Postpartum University® Podcast

How Fertility Impacts Postpartum | Gabriela Rosa EP 249

• Maranda Bower, Postpartum Nutrition Specialist

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That years-long struggle to conceive doesn't disappear when the baby arrives—it becomes the root cause of challenging postpartum recovery. Fertility specialist Gabriela Rosa is here to expose the devastating link between unresolved fertility trauma and intense perinatal mental health struggles. . We dive deep into the physiological and emotional barriers, highlighting the profound impact of pre-conception health and the shocking reality that the male factor accounts for up to 50% of fertility issues, yet remains frequently ignored. Learn how to shift focus from treating symptoms like postpartum anxiety to addressing the arduous, traumatizing path to pregnancy for true holistic family healing.

Check out the episode on the blog HERE. 

Key time stamps: 

  • 04:15: The unresolved trauma of infertility and how it fuels guilt and resentment in the fourth trimester.
  • 09:32: Need for trauma-informed perinatal mental health for previously infertile mothers.
  • 10:19: Infertility is never "one thing" but systemic, biochemical obstacles.
  • 14:27: The concept of transgenerational fertility and lifetime exposures.
  • 16:00: Endocrine disruptors and their impact on reproductive lifespan.
  • 19:00: Why miscarriages are common but not normal—a call for root-cause investigation.
  • 25:52: The critical need to address male factor infertility 
  • 27:10: How Gabriela Rosa achieved a 78.8% live birth rate by treating both partners.
  • 30:45: The conflicting interests in the healthcare system that promote IVF overuse over prevention.
  • 35:18: The massive cost savings of implementing preventative medicine in the perinatal period.
  • 36:44: Inspire Study for reproductive grief and trauma.

Connect with Gabriela 

Gabriela Rosa is a renowned fertility specialist, reproductive health educator, and Harvard University-awarded scholar. She is the founder and CEO of The Rosa Institute, the world's first virtual and holistic fertility clinic, serving patients globally. Gabriela's innovative methodology addresses biochemical obstacles to help couples overcome infertility and recurrent miscarriages. With her team, she has educated over 140,000 couples in more than 110 countries. She also hosts the TalkSex with Gabriela Rosa podcast. For more information, visit www.fertilitybreakthrough.com.

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SPEAKER_00:

The postpartum care system is failing, leaving countless mothers struggling with depression, anxiety, and autoimmune conditions. I'm Miranda Bauer, and I've helped thousands of providers use holistic care practices to heal their clients at the root. Subscribe now and join us in addressing what modern medicine overlooks so that you can give your clients real lasting solutions for lifelong well-being.

SPEAKER_01:

Hey everyone, welcome to the podcast. Miranda Bower here, and today I have Gabriela Rosa, who is a renowned fertility specialist who helps couples overcome infertility and miscarriage even after years of failed treatment. And what sets her apart is her science-fact, holistic approach that uncovers the hidden biochemical and lifestyle barriers to conception. She's the founder of the world's first fully virtual fertility clinic. She's empowered over 140,000 couples across 110 plus countries with proven personalized care. I am so, so excited to have this conversation today, where we are blending the process of having a baby and what it takes to have a baby and the struggles that many women face with infertility and miscarriage and how that impacts the postpartum period because it's all interconnected, it's all together. And Gabriella, I'm just so excited to have you here to have this conversation because I don't even think we've talked about this. It's almost been like 250 episodes on this podcast. And I don't remember having this conversation before. Oh wow. Well, I'm so glad that we're having this conversation. Thank you for having me. Yes, yes. So let's start out with your work. You you work with couples addressing metabolic disorders and hormone imbalances and chronic stress before conception, all of that is so instrumental to conception itself. And how do those underlying issues, especially with your unresolved before pregnancy, how do they impact postpartum recovery? And maybe explain how they impact fruit sanity for those who might not be aware.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Very good questions. And very, you know, there are two different types of people who try to get pregnant. Well, in fact, probably three. Let's let's put it into three buckets, just to make it a little bit, you know, of a of an easier way for people to understand. There's the people who don't try and get pregnant, okay, and get pregnant. And so, you know, those people, and typically, you know, they fall into the back the bucket of, you know, they they either have not actually thought that they might want to have a baby and just oops got pregnant, right? So it's the the the oops babies we hear about. The people who have the drunken one-night stand and you know is are pregnant and you know, like all of those very unintentional pregnancy outcomes. Which is kind of the norm. That's that is normal, actually. You know, in the general population, when people decide that they want to have a baby, usually they will conceive within preconception attacks when nothing is getting in the way. Okay, so that's essentially the first bucket. The second bucket is people who decide they want to have a baby and they conceive within the 12-month period. Okay. And some of those people, they may within that 12 months or around, let's say around that 12 months, they may have conceived naturally, or they may have sought some treatment and done the treatment and it worked. Right. So that's let's just put those people together in the same bucket. Even though, you know, if you are trying and you have to use RVS, some people might say, oh, but that's not the same. Well, it kind of is, because the third bucket is the people who basically have done all of the treatments and have done the trying and have done the you know, months, sometimes years, I've had decades. And then they go and do IVS, they do everything else, and they're still not pregnant. Okay. And I even in that bucket, I would even put some of the patients that come to me who have done multiple failed donor egg cycles or donor embryo cycles and are still not pregnant. Right. So ultimately, those are three very different types of people. And so what happens for those two different types of people postnatally is also very different, you know, because one of the things that I see very frequently for the couples I treat, particularly women who have tried to conceive for a long time and then, you know, finally have their baby, the one of the things that happens is that that grief and trauma of the fertility journey doesn't just disappear. And it's compounded by them, you know, because we all know like the post-partum is not easy, right? I mean, I think that that if you've got over 200 episodes on the topic, is because there are things to talk about, you know, there are things that need to be addressed. And, you know, that's essentially very common for a lot of people and for people who have struggled with infertility and miscarriage failed treatments, they go through those challenges, they feel really tired and exhausted, and the baby cries, and they don't know what to do, and then they start becoming resentful about not having their own time, their own life, their space to breathe, their, you know, things that they were accustomed to. And some mothers, they will experience that, you know, and they will be quite okay with the fact that okay, it's passing it's momentary, and I'm on to the next moment. Whereas people who have struggled, they usually feel really guilty and you know, berate themselves even more about the fact that, you know, this is everything I wanted and now I have it, and I can't even be happy about that, or I'm resentful about the situation or my child, or, you know, so there are some additional feelings I I know from you know, speaking to patients of mine that are really difficult to process for people who have had, you know, challenges. And even when you haven't, I mean, you know, it's it's a it's a very nuanced topic, you know, in terms of like how certain people experience their life. And it also is dependent about, you know, what kind of baby they end up having, you know. And I say this with a smile on my face because with my own children, my first son, he would not be put down like anywhere. Like you couldn't, we only realized a couple of years after he was born that he actually had silent reflux. So we didn't know at the time, you know, first-time parents, we had no idea. And what was interesting, and we found out because when his brother was born, and you know, I called him the perfect child, and he would sleep for five hours at a a night or you know, during periods. And my first son, he would not sleep for more than 20 minutes to an hour and 20 minutes all the way through the day and night. It was a constant struggle. You know, it was constantly having to hold him, he couldn't be put down. So that was really challenging. And I thought that was normal. I thought that was what babies did, you know, until obviously I had my second and realized, oh no, actually, they are meant to sleep for about, you know, four or five hours at a time. And my first son didn't sleep for more than like he slept for five hours for the first time after 10 months, you know, and that was because I got this gentle sleep trainer lady and you know, all of this. And um, but you see, and and I think that also colors the experience for a lot of people. So, you know, there's a lot of distinction, and I and I feel like also your personality will impact how you transition through those stages, you know. But certainly infertility throws in somewhat of a spanner in the works, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_01:

