Is IVF the Only Way? What Your Doctors Aren’t Telling You About Fertility Success
IVF Burnout Is Real — And You're Not Weak for Feeling It
Let’s get one thing straight: IVF isn’t just “science with a price tag.” It’s a trauma loop with a pretty brochure. Women come in hopeful and leave doubting their bodies, their choices, and their worth. And no one warns you that failure isn’t failure — it’s often just misalignment. Your body isn’t a lemon off the factory line. It's a brilliant, sensitive system trying to keep you alive. IVF trauma? Nervous system chaos? Fertility burnout? Welcome to the club no one signed up for — and yes, you can opt out.
“You’re not broken. You’re just running on empty in a system that rewards panic over peace.”
Intuition Isn’t Woo — It’s a Survival Skill
You know that quiet voice that said, “Do I really need this test right now?” or “This drug feels wrong”? That’s not fear. That’s intelligence. But the fertility industry loves to override it with PowerPoints and fear tactics. You get handed stats and shoved into protocols — and somewhere in the chaos, you forget your body has wisdom. Nervous system healing starts when you stop outsourcing your power and start tuning in. Want better results (or sanity)? Start with common sense, intuition, and curiosity. Not a calendar full of appointments.
Healing First, Baby Maybe
Here’s the truth: pregnancy is not the end-all. Health is. You can spend tens of thousands trying to bypass your body’s ‘No’ — or you can sit your soul down and ask what it needs. Irregular cycles? Chronic fatigue? Zero libido? Those aren’t side quests — they’re the core storyline. Because fertility is a function of health, not a test result. And no, you’re not being dramatic for wanting answers before another round of emotional roulette. That’s just being smarter than the system.
The Industry Isn’t Evil — But It Is Incomplete
Jenna gets it. She's been through it. The baby factory isn’t filled with villains — it’s filled with blind spots. Reproductive endocrinologists are trained to grow embryos, not restore vitality. They miss things like gut health, mitochondrial damage, mineral imbalances — the root causes of infertility. That’s why women like you walk away wondering, “Why didn’t this work?” instead of “What does my body need to feel safe enough to create life?” Let’s start asking better questions.
You Don’t Need Another Test — You Need a Nervous System Reset
If you’re obsessing over AMH levels or booking your fifth consult “just in case,” slow the hell down. Obsession is not intuition. It’s your fight-or-flight response on a loop. This isn’t about quitting — it’s about regulating. When you move from panic to presence, your biology follows. Whether you get pregnant or not (and many do once they reset), you’ll get your life back. You’ll stop living on emotional VHS rewind, and start moving forward from a place of actual power.
Final Takeaway:
You are not a project to fix or a diagnosis to decode. You are a whole human with an inner compass that’s been drowned out by protocols, pressure, and pain. But your fertility — your real fertility — was never in a vial or a waiting room. It’s in your cells, your nervous system, your daily choices. And when you slow down, reset, and reconnect, something shifts. You remember who the hell you are. And from there? Anything is possible.
👉 LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE
Connect with Jenna Longoria
Let's Do This Together 💚
Monica
Listen up, lovelies: Everything I share about health, diet, or fertility magic is my opinion. Yep, it’s all based on years of trial and error, study, reading, listening, and side-eyeing the nonsense out there. What worked for me might be a jackpot for you—or it might be a total flop. Bodies are weird like that. 🤷♀️
Let’s get one thing straight: I’m not a doctor, nutritionist, dietitian, or any other kind of licensed health wizard. If you need medical advice, run—don’t walk—to an actual qualified professional. Don’t come back here saying Monique told you to eat kale for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, okay?
As for the products I mention, they’re either what I used during my own infertility rollercoaster or what I wish I’d known about back then. No guarantees, no promises, and absolutely no refunds on your hope budget if it doesn’t work out.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, proceed with curiosity and, above all, discernment. You’ve got this. 💪✨
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Full transcript:
00:00
Hello, beautiful, and welcome to the Finding Fertility podcast.
