Fertility Docs Uncensored and The IVF Blueprint: The Long-Awaited Resource for Navigating IVF

Have you ever wondered if there was a guidebook for the IVF journey? Have you ever felt lost during the process, like there was no roadmap? For most women physicians on the fertility journey, even seemingly simple questions can be a cause for stress and worry. IVF is such a complex process, and up until now, no one resource has addressed the various aspects in one place. 

My colleagues Drs. Hudson, Bedient and Eben have done just that. They are all double board certified REIs with tremendous experience and a focus on evidence based care. Their new book is designed for busy women professionals so you can jump in wherever would serve you the most.  Whether it’s questions about supplements, how to navigate appointments, expectations for the egg retrieval process or side effects from common medications, this book is complete and evidence-based.

Their book, The IVF Blueprint, will be released on September 23rd. Order your copy today!

Guest Details: 

Dr. Carrie Bedient is a board-certified reproductive endocrinology & infertility specialist. She studied at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, and trained at Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, as well as fellowship training at Emory University. 

Dr. Susan Hudson is a board certified reproductive endocrinologist who practices at Texas Fertility Center in New Braunfels and Corpus Christi. Before completing her REI fellowship at Mayo Clinic, Dr. Hudson attended undergrad & medical school at Texas A&M and completed her OB/GYN residency at Texas A&M University System Health Science Center. She has also earned her MBA at Texas A&M Corpus Christi.

Dr. Abby Eblen is a board-certified reproductive endocrinologist and partner at Nashville Fertility Center, which was recently recognized by Newsweek as one of the best fertility practices in the country. Since 2022, she has been honored as one of Nashville’s Top Docs by Nashville Lifestyles magazine, a reflection of her dedication to helping patients build their families.

www.fertilitydocsuncensored.com

As always, please keep in mind that this is my perspective and nothing in this podcast is medical advice.

If you found this conversation valuable, book a consult call with me using this link:

https://calendly.com/loveandsciencefertility/discovery-call

Also, be sure to check out our website: loveandsciencefertility.com

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Please don’t let infertility have the final word. We are here to take the burden from you so that you can achieve your goal of building your family with confidence and compassion. I’m rooting for you always.

In Gratitude,

Dr. Erica Bove

Transcript:

Hello, my loves, and welcome back to the Love and Science podcast.

I am so, so honored to have three amazing guests tonight who are a team.

They are three fabulous RAIs, Dr. Susan Hudson, Dr. Carrie Bediant, and Dr. Abby Evelyn, who together make up fertility docs uncensored.

I am sure you have heard of them because all my patients come to me having listened to their podcast.

I have been a guest on their podcast, and the exciting news is that they are launching their new book.

I cannot wait to get into the meat of the book with you all because we have been waiting for this content.

People have asked me for this content, and I have not yet produced it.

The fact that we have this in written form as a resource, as a guide for all of us in reproductive medicine, I'm just so, so thrilled to welcome these three fabulous RAIs to the show so we can talk about this new resource.

Welcome, ladies.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for having us.

Absolutely.

And so their new book is called The IVF Blueprint.

And so, you know, just to sort of dig in, I'd love to know what inspired you to write this book.

Well, I think we were inspired by the fact that just like you said, there's so many people out there that are interested in IVF, both physicians and non-physicians, medical people, non-medical people.

And there's a lot of details about IVF that we just don't have time to go through in the office in our 30-minute consult.

We have to cover so much from soup to nuts, you know, start to finish that we just don't have time to talk about a lot of the other things that people may wonder about.

And so this is a book that really dives into that.

And we're able to start at the beginning.

We have a section before IVF, during IVF, after IVF, and a section on reasons why we would do, people would do IVF for other reasons, like if they have a genetic condition or something like that.

So ultimately, we wrote this book so that somebody would have a pretty good resource, a handbook really, to take with them as they go through their IVF journey.

That is so amazing.

And so let's count.

So we have three seasoned REIs here together who came together and wrote this book.

How many years of experience do you all have combined?

Are we counting fellowship or not?

A lot.

Some of us are all-- Let's count fellows, start at fellowship because that's when really the REI training begins, the REI being in the world.

So I'm the baby and I've got 13 if you count from fellowship.

Wow.

Dr. Susan, how about you?

I'm terrible.

I'm the person who can't even remember how old I am, so asking me how many years I've been doing this.

So let's see.

We have, let's see, 12, 13, 14-- What year did you graduate residency, Susan?

So 18 years for me.

18 years for me.

Amazing.

And how about you, Dr. Abby?

So when did I finish fellowship is the question?

No, when did you start fellowship?

96.

So I've been in this like 29 years.

29 years.

Wow.

Okay.

So now I need to do the math on this one.

So that's a quick 31 plus 29.

That is 60 years of experience.

60.

