Getting Pregnant with PCOS after Trying to Get Pregnant for 1 year

Are you trying to get pregnant and no success? Do you have PCOS or other reproductive conditions that are not letting you get pregnant? Meet my patient Michelle who got pregnant after only 3 months! You could be the next Fertility success story!

Michelle’s Fertility Journey

Michelle sought out treatment with The Fertility Expert after undergoing 3 rounds of clomid with her gynaecologist, and a diagnosis of polycystic ovary syndrome by a Reproductive Endocrinologist.

Clomid is an ovulatory stimulant commonly prescribed to women with PCOS. Between 70% and 80% of women will ovulate during their first treatment cycle, while the success rates for conception are lower at approximately 35%.  While an excellent and promising treatment for many women with PCOS, the drug is not a ‘one size fits all’. Michelle suffered with severe night sweats during each cycle while taking the clomid, and it did not result in pregnancy for her.

She came to us with complaints of irregular cycles, prolonged bleeding and severe menstrual pain. Her cycles would range between 30-35 days and she would have spotting for a least one week prior to her period starting. She would get extremely painful abdominal cramps and lower back pain on her heaviest day of bleeding – typically day one of her cycle. In the past, Michelle had been put on birth control for 10 years to help manage her painful cycles.

Aside from her irregular cycles, Michelle suffered with weekly headaches, neck and shoulder tension and had work-related stress. But her and her husband were not yet ready to go down the route of IVF.

So, what were the next steps?: 

Building a full picture of your fertility health is important if you are considering treatment. We needed to get a complete picture of Michelle’s life so we could get a better idea of the areas where she most needed our support and expertise.

We started off by asking Michelle to run some lab work so we could take a closer look at her hormones. The blood work confirmed her PCOS and showed elevated levels of anti-mullerian hormone (AMH).  She also suffered from some adrenal stress and imbalanced blood sugar levels which were important to address – especially with her PCOS.

We reviewed the 12 key areas that were affecting her fertility by using our Fertility Balance Wheel, (if you haven’t done it yet, here is the video tutorial where you can get your fertility score and see what of YOUR 12 areas are not letting you get pregnant) and used the scores to provide guidance that was personal to her results and to provide the support in the most necessary areas of her fertility journey.    

Her fertility wheel scores showed lower scores of 2 in diet and mind/body and mid scores of 3 in toxins and exercise. We encouraged and helped Michelle intro prioritising and improving her nutrition with real, fresh, vitamin-packed, healing foods. We suggested that she do some mindfulness work and mild exercise, so she began to do yoga 2 to 3 times a week. This is how part of her fertility score

Diet – 2 / Stress – 4 / Hormones – 5 / Toxins – 3 / Exercise – 3 / Mind/body – 2

We explained to Michelle that we had successfully treated many patients with PCOS and with a proper diet, healthy lifestyle and supplements we could regulate her hormones and help her to conceive naturally. Similar to how we helped Danielle, another PCOS patient.

We discussed how to adjust her diet to manage her PCOS, regulate her cycle and address her blood sugar and adrenal issues. She also had acupuncture and started to chart her basal temperature to see when she was ovulating (as it was not always clear based on symptoms). Michelle started to experience positive changes to her cycle after her first month. Her first cycle was 31 days with decreased breast tenderness, less spotting, less cramping and overall less heavy bleeding. She was learning how to listen to her body and respond to it in the ways that it needed. Her following cycle was 28 days, with much less spotting and manageable cramping.

 By her 3rd cycle, Michelle was pregnant!

We were so so happy for her and her husband! They had been waiting for this moment for so long and it was a true joy to share in that success. A success that wouldn’t have existed without their openness to make the changes we suggested to their lifestyle and belief in the power of making positive health decisions. There was no one magic way for them to reach this day, and it took many changes in many areas of their lives. But they can happily say it was all worth it in order to conceive their first baby naturally.