EP82 She Took A Break…And Got a Breakthrough

Fearlessly Fertile Podcast with Rosanne Austin

At 39, Sarah did something most women on this journey are too afraid to do: she took a “break.” With so much fear mongering about age and the “timeline,” learn how this brave Miracle Mama changed the trajectory of her fertility by following her instinct. She went from a history of miscarriage and endometriosis, to the natural, healthy pregnancy she had always dreamed of. Sarah is proof of why “weird” is AWESOME.

Transcript:
Hey gorgeous, if you want success on your fertility journey, you’ve got to have the mindset for it. It’s time to kick fear, negativity, doubt, shame, jealousy, and the whole clown car of low vibe fertility journey BS to the curb. I’m your host, Roseanne Austin, Fertility Mindset Master. Former prosecutor and recovering type A control freak perfectionist.

I use the power of mindset to get pregnant naturally and have my baby boy at 43, despite years of fertility treatment failure. I help women across the globe beat the odds on their fertility journey, just like I did. Get ready for a quick hit of confidence, joy, feminine badassery, and loads of hell yes for your fertility journey.

It’s time to get fearless, baby. Fearlessly fertile. Let’s do this. Welcome to the Fearlessly Fertile podcast, episode 82. She took a break and got a breakthrough. My loves, I’m super excited to be sharing this interview with you this week. You get to meet another one of my Miracle Mamas. And I think you guys are going to fall in love with Sarah as much as I have.

Sarah is a really cool example of what happens when a woman makes a decision to do things her way on this journey, particularly when it requires her to follow her instincts, especially when it would be really easy to abandon them out of fear, out of, you know, all kinds of the insanity that we go through when we get wrapped up in statistics and other people’s stories, other people’s Fear all kinds of the stuff that will knock us off course and what you’re going to discover here like so many of my ladies Sarah had a choice to make she was either going to fall in with lockstep about what everybody else is doing Or she was going to follow the call in her heart And what you’re going to hear is Sarah found a way to reconcile the information she was getting from her bump squad with what she knew in her heart.

She didn’t wholesale eliminate modern medical science from her life. What she did was she curated a bump squad that was in alignment with what she valued. Sarah makes no bones about the fact that she really wanted to do things naturally. That was her commitment. That was based on her life experience and her training.

So she had to figure out a way to address the endometriosis she was diagnosed with. She also had to find a way to support her body through a healthy pregnancy, because as you’re going to find out, she had a history of miscarriage, as well as advanced maternal age, because as you will find out, she did something crazy at 39.

She decided to take a break. So I really hope that you take my conversation to heart with Sarah. You’re going to find that this woman’s path really required her to take a stand for what she desired to really dig in, but also to have the softness to be willing to receive the support that would help her get to the place that she wanted to be on this journey.

Ooh, it’s so exciting to hear how my ladies make the seemingly impossible possible. Enjoy, my loves. All right, Sarah, I am so excited for the ladies in the global fearlessly fertile community to get to know you because your story is certainly one of triumph and I am just delighted to have you here. So welcome.

Thank you so much. I’m so excited to be here and talking with you. Yeah. And you know, it’s so funny because when I think about it, you kind of predicted that at some point you would get on this podcast. It was definitely part of my plan. Yeah. So, so why don’t we start by, you know, why don’t you just share with the ladies listening, you know, how did you find yourself on this journey?

Tell us a little bit about when this journey became a reality in your life. Well, my husband and I took about 10 years to decide that we wanted to have kids at all. And so we kind of figured that, you know, we’re pretty healthy. And after waiting so long to even make this decision, probably we were just gonna get pregnant right away.

And I did get pregnant pretty quickly, and I had a miscarriage at six weeks. And then I started doing a little research. Actually, this was the, probably the point where I started doing too much of my own research and, but also like worked with some new doctors and. just kept it all pretty low key. We’re both pretty kind of naturally oriented and I didn’t have any interest in going through fertility treatments.

So about almost another year passed and I got pregnant again and also miscarried early again. Then I really I knew that I needed to ramp up my, my team and sort of the level of investigation that I, that I felt like needed to happen. I think it’s crazy that the medical professionals say that they don’t really investigate until you’ve had three miscarriages because one sucks enough and two really sucks.