Which is-- You should have stayed darn good for that.

I think you guys look really fabulous for 60 years of experience.

But I mean, I think it's just helpful.

I mean, before we hopped on, Dr. Abby, we were talking about how you've seen over 11,000 new patients.

I mean, I think sometimes we don't appreciate enough how much wisdom comes with the day-in, day-out experience, right?

We get our training.

You realize you don't learn everything you need to know in your fellowship training.

And then the technology evolves.

I mean, PGTA, all this endometrial stuff, all the antagonists even, all the things.

And I even mid-career, I feel like I'm older counseling my fellows and my residents about the way things used to be.

Somebody asked me today about an LH to FSH ratio.

And I was like, is this really a historical fact?

Are we really talking about this?

But it is.

I mean, people are not taught this these days.

And so I think just to appreciate how many patients, how many complicated situations that you all have been in that have led to you being where you are today and being able to offer the wisdom that you have to share.

And so I just think that's just fabulous.

And so tell me a little bit more.

So tell me the before IVF, the during IVF, after IVF, what sorts of topics do you cover within those phases?

So the first part of the book, when we're talking about before IVF, we're talking about supplements.

So what are things that actually have some data behind them?

We talk about your other health conditions.

We're not just dealing with your reproductive tract.

We're dealing with your entire mind and body.

And so we need to make sure all of those things are in place.

And then we also talk about what types of testing you might need to do prior to going through an IVF cycle.

Because the book is really, as we mentioned, intended to be a handbook.

We understand some people may be smack dab in the middle of it, but some people may just be thinking about it.

And so that's really, we really wanted to say, you know, if I've never walked into an RAI's office and I've thought, hey, IVF might be in my future.

I kind of want to learn a little bit more about it.

You can start at the beginning of the book, but you don't have to.

So then there's during IVF, which is the thick of it, which is the monitoring and the ultrasounds and maybe some medication side effects and things like that and what to do.

Is that sort of...

That's a whole chapter on medications.

Yeah, a whole chapter on medications, right?

So sort of in the thick of it, the things that they don't tell you necessarily and sort of trying to preempt some of those anxieties or concerns as they might exist.

And then after IVF, what's sort of in those parts?

So with those, as we're getting into and through the whole IVF process, it's really broken up chapter by chapter.

I mean, there's a chapter on the medications, there's a chapter on the monitoring, there's a whole chapter on the retrieval itself.

There's a chapter on deciding fresh versus frozen transfers, some historical information there that really feeds into what people are getting advised now and what they hear out on Facebook and out in the world.

We talk about what are the frozen embryo transfer protocols, we talk about PGTA.

It's very much a chapter by chapter.

Like you could pick it up right smack in the middle saying, "Okay, I'm about to go through a transfer, pick it up at the fresh versus frozen chapter and keep going and be very, very comfortable in the middle of the book." Or you could start at the beginning or you could skip from chapter to chapter bouncing around depending on what suits your needs at that time.

And so really walks through all those steps.

And then the final section is looking at what are all of the other reasons that people need to have fertility treatment?

Things like advanced genetic conditions where you need PGTM or PGTP or PGTSR, where you need a donor, sperm donor, gestational carrier, an egg donor, LGBT, there's a whole LGBTQIA chapter for patients who have the slightly different needs of that population.

And so we really try and drill it down so that whoever you are, even if you just pick up the book for the one chapter, it stands on its own.

[J.B.

WOGAN] And egg freezing, Carrie's written a great chapter on egg freezing.

That's another one that people are really interested in, I think, or will be interested in.

[K. LIEBERMAN] That's amazing.

That's so amazing.

So I'm curious, I mean, I'm curious about your process about doing this, right?

You know, I mean, I sort of keep my list of the things that people ask me about most often.

My audience is mostly female physicians with infertility.

We have some women of other professions, but for some reason, the physicians are the ones who find me.

I want to know sort of from the perspective of like your process of writing this, how did you even decide like where to start and what pieces of information to highlight?

I mean, I'm sure you are as comprehensive as you could be, but I'm sure the listeners will want to know like kind of how you came to this point of writing this masterpiece.

We had decided at the beginning of the podcast, we sort of set some goals.

I think Susan was the one that we almost, we didn't really come up with a mission statement, but kind of we came up with goals and things we wanted to accomplish in a certain timeframe.

One of the things from their beginning we wanted to do was write a book.

And so we had talked about it and talked about it, you know, as physicians, we get really busy and it's hard to kind of to do it.

And so at one point I thought, well, I just, I'm going to delve into this and kind of figure out how you go about all this.

And so we had talked about kind of things that we thought would be important.

And we have lots of listeners that ask lots of questions.

And I would say the great majority of our questions are about IVF.

And so we felt like that that was really a good place to start.

