LadyGang - The Lucky Egg: Fertility Secrets They Don’t Tell You

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

Dr. Lucky Sekhon is here, and she’s breaking down everything you think you know about fertility. The board-certified reproductive endocrinologist behind The Lucky Egg shares the real science (and the myths) around getting pregnant - from when to call in a specialist to what actually matters vs. what’s just expensive noise. She explains why timing is everything, how IVF labs can make or break outcomes, why supplements might be a waste of money, and the truth about male fertility (yes, it’s 50/50). Plus, she gets real about the emotional toll of the journey, and how to stay sane through it.Thank you for supporting our sponsors!Better Help: Thank you to presenting sponsor Better Help. Sign up and get 10% off at https://BetterHelp.com/BABYGANG.Skylight Frames: Go to https://MySkylight.com/BABYGANG for $30 off your 15 inch Calendar.HERS: Ready to reach your goals? Visit https://forhers.com/babygang to get personalized, affordable care that gets you.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello, hello, and welcome to the baby gang. I am your host, Becca Tobin, and thank you to our presenting sponsor, BetterHelp. All right, here I am. Episode two, you guys. Episode one, last week's episode with our surrogate. The reception has been incredible. I was so nervous and I don't really get nervous or anxious about stuff like that. But yeah, I just was expecting some trolls some some internet trolls and knock on wood it has been minimal and most of this has been just an outpouring of love and support and really amazing beautiful touching comments about people being grateful to have had that conversation with our surrogate gestational carrier so thank you i'm really excited to have you listen to this week's episode with dr lucky

She is a world-renowned fertility endocrinologist in New York City. I feel like this is a resource I wanted to be able to reach the people. And if you're trying to get pregnant, struggling to get pregnant, this episode's for you. If you have already had your kids or not having kids, it's still such a fascinating conversation. I love learning about this, even though our journey of baby making is, you know, underway and hopefully everything goes smoothly. but this is also for you to send to anybody in your life who is struggling and I just feel like it gives some information some hope some tools I just really love Dr. Lucky and the book she wrote

is fabulous and we'll get into that in the interview and a little update on my life because I'm going to give you these as I as the episodes go on I went on a trip with my husband Zach we went away for a full week with friends, and it's the longest that we have ever left Ford, our four-year-old, together. We've left on short weekends away, but one of us is always home when it's a long trip for the other. So I had, you know, I had, I felt guilty, as we do. And we just had to go on this trip because, not like had to in a bad way, but we really wanted to get some time together to reconnect, to spend time with our friends, and, you know, gear up for having a newborn in August or September, but we decided to do a little, a thing that I think is really

helpful. And by the way, spoiler, he did not miss us at all. He had so much fun. He had my mom in town, my dad in town for half the week. And then the other half of the week he had my sister-in-law and my mother-in-law and everybody is so, he's so excited to have all those people that he really didn't miss us. It was, it was great. It was the best feeling ever to check in at home and know that he was he was at Disneyland every day at this house with these people. But what we did was each day we were gone, we got him a little surprise for after school, whether it was like sidewalk chalk or a Lego thing or an activity to do like a volcano to make with my mom or a new coloring book or, you know, it's activity kind of centric so that it was giving the people taking

care of him something to do, giving him something, a surprise that he loved. And each day we wrapped it and Zach had this brilliant idea he used AI to he prompted it to say my wife and I are going on this trip here's our itinerary can you make a one-page printout for each day we're gone for our four-year-old son and just give him an overview like today mom and dad are in Croatia they're truffle hunting blah blah blah blah blah um and fun facts about the place that we're in and he loves maps. He loves to see on a map where everything is. It was so easy. I highly recommend it. It was really such a great way to feel less guilty about leaving your kid, which is, I think, very necessary. I always thought people were kind of annoying when

they would say, you just need to get away with your spouse and reconnect. And I would just be like, yeah. First of all, it's such a luxury. We just got very lucky that these friends of as we're planning this trip. We probably wouldn't have done it on our own accord, to be honest. But two days into the trip, I did think, wow, I really feel like everyone is right. I feel like connecting with Zach in that way as adults, not caretaking. We had so much fun together. It was like we were first dating when we would, well, don't get me wrong. It's still, you know, we're 10 years into marriage. So some of the things are some of the things. But it was so nice to just look at my person and be like, I love spending time with you. I have so much fun with you. Yeah, I still