So I had actually found you before the second miscarriage through your support and through really a lot, I think, to do with the work that we’ve done, like really learning to listen to myself first and be, trust my intuition and my body, not go down the mindset rabbit hole. And, you know, like really just listening to myself, I sort of followed this.

I kind of think of it as like, uh, like a trail of crumbs, like one crumb led to the next. So it was kind of people, though, practitioners. One person led to the next, the next, the next. And I found myself working with a really amazing naturopath who I spent eight months, I took eight months off from actually trying at all to conceive and did a whole kind of reset of my body systems and.

And then we started trying again and I think about five cycles later, got pregnant and stayed pregnant. So let’s back up a little bit and, and let’s understand because I think something that you said is really important to highlight and that is you decided to take a break. Yeah. Reset, which is like one of the scariest fucking things we can do on this journey, especially when you have a history of miscarriage and.

You know, you’re in a place where you’re like, wait a second, you know, time is a ticking. We took forever to make this decision, you know, to even have kids. And now it seems like the carpet, I mean, the, the rug’s getting pulled out from underneath us. And, you know, it takes a lot of courage to take a break and say, no, I’m going to take care of my body.

I’m going to take care of my mind. Can you tell us a little bit about how you came to that decision? Yeah, and I’ll just throw in my age there too. So we were, I was 36 and my husband was 37 when we started trying. So yeah, so that led me to being 39 when we took eight months off. Wow. Like that is so crazy.

That was definitely a bit of a mental challenge. Yeah. I don’t think I could have made that decision actually without the support of the bump squad team that I assembled. Just trusting all, there was a lot of investment over of, um, over the years of time and money and it’s, you know, so worth it. The combination of my own intuition that yes, something needed to be, there was something going on with my body that I needed to heal combined with the support around me, encouraging me like, yep, it’s not, it’s not too late.

You’re not going to like. Miss your one chance if you take this time to reset. Wow. It was the team approach. Well, it’s a, it’s a team approach for sure, but you had to become the woman that was willing to do that because think about it. Let, let’s get real sister. There’s a shit ton of lack and scarcity on this journey, right?

Like there’s lack of scarcity mentality when it comes to time, when it comes to resources, when it comes to opportunity, Like, let’s talk about that because you did a jack move that most people would never even consider and I mean, mad respect to you to be able to say, Hey, you know what? I’m 39. I’m backing off this thing for a second.

You know, 38 39 when you’re doing that. It’s, it’s incredible to really dissect that process because you had to become the woman that trusted herself, trusted her team more than she fell back on her fear. Yeah. Talk to us about how you got there because that’s some gangster shit. The first thing that comes to mind was my daily routines of meditating and for me doing some yoga and reading.

So having that really made all the difference. And when I let that slip, my mindset totally slipped too. Like, what am I doing? This is crazy. This is never going to happen. And, and then I tracked that, like, Mindset derail back to, Oh, like I haven’t been doing my daily self care practices. Mmm. There is a method to this madness, right?

Like. Yeah. I mean, this is why we build a discipline, right? Like this is why I always say that mindset is a skill set. Like you’ve got to learn this skill set because it’s so. Easy to fall back into your inertia, right? Going back to these old things. Cause you know, there, there was somebody, and I don’t know if it’s like an old Navy seal saying or whatever, but we don’t rise to the occasion.

We fall back on our training and, and it’s like. It makes a whole lot of sense because our, our natural inclination is to go back to what we know, but when you’ve done the work that you have, what you know is such a higher level of awareness and such a higher level of discipline and, and building that daily trust in yourself, trust in your intuition, because that’s a word you use many times.

We’re going to get there, but I really want to make sure that we celebrate the fact that you didn’t just fall back onto the bad habits. You fell back onto the training that you had gathered. Yeah. And I would add to that, uh, part of not sliding into lack and scarcity very often, most of the time I could maintain an awareness of all of the, um, amazing.

Abundance and gifts that I have in my life, like, including having you and all these other practitioners like in my corner, like there’s you and certain these certain other people that I met that I was just like. Oh, yes. I know this person. I need this person in my corner. That was how I kept thinking about it.