And then just in the perspective of the layout of the book, we just thought kind of like Kiri said, to lay it out in a way so you could either go to a specific chapter or you could go start from the beginning and go all the way through.

And so I think as we wrote the book, we had sort of an outline, but as we wrote the book, you know, we came up with like, Oh yeah, we need to put this in and Oh, where does this go?

And it was a little challenging with three of us writing the book to try and figure out kind of where certain places, certain things went.

But I think we all in all did a pretty good job really with the first go around of getting most everything in the book.

It was just a matter of kind of organizing it, you know, so that it was in the logical order and a good place.

Yeah.

That makes sense.

Because we've been podcasting for so long, we also do what parts were our different strengths and weaknesses.

And we all wrote on things that we had interest in doing there.

We had one chapter that all three of us combined, and that was our supplement chapter, because I think that was probably the most challenging one for all of us to do.

Yes, absolutely.

But we had to put a lot of information of why we do it fine.

And so we did that.

And then through the process of editing the book, because we all read over each other's, and we really blended our voices that I really think it created a really seamless entity that flows from beginning to end.

Well, that's amazing.

And I think, you know, as I think of my people who are the female physicians with infertility, you know, they're going to be like, I need to know about Fresh First and Frozen, or I need to know about PGT testing, and I need to know about egg freezing.

And so, sure, people might pick it up and go from start to finish, but it sounds like people really can enter where it's most useful to them and really get the wisdom that they need in the moment.

And it's not even total.

We actually have references in it too.

I was going to say, your listeners particularly will appreciate this.

We joked on chapter six, which was a supplement chapter that was hands down the hardest chapter to write because a lot of the other chapters, we could remember the citations and remember like the references, but with the supplements chapter, we just had to, you know, go to the library and pull papers and quote, you know, different sources.

And it was a tough chapter to write and to write it in a way that was understandable and not like you were reading a textbook.

And Susan easily revamped it and made it a lot more readable than I think it was initially, just because it had so much information in it.

I think that'll be really useful too.

I get questions about supplements all the time.

And also the protocols, I'm so glad that you wrote about protocols because my physician, you know, it's hard to go to medical school, right?

You do your residency, even my OBGYN patients and clients feel just like completely lost when it comes to the REI lingo and the physiology and all the things that are so far out on the stock of medicine that is REI.

As I think about your audience, you know, people who really need to understand things at a granular level to make their empowered choices, but for whom they feel like they're in a foreign land, even if they're in medicine themselves, right?

Because it's even worse, I think, being a physician, being like, "I quit using air quotes here.

Like I should understand this.

I should have a better understanding." And so what you're really doing is helping people to feel more at home in the system, to be able to access the language, to be able to hear from the experts with resources, with references, to make the best decisions.

Obviously the relationship with the REI, there needs to be front and center, but I think you're right.

Because of those 30-minute appointments, you can only talk about so much.

And we know that Reddit is not going to cut it.

We know that the Google rabbit hole is going to just keep people up at night.

So I say, "How can we keep people out of those non-evidence-based sources and really get the meaningful information in a useful bite?" And it sounds like this is really what needs to come, right?

And another thing for your listeners to know, both Abby and I went through IVF ourselves.

So we've been the people sitting in the chair and the people sitting on the couch.

So we really took it as what was information that we wanted to know.

I mean, I remember being in tears during my IVF cycle because I was getting one piece of information from this and one piece of information from there and things weren't making sense.

Not having that information is what a lot of the fear comes from.

It's just so complicated.

There's so many things that can happen and there's so many options of, "I picked this.

Do I pick that?" And literally, you're dealing with...

We wrote a 300-page book and we're expecting our doctors to give us all that information in that 30-minute consult.

It's just a good point.

It's just not humanly possible.

And we really did write this from the perspective of also thinking about if somebody else wrote this book and came to us in our clinics, what would we want it to say?

Interesting.

Yeah.

And an important thing, and I'm sure you share this with your listeners as well, is that there are so many ways to do what we do.

There is an art to art to the assisted reproductive technologies and there isn't just one way to do it, but what we try to do is give a little bit of the background of why somebody might choose this medication or choose this protocol or choose to recommend a certain additional test.

What is some of the rationale behind that is just automatically going on in our heads that we're trying to convey in a very short amount of time?

I think that's so important.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

We also wanted to make sure that when we go to ASRM, the annual conference every year, that we don't have our colleagues coming and chucking a copy of the book at our heads because, "Why did you write this?

My patients say da-da-da." We wanted this to be a very supportive help and a comfort tool, something you can shove in your purse and just have with you as a comfort object that is socially acceptable as you're going through an IVF cycle.

We don't particularly want to tick off our colleagues.

It's written in such a way that it always goes back to talk to your doctor because your doctor knows you best.