wanted to like strangle him at moments, but that is marriage and that is love. But it was, it was wonderful. And so yeah, just a little tip. Without further ado, I am going to bring on our guest today. Our guest today is Dr. Lucky Seacon, a double board certified reproductive endocrinologist practicing in New York City. She has guided thousands of individuals and couples through their fertility journey, combining cutting-edge science with compassionate care to help them overcome infertility, preserve their options, and build the families of their dreams. In January, she released The Lucky Egg, which became an instant bestseller and a book I think should be required reading if you're a woman in general, especially if you are trying to conceive.

Hello. Welcome. Hi. Thank you for having me. Thanks for coming on. This is really exciting. On the Lady Gang podcast, we've talked a lot about baby making, trying to conceive, pregnancy, all the things. And I just feel like in the last couple of years, there's just this hunger for knowledge and people are sick of being in the dark even when they're going to the doctor's office and they're trying to understand. The way you break this book down, it's like a really entertaining textbook. And I hated school. So to say I blew through it, thank you for writing it. Oh, my gosh.

It was a labor of love. It's something that's been just so needed in this space. There really isn't anything that exists like it. And I would be lying if I said that it was my goal that I set out to do because I knew it was going to be a huge endeavor. And I kind of waited around for the first six to seven years of being in clinical practice for someone else to step up to the plate and do it. And it just wasn't happening.

So I decided if not me, then who, right? And I've been creating content online. So I've become really good at taking complex topics and kind of breaking it down in an easy to understand, sometimes even fun or entertaining way where I like fool people into learning something. And I figured I would just apply those practices and all of those learnings to writing a really comprehensive guidebook, which everyone's calling it like the fertility Bible. And I actually think that is a really accurate way to describe it because it's something for

everyone. I love the idea of it being required reading because we don't have, you know, a health class 2.0. We don't have a way to make sure everyone's up to speed and on the same page and moving forward in a direction where they're not wasting time or, you know, maybe making decisions that aren't the wisest considering their particular situation or their goals. So it's really about just giving people information and a roadmap so that they can kind of figure out what's best for them. Yeah. And I really do feel that when reading it. And I also think that when I talk to women all over the world, the access to this information, it's so scattered. It's so random. It just kind of depends on who you're seeing and who your friends are and what your network is doing.

So it's not fair. It's not at all. And I do think that this is really democratizing fertility and the information. And it's really awesome. And I, as a dum-dum, but going into this whole thing, can you explain the difference between an REI and an OBGYN? Yes. So all REIs, reproductive endocrinologists and infertility experts, are by definition OBGYNs. So think of it as layers of expertise. We all had to do four years of training and learn how to deliver babies and learn about all of the different complex gynecologic things that can come up along the way in our lives from puberty all the way to menopause, right? So we did that four years of training where you learn everything that you really need to know about women's health.

And then on top of it, you do three years of subspecialty training in reproductive endocrinology and infertility, where you learn all about hormones and the reproductive system And every aspect that goes into making a baby and all the different places that you can have pitfalls or challenges and how to work around that and learning about how to do different treatments, whether that be helping someone ovulate regularly where everything's just happening inside their body or whether you're talking about more complex, complicated treatments like IVF where we're relying on a team of embryologists in an IVF laboratory to help put sperm and eggs together. together. And then we coordinate everything hormonally to put the embryo inside a woman's uterus to help her overcome a lot of different causes of infertility. And then there's also fertility preservation, freezing eggs and embryos for the future. So an REI is the specialist that you want to be going to if you've been trying on your own and it isn't happening or it's starting to get more complex. But I have conversations with people at all different phases of their

journey. Some people do come to me kind of just to get a reproductive checkup and counseling and to fill in the knowledge gap. But a lot of times if their OBGYN is well-versed and feels comfortable and confident, they can give them the building blocks and the guidance to say, this is what you should be doing and thinking about as you move forward and start trying. And this is when it's time to really call in the actual experts. And that would be an REI. And you actually talk about this in the book about when to call in the experts. And why do you tell women under 35 who are trying to get pregnant naturally to wait a full year before seeking fertility help? So I actually don't necessarily tell them they have to wait a full year. But I do say,

