Failed IVF to Natural Pregnancy: How Lisa Got Pregnant After 4 Years of Trying [EP 62]
When you spend years being told that IVF is your only option, it can feel like your body has stopped being on your side. In this episode, I sit down with Lisa to talk through her four-year fertility journey, the testing that changed everything, and how she and her husband were finally able to conceive naturally after getting more individualized support.
What I love most about Lisa’s story is that it is proof that fertility care does not have to be extreme to be effective. We talk about the power of fertility-specific testing, mineral balance, gut health, nervous system support, and realistic nutrition changes that actually fit into real life, plus how those same changes supported her through pregnancy, too.
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“We need that energy pouring into reproduction to help the body feel safe enough to grow an entire human.”
What You’ll Learn:
Why a fertility clinic’s “one-size-fits-all” approach often leads straight to IVF recommendations instead of root-cause support
How mineral balance, gut health, and comprehensive testing can uncover barriers to conception that generic advice misses
Why sperm health matters just as much as egg health, especially when DNA fragmentation and morphology are part of the picture
How nervous system regulation and stress reduction can support reproductive energy and improve fertility outcomes
Why the most effective fertility nutrition plan is one you can actually follow consistently
How preconception changes can carry into pregnancy and make that season feel calmer and more supported
Why “doing enough” often looks less extreme than people expect when the plan is personalized
“The body wants to feel safe enough to support reproduction.”
Links Mentioned:
Get my FREE Fertility Meal Plan
“We can’t just add supplements and foods and hope the mineral balance shifts. We have to look at the nervous system and the environment too, because if the body never feels safe, it’s not going to prioritize reproduction.”
Transcript:
Introduction
Brooke Boskovich:
So excited to be chatting with Lisa today. She is one of my program grads who is currently 20 weeks pregnant. We are going to learn all about her experience in the Master Your Fertility Program today and her experience being pregnant so far.
Lisa Wiese:
Yeah, I’m happy to be here.
Brooke Boskovich:
I’d love to start by having you take us back to the beginning. When you and your husband first started talking about trying for a baby, what were you expecting that journey to look like?
The Start of the Journey
Lisa Wiese:
I was not expecting it to be four years without a baby. That’s for sure. When we got married, we both wanted to have kids right away. We were hoping to get pregnant on our honeymoon, which did not happen.
Then years passed and it still hadn’t happened. Our expectations were very different from reality. We tried naturally for a while and nothing worked. We did some testing and then started going to a fertility clinic. They did more testing and said my husband had low motility, low morphology, and high DNA fragmentation.
The answer was IVF, and I want to tell everyone that when you go to a fertility clinic, they are most likely going to tell you to do IVF because that is what they do. They are probably not going to try to help you in other ways.
I am not against IVF. It works for a lot of people. But that mindset was not what I expected. I thought I was going somewhere to solve the issue, and instead it felt like there was only one solution: pay thousands of dollars for a procedure.
That was a surprise to me. We were new to the fertility world, and at the time we had no idea that was how it worked.
IVF and Testing
Brooke Boskovich:
You made a couple of really good points there. You were initially thinking you were going to a fertility clinic to learn more about what you could do to get pregnant on your own, and that is often not the case.
Were you given any sort of insight or investigation before the recommendation to do IVF?
Lisa Wiese:
No, and I know some people do other things first. We were told to jump straight into IVF because of the results.
They said we could try IUI, but it did not make sense with the high DNA fragmentation. The whole point is that you want to do the whole thing, so we skipped over a few steps and went straight to IVF.
I thought it would give us a result, but it did not.
Brooke Boskovich:
And you ended up getting a lot of eggs retrieved, right?
Lisa Wiese:
That’s true, yes. That was another issue. I did have a lot of eggs, more than I was supposed to have, and then you have lower quality eggs.
So that whole combination was not good. I also reacted strongly to the medication and ended up at the highest dose by the end.
Talking to other doctors afterward, maybe that was not the best case. I do not know. I am not a doctor, but there were a lot of variables involved that you do not really know about as a normal person without a medical education.
Initial Call
Brooke Boskovich:
Thankfully, your friend encouraged you to go a different direction. So you reached out to me and we had our initial call.