You've talked so much about the feelings and the things that might come up, and and this is something that I've experienced a lot with the clients that I've worked with over the last decade plus is what you had just described, the feelings of resentment and frustration. And you know, I I've been wanting this for such a long time, and now that I have it, and I'm grateful, and what's wrong with me, and you know, all of these feelings. What about the physiological impact? How does that play a role? Because a lot of these women who are coming to you with infertility issues, they have something that's preventing that fertility to happen. So what what could that be for one? And how is that impacting postpartum as well?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So, you know, look, when it comes to the ability to conceive, you know, and this is going back to what I was saying before, majority of people will conceive. In fact, within 12 months, 93.6% of people who are trying will get pregnant. Okay. So when that has not happened, it's not a matter of better life next time, or it's a numbers game, just keep trying. No. Because the reality is that there is something that's getting in the way, you know, from what you've just touched on. Whether it's biochemical, whether it is physical, there is definitely obstacles. And usually it's not just one. And I think that a lot of people get caught up on exactly that point, which is they seem like, oh, what why is it that I am not getting pregnant? What's that thing or that one thing that's getting in the way? And actually, it's not one thing. It's sometimes thousands of things. You know, we talk about exposures when it comes to, you know, the things that impact our health. And if we think about it, diet is an exposure. You know, you're an exposure that leads to an outcome. And so either your nutrition is going to lead you to health or it's going to lead you to disease over a 40-year span, right? It's not going to be any different. And I think that that's the difficulty we have is that we are very immediate, you know, humans are very immediate. Like we can see cause and effect very close together, but we can't see cause and effect when that time span lapses. So, you know, we'll have the killer of iceberg today and think, oh, it's only today, it's fine. You know, I'm postpossum or whatever that I'm pregnant or whatever the excuse is, right? And uh and we then disentangle the fact that, okay, we are having that, and that is going to have some kind of consequence. With fertility, it's even more so because fertility is transgenerational. So imagine that. You know, if we have difficulty disentangling cause and effect in a 40-year period, imagine that over, you know, a couple of lifetimes. And so what happens, and of course, there are things you can do. It's the same way that if you were to intervene on having a healthier and more nutritious diet today, it is going to change the course of your next week, your next month, your next year, your next decade. That is for sure. And so that's how we need to start looking at fertility and the challenges that can actually impact it. Because whatever happens from the before trying to get pregnant is going to have a downstream effect after you give birth, right? And it's going to also have an impact on you and your child's health. Now, when it comes to not getting pregnant and being in that third bucket that I talked about, which is the people who have tried lots of different things and nothing has worked, when they are told, oh no, it's fine, you have time, or you're running out of time, or this is, you know, like there's a whole lot of mixed messages that goes on, really. But whatever it is that somebody is told, one thing that we need to be very clear about, and this applies to every area of life, and especially reproduction and reproductive lifespan. So that covers the period before getting pregnant, the period of pregnancy, the period postpartum. And of course, if you're going to then continue to menstruate, you're postpartum for the entire time that that is going on, because there is the potential to get pregnant at any point within that, you know, kind of life cycle. And so what happens is that we need to start looking at the things that we do to nourish our health way before a conception is even in place. And that is even when we're not trying to get pregnant. Because as I was mentioning before, given that fertility is transgenerated, like you and I, in fact, every human alive today was once in their grandmother's womb. You know, like when I put it this way, people are like, what? But here's the thing: we women are born with all the eggs we'll ever have, right? And so we, as little follicles in our mother's womb when they were being ingestated as a baby, were already there when they were being ingestated in their mother's wombs, you see. And so the exposures, the impacts, the things that we are that are swimming in our environment in our day-to-day, from our grandmother's exposures to our mother's exposures to our own, are all going to have some kind of effect. You know, we are understanding so much more these days about the fact that, you know, endocrine disruptors are a thing. And endocrine disruptors are anything that will, you know, that lock and key effect, you know, that hormones have on cells. So the key is the hormone, the lock is the cell. When it gets in there, it does something to that cell, right? Now, the impact of endocrine disruptors is that they disrupt what the hormones would typically be doing in terms of biofeedback loops within the body. And so then what ends up happening is that you will have some kind of differential effect than what would be expected from, you know, kind of whatever it is that you're doing in your day-to-day. Now, that's relevant not just for getting pregnant, not just uh for the mother, but also for the baby, because we know the endocrine disruptors are present everywhere, from fragrances to plastics