you know, you don't have to have a knee-jerk reaction to do anything wildly different if month after month after month it's not happening. You have time to play around with this idea of persistence paying off. And the idea is that human reproduction is inefficient. And so you really want to give yourself enough tries, enough shots on goal, because if each time you try, there's this narrow window of opportunity and you only ovulate one egg each month, if you have a regular cycle that is, and you're not expecting at best 20%, you're thinking, okay, 20% chance of pregnancy. You're not expecting the first time you try to work, but your cumulative odds should get to an acceptable level between six to 12 months, right? And if you're under 35

and you're thinking, hey, I want to have one to two kids, maybe it makes sense to just really give it the full amount of trying. And 85% of couples will be pregnant after one year of regular unprotected sex timed with ovulation. But it's not a rule book. And if you feel distressed or you feel like you want to be pregnant yesterday and now it's been six months, I would never tell someone, oh, you're under 35, just go back and keep trying. I have heard of people getting those types of responses, and this is where advocacy comes into play, right? And if you're someone who has an irregular cycle, you might not be in the game. You might always be hitting the wrong window, and that's a waste of time. So I would say go straight to an REI in that situation,

right? Because you may have issues that require rectifying so that you can actually be in the game and get ovulating. Or if you have really painful periods, any gynecologic issue that could relate to a fertility issue, you should go straight to see an REI regardless of your age. If you're 35 and older, we say don't wait longer than six months because we have to factor in the biological clock and the fact that as we get older, it becomes more difficult to ovulate a healthy egg. And so you don't want to spend too much time doing something very low yield and kind of inefficient if it would make sense to get on the path to pregnancy sooner because you want to have two or three children and your window of opportunity may be getting a little bit more

narrow. You said something really interesting and it's advocating for yourself and it can be really intimidating when you're sitting there with a very educated, very experienced person. As far as I know, you don't need a doctor's referral, your OBGYN's referral to go see a fertility specialist. Is that correct? In most cases, yes. You may want to check with your insurance because sometimes getting a referral can make a difference between a visit being covered by insurance or not. So there can be some nuances and fine print to look at. But in general, people come to me all the time because they saw me on Instagram or their friend mentioned that they saw me as well. It doesn't have to be that their OBGYN gives them a formal

referral to see me. the BetMGM Casino app for exclusive access and excitement on the Price is Right Fortune Pick. Pull up a seat and experience the Price is Right Fortune Pick, only available at BetMGM Casino. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager, Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact ConnexOntario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Bet MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Now, what tests would you recommend to a woman about to start her journey?

And what tests would you recommend to someone who is currently struggling to get pregnant? So if you're just getting started, I think everyone preconception, if they're like, I know who I want to join my DNA with, which is my very non-romantic way of saying have children. I think that we need to be a bit more proactive. And this isn't a must, but most people do genetic carrier screening to see what mutations they carry, what mutations their partner carries once they're already pregnant because they just didn't even know about it, right? They didn't know it was a thing. And then they go to their OBGYN and the OBGYN says, all right, let's do blood work on both of you or a cheek swab. And let's understand if there's any combination of

your genes and his genes that could come together in a way where you'd want to know in advance. could my child be at risk of having a problem? And these are things like serious disorders like cystic fibrosis, major lung disease, or problems that can make it hard for a child to have a normal life or health beyond age two, a lot of metabolic disorders, things that are obscure that you've never even heard of, and most people are not going to match up. So this is not something to feel anxious about. But 2% to 4% of couples that I see and treat match up for some sort of mutation. And if you know about that in advance, you could say, all right, I want to avoid even being in that situation. I maybe want to think about creating embryos outside of the body, doing IVF,

and testing them and avoiding using an embryo that is known to be affected by that condition, right? And that allows you to kind of move forward and have a healthier family with less problems. That's being super proactive. A lot of people will find out about this when they're in the first trimester and they have to wait until they're like 12 weeks pregnant to then do focus testing on the pregnancy to know if it's affected or not. And it can help with just being mentally prepared and planning. But I think doing all of this beforehand makes a lot of sense. So whenever I'm sitting across the desk from a couple, I always bring this up because I'm all about being proactive. Aside from that, for someone who's just starting out trying, they haven't run into

any problems, the main thing is really around tracking your cycle and understanding when you're ovulating, if you're ovulating, is it regular, how to predict it. Because ideally, you're concentrating your efforts to having sex and getting exposed to sperm in the two to three day window leading up to ovulation where the egg is released. It only lasts for half a day to a day. So any attempts on ovulation or after tend to start to drop off in terms of efficacy. And if you're having problems with ovulation, go directly to the doctor, right? And if you are at all confused about ovulation tracking, just go directly to your doctor and get some guidance.