They're the one that is looking at your levels and they're the ones who are going to be able to say, "Yeah, your FSH and your estradiol technically fall within the normal range, but there's something about this that makes me think X." That's why we're doing this.

Even though it may not be what you think it should be based on the book or based on your most recent Reddit thread or whatnot, they have a reason.

None of us do anything arbitrarily, but those nuances, even with as much detail as we put in the book, your doctor is going to know your nuances.

We're really trying to avoid the throw a book at our head scenario at meetings.

[crosstalk]

Yeah, go ahead.

Go ahead.

Dr. Amigus was going to say along the lines with the chapter that Susan wrote on the different types of stimulations that you can do.

It goes back to patients being confused by why a doctor may do what they do.

Even I was looking at, "Okay, are we talking about long Lupron or day 21 Lupron or Lupron Trigger or Lupron for Receptiva Assay?" Even I was like, "Wow, we didn't use Lupron in a lot of different ways." No wonder patients are confused by, "Well, why did I get Lupron for a trigger here, but now you're giving it to me right before I do my transfer.

I don't understand." I have a whole mini lecture for my residents on all the uses of Lupron.

If I'm ever lagging for material in a lecture, all I have to do is bring in Lupron some way and that's 20 minutes right there.

Yeah, it's true.

That's why our physician patients and clients get confused also because it's like, "Wait, I thought I had this categorized in my brain." Things are all evolving.

We as REIs, we work really hard to keep up with the latest science and everything, but especially if you're a cardiologist or you're a surgeon or something else, you really can't keep up.

Also, what you're doing is you're giving people the context so that they can start putting the information that they get about their own body in their own situations on a scaffold.

I think that's a lot of what's missing is any context as to why a doctor might choose a certain protocol or why somebody might have a diagnosis that maybe isn't quite intuitive.

All those things, I think, giving people the context of REI and specifically IVF.

I think that's really what your book is about is the IVF journey so that it's a more empowered process and not one.

That's what drove me to form Love and Science was I was just so sick and tired of seeing smart, beautiful, educated women just completely powerless at the face of infertility.

I was like, "This has got to stop.

Who is going to be the one to empower these people so that they can actually live their lives and just not be so hopeless and powerless?" That was really my biggest driver was to be like, "How can we bring these women, these beautiful women back into their place of power, back into their confidence space?" I think that's what you're doing with your book is to say, "Here's the lingo.

Here's the tools.

Here are the building blocks." Yes, every single person's journey is individual, but yet here is how we approach the art of art so that you may also have that perspective.

It's not some secretive thing that we all put off away, "Oh, because the doctor said so." It's like, "No, let us take you to our museum and let's give you a private tour so that you can understand the working elements of this process." I think it's fabulous.

I think it's going to help so many people.

Tell me a little bit about your plan to launch this book because my understanding is that it's coming out on September 23rd, which is a fabulous day.

Bike group programs are also launching in the fall.

Lots of positive energy in that space of knowledge and empowerment and just sharing the knowledge with everybody who deserves to know.

Tell me about your plans to launch this amazing masterpiece.

As we are going through this, I think we have talked to probably a million separate people of how do we really work with the movers and the shakers in our field who do have a lot of contact with patients who can get this to the people who need it most.

We've talked with quite a few people who have podcasts like yourself, who are very invested in getting good information out to people.

It's all of the teachers and the movers and shakers of our world.

Launching it in the fall is wonderful because when you think about it, the fall is the time when you shed the old dead stuff that is no longer serving you.

You start to move into what is going to be new and prepare for it and then spring into it.

It's really wonderful to be doing it in the fall as people are preparing because I don't know if you guys know this.

It seems like forever and always, January is a crazy month for IVF clinics because everybody has gone home for the holidays and they've gotten gradient tilde going, "When are you going to have a baby?" They just hit their limit.

We wanted to make sure we had this available for people before that rush hits so that when they go through it, they can feel empowered and feel calm about it and be able to get it at all of their favorite bookstores, whether it's Barnes & Noble or Amazon or Target or Bookshop.org, any of those places.

You can go to our website, thefertilitydocsuncensored.com website and there's launchpads, links to all of the different places you can buy it.

Wherever is your favorite bookseller, there's lots of places out to get it.

It's also available in both hardback, audiobook, and ebook.

That's amazing.

That just for your material, we got it for you.

I was going to ask about that because I will say most of my people, my clients specifically, are real audiobook kind of people because it's like, "Well, I listen as I'm doing the laundry and I'm so busy and I'm a physician and I'm balancing all the things and I'm driving to my fertility appointments." What else are you going to do as you're driving to your RA clinic but to listen to the IVF Blueprint?

I think that it's wonderful that it's in so many formats.

Who is reading this book on audiobook?

I'm curious.

Who's the voice?

We were actually given some choices of narrators.

