road of the medical industry. And were told, finally, at this point, because I was 36 at the time, that natural wasn't going to work, and we needed to do iui, and if that didn't work, we would need to do ivf.

So can we back up a step, Kayla? Because I always say to my patients, if you're not pregnant after six months, come talk to me. And it sounds like you had almost two years of just having sex before anyone was willing to intervene.

Well, so we went a lot of. So three rounds of Clomid, some Letrozole. We did an hsg. We did a lot of stuff medically, but to lead to that, you need to do an iui. And they might have said that sooner, but I might have not heard it. I might have just been like, oh, this is going to work naturally. I don't want to hear iui. And that's.

So what is an iui?

So inner uterine insemination, where they take your partner's sperm and put it with your egg inside of your uterus around ovulation so that it's more likely that that sperm will hit that egg. So you're kind of taking the trying game out of it. Yeah.

And that's opposed to ivf, which is.

In vitro fertilization, meaning they take the egg and sperm and put it in a petri dish together and let it fertilize and grow an embryo, and then they put the embryo inside of you.

Awesome. I just want to make sure we're all on the same. All our audience.

Yep.

All on the same page.

All right, so you're 36, and you've done the Clomid, you've done the lecture. I mean, you've done everything, and now you're at the IUI point.

Yes. And that's when I said, wait. You said, there's nothing medically wrong with me. I don't understand. Just because my age is my only factor, why I need to do a medical procedure to do what my body should do naturally. And so I said, I know IUI will be there. I know IVF will be there. Nothing to take away from those procedures. I think they're wonderful. I'm glad we have them. But for me, personally, I did not want to do that yet. I was like, I'm healthy. I was a personal trainer. I was ate healthy. I was fit. I didn't feel 36. So I was like, I'm going to try to do this naturally and, you know, see what happens. And if it doesn't work, I'll go back to those procedures, you know, as I'm closer to 40.

Did you give yourself a time here? A time frame like I'm going to try it for X?

One year? Yep. In one year. If I'm not pregnant at 37, I'll go back. And so I, that's what I did. I dove into research. I took what I knew from personal training and nutrition and I tried to say, okay, I know I'm eating healthy, but I need to eat for fertility. So what does that mean? And I realized that I was eating too little, I was way too skinny. I was not eating enough fat, not eating enough protein, not eating enough in general. I was exercising way too hard. I was like I said, I was really skinny and fit and low body fat. I thought I was healthy, but I wasn't, not for fertility. And so that's what I did. I changed my diet around. I started eating more, eating more fat, eating those fertility friendly foods. I looked at my supplements, I looked at my stress and kind of really wanted to do everything I could to holistically get as fertile as possible.

There's so much to unpack in that, that, like those few sentences right there.

Kayla. Yes.

So what did you find? I mean, so what does it mean? You were too skinny? By whose definition?

By so I had really low body fat, I think around 15 or something like that. For women, you should be around at least 20 to 22%. Men, I think it's 24, 25. I was fit. I mean I was like, no fat on these bones whatsoever.

Did you have regular periods and identify ovulation when you were that, when you had that low percent body fat?

So that's the other funny piece. I. So I had been on birth control for 15 years. When my husband and I got married, I came off of it. My cycles were irregular, but I was never my doctor. None of them ever said to me, how's your period look? Are you ovulating? Are you tracking your cycle? Do you know if you're having sex at the right time? Never said any of that to me. And I didn't know. Now I know, but didn't know then.

So let's dive into that. I mean, we have a whole list of stuff to cover. But can you give the punchline or do you want to save that for later? Like, did you conceive on your own? Did you end up what ended up happening?

Yeah, I did. So it took us about eight months of really targeted everything, nutrition, lifestyle, all of that. And we did. I was able to get pregnant not once but twice had my Last one at 40, so I did it once. Had my first, like, almost 38, and then the second one was at 40. So, yep, we've got. And those little boys now are almost 9 and 6. So.

Yep, we had our last when I was 41 and she's turning 10, so. Okay, so let's go back to. I mean, all that stuff that we're unpacking. You spent those eight months really looking at how do you eat more healthfully? Like, what went into that?

Yeah, so I was researching, like, literally googling what foods do I need to eat for fertility? And what came back was whole foods. Obviously, I was already eating pretty clean diet, but again, I wasn't eating enough fats. I grew up in the 80s where I thought fat was bad and I thought Lean Cuisine was good.

It's actually. It's per decade now to mention it. It actually changes.

It's not just the Lean Cuisine, it's the plastic that it came in in the microwave. We heated it up. So you figured out you needed to eat more fat. And when you say more fat, was there some like, oh, I wasn't eating any and I needed to eat more, or you were eating too little?