00:10
I'm Monica, your mentor in uncovering the hidden layers of your fertility journey. Together, we'll discover the right path for you within the six essential steps to creating the family of your dreams. We'll ditch the overwhelm, tune into your intuition, and build a vibrant foundation for your fertility. Whether it's through gut health, subconscious healing, or energetic alignment, you can unlock your body's...
00:34
natural power to get and stay pregnant. Your fertility journey is all about radical responsibility and deeply believing that your body is on your side. It's time to stay consistent, embrace trust, surrender, and create the transformation you deserve. Finding fertility does not diagnose, prescribe, or treat any fertility issues. What we do is empower you to take control of your health by uncovering the root causes holding you back. Let's do this together.
01:03
Happy Friyay! Welcome back to another episode of Finding Fertility. I'm your host, Monica Cox, and I am so honored you are here with me, becoming the conscious mama you were born to be. Today we have the second half of Jenna's podcast. So without further to do, let's get to today's episode. It's taking that pressure and just saying, hey, all I have to do is show up for myself every day. 1%. Whether that's diet, lifestyle.
01:33
mindset, energy work, if I just continue to focus on loving life now, your fertility is innate, it will naturally come. And I always say like, if, if it doesn't, which sometimes that happens.
02:00
you're still going to be better off because you're going to be a happier version of yourself and you will have a lesser chance of living in the pity party or victim mode or anger or frustration and you can create that life of your dreams with or without a child.
02:25
It makes sense to prioritize our health first before, you know, looking into any other options because there is always, as you said, I love to say innate fertility is innate. It is something that we are designed to do. And that's one of the reasons way back when I was like with always asking my clients about their menstrual cycle, what day they ovulated, how long their cycle was because our menstrual cycle is this, it should be this automatic process that happens. You know, we ovulate or hormones ebb and flow. And so if something's caught up, you're not menstruating every 60 days, you're not ovulating. Why? Digging into that earlier before you do that later is going to help you figure out what's out of balance in the body and supporting our health. It's not just for having a healthy menstrual cycle. It's not just for
03:20
getting pregnant, like we're not commodities, know, like baby, we're not like, oh, we only, we only matter when we're trying to get pregnant, take them to the baby factory, let's do all the tests, let's do all the things. And then before and after they don't care about our health. It's like, you know, if you have irregular menstrual cycles, it's show that women who have irregular menstrual cycles live, you know, they die earlier. They're more prone to breast cancer and heart disease and Alzheimer's. So to me, that's pretty important. Like I don't want all of these things, baby or not.
03:50
I would like to preserve my fertility and my health for longevity. I always tell my clients like, so, you know, can you get me pregnant? You know, can you get me pregnant? What do you think? What are the chances? I don't play that game because I'm not God. But I always say, look, my duty and my job and my promise to you is help you restore your health and get you into the healthiest version of yourself. And a side effect of that might be a baby. Exactly. Yeah.
04:20
when we're ovulating, when we, when we reignite that innate fertility and we're living in alignment and we're feeding ourselves well and we're, we're, you know, getting some light at the right time and we're avoiding blue light at the right time. And we're kind of just living more in harmony than it's going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely with or without medical assistance, right? With or without. And for some people, Monica, I do think that medical assistance
04:50
is necessary. Yeah, and can be, but it's, it's the, it's the going to the fertility clinic as your first stop is what needs to stop because it just breaks my heart. And I know you see it too. You know, we've had clients who come to us with so many failed transfers. You've, if you've been in that on that, you understand how that, how that is personally.
05:15
when certain things could have been tested or investigated or supported, at least before a transfer, they probably could have gotten pregnant naturally, but they're doing this and taking their money and just going cycle after cycle after cycle. Yeah. Without looking into the health of the couple. Yeah. Blows my mind. Yeah, I have a recent client that
05:44
got pregnant, had a miscarriage and then got thrown into the industry. And that's just what I call it now. And we're having these conversations now and just getting her mindset and realignment of you never have fertility issues. You had one miscarriage, you're a little bit older. So they slapped a label on you. Where if we would have taken a few step back and
06:11
looked at what was going on in the core and she now knows that and is, you know, applying those steps. And that's just the journey that we have to go through. That's the frustrating bit. mean, trust me, I, eight years to getting pregnant naturally, year five, year six, year seven, what more do I have to do? What more do I have to do? And now with hindsight, I can look back and I can understand why I had to go through so much because I can articulate so well.