We do have on the audiobook, there is a special segment that's about an hour long that's an interview with the three of us talking about our journeys and the different things having to do with the book and kind of that type of stuff.

We do have a voice in the book, literally a voice on the audiobook.

That's fascinating.

We have a professional narrator who's reading the book for the majority.

I love it.

But actually the actual rationale behind having just one person do it is that it's a lot easier to listen to when you don't have changing voices.

That's why we have a narrator and her voice is lovely.

It was a very unanimous decision of, "Okay, she's the one who's going to do it because she's got that same warmth and energy that we try and have with all of our patients." It's a good fit.

It's a good fit.

It's easier to listen to and feels like she's just kind of blending right into the discussions that we always have.

That's amazing.

I envision this as being something that is in the waiting room of every fertility office in the country.

That's sort of what I envision is you walk in and you have the tables and you have the couches and the chairs.

Think of how much waiting.

Obviously, we all try in our respective offices to be as efficient as possible, but sometimes there is a backup and sometimes or maybe somebody comes early.

Just having it on the table for people to pick up and read, having it as a conversation piece.

I'm a book nerd.

I love book clubs.

I was a great books major in college if that tells you anything about me.

I know.

I do really love books.

I think about all the book clubs that we have.

People are people of all ages, really, because I say everybody, if they're not doing IVF themselves, is one degree separated from somebody who is.

Would you all agree with that?

Even if you are to support your daughter who's doing IVF, if you are to support your colleague who's doing IVF, educate yourself and understand what is going on in their lives.

I had a client recently whose boss talked to her about something and she said, "Well, I just have to share with you what I've been going through the last two years without even asking for a day off and everything." I think people are just, not that they're bad people, they're just clueless to what this actually involves in somebody's life.

I think it can help us have compassion, even if you're not going through IVF, to have the understanding of so many people who are and have a little more empathy and compassion.

That's another way that can be used.

Because if you're going through IVF and say your sister or your mom or your best friend, they want to know more information about it, but you're just like, "I can't explain all of this.

I can't really process it myself." The book is a great resource.

That's fascinating.

As you're talking, Dr. Susan, I'm thinking about a client I had who she ... Interestingly, I'm sure you all see a lot of sister pairs because the genetics are the genetics.

These two sisters both suffered from infertility and one got pregnant with chlomaphene, which is fantastic, although that didn't work for the other sister who was my client.

Even though these were two sisters, even though they both shared infertility, my client who is going through IVF was like, "I just don't think I can talk to anyone." Even my sister who went through infertility just cannot understand the toll that this particular burden of all these IVF cycles, all these appointments, all this data, all this disappointing news.

I would love to connect with her on this, but I don't think we can because even she just doesn't get it and I don't have it in me to explain it to her.

I think even something that's that specific of a situation, two sisters who might share very ... It can actually help them bridge each other's journeys and support each other even better.

I think of all the possibilities and just blows my mind.

I've had some of my physician, patients, and clients say to me, "Dr. Bove, I just wish there was a book written for what they don't tell you.

They don't tell you, "Oh, you're going to react to the progesterone and oil." They don't tell you that your hair is going to fall out.

They don't tell you about the different particular side effects of the antagonist." I mean, a good RAI nurse will go through these things, but I think it shouldn't just be so patchy like, "Well, maybe I'll get this counseling and maybe you won't." I think there really just needs to be a Bible, so to speak, of these are the things you need to go if you're going to entertain this process.

That's really kind of the mindset we had when we went into it.

We didn't really call it a Bible, but really, like I said, everything we could possibly think about, like when you said shots, I know Susan wrote stuff about what she did when she took her shots and what you can do to alleviate the discomfort.

It kind of is like a Bible.

It's like everything we could think of that somebody would want to know about IVF, basically.

One of the things that when you think about it, as you're going through a clinic, even if you're a clinic, your doctors and your nurses and the front desk staff and everyone is amazing, the volume of information is so huge that even if, let's say you go through this and everyone really truly does give you every piece of information, you're not going to remember it.

You need to go back over things a couple of times because it doesn't ... It's not going to stick the first time because the volume is just too much.

That's okay.

You just tell people, "I will say the same thing as many times as you need to for you to understand it." I'm totally fine with that, but this just gives us another avenue to do that that is hopefully easier for patients to digest at the pace that they want to go because it's not even a podcast.

You can stick your finger in the book and go, "Okay, I need to think about that," and come back to it two hours later.

Hopefully you haven't had your finger in the book for two hours, but whatever suits you and really come back to it.

We're hoping that that serves that purpose as well so that you can take it at your own pace so that if you are overwhelmed, you just walk away and come back when you're ready.

That's right.

I do think ... We know that when we're in an anxious state, our frontal lobes are offline.

We don't absorb things as well.

