📍 Welcome to Her Fertility, the podcast for women navigating infertility who want to feel like themselves again while they do it. I'm your host, Jess Tims, researcher, educator, and somatic practitioner, and I've been exactly where you are. I know what it feels like to be in the waiting, in the not knowing, in the relentless hope and grief of this journey, and I know there is a way to move through it fully alive without losing yourself in the process.
Every week, I bring you honest conversations, real research, and the kind of support your clinic can't prescribe. This is Her Fertility. Come on in.
Dear Jess, why is secondary infertility on the rise? I feel like all of my friends who are trying for another baby are having trouble getting pregnant. What's going on? 📍
My biggest theory around secondary infertility, it's kind of twofold.
One, we're talking about a group of people who already are parents, and parents now more than ever, have a lot on their plate. My like saying is, Your Fertility is Your Vitality and it is a non-essential system of the body. So you don't have to have a reproductive system to be alive, right? Like it's a bonus system.
If you're running from a lion, like you don't need to make a baby, you need to run from the lion, right? So you need your cardiovascular system, your nervous system, all those systems. And it requires a lot
and so when we start to strip the body of its extra things, like it's extra energy, it's extra nutrients. That system starts to shut down and parents now more than ever, have a heavier load for a variety of reasons. Some are systemic, right? Like we, we don't have the support that we need.
And then on top of that, we added Covid. So I am working with a lot of people who gave birth during Covid, which was a really unique experience if you did give birth during that time and your body remembers. Mm-hmm. So your body is like, I'm not sure I wanna go through that again, even though we're not in that time anymore.
So I always say, if you are not getting pregnant, it's time to start listening, right?
And statistically speaking, this is happening to 15% of couples and I always say, you know, in social science, like if it's above 10%, that means you know someone, so we all likely know someone. But it's very unspoken. Usually we don't talk about it because it's unexpected.
If you've already had one baby or two and then you can't, it's pretty surprising. There's also this social expectation that we have that you should just easily be able to conceive again and often that's coupled with a deep feeling of like embarrassment or questioning internally, which is a whole other bucket we could go into around infertility in general.
But the couple themselves usually feel some level of embarrassment around it and doesn't really wanna talk about it, right? If this is you, I have developed a framework called the Her Fertility Method, and it's what I use with everybody because it is just this three-pronged approach. So of course we start with the body, then we talk about the mind, and then we talk about your energy.
If you are experiencing secondary infertility, your doctor again might not diagnose you until after a year of trying or after six months. But if you have that internal gut feeling, I am a huge proponent of starting to get data on your body sooner than later. So you might not be qualified by your doctor to like jump into IVF.
However, you can absolutely start asking for testing on your body, and this is where working with your doctor is really helpful 'cause they have access to a lot of tests. So ask them for a hormone panel, get a semen analysis. There are some deeper fertility tests like AMH, which is Anti Malarian Hormone or an HSG exam, and that's testing if the fallopian tubes are open.
Those are more advanced fertility tests that you might not actually need because you have had a successful pregnancy and delivery. So simply getting the sperm analysis and the hormone panel is a really great way to start. And now both of those tests your normal doctor can get for you and that can give you a lot of data.
So I would say don't wait until the six month or the year mark. Go ahead and ask for that data now. And then the next step is the mind. What naturally happens, especially with our subconscious mind, because the subconscious mind's job is to keep us safe, right? Like that is its whole programming.
But what will happen is the mind will start to take over and feed you thoughts of doubt really quickly and especially with secondary infertility, it starts to sound like, oh we should just be happy with one or we already have a child i'm, you know, it's okay. But if you deeply desire another baby, it's my belief that that is like a soul calling in this life.
So it's okay to want another baby. There just might be a couple things that look different in this path and so really having awareness around what your mind is telling you. I like to say, like, you acknowledge it and thank it and let it go, right? Don't let that start to consume 'cause it can pretty quickly with secondary infertility.
And then the third step of what I call the method is your energy and this one's really important for secondary infertility. Like we talked about at the beginning. As a parent, you are zapped for energy like you are giving out energy all of the time to your family, and that's part of the beauty of being a mom.
But what we know about energy centers is the energy center that it takes to create life from the sacral center. It needs fuel. I like to think of it as like a vase, and if you are constantly giving out from this vase and you're not feeling it back up, then you have nothing to create from and this is a much deeper nuanced conversation but
simply just asking yourself like, what is my energy level today? How do I feel when I wake up? Like on a scale of one to 10, how tired am I without caffeine and movement? That is a really good barometer for how your energy is in your body and without judgment, it just gives you a space to work from.
So then you can find ways to fill up that bucket if that bucket needs some filling up.
Thank you for being here today. If you would like to submit an anonymous question for Dear Jess, please see the show notes for the link. I would love to support you with answering your question. And if you're ready to go deeper, the Her Fertility Support Portal is where this work continues. It's a monthly membership built for women who want to feel genuinely supported, not just medically, but emotionally, somatically, and in community with women who actually understand.
You can find everything at www.herfertility.support. And if today was your first time here, welcome. Come back. There's more where this came from. Until next time, give yourself love. You are doing more than you know.