to phthalates to, you know, which is in plastics. Um, often we hear about, you know, choosing BPA-free whatever, you know, dummies and, you know, bottles and so on and so forth. The reality is that a lot of those, even though they might say BPA-free, bisphenyl A-free, that there's many bisphenols. It's not just A. In any plastic, you will find, you know, there's an alphabet of bisphenols, really. And so it's kind of understanding, okay, what are the types of exposures that will have an effect on my body now that will either harm or benefit my chances of your normal physiological processes to be able to then figure out, okay, how does that impact downstream from getting pregnant and having a baby? What's also interesting here is that, you know, when we are looking for these effects, we need to understand that they happen in a long time period. It's not a situation of, you know, I did it today, tomorrow I'm going to have an effect. But it the effect is dose-dependent. And dose also relates to the amount of time that you've had certain exposures. So when you end up with an outcome of inability to conceive, inability to keep a pregnancy to turn, inability to breastfeed, whatever it may be, right? We need to understand that there is a very big distinction between the word normal and common. Because what a lot of my patients hear, and I don't know about you, Miranda, but I'd love to hear what you know people are being told these days in terms of postpartum. But, you know, in terms of like my patients, usually when they have difficulty conceiving and keeping a healthy pregnancy to term, they will hear things. And let's say, for example, they've had a miscarriage, you know, at six weeks or seven weeks or eight weeks, they will usually be told something like, Oh, yeah, it's normal. It's normal. Miscarriagements are normal. Just keep trying. Better luck next time. It's a numbers game. And it's like, oh, actually, you know what's normal? What's normal is you have sex, you get pregnant, you have a baby. That's normal. Miscarriages may be common. They may happen often and around that time, but they're not normal. When something like that happens, we do have to question deeply about its cause. What is causing this to occur? Because sure, it might be just part of, you know, that whole physiological component of, you know, some pregnancies don't make it to turn, which is common, but it's not normal. There's usually something that's causing that, that's underlying it. The same applies to fertility, right? If you've been trying for over 12 months without success, and then you end up perhaps, you know, doing IVF and it hasn't worked. Those things happen. In fact, with IVF, we know that only at 20, and this is across all ages, which means that, you know, as women get older, you end up having even less of a chance of conceivable conception through IVF. But we know that on average, across every age group, and here, you know, a lot of the younger women will make up for what is going on for women over 40, but 29% of cycles actually make it to a full pregnancy determine. 29%, which means that 71% of IVF cycles actually fail. Now, you may be told that's normal because it's common, but it's not normal. The second that you have an egg and a sperm together and you have an embryo and you've had that embryo transferred, at the moment of transfer, you are pregnant. There's no other way to describe that, right? In utero, if you're trying to conceive naturally and that occurred, sure, you wouldn't see it, but it doesn't mean that it's not there. And actually, that's one thing that a lot of times people get confused about is that they think, I have never been pregnant. I've never seen a positive pregnancy test. Those two things are different statements and different occurrences of different things. You may never have seen a positive pregnancy test, but it doesn't mean that fertilization hasn't occurred and that implantation hasn't been attempted within your body. It just means that you haven't seen a positive pregnancy test. What a lot of people miss and don't realize is that if they have long standing infertility with clear fallopian tubes, you know, that are patent and that are working and operational, and sperm that is relatively healthy, it's very possible that you have achieved virtualization in the past. You just haven't seen a positive pregnancy test. So there's a lot of these kind of like this. And explanations that people miss or that gets simplified and sometimes oversimplified that causes people to actually misunderstand their situation and go with the flow of like, oh yeah, no, everything is normal, just keep trying. You know, there's there's a lot that we can say about that. But I think that's one of the big things that people need to be aware of. And of course, you know, that will also then impact the way that the body responds, you know, when you are in that postpartum period. Because if you had fertility challenges and you were able to restore optimum health and optimum fertility to take home a healthier baby or a healthy baby, guess what? You are going to have an easier time. And mind you, it is not just like the fact that some people will struggle postpartum and other people won't, is not about necessarily anything that they have done or have not done, or that they should have done, that they didn't do. You know, I think that we need to really remove that blame piece out of this conversation because, you know, you just you end up with different babies and different interactions and different situations that occur. You know, a mother who has had a natural vaginal birth and you know, milk came in so easily and her baby sleeps for five-hour periods. Gosh, that is a dream life for a post-pastal, you know, mother. Jesus. Um, you know, whereas that doesn't happen. That is not common, you know. That is not common, especially not with a first baby. But when it happens, oh, hooray. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_01:

I love everything that you are sharing here. And I'm sitting here shaking my head. You might even hear me. Yes, yes. I feel like I can sit here and listen to you for hours and hours. You're such a wealth of knowledge. And, you know, I'm I'm thinking like, where do we where do we take this conversation? Because we can dive into, you know, that that transgenerational that you talked about. We can dive into fathers and their role, which I don't think is talked about enough about how oh, I think we need to talk about that. How it's so critical for them to to play a part of this of that. They really do. I think the statistic is uh around 50% of infertility is due to men, and I could be completely off. That was just a random thing that I remember seeing uh recently. Yeah, I have really about I I'm curious too, because I'm I'm wondering how many moms come to you as a first-time mom having experienced you know infertility and and these challenges. Do you give them a way to optimize health, obviously for conception and through that process, but utilizing the postpartum period as a healing opportunity for future fertility because postpartum is this very unique space in which our bodies are have the ability to heal very deeply beyond what we consider quote unquote normal. Uh, many cultures around the world think that we have this ability to heal our bodies during this time because we are closest to God than we've ever experienced before, right? And only women get to experience this. But science shows us that we have microtumors, uh, we have uh fetal cells that come into our bodies, stem cells, things like that that we can use and that our bodies use to deeply heal us. And then there's so many other components. So when we have the right support, when we get the nutrition that we need, when we are well cared for, no matter the temperament of our babies and our temperament, when we have what we need as women to thrive in our own homes caring for our babies, uh, then we have this unique opportunity to hear our bodies. And I've often found that many women, and and I'd love to hear your experience, who finally, after such a long process, years of fertility and treatments and trying to get their you know body quote unquote healthy to have a baby, and then they get healthy and or whatever it is that they feel they needed to do, and uh you know, had the treatments or or whatever the case, saw the the physician and got pregnant, and then are able to get pregnant multiple times after without having any issues. And so I'm wondering if that is also, you know, maybe not common, but maybe normal. Like where where does that fall on that? Do you have you seen that before? Where does that play at all?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, but it's a great, great question. Let's start with the male factor uh piece, because I think that that's such an important thing for all people to understand. If you're wanting to have a baby as a couple, the reality is that you know you you were very close in terms of the the actual attribution of effect, right? So it's 40% male factor, 40% female factor, and 20% embryonic and other factors that impact implantation. Which essentially means, from a male and female perspective, yes, it is a 50-50, right? And so, and of course, the embryonic piece, we can only really impact that by impacting the egg and the sperm before they create an embryo, really, right? And so, of course, there is the environmental piece, which is where the embryo is developed. But, you know, there are so many different pieces here that I think we need to take into account. The first is that fertility is a team sport, there is no other way around it. And in fact, there is a lot of research now that shows that not only is fertility that 50-50 equation, the the reason miscarriages occur or treatments fail is also 50% due to male factor, you see? And so it's not just a situation where, and I see so many couples, I mean, I've I've seen thousands and thousands of people over the years. And invariably I hear things like, oh yeah, I've been told that it's an egg issue. And I'm like, okay, uh, where do we begin? Um, with this piece of education. Because you see, when you go through and do IVF and you end up, let's say, you know, you end up with 12 mature eggs, and this is again, I'm thinking of a particular patient here. You end up with 12 mature eggs, and then you go through the process and you end up with the zero embryos. You do that three times and are told, oh, yeah, your eggs are no good, you know, like you have an egg problem. And, you know, I then go and assess the case. I assess every case coming into my clinic because we do make sure that we only check on cases that we can actually help. That's why my program has a 78.8% live birth rate. You know, we did that was my master's thesis at Harvard. I literally wanted to see, okay, what are we actually doing? Who are we helping? What are we doing? And what came out in this analysis was 544 patients, and we looked at the fact that, you know, over um a four-year average of infertility, with almost 50% of patients having gone through and failed through IVF previously, and 51.5% having experienced miscarriages. After treatment, we ended up seeing that the overall live birth rate was 78.8% across that cohort. 