That's another reason I was driven to form Love and Science was because I was talking in ways that I thought, "should be landing with patients," but I think it was that heightened emotional state of anxiety or overwhelm that was truly preventing people from absorbing what I had to say.

I tried so many different ways and I realized until I reduce the anxiety, until I can calm the nervous system down, that's really when the information is going to absorb, but you can't always do that even being ... We talk about white coat hypertension.

Even being in a doctor's office, especially a fertility specialist office, in and of itself, that's going to change the vitals.

That's going to make it a more stressful situation.

You're right.

This does restore the agency that people can take it at their own pace, return to it when they need to.

Also, people learn different ways.

I'm a visual processor.

My fellows always joke because I'm always hovering over the ... I never sit.

I always stand because looking across the room at a computer screen in labs, I want to be able to see the numbers myself because that's just how I learn.

If you speak to me in my ears, I'll appreciate it, but it's not going to ... Everyone processes information in a different way.

I think this allows people to process the information at a pace and an avenue that really works for them.

If somebody's an audio learner, great.

Somebody has to be able to read a book, if you're more visual and they want to read a paragraph four times, then fantastic, but it opens up so many more possibilities for people.

Yeah.

One other thing I would add in too is on the flip side, one of the things when we first started the podcast, we would often talk about, and I'm sure you experienced this as well in our other female listeners in their fields experiences, so many people go online and they're like, "Well, I read this on Google.

I searched Google and this is what I found." I tell my patients that if you search on Google, you're going to find things that we haven't done in 20 years.

Sometimes people come in and go, "Now, why don't you do that post-coital test on me?

Why don't you do that challenge test on me?

Well, we don't do those things anymore, but nothing ever dies on the internet." Part of this book too was to let people know what middle of the road physicians are going to do.

We're not way out there to the right or way out there to the left.

We're right in the middle.

What a normal OBGYN REI doc would consider when they're doing treatment.

I think that way people can compare and contrast what they're hearing in their practice.

Sometimes people come to me for second opinion and I'm sure it's the case with you guys as well, "Well, I'm not sure.

They told me this, this, and this." I'm like, "No, that's right on target.

That's what I would do." I think it helps people just reassure them the information they're getting is good information.

That's right.

In the snapshot of in 2025, this is the standard of care.

This is what we're doing.

This is the most up-to-date data.

I think that makes a lot of sense.

It's just true.

There are many right ways to do it, but I also think that we need to be current and we need to be evidence-based and separate out what does not anymore belong.

That makes so much sense.

I'm curious what surprised you.

I'm curious for each of you.

If there's one thing that stands out that you're like, "Oh, that really surprised me when I was writing this book." I was really surprised at how much I liked doing it because I used to say, if I'd known, of course now we're on electronic medical records, but when I started out, we were not.

I used to say, if I knew how much writing I had to do in medicine, I would have probably never gone into it because I didn't like to write.

I did find it in English, but I didn't really like it.

I really enjoyed it.

It really was a creative outlet for me.

I really had much more fun than I ever thought I would.

That's amazing.

How about you, Dr. Susan?

I enjoy it coming, just being able to bring it all together.

The fact that we're the typical type A people.

We had an outline.

We had a plan.

Watching it evolve into what it eventually became and being like, it became a cohesive entity and the fact that we were all able to add but essentially have the voice of Fertility Docs Uncensored as truly the voice of the book is what was exciting to me.

That's amazing.

I really loved the reminder of how much I enjoy teaching.

I was surprised by that.

The reason I was surprised by it is because I'm faculty at UNLV, faculty at Mountain View Residency.

I've taught the med students and their didactics.

Teaching is just part of the job for where I am.

This made me turn on a different part of my brain of, "Oh, I have to write this down.

I have to make it tight and concise." Very understandable.

Both Susan and Abby are about to fall off their chairs laughing at me.

Compressed is not usually a word I would describe Carrie as.

No, but my writing was way better than my talking.

After the two of you went through my writing, it was even better than that.

It was a nice reminder of pulling everything together and getting it across very clearly so that someone could pick it up and read it and get it, not having had the background of a zillion years of training in it.

Yeah, that's so true.

Go ahead.

I think I was going to add, and I haven't said this to Susan and Carrie before, but we've been together now for five years, and this has been such a fabulous collaboration.

I feel like they're my sisters, and it's like we talk about how we can answer each other's sentences or know what the next person's going to say.

We've podcasted for at least 250 some odd hours because we have 250 more than that.

It's really been special for me to have this kind of relationship with two other female physicians that are REIs.

We kind of, right before we podcast sometimes, we'll vent about something, and it just stops to have them to bounce those things off.

This has just been the mountaintop of our relationship together, so it's been really fun.

That makes me so happy.

I think about when I'm with the three of you, your energy is so palpable, and the sisterhood that you have is so just apparent to me.