What were your first impressions? Did you feel like it was going to be successful, or more like a step in the journey?
Lisa Wiese:
It gave me hope. But in my mind, it was like, well, it would be great to conceive naturally. Basically what we had been told at that point was that it probably was not viable.
I thought, worst case, we would be better positioned for IVF. IVF was a huge expense, and just doing it over and over and hoping for different results did not seem right.
So it gave me hope. I was not sure it would result in getting pregnant naturally, but I thought if we could be more prepared, that would be good.
I had already started replacing products in the house because my friend had recommended you. We had already been making some changes. But I knew there was a diet piece we had not done in depth.
I wanted individual attention for both myself and my husband instead of just generic things like “take CoQ10” or something that does not really mean that much.
What Testing Showed
Brooke Boskovich:
That is a big part of what we do in the Master Your Fertility Program. We work with a couple, and both partners are seen as individuals.
We deep dive into testing, and what I am looking for is how your body is creating energy and whether it is doing that efficiently. Reproduction is extremely energy-intensive for both men and women.
If energy in the body is going somewhere else to support inflammation or imbalance, that takes energy away from egg quality, sperm quality, and the reproductive environment as a whole. We need that energy pouring into reproduction to help the body feel safe enough to grow an entire human.
For Lisa and Jonathan, we looked at mineral status, gut health, and deep dive blood work. That uncovered some barriers.
What was the most eye-opening thing you got from the testing?
Lisa Wiese:
Honestly, the biggest thing was that we had data to look at. It was on paper, and you could interpret it for us. That mattered a lot because we are both very data-driven people.
It is hard when people just say generic things like, “It will happen,” or “Stop trying.” That is not helpful.
The most eye-opening thing was that we both had parasites. That still freaks me out to this day. That was definitely not what you want to hear.
We dealt with that, and now I am still very conscious every time I eat raw fish.
The depth and detail were unlike anything else. We had done analyses in Europe and some more in-depth testing through OB-GYN and fertility clinics, but nothing came close to what we had with you.
Seeing the minerals and how everything works together was so eye-opening. It showed us what we actually had to work on.
Then seeing that combined with the meal plan, and you walking us through why we needed to eat certain foods, made it make sense.
Even if I did not want to eat sardines ever, I knew why I was doing it. Logically, that is what really worked for both of us. We were able to do it and stick to the meal plan.
Realistic Changes
Brooke Boskovich:
Do you feel like the changes we discussed or I recommended based on testing were extreme, or were they doable and easy to integrate?
Lisa Wiese:
No, they were very doable. There were different ways to do it.
There was a whole meal plan you could follow every day, or more general guidelines. For my husband, it was something like eat six cups of vegetables. For me, it was something else.
We followed the more general guidelines. We tried some of the meals in the plan, but we did not go day by day and eat everything listed for each day.
We adjusted it to our lifestyle and made sure that within each day we got what we were supposed to get in. That is what made it so much more achievable.
I was always worried I was not doing enough. Every month when you are not pregnant, you think, what else can I do?
But we did get pregnant, and we did do enough. It just took time.
I am not a big diet person. I do not like strict diets, so I was definitely concerned.
My husband is much better at following stricter stuff, but I was able to do it too. It was fun foods. It was not the extreme, “don’t eat sugar ever” kind of thing.
There were smoothie options and solid options depending on what you want. There were all kinds of ways to make it happen.
That was way easier than I originally thought because I assumed I would have to be on a super strict diet, and I am not good at that.
Nervous System Support
Brooke Boskovich:
Do you remember what some of the first changes you noticed in your body or cycle were once you started making changes?
Lisa Wiese:
I think the hardest part was not the diet. It was forcing myself to relax more.
That was so hard. Living in constant high stress and then trying to slow down was really difficult. That is where I saw the most benefits.
The baths, going outside first thing, and small things like that turned into big things in terms of results.
At first I was like, do you mean I need to take a break and relax and not be constantly doing something?
I started reading more, relaxing before bed, and just breathing. That was very new to me, which is sad.