06:38
why things might not be working with the cellular health, all that kind of stuff. an interesting thing, I know you saw my post on Instagram the other day that has been coming up for me is that common sense has been completely lost in the medical system. And you can go down whatever rabbit hole conspiracy theory you want to go to as of why. But I've really...
07:06
Realize I I'm not a scientist right like I am NOT an academic. That's not how my brain works Give me paints. Give me, you know a snowboard Put me out in the garden and it frustrates me that a layman like me could figure this out because it is common sense and I wonder how much intuition and common sense have in common and I can only now
07:35
articulate that the scientific field, the medical field is so indoctrinated because most of those people in it are very smart. know, they highly educated reproductive endocrinologists have more training than in fellowships and it's just pretty much any other doctor. Exactly. And I'm like, how can you work in this field and not connect the dots? I like it blows my mind.
08:05
And then it makes me incredibly sad because the work we're doing is so bittersweet. Yes, we're incredibly happy that you feel empowered, you want the wisdom, you hear the signs and you're taking action. But after so much pain, and I know that pain and I get it and there's no judgment, but I know that we are now dealing not only with the core issue of what contributed to the fertility issues,
08:34
And what I didn't know until much later in my life, probably a few years into after my second child was born, the actual physical and mental and emotional toll that IVF had on the body. now we are unpacking that as well. So kudos to everyone listening that you're here, that you have embraced a different way.
09:03
And whether or not, I know we wanted to talk about, because I felt this in my journey, right? When I got the holistic and the functional medicine stuff, and I knew, I deeply believed in it, but I still wasn't getting pregnant. And we had already collected embryos and we, you know, the immune suppressing drugs that I use. I had this guilt, like why?
09:29
Why can't my body just do this? And why am I using this? And this is cheating and all that kind of stuff. What are you seeing in maybe your own life or your practice that you're helping these women, you know, release that guilt, release like it is okay, you are doing this in an empowered way. It's a different story. Yeah, I think, you know, once you're the keyword empowered, you know, it's not going into a fertility clinic.
09:59
after one year of trying or six months of trying with that first referral from your OB, okay, fertility clinic, right? That's how it works. Six months, one year, OB says, all right, you graduated to the next tier, fertility clinic. And they just put you through this rigmarole of testing and poking and prodding, but it's so, it's basically just like this algorithm that they're plugging you into.
10:27
when we're so different. And so I feel like that's a little bit different when a couple's going in and they're fearful. It's coming out of a place of fear instead of a conscious, mindful decision of informed consent. you know, for anyone who's not been to a fertility clinic, it's like they sit you down and you have this PowerPoint. That's what it starts off with. Like the doctor sees you.
10:53
for like a 15 minute PowerPoint of how your eggs fall off a cliff, 30 to 35, 35 to 40, 40 to 45. This is your chances, 2 % chance to get pregnant naturally. And it's just terrifying. And then afterwards they bring you into this quiet room where the liaison, the business, the closer comes in. the closer. The closer. It's just, blows my mind. It's like a car dealership or something, but like, and it's a factory of fear.
11:19
And so they're like, you gotta get all these tests, you gotta do all this. Okay, so you're getting all these tests and checklists out of panic versus, okay, the couple, we're not getting pregnant, we're exploring these options, we're gonna go to the fertility clinic, we're also gonna go to maybe another type of practitioner, integrative practitioner, we're gonna functional, whatever. And being empowered, which also means being an active participant in your health journey.