I think anybody who listens to Fertile Doxone sends her truly, but it's so beautiful.

I think to come together and to have this creation together that is serving the world, really it's serving all the people who otherwise would remain in the dark, would be on these Reddit threads at 2 AM.

It's just that you've been on this journey together and that you're doing this.

This is what we need in the world.

We need women coming together to change the world for the better, and you're using your knowledge and your skills.

Like you said in the beginning, Susan, strengths and weaknesses and everything, and this is how I think of my two partners at Vermont.

We are so complimentary as people that I think of our strengths especially.

We lift each other up, and then when we are strong, that just gives so much to the people around us.

You're doing this on a national and international level, which I think is so powerful.

I cannot wait to see you enjoy the fruits of this effort, which I know ... How long did it take you to write?

What did you say?

I know the idea has been turning for a while, but I'm sure you've spent lots and lots of hours on this.

All writing took us about a year.

Yeah, that's a long time still.

I mean, really, it's a labor of love, but then you get to enjoy the fruits as you see people in their book clubs, in their conversations.

"Oh, this finally helped my mother understand, and she's no longer so judgmental about the fact that I'm doing ..." Whatever it is, whatever you hear day in and day out that makes the journey 10 times harder, you're dissolving that pain for people, which I think is just so powerful.

It's amazing.

Yeah.

In your hopes, and it's so funny to say this ahead of the lunch, but I think that sometimes we have hopes, and then what the reality even further surpasses what we're hoping for, but at this moment of time, as of this date of recording, what is your greatest hope that your readers will take away from this book?

I want them to have good, solid information that's not just from somebody who's a self-proclaimed expert in the field.

Yes.

Because we get a lot of those, unfortunately.

I know we do.

Yeah.

I want them to feel some of that uncertainty and anxiety about the unknown.

I want that to dissipate because at the very least they know, "All right, this is what's coming." I don't necessarily have to go back and ask my doctor and my nurses and everybody a zillion times because I'm going to walk in and this is going to be, in general, the next thing that happens.

We're going to do the meds, and then this is how the retrieval is going to go, and to help get that uncertainty, calm down a little bit.

That's so beautiful.

I just think with knowledge there's power, and I think particularly for your listeners and Susan and I were in the same boat and Carrie, just the more information that you have, we tend to intellectualize, I think, when we're stressed and anxious.

We want to get information, information, information.

I really think a lot of just our other patients too operate in that way.

I think by having this book, they'll feel better because they'll feel like, "Okay, I've read this and this is what these three physicians say from three different practices, three different backgrounds and training.

This is what they've agreed on is the knowledge that we should have." I think it'll make women feel more confident and hopefully less anxious when they go into this process.

That's amazing.

That is so beautiful and so powerful.

Well, I, for one, cannot wait to read this book.

I want it in all the forms personally.

I want the book that I can hold in my hand and put on my coffee table so that people can ask me about it in conversation and all the people in my life, the men in my life, all the people need to know about this.

I want the audio book because I need to hear this interview.

I would not get that on the written page and I need to know.

I just need to hear because I think it just ... We listen to the podcast of course and I think it's ... If you are listening right now and you have not dabbled in the Fertility Docs on the SEDSAR podcast, please go there and please listen.

When I look at which podcast episodes of mine people listen to the most, hands down it's the science.

I call myself love and science because I think it takes both.

I get the most enjoyment personally out of recording that this is how you emotionally handle XYZ.

This is how you do it.

I mean, that's my jam.

That's really my ninja strength.

I think that I am always surprised at how much people are craving the knowledge.

They're craving the science.

Those are the ones that my people come to over and over again.

Those are the ones that my people share with their other people in their lives who are struggling because there's such a knowledge gap.

I think that's what your podcast speaks to and that's what this book is really seeking to address, which I think is so wonderful.

It's amazing.

I cannot wait to listen and to read.

I understand that you can pre-order this book.

Tell me more about that, please.

You can go pre-order currently on Amazon.com as well as at Barnes & Noble.

There's also links through, Carrie, what is for the independent booksellers?

Facebookshop.org, and those are more of the indie booksellers.

The other thing to consider is if you are going to buy in bulk, which is something that can apply to, especially if you've got a bunch of physicians.

This is a book that OBGYN residents should probably read because it's technical enough for them to understand what their patients are going through.

If you're ordering for book clubs and for people who really need to have more of that information, whether it's a college textbook, for a class, those types of things, porchlight.com is where you go and there's all the bulk pricing there, so that can help as well.

That's amazing.

That is so fabulous.

Well, I am so, so honored and so honored to know you guys that you're doing this work in the world, that they're sharing this beautiful information.

I cannot wait to share it with my people.

Is there anything else you want the listeners to know about the book, about the process, about just the next steps in terms of dispelling the myths?