47.7% actually conceived naturally, so it did not require IVF. And many of the people who had previously had IVF not work ended up conceiving naturally. And the miscarriage rate dropped to 13.5%, which is under the general population expectation of 15%. So, you know, it was enough kind of evidence for me, having been doing this work now since 2001, to go, all right, this makes a difference, you know. And with the cases that we take on, we only take on difficult complex cases. But this couple that I was just, you know, kind of remembering right now, 12 eggs, this happened three times, and no embryos every single time. And she's been told that it's an egg quality issue. I assessed the case and I see that we have poor sperm count, poor sperm motility, poor sperm morphology, right? And there was no testing about DNA fragmentation or semen culture, which should have been, and no antibodies tested as well. So that's fine. We go, we do all the testing, we find out what's going on, we treat both partners. And even though she was told that she needed donor aid, she probably wouldn't even be successful with that because she had skin lining and, you know, was most likely to be successful with a surrogate. That wasn't true. She ended up conceiving naturally after we improved sperm and improved her health. And she delivered two babies, you know, consecutive consecutively. She basically had one child, came back two years later to revisit the program, despite having having previously been told that she had low AMH and poor eggs, and conceived naturally again the second time and completed her family. So the reality of it is that often, and particularly in the healthcare system, you know, like it's not, it's not the fault of an individual doctor per se. You know, there are some very competing interests and very challenging competing interests that go on when it comes to reproductive medicine. You know, you have the healthcare system that wants to pay the less amount of money to support the most number of people. You have private clinics who want to do the most number of cycles possible because they charge per cycle and not necessarily per baby. And then you have, you know, the individual doctor that's working within the constraints of either the clinic or the constraints of the clinic and the healthcare system, who may want to do the best that they can for their patient, but may also be influenced by how they are remunerated by doing the work. So there's a lot of different conflicting, you know, interests in this picture. And that's what, and then of course, there is the patient's interest, which is they just want to have a baby, you know, and they're not told, however, that there are things that need to be done or that can be done to improve their chances. Um, you know, it's a commonly known fact that it takes 17 years from the, you know, publishing a scientific research paper and a study for it to actually make it into clinical practice, into clinical guidelines. Now imagine 17 years. So the evidence, all the evidence we ever will need to prevent the need for IVF, to prevent the need for I'm you know, overuse of IVF, I should say. I have nothing against IVF per se. It's a great, wonderful technology, miraculous in some ways. Some couples will never conceive without it. But the reality is that when it's overused to the point that it is currently in the world, well, that doesn't benefit the individual. You know, it doesn't benefit the patient because also it's extremely expensive. You know, in most places around the world, an average RVF cycle is$15,000 to$20,000. And so some people just don't go down that path because they can't afford it and they're told that it's the gold standard. When, let's be real, you have doctors who basically are not counseling their patients on you need to stop smoking, you need to stop drinking alcohol, you need to improve your health before you go through IVF, which is demonstration to improve IVF outcomes, right? Then you have to question, okay, but why is that? Is it because they don't have time in a consultation, because of the guise of, you know, having to see as many people as possible under a healthcare system? But what about what happens in private practice? Is it really because they don't have time or because they want to fit in as many more patients, or because they know that if people are willing to pay, there was a study that showed that in the UK, in the UK actually, in order to have there was 178,000 IVF cycles. And it showed that in order to have close to an 80% live birth rate, a couple needed on average eight IVF cycles. Imagine eight. Now, if people are willing to pay for eight IVF cycles, and you know, is there really a point to, you know, decrease that to five or decrease that to none and decrease profits entirely? So there is a part of me that does question it from that perspective. And I know that I'm not alone in that questioning because at the end of the day, private practices, they're usually conglomerates that, you know, have shareholders that they have to answer to. So there are some real challenges that fertility, you know, couples that experience fertility difficulties uh really face when it comes to this, which is also, you know, can I really trust that the healthcare system has my best interest at heart? The answer is no, because it doesn't have the funding to have your best interest at heart. So unless, you know, for testing and for proper diagnostics, and in the healthcare system, you've got the whole cost-effectiveness mindset, which is basically if something is going to be uh paid for and we need to treat, do we prevent if the cost of treatment is the same as prevention? The answer is no in the healthcare system. You know, the healthcare system will not ordinarily spend money on prevention if the cost of treatment is the same.