The main consistency of my diet was Ling cuisine. I was eating some vegetables, but really not a ton of fat. Like, I didn't even know to focus on fat. Now I tell my clients, you should be eating avocados, nuts, and seeds and fatty fish. And I wasn't eating any of that stuff. Not before.

Well, it sounds. Also, your micronutrients might have been deplete if you were eating Lean Cuisine and no fresh fruits or vegetables or anything else. That too, would have.

I think that's really a valuable point to make. Wherever people are. As a human, we're always thinking, I eat pretty well. And then you go to level up and you go, well, I mean, she.

Was 15% body fat. No, but I mean, she looked great. Awesome. You're done. You're healthy.

But everyone where they are thinks they're eating healthy. And then it's only when you really drill in, you go, well, maybe there's room for improvement there, you know, so it's just a constant process of improvement. So wherever you are, there's room for improvement.

Exactly. Yes.

Okay, so you figured out your fat. Did you gain weight in that time, in those eight months?

I did, yeah. I got. Yeah, that was one of my goals, too, is I needed to gain a little bit of body fat so I wasn't this, you know, skinny little thing. And so, yeah, I did. I didn't gain a ton of weight. I would say I probably went up to 20% body fat, but that's a big difference from 15 to 20.

Well, also, if you started eating good fats, good nutrition, your body was probably deplete, literally, of nutrition and was starving. Might have looked good and some. Right.

When you gained that from 15 to 20% body fat, did you notice any challenges around how you looked and your sort of body image and what you thought about how you should look? Did any of that come up as a should or. This doesn't feel right.

Yes, yes. I'm sure if we dove in even deeper, we would have some. You know, I've got some issues with food and with, you know, what I think is fit and healthy, but, yeah, for sure. And so that was like a big thing. I was like, in the back of my head, I don't want to get fat. Like, 20% body fat is fat. But, you know, but I knew I needed to do this for fertility, so I kind of pushed those thoughts away. So, yeah, there was definitely some body issue, things that popped up.

And then what happened with your periods when your body fat went from 15 to 20%? What happened?

They got more regular, for sure. Yeah. And I really started paying attention to tracking them. That was the other thing I learned through research. I was like, I need to be tracking this. I need to see what's normal. I need to see if I'm ovulating. And so I was able to figure that out. So they got more regular. I could tell I was ovulating through learning how to read my body and all of that.

Great.

I remember we got as a present, right around our wedding, we got a book, which I was kind of offended by because I was like, wait, what? But then I read it, and it was one of the best resources I've ever read around how to really get present to your body. And it was Taking Charge of youf Fertility by Tony Wexler. And it was. It was so great. And I remember being like, I didn't know the cervix moved lower and higher in the body. And so. So it's really. I think it's a great book. Cause it's, you know, it's 12 bucks or something, and it really walked it through.

I think they need to teach this in every elementary school. I mean, eighth grade, you need to be learning about your body, and they don't teach you any of that.

No.

Now we're just starting. I actually. My son's in A school that doesn't do sex ed yet. They're just sort of figuring it out. Cause it's a new school. And so I'm like, I'm a gynecologist. There's no way that my son is going to be poorly educated about how women's bodies work, how his body works. So I just bought all these books because I really don't know how boys go through puberty. I know how girls go through puberty. Buy some books.

It's less complicated.

Right. I might need that book because I've got two boys myself, so.

Right. Well, I bought seven. I was like, I don't know what the best one is. And they all came highly recommended. So I bought them all. I'll get back to you on what's the best one, Kayla.

So going back to the subject that hates fertility.

So you went through this whole process and you had a good outcome, which is amazing. And then you had young babies. And what's really amazing to me is you had the brain space to then put together a protocol for women to get pregnant, which blows my mind because I don't think I had any brain space. Well, I don't think I have any brain space. I don't remember when I got brain space to create.

Can you give kind of a quick, like, what is the actual program that you have? Because I know it's breaking down the word puzzle. So can you kind of give a summary of what that looks like?

Sure. So when I was doing all of this research and going back to school, there was pieces that I would work on every day to kind of optimize my own fertility. And then once I was able to get pregnant, I was like, I need to think of a really easy way to tell clients how to do this too, and for them to be able to remember it. So I love acronyms. So I created something called the hormone puz. And it's all the pieces that I used to put my hormones back together so I could get pregnant naturally. And it's what I teach with all my clients. So puzzles stands for P Proper whole food nutrition, U Understanding supplements. Z is zapping stress. Z or Zs, which is sleep. L is love and encouragement. E is exercise and environment. So these are all the pieces that I took myself through and what I take my clients through to holistically heal so that their bodies work the way that it should and so they can get pregnant naturally. And since we've create the puzzle method, we've also kind of added into that the mind and spirit piece so we work a lot with like mind, body connection meditation to bring in consciousness, helping to rewire the brain so that your physical body takes suit to what your mental body is telling it. So it's really a mind, body, spirit program. That's why we call it that.