That was definitely the best thing, and I still do it now. I miss the hot baths the most, because now that I am pregnant I cannot take them the same way.
I started doing more yoga, being more conscious of how much I worked out, not overdoing it, taking breaks, and sitting outside.
That kind of stuff had a huge impact, and it is also something that will last me for a long time. I can still implement it and work on it.
It has allowed me to say, okay, I am allowed to take a break. I am allowed to do this. This is actually really good for me and has long-term benefits.
Pregnancy and Mindset
Brooke Boskovich:
Do you feel like your mindset or the way you feel about your body has changed throughout this process?
Lisa Wiese:
Yeah, definitely. I am giving myself more slack and more time to just be, relax, and trust the process, which is also hard.
What really hit me recently is how much this has helped in pregnancy.
Working with you was always about the goal of getting pregnant. Then you get pregnant and the goal becomes having a healthy baby.
It has made it so much easier because I see how many people get pregnant and then panic about products, food, and everything else.
It was so easy that I did not have to change anything. I was already eating the nutrients I needed.
Even now, I still go back to the recipes you sent us and make meals from there.
Especially when the second trimester hit, I was starving. The first thing I did was go to the recipe book and see what I wanted to eat, because I knew it would give me the nutrients I needed and actually fill me up.
That has been so huge. It has also made me calmer during pregnancy.
You spend so much time trying to get pregnant, and then you get pregnant and start freaking out about being pregnant and raising a human being.
It takes a big stress factor out of it. I am still stressing about having a baby, but at least I know I am nourishing my body and doing the right things to have as healthy a baby as I can.
I do not need to make huge lifestyle changes because I already practiced all of that before I got here.
After the Loss
Brooke Boskovich:
You are 20 weeks pregnant and recently had your anatomy scan. Everything is looking good with baby, right?
Lisa Wiese:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, everything is good. No issues whatsoever.
I was definitely scared going into it again because of everything we have been through, but then it was like, oh, everything is fine.
They took their time and looked at everything, and it was really good to hear that I have no issues and no risks. It is crazy. I am just waiting for something to happen.
Every time I go to the doctor they are like, you are good. Why are you here? Next.
So it is very exciting to hear that everything is going well. It is crazy that we get to experience this after four years. It still feels surreal.
I am just starting to show, so I am getting bigger, and I keep thinking, wow, I never thought this day would come.
There is hope. I cannot believe I am on this side of this conversation. It is so crazy.
Looking Back
Brooke Boskovich:
If you could go back and talk to yourself at the beginning of the journey, or even in the middle of it, what would you tell yourself?
Lisa Wiese:
I would want to start working with you way earlier. Four years wasted. They were not wasted, I am sure it was meant to be, but it would have been nicer because I could have probably had two kids by now.
I wish I had not gone the IVF route. That is just personally for me.
It was a lot on my body: the medication, the shots, the egg retrieval, and the surgery. It was so many firsts, and it felt like a lot.
A lot of people do have success with that, and I know you take breaks between retrieval and implantation. But for me personally, I wish I had tried the more natural route first.
It makes more sense to me now, but back then I was not aware of these things. Based on society and what you see online, it sounds like everybody is just doing round after round of IVF.
I am hoping somebody listening who has not done that yet can work with you first and try that route. You can still do it. I am not saying IVF is bad, but for me I wish I had started with you instead.
I think it would have been better for my body because it was so much medical intervention for no result in the end.
Final Thoughts
Brooke Boskovich:
That is a lot on so many levels to go through reproductive endocrinology.
Even if it is IUI, medicated IUI cycles can be a lot too. But even if those tools end up being used, this approach makes a big difference.
Your body is more prepared. Your egg quality is better. Your sperm quality is better. It can really decrease the number of retrievals and transfers you have to do.
My goal is always to help you get pregnant without those tools, but there are definitely reasons couples lean that way, whether it is obstruction, age, embryos already frozen, or another factor.
At that point, we may not influence egg or sperm quality as much, but the environment can still make a difference in next steps.
This approach changes outcomes no matter how you are trying to conceive.
And if you have the ability to take a step back and learn more about your body, it is going to help you on your fertility journey and help you support your health and your baby’s health too.