11:46
Not just doing what someone tells you to do because that's what their education says. Hey, I'm educated. I have these letters after my name. And so just listen to me and do this. I'm sorry, but that's just, if you're just going to do that and you're, not going to get the results you would like. You've got to do research. You've got to listen to your intuition. What resonates when you're hearing something like listening to your body. know you would probably agree with this, Monica, like when, when you're hearing something or a test is suggested or something is suggested.
12:15
What are you feeling in your body? What is coming up for you here? Is it resistance or is it openness? you know, like I recently just a personal, you know, story yesterday, I had an HSG procedure and I was so resistant to it at first. I was like, you know, it's only been, it's only been, you know, six months and one miscarriage. I've had one baby, everything's probably fine. And I don't want to have that done.
12:45
Um, but I did have a C-section because of placenta previa. And so the other day I was just really kind of like thinking about it. And I was, you know, I I've really released a lot and. know, I just, for some reason, the HSG was just my heart. I felt a softness when I thought about it, I was like, you know, I really just want to rule out any structural issues. And I kind of felt a little guilt that I wanted to go for this procedure and it's a sterile and it's with a radiologist and I should just trust in my body.
13:13
But like, felt this, like, really felt this, it wasn't like I felt I was doing it out of fear, if that makes sense. It wasn't like I was going in to get bad news. I wanted to go in just because I'm like, we're coming up to the year, Mark. And I just, I've had clients that have had HSGs that have rolled out like maybe a closed fallopian tube where they opened it and they got pregnant. What a win for Western medicine. It can happen if we combine, you know, obviously with,
13:42
improving their egg quality, doing the work, gut health, mineral balances and mineral, mineral balancing and energetic work. It wasn't just the HSG that got them pregnant. They still had to optimize their egg quality, but what a beautiful integrative combination of a Western medicine procedure and using diet and lifestyle and, know, and, and epigenetics by being the master of your ship and doing, and, and, and influencing your genes.
14:11
And so I did that and it didn't feel scary or fearful where at the beginning when it was suggested, it felt fearful. They were like, you need to get this done and da da da da da. And I was like, do I? know? And so I don't know if that, you know, I feel like, just being empowered, being an active participant, not saying yes to every single test or every single procedure that they want you to do. And.
14:40
coming up to your own conclusion. And usually sometimes that takes more than one practitioner. I just, I'm not trying to be the industry as you call it, but honestly the industry, they do want to help people have babies. I do get that. I believe that these reproductive endocrinologists are not like sinister. They're not like, can I rule the world and trick people into our services and not have babies? I generally believe they really want you to have a baby. They really do. But it is not in their tool house.
15:08
to support your mitochondrial health, your cellular health, to do the testing that is necessary. And all they know is how to grow an embryo in a Petri dish. And that's not all you know. I mean, that takes skill. That takes skill. And so if that's a route that resonates with some people and you want to control the timeline and you know your chances, especially, honestly, was in your 40s, you have more chances of conceiving naturally than with IVF.
15:38
So, you know, because I was reading about how like, if, you know, why aren't you ovulating? Okay. Well, let's throw Clomid or Letra's all at it. So your egg quality, you you do ovulate, it forces your body to ovulate, but is that egg really good quality? You know, because we haven't got to the bottom of any metabolic issues or inflammation and gut infections. And so the outcomes of IVF are lower if you don't fix those problems anyway. So if anything, we should all be on board.
16:08
reproductive and endocrinologists, all of us should be on board that, we need to get the health of the couples, you know, we've got to support their health first, get to the root causes of any of these issues that are going on so that they can have a better IVF outcome.
16:26
Yeah, I mean, maybe that doesn't happen because I know they'll get pregnant naturally. I don't like I like to think that there's not some like committee of sinister reproductive endocrinologists out there like, yes, let's not do it so that they need five cycles instead of two. But yeah, yeah, it's hard to go down that because I don't I generally don't think they know. Right. Like you said, I really just don't think they get it. But the statistics are out there already.