Nice. I was actually going to ask you love and encouragement, that's not the typical. So what, can you elaborate on that?

So that one is two piece. It's love and encouragement with your partner. So it's really building that bond and even before your parents, having that strong bond so that your marriage is solid, so that your relationship is solid. So we teach a lot with, you know, how to connect with your partners, how to have a baby without making it about having a baby, how to, you know, make oxytocin as you're having sex and really connect and bond with each other. So it's that piece. Then it's also having community around you, having love and encouragement with your friends and family, surrounding yourself with positive people that are going to support you and lift you up and not, you know, not everybody's going to understand your journey. So building a community around you, that does. But then it's also love and encouragement for yourself and having that self love and really believing that you can get pregnant and stay pregnant and just having that, that solid love and affection for yourself.

Yeah, I think that's missed a lot because first of all, self talk, internal self talk is for most people is pretty terrible. And that then messes with the biochemistry and messes with the adrenals and then messes the hormones, etc. So forth. So even though it's mostly a soft thing that you're talking about as defined in the outer world, it's so important.

Yeah, no, I mean, I think when you're in a state of fight or flight, which is a state in which your adrenals are activated and thinking that a lion's gonna chew on you, you're actually not focusing on ovulation and reproduction, you're focusing on survival. And survival is a very different pathway than ovulation, reproduction, regeneration. So you do shut down the fertility pathway when you're stressed, when you're having tons of negative self talk, when you're not sleeping, when you're all those create that whole environment of your body's not. Well.

So when you had talked about supplements and is there any particular supplements that are actually what women want to hone in on or is there a broad spectrum or is it very individualized?

So it really depends. So it definitely is individualized you don't ever want to take a supplement just because you read about it on Facebook or hear about it on this podcast.

Come on.

We would argue vitamin D, but you live in the south and I live in the. The north.

Yes, still vitamin D. Still.

Yeah. So vitamin D is one of the, and that was my next sentence is there is a few supplements that I recommend for pretty much everybody, but you definitely want to talk with your practitioner before you add or take away anything. So those supplements are one a really good whole food. Prenatal or multivitamin if you're trying to get pregnant. Prenatal if you're not. Multivitamin, whole food. So it's bioavailable for your body and it's not synthetic. So then your body actually sees it as food, knows what to do with it and then detoxes what it doesn't need. And then I also have been playing a little bit and I can't remember the brain because I just started doing this, but I've been playing a little bit with liver supplements as a multivitamin, which is really good. Yeah. Lots of vitamins and bioavailable and you know, all those organ meats. So. So that's the first one, the whole food, prenatal and multi. Then I also recommend the vitamin D definitely get out into the sun 30 minutes with no sunscreen, at least every day. But then also if you're in a northern climate, you want to supplement with some vitamin D. You know, a lot of times people with fertility issues are low in vitamin D and they don't realize it. So yeah, that's when I recommend a good probiotic if you, even if you don't have any gut issues, I think everybody needs probiotic. I think it's just good, you know, a foundational health piece that you need. So good probiotic. And then I recommend fish oil if you're not eating fish a couple times a week. You definitely want to eat a good high quality fish oil if you're not a vegetarian. And then cod crude oil if you are a vegetarian. So it kind of, you know, that's made out of algae and all. Yeah, this, it's like an algae form of fish oil that gives you those essential fatty acids.

Omega 3s are obviously really important in brain development for babies. So that's, that's really besides important for moms. If you're deficient in omega 3s, that's going to affect brain development in babies. So it's really important.

And it's anti inflammatory too. So if you Have a state of inflammation that's going to help bring it down. So do you track all of your patients to see what percent end up getting pregnant naturally versus end up opting for a more invasive approach? Do you have data on that?

A little bit. So the people that work with us, we have about a 70 to 80% success rate. Either getting pregnant naturally, that's really good. Or getting pregnant through a procedure. About half the people come to us are wanting to do it naturally. Half are already going through ivf, IUI and want us to help support their bodies through that. So. So we have a really good success rate. Obviously, you know, there's some things that we can, if somebody comes in, they're 50 years old and have no fallopian tubes, they're not going to be able to get pregnant with us. But yeah, we have a really good success rate and a lot of happy clients. Yeah.