Right. But also think about who you had to become in order to receive that. Yeah. Because it wasn’t just reaching out for the help. You had to get past your own excuses that you could have made to say, Oh, that’s too much of a commitment. That’s too much money. La la la la la la. All that boring bullshit. So what did you have to discover within you to get past that and say, no, this dream is This is worth the time and effort I’m putting into this.

I’m going to be that woman. Feeling the, really that desire in my heart to be a mom and connecting with that and staying, staying connected to that. You, so here where we’re at at this point in your journey is you, you and your husband decide to have kids. You guys go through two heartbreaking miscarriages.

You’re supernaturally oriented. So you basically are saying, look, I’m not interested in having some, some invasive treatment. I really want to do this on my own. And that is really cool too, because you had a vision for how you were going to have this baby. You didn’t just immediately jump into medicine is going to save my ass.

Right? Like there was a part of you that, that had to create a vision for how she wanted to build her family. And man, you had to trust in that. Because it would have been really easy to go down a road of, like, chemicals and crazy. I, in college, went through a pre med track, and then really in, like, studying medical school curriculum, realized that it was really all about pharmaceuticals, and I just discovered early on in myself that I wasn’t interested in healing disease with chemistry from a lab.

That I had this long standing innate belief that we can heal through food and supplements and lifestyle changes. And so this, uh, experience really put that to the test. And I really did just have to trust that knowledge within myself and then also trust. Those gut feelings that I had about the people that I was trusting to guide me as far as making those changes and choices Wow Oh my gosh, you’re totally hitting on the holy grail for so many of us.

It’s like trusting yourself What’s that like for you? I came to working with you kind of already knowing That the way that I trust myself is not a mental process that it’s uh Below the neck body process where it’s like down baby neck down. Yeah Where it’s this I like even kind of physically feel myself drawn towards something so it’s like my gut is like yanking me in a direction if I stop and pay attention and my my work has been in Massage therapy, so that’s obviously very body oriented and that’s what comes to mind on that Well, and what’s interesting though is there’s nuance there because it’s one thing to be in tune with your client’s body and, and, and getting a sense of what they need in order to become the accomplished therapist that you are, but it’s another to be able to give to yourself and be willing to afford yourself that same level of priority.

Yes, that is very true. And I found a massage program when I was studying that really emphasized doing the work for ourselves and how we really couldn’t do this work as effectively for other people if we weren’t able to do it for ourselves. Wow. So that was, that was helpful piece along the way. Yeah. No, it’s fascinating.

It’s fascinating how we, we think of ourselves in compartmentalized segments, right? There’s like work self and then home self and friend self. And it’s like, no, there’s actually unity amongst all of those things. And the way we do one thing is generally how we do everything. So you may as well get you straight.

In all of that so that you can actually live in alignment. I know that sounds super woo woo, but I know you of all people won’t be able to get that. Right. Yep. Yep. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about, so you’re at this point, you’ve had two miscarriages. There’s something in you that feels that I need to be healed.

Like, did you have a diagnosis at that point that could explain the recurrent miscarriage? Yeah, so I did, um, I did go to a fertility clinic and do their initial evaluation and, um, and then they didn’t really find anything actually. They thought everything looked good and then it was the next year, not two, maybe six months later.

I started working with a fertility naturopath who asked a lot more questions than anyone else had asked yet and said, Oh, you have like nine out of 10 period pain. You really might have endometriosis. And so I saw a specialist here who was a surgeon who like did her initial exam intake and said, Oh yeah, that’s.

That’s what’s going on. I’m confident enough to, like, book you for surgery if that’s what you want to do right now. And, um, I’d already been working with a naturopath for a few months, and I was already starting to see some improvements with the pain that I was having, and so I really appreciate this surgeon that I saw because she said, you know, if what you’re doing already is working, stick with it, avoid surgery at all costs.

It’s really invasive and hard to heal from and has side effects, but she was willing to do what, you know, she was willing to take my lead as well. And, but I thought that was great. Keep doing what I’m doing. She thinks it’s going to work. Like she’s seen all my labs. She knows how old I am. She’s not freaking out.

So, I mean, so at this point, you’ve got, sounds like a real kick ass surgeon that isn’t subordinating, you know, your opinion to theirs. You’ve got a naturopath, you’ve got me, you’ve got, you know, other people in the constellation of support that you have. And so, what came next? I made a bunch of adjustments to my diet and my lifestyle adjustments were basically getting really regular with my meditation and movement practice.