16:55
You know, we're a little bit over 40 years into IVF and let's just like be graceful. Let's say half of that 20 years has been really heavy use, right? And the last 10 years, even more, because the technology is getting better. The rates are getting better. All that kind of stuff. The statistics already out there that IVF babies are 30 % more likely to have a whole host of issues. And there's, um,
17:24
a great autistic care center therapy where I live and I randomly met the owner and he didn't know what I did. I was, just casual conversation, you know, what's your take on the rise of autism? Cause we can't deny it. And there's many things he said, you know, and he said, but one of the things I see in our clinic is the use of IVF, the use of IVF. And that's the conversation we're not having.
17:54
in the industry of what are the long-term effects of not boosting cellular health for both mother and baby? Because I don't think it's the treatment. I don't think it's, you used IVF, so therefore it damaged the egg or the mitochondria or this or that. It's just you are bypassing nature's ability to say to you, this isn't a great situation, you don't have enough, this doesn't have, whatever it is.
18:23
And I feel that deeply because I used immune suppressing drugs. So my body really, especially my IVF baby, I know for a fact my body wasn't healthy enough to carry that baby without immune suppressing drugs. And during that time, I did everything that I had in my toolbox to help combat that issue though. And that is the empowerment of what holistic health gives you.
18:52
is not, you know, hopefully we can avoid spending all that money on IDF, but giving you better results, better chances, lower risks for everyone involved. And that's the true empowerment. And sometimes it's hard to have these conversations to not seeing that we're totally against it because we're not. But how do you put that fire and that emphasis that
19:22
Listen, I promise you, if you take a year, six months, just to really hone in on you, that the outcomes long term are going to, well, you're going to decrease those risks dramatically for yourself. And that's just basic science. That's just common sense. you know, unexplained infertility is a BS diagnosis. So that's what they'll give you a lot. They run three tests for
19:52
to see if it's unexplained infertility. It's the HSG test, which I was just mentioning where they put the dye, the contrast dye through your fallopian tubes and uterus. And if that is open and you're still getting pregnant, if your blood work is open, which is so full of holes, that blood work that they give at fertility clinic. It's like TSH for thyroid and free T34, like a ferritin marker, a CBC, a celiac panel for some of them.
20:19
And what else do they do? An infectious disease panel. Like it's so incomplete. Like really that's all. And then you rule out, you're perfect based off of that tiny amount of blood work. And then the other one is your, which I love the ovarian assessment report, which is the AMH and the FSA and LH, which, so annoying. AMH everyone, like, and I'm sure most of your listeners know this, but AMH predicts your success rate for IVF, not natural pregnancy. So.
20:46
And it can change. It changes. It's the dumbest marker. Like I have literally turned down brand deals, right? Because now you can test these things at home and they're like, here, we want you to like promote FSH. Yeah. And I'm like, absolutely not. I was like, this is the dumbest test. It literally puts everyone into fear. Oh, it's low. And it changes. Yeah. And you can control your AMH and you can control it. And it's also
21:12
That's quantity of follicles. It's not quality, which we are focused on quality. So those are the three tests they give the woman to see, like everything is, if you're not getting pregnant and all of those are good, unexplained infertility. And with the man is a sperm panel, they've set the bar so low on sperm health now. And then, okay, if those are all good, unexplained infertility. And that is such BS.
21:38
So as we're circumventing the natural cycle of things, because our body, if we feel safe, if our nervous system is good, if we are nourished, we have this innate fertility. That is what we are here. We're designed to procreate, whether we choose to or not, or whether it happens. so it just means unexplained infertility just means something is off. We need to investigate a little bit more. We need to support our bodies.
22:07
And so we can live in alignment and get pregnant. And that's different things. I know that I do believe in some testing. do believe there is, there is a, and I was personally one of that Monica, in our session, was like, okay, I need to just stop testing. Like I'm a functional nutritionist. I know all the tests. I can run all the tests. I can analyze my case as much as I, mean, the data, I've got the data.