I'm sure there's a lot of myth busting in this book.

I'm sure anything else that we haven't yet talked about that you really want to make sure that the listeners here today.

I mean, I think one of the big things is IVF is really successful.

If you're thinking about it and you want to do it, just jump in and do it.

All physicians are some of the most devoted patients that I have, the patients that just, you know, something doesn't go right.

They just keep bouncing back and bouncing back.

They're the most resilient.

That's the word I was looking for.

But if you're thinking about doing, just take the plunge and do it and there's a really good chance you'll do really well.

That's right.

I think a big thing, and I'm sure Erica reinforces this, is that you're not in this alone.

That's the reason why we do this.

We dedicate an hour of our life every week just to talk about all of the nuances of what we do.

And really, it was a labor of love for us to write this book so that you can make your journey even more successful both, you know, in trying to have a baby, but also where your heart and your mind don't suffer from the stress of it and not knowing what's going to happen next.

Yeah, I think that's a really good point.

Yeah.

And I think Dr. Abby, like you just said, I want to reinforce this point as well is that, you know, it's about the process and that, you know, especially for people who stick with it.

You know, try to extract yourself from this particular cycle and this particular outcome, because if you look at the data, you know, maybe we're going to learn something on this cycle that's going to influence how we approach a different cycle.

You know, it's, you know, try to take the pressure off of this particular embryo transfer, you know, when it's really about the process.

And this fertility journey is a chapter in your life, right?

And so there's, you know, we're talking about books, which is kind of an interesting thing, but really it's about trusting the process.

And sometimes the process involves two IVF cycles.

Sometimes it involves three IVF cycles.

Sometimes it involves, you know, donor gametes, you know, and that's the pathway that people decide sometimes that sometimes it involves educational care.

Like there is not one right way to do IVF.

This is all about family building and bridging our people to become parents and to build their families.

And so I think as we think about what we're really trying to do here is to help people understand the process and trust the process.

Because if we're always so hypervigilant, especially my patients who are used to, my clients who are used to delivering the care to being in that position of power, that hypervigilance, which is unavoidable as humans, that helps nobody, right?

It's just harder.

So, you know, I think when we can help with the alignment with the REI, you know, especially when it's appropriate, when we can help people say, this is why I should trust the process.

We talk a lot about balancing trust and advocacy, but I think as people read your book, that's really what they're going to be able to do is to say, oh, this is why this makes sense.

And so therefore I can trust.

Wait a sec.

This might be a little off from what seems like the standard of care.

Maybe I need to advocate a little bit more in this space.

And so when we can help people navigate that process, I think hypervigilance reduces success rates personally.

And I think that when we can help people get into that space of trust, trusting the process, trusting the doctor, trusting themselves and their body's own inner wisdom, I think that's when really the magic starts to happen.

But how do we help people get there?

And I think your book is going to be a really big part of that for so many people.

We definitely hope so.

It was written with a lot of love.

And I hope, all of us hope that that comes out in every page as you're reading it, knowing someone agonized over these words, just someone.

It was three someone's.

And the number of times that all of us have read and reread the book, I think Susan probably holds the record, but Abby and I are not far behind of having reread the book a zillion times to get it right.

And so hopefully that comes through and people can feel one extra layer of love and that they're not alone.

Well, it's so important, you know, people read studies and they're like, oh, well, this study showed this.

And I'm like, oh, but it was biased because this person had this self interest in doing the study.

And so I think the intent matters.

The intent is three smart, experienced, capable REI's who came to this project with the intent that everybody could understand the process, that everybody could be empowered.

And that is why the labor of the love existed was so that each person could have the best information, the most accessible information in a way that made sense to them.

I mean, I think the intent here matters.

And so just I hope that this podcast will help people understand the spirit in which this book was written and feel that love as they read the book.

You guys are doing love and science, right?

Can we honor members of your podcast?

Yes, please.

Yes, please.

I had somebody once told me, well, maybe it's love as science, you know, and maybe the two are actually kind of...

I like that too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, neurochemically, it makes sense if you actually think about it.

I think that you guys are combining the love and the science, right, to make the science accessible through a very loving process so that it can infiltrate those cells and help people have the best experience and the best success rates possible.

So thank you for what you do.

Thank you for being you.

Thank you for coming together as a group.

Thank you for empowering.

Like I said to my listeners, to my people, pre-order this book.

I'm going to do it tonight.

I cannot wait to read it when it comes out.

I cannot wait to discuss it and have conversations about what's inside.

It's just going to be such a useful tool for all of us, all of us who provide the care, all of us who receive the care.

And thank you again.

I'm so very excited to see the fruits of this as it starts to come out into the world.

Thank you again for having us.

Awesome.

Thank you all for having us.

Absolutely.

Until the next one, my friends.

That's right.

Okay.