Cause at this point also my FSH had gone higher than it was originally, which was actually one of my like mindset freak outs. I remember, I remember that, the, the terror of the FSH. No! No! No! And then it turned out, well, obviously, like, that was, so it was like six months later that we conceived. So I, I was just, I was gearing up to like go back for another round of tests to see if things were improving.

It was, um, it was like a lot of dedication day to day. It takes a lot of work to heal something that’s been going on for most of my life. So you know. That was also one of my ways that I understood how it was like, okay, to be taking this break is that I’ve had this like really excruciating pain for this many years of my life, like 15 years.

Every month and so yeah, that’s going to take some time and that seems like really legitimate thing that needs to be healed before going on to have a healthy pregnancy. Right, right. You know, but I think what I’m blown away by and I think what the ladies listening are going to be blown away by is there’s a very deep sense of, you know, the only way I handedness.

I’m not even sure if that’s a word, but we’re going to run with it is. You know, you had to have some really hardcore presence of mind to have the evidence that you have, because at that point, two miscarriages, a diagnosis, or at least strong suspicion of endo, right? And also you had your commitment to try to do this as naturally as possible because in your experience and in your education, you’re like, man, I’m not down with all these pharmaceutical things.

Yeah. You know, it might work for some people, but that’s just not in alignment with what I value. It really had you had to find another gear in yourself, like, and I know how modest you are and like, you know, you don’t want to take a shit ton of credit for this, but I really want to reflect this back to you because it took you could have gone like crazy with all of this evidence.

You could have really gone off the deep end with this, but you didn’t. You actually dug your heels in, you held firmly to what you value, and you had the, the presence of mind to put shit on hold while you healed, and now look at you. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah, I mean, it’s huge. It’s like, but I think this is what happens when you’re lovably, you know, Type A, you know, doing all your research like you talked about, and doing all these things that we take The kind of discipline it takes to, to triumph on this journey for us.

This is how we live, right? This is, we just kind of take it for granted. But I think what’s really important here is you had to love your vision enough to be able to stick with it. What did that teach you about you that it’s, it’s another incredible example of the, that power of having that vision and sticking with it.

And having success and it’s different from all the other ones in my life because yes, there was hard work and yes, I had to take supplements six times a day at certain times, but it’s also not like this one to one thing where you can like work hard, keep working and achieve because it also just required this.

Level of like letting go of like how and when and, um, that like the kind of structure that you can really have with other goals for career education or whatever they are. And so that was also really powerful for me to have that experience of like, yes, is going to happen. I don’t know how, well, I have my vision, but I don’t know exactly how or exactly when.

And I loved that I got from another one of your ladies, this empowered surrender. Because I would get from people like regularly. Oh, just relax. Just stop trying and it’ll happen like, no, I’m not going to stop trying like this is a dream. I’m not giving up on it. But what I am going to give up on is knowing all the details about how and when it’s going to happen.

It’s such a master stroke. Such a master stroke. I love that and I love my community too because I felt with most of them, I could explain that to them and they were like, Oh, okay, cool. Yeah. Well, I mean, but that’s, that’s the essence of this empowered surrender is, you know, people get this really wild notion that, that surrender means you’ve given up quite the opposite.

Like if you’re doing it in an empowered way, it’s not giving up at all. What was it for you? Another one of the things that was really powerful for me. It was that idea of the like the soft focus. Like I’m not staring my goal down with laser beams or like being Darth Vader or like approaching it with this like, desperate neediness, but really just like staying connected to this is my dream.

This is my vision. We’re going to find each other eventually, baby, I’m, I’m, I’m ready. I’m going to just do everything I can for my health. And then in the other piece, that was kind of. Or related to this surrender piece is wanting to broaden my, my work and taking steps towards doing that. Oh, I love that you brought that up.

I love that you brought that up because it’s so good. It’s so good. And this is, I love that I get to chat with you about this because it’s a part of. This journey that people do not consider and you know, sometimes you’ll hear me talk about this I know you and I’ve talked about this idea that the more you you become and the more you step into the vision for your Life the easier it is for this baby to find you because you shine so bright when you’re living The dream not just being stuck, you know, you know, where’s my baby?