And there's a lot of stuff that I talk about in my book around knowing when you're ovulating. And there's so many different methods that you can use and you can layer them one on top of the other so that you're really improving accuracy and confidence as you move forward. But aside from that, there aren't major other tests that I would say one needs to do. I think everyone should have a clean bill of health. So if you're like, I haven't gone in to see my OBGYN or my primary care, that would be a good time to be tested for things like diabetes, pre-diabetes. These are regular screenings that everyone should be doing. Make sure you're up to date on a pap smear. And if you're someone who should be doing mammograms or breast ultrasounds because of your

age or your family history, going into a pregnancy with a clean bill of health, knowing that you're up to date on all of that is going to just make you feel calmer and it's safer for you because a lot of times when people are pregnant and they find things out, it can delay the ability to treat them or it can make it so that they have to make really difficult decisions. And so if you are on medications for any conditions, if you have any chronic medical conditions, those are things you really want to be fine tuning and ensuring that your doctor who prescribes those drugs for whatever reason, knows that you're intending to get pregnant soon, and you should get

on a prenatal vitamin with folic acid. And if you have been trying and it's not happening, at that point, we do a focused fertility workup where we're looking at the sperm. We're doing a semen analysis to make sure there's enough sperm and it's moving in a forward direction. It just involves him giving a sample, so it's pretty straightforward. And it's usually cheap and non-invasive. On your side of things, on the women's side of things, a pelvic ultrasound to look at the uterus and look at the ovaries. Hormone testing to look at your egg count, to look at your thyroid function, to make sure your pituitary is sending signals to the ovary. So this is like a blood panel looking at certain hormone levels. And then I would also,

if someone's struggling and not getting pregnant, look for potential barriers in either the uterus or in their tubes, right? Maybe there's a package on both sides and the sperm and the egg have no no place to meet. There are specialized scans like something called an HSG. It's an x-ray of the pelvis that actually looks at both the fallopian tube and the uterus. And that's really the full workup. And if everything comes back normal, it doesn't mean, okay, sorry, then there's no treatment to be administered. No, we're still going to do something to try to make this really inefficient process more efficient and more likely to happen. Yeah. I love when I got to the part in the book where you discuss supplements because over the five years of my fertility journey,

I got on some weird algorithm and it was so overwhelming. I felt like if I wanted to, I could spend $3,000 every time I got on Instagram in the right algorithm with people telling me all the supplements that I needed to take. I really, really think if nothing else, get this book to read about this because I think we're being inundated with a lot of not snake oil, but just untested, unproven things. So you really break it down. Can you say what you recommend just a couple to avoid due to the lack of evidence and research? Yes. And for the amount of airtime that supplements get, I think that's the number one thing people really focus on. prior to my book being out, the number one resource that is always recommended and quoted,

not by me, but, you know, from patients to other patients are, is this book that's not even written by an expert, but it's got a catchy title and its mainstay is here are all the supplements you can take. Right. And so it feels good in the moment because it feels like it's giving you the locus of control. Like, oh, I have the tools. I don't need to even go to a clinic, you know, and be in a scary, cold clinical situation. I can do this in the comfort of my own home. I can take this, you know, long laundry list of supplements and kind of in a very targeted way, correct my egg quality or correct this or correct that. And it's a really magical way of thinking. And I don't blame people for finding it attractive. But I think that the backlash of that thinking is then

a lot of internal self-blame and shame because it feels like, well, if I just had known about these and done all these right things, I wouldn't even be in this situation. It kind of implies that if you're saying there's this formula and there's this way to really hack your biology and ensure that you can improve your egg quality and get pregnant quickly, and those things aren't happening for you, then it feels like it's a failure on your part because the control was in your hands. You just didn't find the right resources or listen to the right people. And none of it's true.