SPEAKER_01:

So imagine that. Meaning that if we had preventative medicine and preventative care efforts for postpartum women starting, you know, through conception and starting in pregnancy for mental health disorders alone, billions of dollars would be safe. But they are an absolute student. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02:

And quality of life. I mean, think about it, it's just crazy from a purely from a quality of life perspective and a beginning of life perspective. Like we all know there's research that shows that, you know, if you go into a convoluted family environment, that you know, your chances of doing well in life are less than if the environment is better. So yeah, I hear you. It's just such a challenge.

SPEAKER_01:

I am so grateful for this conversation. I know that you I want you to share where everybody can connect in with you and your beautiful work. But you also are doing an incredible study. And I would love for you to share what it is that you are doing and where people can connect in. And of course, we're gonna share the links here in the show notes so people know where to find the site, be a part of the study, but also where they can find more information to.

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. Thank you. Um, so I'm conducting a randomized controlled trial right now on the emotions of reproductive life, you know, whether it's infertility and miscarriage, failed treatments. You know, lots of people who obviously are listening into this conversation may have, prior to this, experienced challenges, you know, along their journey. And those feelings, they don't fade quickly sometimes, you know, like the loss of a child, the loss of a baby, um, you know, all of those things can really linger. And I've noticed over the years that it's one of the big sticking points for a lot of my patients. So we're conducting the Inspire study, which is an expressive writing intervention for looking at how we may improve or change the impact of infertility. And, you know, by infertility, I'm putting all of those things that I've just talked about before in the same bucket. Um, but you know, any kind of reproductive life-related trauma and grief and the stress. So this particular technique, this particular intervention has been demonstrated to be very effective in chronic disease, in chronic conditions like cancer and others, paralysis and you know, a few other things, but it hasn't been studied in this demographic and this population. So if somebody, and it's my my doctoral thesis at Harvard, um, I have one year left. I have to finish the study to be able to graduate. So everybody joined the study. Thank you. Thank you so much. But yeah, so people can find more information about the study at inspirestudy.online. So they just need to put that on a browser. Inspire inspire study dot online. And if people are interested in treatment in my clinic, that is a different thing altogether. And they can go to fertilitybreakthrough.com. So that's fertilitybreakthrough.com. And they're also able to go through and just Google, you know, Gabriella Rosa Fertility, and they will get to me somewhere on the interwebs.

SPEAKER_01:

I love this so, so much. Again, what a wealth of information. I uh appreciate you being here and sharing all of this knowledge. Of course, all of those links are in the show notes. I highly recommend anybody listening in to go take a look and just learn from her work and how this is applicable to postpartum and how this is a conversation we need to be having with our clients as well. So thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you. Thank you for having me, Ryan. It's been wonderful.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks so much for being a part of this crucial conversation. I know you're dedicated to advancing postpartum care. And if you're ready to dig deeper, come and join us on our newsletter where I share exclusive insights, resources, and the latest tools to help you make a lasting impact on postpartum health. Sign up at postpartum you thetteru.com, which is in the show notes. And if you found today's episode valuable, please leave a review to help us reach more providers like you. Together, we're building a future where mothers are fully supported and thriving.

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Maranda Bower

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