I need my baby to complete me, you know in that icky gross neediness that you’re talking about. You’re like, Hey, I’m here to live a full and complete life. Yes, I want my baby and I want to be creating an existence. Uh, you know, I want to make my dreams come true. All of them. And for you, part of that was expanding your work.

Yeah. So I I’m inspired to work with other women who are on this journey. As I was feeling that inspiration for many months, I was also starting to get more and more like prenatal massage clients, which was interesting. And not surprising, you put that out into the universe and it came right back to you and saying, yep, yeah, Sarah, you’re on the right track.

I did so much research on different avenues. studying, coaching, health coaching, nutrition, and, and into like physical therapy, naturopathy, chiropractic, and eventually got to a point where I just had like heaps of research and couldn’t decide which one to pick, but I just had this really strong feeling this was in like January this year.

I really just have to pick a program now and I know I don’t want it to be a super long program, so. Basically, I wanted something around a year and I know that I really love food and love cooking. So let me find something that’s kind of nutritionally oriented. And you helped me with a little kick in the pants of, yes, you know, you need to decide, just go decide.

And it’ll kick in the pants. And so I did pick a program in February, that’s 10 months. Then I got pregnant in March and then the world shut down from this pandemic and my massage practice closed and I I’m in this nutrition program, and I’ll be done, like, three weeks before my due date. Wow. So you’re birthing a new career and a baby.

Like, that is some badass bitchery right there. Like, really? I mean, but think about that, though. Think about what you’ve created in a relatively short period of time. You know, if we think about this in geological time, like, you made a decision to be a certain way. And all of these pieces start to fall into place because it doesn’t surprise me that when you made the decision, Hey, I feel this call on my life.

I feel this, this call to something, you know, this next stage that you take this massive leap. You say your hell. Yes, I’m doing this. I feel expansion in my profession that the more you step into your truest desires. the, the more light you put out into the world and this baby’s like, Oh my gosh, I see you mama.

Yep. So that was like pretty quick. That one, that was one month next month. And with all the important lead up, yeah, I mean, but isn’t that crazy? It’s really crazy. Yeah. Because you and I now having the perspective of, of watching your journey, we can see, you know, you know, you remember me yelling at you guys about how, you know, we can’t connect the dots looking forward.

It’s always looking back that super famous Steve jobs quote. Yeah. Connect the dots now. Yeah. Yeah. And I, that was another piece that I just had to trust. Yeah, the, I can’t see why, but that’s like my trail of crumbs. So I’m like, okay, this is a crumb. This is an event. This is something important. This is something important.

I could identify them in the moment and not, not necessarily see how they’re connected until with now with retrospect. Wow. So you went from two miscarriages, endo diagnosis. Taking nine, nine months ish off to heal your body, making a decision to start a new, more expanded career, getting pregnant the next month later.

And wow. So tell us how far along are you now? I’m 24 weeks. Yeah. Everything looks great. Yeah. So you’re healthy, baby’s healthy. You’re going to be, you know, preparing to graduate. In the coming months from your program. Oh, I gotta know. What would you want the ladies listening to know because I remember you’re like I’m getting on this podcast.

I know it What would you want to tell? These women who are on the journey right now, and it seems impossible. I think the first biggest one is really doing whatever practices it takes to learn to trust the, the body sense, so that desire to be a mother. And that feeling that this doctor is, I like this doctor, but they’re just not, something’s not quite right.

No matter how irrational or weird it might seem to switch doctors after five years or take eight months off from trying at the scary age of 39, um, to just, to, to, if it feels totally right to, to do it anyways. And Another piece that I didn’t talk about yet is kind of curating your life. So I did this in the ways of changing what kind of media I took in, changing certain people who I did or didn’t spend time with, and really just finding the most supportive inputs, both like media, external world and like close community.

It’s huge. Yeah. I mean, that, that’s, I, I’m so glad you brought that up because I think that’s a piece of the puzzle that, that we often miss when it comes to doing exactly that, curating your life and saying, Hey, look, I don’t have to listen to that bullshit. Whether it’s on the media that’s constantly trying to manipulate us anyway, or friends and family, like, friends and family, I mean, they’re super awesome, but if you’ve got somebody telling you, hey, why don’t you just give up, it hasn’t been long enough, I mean, at some point, you have to be like, yeah, no.