And it's so damaging, not to mention a waste of money. A lot of times supplements, you're paying for expensive urine, right? Because your body's going to filter out a lot of this excess stuff that we're overloading ourselves with. And as much as people talk about big pharma and all of that, the wellness industry is a trillion-dollar industry, and it's several-fold times lucrative compared to pharma, right, which is actually regulated by the FDA. You know, when you think about drugs that you're taking and you're getting from a pharmacy

that are prescription-strength, those have had to go through rigorous trials. There is no such thing or no such oversight for supplements. So every bottle of supplement that you take, you could be taking the same supplement. You don't know if you're getting the exact same formulation, right? And they have some safeguards where you can get some supplements that are certified and you know there might be an extra safeguard there, but it's not anywhere nearly as regulated as the pharma industry. And a lot of times it's treating a made-up problem.

Like something that's really big right now is like adrenal fatigue, estrogen dominance, As a reproductive endocrinologist and infertility doctor who's double board certified and has done tons of clinical research and helped thousands of patients navigate infertility and get pregnant, I'm here to tell you that those aren't real entities. Those aren't real problems. So a lot of times you'll see problems that are kind of made up and then a made up solution, which is really frustrating. So the supplement chapter, I'm glad you appreciate it because it's the chapter that nearly killed

me. I'm sure. Because it was really hard. It was disheartening for me to – I already knew it, but then actually writing the book, I did such a deep dive on all of the different studies, if you can even call them that, and some of the junk science. Because just because something's published, you know, you have to look at the journal it's published in, who's publishing.

A lot of the people publishing these studies are the manufacturers of the supplements themselves. It's like so much bias. And there are things that are being touted as like the next big thing. I'll give you an example, NAD infusions, very little data. And there's zero human studies about the effect of NAD on fertility, which is shocking because people are going and paying for infusions at med spas and spending hundreds and thousands of dollars. DHEA is another one. That is a hormone that is naturally produced in our bodies. And there's this idea that came out in the 80s and the 90s and really took off that, well, women seem to have lower levels as they get

older. So perhaps that's the secret. If we replace that, then it's going to give those women something that they're missing in a way that could improve their egg quality. And it's very simplistic thinking. And the studies are all mainly by one group that actually, again, manufactures these supplements. And actually, there was a study in the Washington Post that pointed out a potential bias where an author of a big fertility guidebook that really heavily promoted this one supplement was actually kind of in cahoots with the group that was creating the supplement. So it's a big, it's a murky, dark underworld where like once you peel back the layers, you're like, oh, this is kind of depressing. And in reality, less is more, right? A lot of these things,

like I just mentioned DHEA, which is a hormone, it's not without risk. It can cause voice deepening, skin changes. This is a hormone and it should be treated like any hormone when we consider taking hormones over the long term. So you really need to be careful. There are people that have gotten into liver failure or who've had heart arrhythmias because they overdid it with supplements. It can have interactions. It can have side effects. So something that I did in my book is I put together a table, and this is what almost killed me, where I listed every single supplement that people talk about in relation to female fertility and male fertility. And I listed out the name, the typical dose that's been used in studies and in clinical practice.

What is it proposed to do? What does the data actually show? And what are the side effects and potential interactions? Because no one ever talks about that. And that way it's all laid out for you and it's well-researched. And now it's explained to a person in a way where they can make an informed decision, not just based on something they saw an influencer sell online. Right. It's so funny you say NAD. I feel like I knew more about NAD than I did about like actual fertility medications. Like folic acid, right? Yes. Like I recommend a prenatal with folic acid and correcting deficiencies. A lot of people are vitamin D deficient and that can play a role. A lot of people are iron deficient and that's

actually associated with infertility. So these are the things we should really be focusing on. We often get so bogged down with these really obscure things that have nothing to do with anything. And then we miss the thing that's most important in front of us. Yeah. I love that. okay now i get asked very regularly for referrals for ivf clinics and i obviously have no idea where to send people i know mine was wonderful but um you actually talk about the importance of the lab associated with the fertility clinic i had never heard of this and when I read it, my mind was blown because it really does narrow down your search. It can do a really beautiful job of being a little less overwhelming and finding where you're going.