What, are there any one or two or three people that really stick out?

Yeah, definitely. So the lady that I worked with, she actually just sent us a follow up, you know, a follow up message. She just gave birth to her tw.

Oh, nice.

Yeah, we've had a run of twins lately. We've had like five people with twins lately, which is really cool. And these are natural. Five natural pregnancies with twins. Crazy. But she came in and she was already pretty healthy, but just needed some tweaks. But she hadn't had her period. She had pcos, hadn't had a period in three years since she, you know, she had a period. So we started working together. We really honed in on her cycle tracking and figuring out why she wasn't having a period, looked at her hormones, looked at her diet, kind of really got in there and figured out what was going on. So in about three to four weeks, we had her period back. She had one more cycle and then she got her period. And then we worked together for three months. You know, we optimized, did everything. She was having a healthy cycle, but we finished working together and she wasn't pregnant. So we, you know what we tell all our clients, you want to keep working on it, this is a lifestyle. This isn't a diet or quick fix. This is what you're going to continue to do. And she did, she continued to do it. And so she text us about three months later saying that she was pregnant with twins. And she just sent me a message that she just gave birth with the two healthy babies. So, yeah, so that was a really fun one. We had another lady, no period for 10 years. And she came in, worked with us, and she ended up getting her period back. And then she got pregnant and she was 45.

Wow. And never been pregnant before?

No, never been pregnant before. She was, you know. And that's what she sent me a message saying, like, I, I've wanted this for so long. It finally happens. But now what? I never thought this was gonna happen. What do I do now?

Now you're gonna get the next course of raising a kid.

Right, Right. Well, we do have a pregnancy program, so that's good. We work with clients as well during their pregnancy to help them stay pregnant and have a healthy birth and postpartum and all that. But we don't have a parenting class yet.

That's next.

She officially had premature ovarian failure at 35 and then got her periods back at 45. I mean, that's just amazing to talk about.

Crazy. It's crazy. Yeah.

So how. Well, how do you evaluate people? Like, where do you start in terms of. In your puzzle? Like, do you have group programs? Are you mostly one on one? How do you see people? How do you talk to people?

For sure.

So we start with a phone consultation and call it a discovery call because we really want to hear your story. We want to find out what you're struggling with. We want to tell you how we're different, and we want to see if working with us is your next best step. So we start there with that discovery call and we have you fill out a pretty in depth intake form so we can kind of get a snapshot of what's going on and then we learn more on the call. So once we get on the call, we learn we want to work together. Then you would enroll in one of our programs. We have one on one coaching with either me, myself, or with one of my trained hormone puzzle method coaches. We also have online programs that don't come with calls, they just come with videos and they're kind of a self study. So those are the three ways you really work with us. So then once you decide if you want to work with us, the first thing we start with is our at home dried urine hormone test. It's similar to Dutch, but the company we use is a little more in depth. So we have a couple more hormones that we test. They don't. So we start there to kind of see a baseline. Like where are you at? Where are your hormones at? We do urine versus blood because we feel like we can see a 24 hour period how the hormones are fluctuating, how they're being metabolized and how they're being detoxed. So we do that along with a really in depth health questionnaire. We want to see, you know, physically what you're dealing with mentally. We want to see past. We want to see, you know, hereditary things. We want to see the whole picture of what you're dealing with. And so with those two pieces of data, we look at that and we customize a program for you. So we do, you know, a customized meal plan, lifestyle plans, really mind, body, spirit. So it's not just the physical but the mental, emotional as well. And so that's a, that's a little bit how. And then during the programs we work towards the hormone puzzle method. We work with your hormones and, you know, anything targeted supplements and we go through the sleep and the stress and all of that. So it's a really comprehensive program.

It sounds very cool.

Yes, it is very cool.

So I think where can people find you? How can they connect with you?

So I'm on coachkayla.com and Kayla is K E L A so coachkayla.com on there. I have three different freebies. So I have a fertility meal plan, a pregnancy meal plan and a cycle optimizing Quick Start Guide. So you can get those freebies. You can scroll down halfway through on the page and click book a Call. If you want to have a call with myself or my team, I'm also on Instagram at Kaylah Underscore Health Coach and Facebook Kayla Health Coach. So those are probably my two favorite playgrounds. So yeah, if you're, if you think you want to learn more, if you want to talk to us, definitely book that call, get one of those freebies. Oh, and then also I have a podcast, the Hormone Puzzle Podcast.

Nice.

I think this is great, Kayla. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you for listening to another episode of Live like youe Matter. Our guest today is Kayla Smith and you can find her on coachkayla.com inspire and empower someone else by leaving a.

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