Yeah, we don’t need to talk, we don’t, we don’t, we don’t need to talk about this. Um. So that’s really awesome to be able to curate your life. And, and to be willing to listen to yourself, to be your own most trusted counsel in a lot of ways is what you’re talking about. You know, and I, there’s one last thing that just because I love you so much and because like I know that this was a, a, a big deal for you, I would love for you to just super quick talk about owning your quirkiness.

I was thinking about that too, as you were saying, like, what, you know, what are the nuggets because like from one quarter to another, like I, I totally get what you’re talking about, but I think that’s an essential piece of this, that because of who you are and who you, how you move through the world. Let’s just tell them a little bit about owning your quirkiness, owning your weird.

Yeah. Um, I had to make peace and, like, more than accept, like, really enjoy the sort of different way that I have chosen to live. And as far as being self employed and having, like, an artistic house, shall we say. It’s not like your average house that you might walk into. Just there’s more art and more like unusual architecture and I, I feel like that was one of, that was part of letting my, being my brighter self and a big part of it along with the following and acting on the other desires in my life to expand my career and just.

Having that attention and kind of love for all of the ways that I’m me and I’m not really very mainstream American. Um, and like knowing that I can connect with people who are, consider themselves more like, whatever that means, kind of just more mainstream. Just knowing that we’re kind of all in the same tribe, so to speak.

Yeah, yeah, that is just gorgeous. I love that because I have, actually I have a sign in my office that says weird is a side effect of awesome. And, and I, and you know, I was like, I, I think about like at, at the heart, you know, we’re all just kind of fucking weird at some level. But when we don’t embrace who we really are, and, and this goes back to embracing your desires as, as you were saying is one of the key things that you took away from this journey, is that when we own who we are and our desires without apology, we get into an alignment that makes us so magnetic.

To what we want, like I saw this and you, I see this in, in every single woman that sends me their text message or DM or email. Oh my gosh, Rosanna, I’m pregnant. Like if I look back, you know, because I have the unique perspective of being an observer, an observer, not only who lived this journey, but who’s helping other women get to the other side of it.

I see this consistently and there’s nothing that delights me more in your story that you came to love the aspects of you that make you, you it’s, it’s so good. And you’re going to be able to teach this to your baby. I mean, I, I can’t wait. This is why I tell women, the world needs you to be a mama. That desire in your heart is meant for you because you’re going to have an impact on the world by becoming a mom.

So thank you for becoming a mom, Sarah, for sharing your story with us. Another, like, maybe final thought is that, you know, this time that’s part of this journey, like, can be, you know, before the baby comes, like, it can be really healing and we can take it as a preparation to be these amazing parents. And like you said, it’s so important.

Oh my gosh. Well, thank you so much, Sarah. It’s such a delight and I have no doubt in my mind or in my heart that you’re going to be changing someone’s life today. Hey loves wasn’t my conversation with Sarah absolutely inspiring. See, y’all can do this journey on your terms and be stubborn in your faith that your baby is coming and even dare to take some time off because you know in your heart it’s necessary for your healing.

This is what happens loves when you take control of what you think and believe. You can make the seemingly impossible possible. Just think about where you could be a year from now. Think about how you can use this time of year to your advantage that can absolutely impact your result. You could be in a wildly different place faster than you think.

My Fearlessly Fertile Method program is for women who intend to get pregnant in the next 12 months and say hell yes to covering their bases. Mind and body. So you don’t have to look back on this time in your life with regret. I work with women who are committed to success to apply for your interview for this revolutionary program.

Go to my website, www.FromMaybeToBaby.com and apply for an interview with me there. My methodology, as you heard today, has helped women around the world make their mom dreams come true. Their results speak for themselves. If you don’t have a mindset for success on this journey, baby, you got a gaping hole in your strategy.

Let’s fix that shit and set you up for success till next time. Change your mindset, change your results. Love this episode of the fearlessly fertile podcast. Subscribe now and leave an awesome review. Remember the desire in your heart to be a mom is there because it was meant for you when it comes to your dreams.

Keep saying hell yes.