22:34
Okay. And so I've got to stop controlling. And so it's like, I'm stepping back from the testing. This doesn't mean that I should, you should never test. mean, obviously you need to have some testing. you have, you know, a goalpost, you know, you have a, you know, you have an understanding of where you're coming from. Now it's when we start testing like every four weeks or every eight weeks. Okay. Is it changing? What's going on? Like get the data released and surrender, but working with someone too, that can give the testing, you know, like, you know, for infertility.
23:04
You want to see like a full iron panel. You want to see mineral testing, gut testing. know you're very, you know, and I agree with you, Monica on the gut testing. Like that is so important for sperm and egg health, like lowering inflammation and autoimmunity. It's the number one thing. I mean, obviously you're going to have these like variant, like different things and you got to find what's right for you, but hands down the whole entire world has to work on their gut health. You know, it's just essential.
23:32
for everything and you know, just bringing it back to common sense. Right? Back to common sense. Back to common sense. and part of that is like you ask these couples like they're experiencing it. How's your house? Well, you know, I've really never really thought about it. I'm just, I just, I'm just focused on getting this baby. How are your energy levels? Well, you know, they're kind of shitty. Okay. Well, you know, having a baby is going to take a lot of energy from you and you're going to need that energy and you know, postpartum is challenging.
23:59
So, you maybe this is your body's way of protecting you because you don't have the energy now for yourself, let alone a baby. Right. So let's get those energy low. And also low energy is a sign of poor mitochondrial health. So, you know, what is your appetite like? What is your sleep like? How are you feeling? Like, we want to have these in check before we go through the biggest marathon of our life, which is pregnancy. Absolutely.
24:26
There's so much more than the two pink lines. And I know that I was in the thick of it for a really long time, just searching for that. And, you know, hand on heart, if you can step away from that part of the journey and just focus on what truly matters and what actually controls your fertility, you know, that ultimate goal is, within reach for sure.
24:55
Thank you so much for coming on. This has been such a fun conversation. Please let our listeners know where they can find you. Yeah, you can find me at JennaLongoria.com. It's my website and I'm on Instagram at The Period Guru. And I also have a couples fertility checklist for y'all that Monica will put in the links to the link in the show notes. Yes, I will. Thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure and until next time. Thank you, Monica.
25:25
Thank you once again for tuning in and becoming the conscious mama you were born to be. Remember, I wasn't some magical unicorn who stumbled into fertility success. I stayed consistent. I put in the work and I made it happen. And guess what? You can too. And I have something for my loyal podcast listeners, but here's the key. This is only for women who are feeling burnt out, frustrated, and stuck in the cycle of endless research. And you're at a point
25:54
where you are screaming, I have tried everything, why isn't this working? This only works for women who are ready to take a radical responsibility for their journey and start listening to their body's innate wisdom because deep down you know you can heal and achieve your ultimate goal. If that's not you yet, that's okay. Not everyone is ready yet to show up with ease.
26:21
deeply connect to their energy, unlock subconscious patterns, and listen to their body's ability to come into full coherence. But for those who are ready, I'm offering something I only do with my paying clients, and this is a fertility breakthrough session. This is the first thing I do, even before I start really deeply working with someone in a coaching package. It's a deep dive session where we look at exactly
26:50
where you are right now, what's keeping you stuck, and the easy shifts that can change everything. But fair warning, these sessions are very limited and go fast. So if you're interested in checking out my superpower for uncovering exactly what's been overlooked, jump into one of these free calls. They're deep, they're intuitive, and they're game changing. The only way you can access this is if you actually personally message me.
27:20
You can do it on your favorite platform, IG, TikTok, or at my personal email, Monica at findingfertility.co, not .com because they wanted $3,000 for the M with just one word. And that word is dreams. Obviously, D-R-E-A-M-S. And I'll make sure you get that link right away. Remember this transformation happens when you stay committed to yourself.
27:49
Trust your body, follow your intuition, make it possible. The links that you need are down below. And if you are still here and you absolutely love this podcast, please take some time and leave me a review and help other women like you find this podcast to get the support they need. Help a sister out. Leave a review today.