So can you explain why the lab is so important? Yeah. I feel like this is like insider information, right? As a fertility doctor, I'm helping figure out the diagnosis, doing all the testing, and helping to make really important, intricate decisions about how to stimulate your ovaries, if I'm trying to get you to ovulate regularly, or if I'm trying to stimulate your ovaries to extract eggs for an egg retrieval for whatever reason, or if I'm putting an embryo in how to best prepare everything hormonally, that's really where I excel. But I'm not the one actually handling your eggs and your sperm and the embryos. This is something I learned and I'm familiar with, but it's not my expertise. I'm relying on a team of embryologists who are specially trained

individuals that are essentially doing like microsurgical procedures on your cells, right? And the quality control of the lab, the lab environment, the level of training and experience. So think about a surgeon, right? For any procedure that you needed, would you go to the surgeon who only does 20 procedures a year or the guy that does 5,000, right? They're going to have better success rates, less complications, they're well honed. And larger volume clinics tend to be more flexible and prioritize the timing of things like the egg retrieval around when it's beneficial for your biology and when your body's ready, not based on staffing. Whereas if you only do like 100 retrievals a year, that might not be the case, right? So there's all these like

inside scoops, I like to call them, that I put in that chapter of, you know, when to seek expert help and where to find the experts because it feels very opaque. It's like very much behind a curtain and no one really understands what it means when you say, well, the IVF lab really matters because you want a lab that has done a lot of what you need them to do well for you. And you want flexibility. You want to know that if you're ready for your egg retrieval on a Sunday, it can be done on a Sunday because it's one of those things that really revolves around when your ovaries look ready and when you're going to get the most number of mature eggs. And IVF is such a numbers game that that's important to not compromise on any part of that process. It's so

high stakes. So I go through a whole list of like, here are the things you need to be thinking about. And I actually quote a major study, a few studies. There was one in 2022 that came out where a group looked at 13 different IVF clinics, and they isolated out the common clinical practices, the things that the doctors were doing, you know, the trends in treatment decisions, and also the way the lab was doing things. And they identified what was the common thread among the top performing clinics with the highest success rates. And there were very technical things about the lab, but this is information that's in my book of things to ask about, right? Like does the lab typically grow embryos out to stage five, six, seven days after

retrieval? Or do they just kind of stop at day three? Are they competent and confident in doing that? Because that's something that's considered more the modern day way of doing IVF. Even like the equipment that they use, not all labs are equal. And then there's also things on the clinical side. Like what kind of protocols do they use? Do they do an ultrasound during all of their embryo transfers to guide the embryo transfer? Because some places just do it by touch. And that can make a difference in success rates. So this is really vital information that has never been put out there in this way. It's not something you can easily Google. You need someone who's like your best friend who happens to be a reproductive endocrinologist who's like, hey, this is what you

need to actually be focusing on. So interesting. I wouldn't have made a single embryo if they had stopped at day three. I think it was all of mine were past day three, and I didn't even know there are labs that stop there. Yeah. I mean, it used to be the old way of doing things. So I guess that's the key that I really pointed out in that chapter is like, what are the advances in our field? And if some labs or programs are stuck kind of in the past and haven't really advanced, then you owe it to yourself to think about whether you want to do your treatment with them or go to a place that's doing more modern techniques that are associated with better outcomes. Right. You know, I had it in here to ask you about the red flags, but I feel like you really

did cover. Is there anything else that's like a big, you know, big red flag for a fertility clinic or doctor? I mean, I think it's about going into it as mentally prepared as possible. A common complaint that I will hear is when patients are like, you know, coming to me for a second opinion and they say, I went in, I had a great meeting with my doctor, I loved them, but then I never saw them again, you know? And I think that they're blindsided by whether it's the doctor or the sonographers that do all of the monitoring visits thereafter once they're actually in treatment, or they will have burning questions and things that come up along the way. And they're like, I don't have a direct line to reach my doctor and ask questions, or I don't even know how to communicate with my team.

So I think by providing a list of questions to ask at your first visit and before you actually embark on treatment, it allows you to kind of avoid feeling blindsided about any of those things. Every meeting I have with a patient, a new patient, I always tell them, I go through all of the medical stuff that we want to talk about, but I always make sure to leave time at the end to say, here's my direct email. This is how you reach out to me with any questions. Here's the portal. This is how you communicate with my team during business hours. On the weekends, this is the office that's open, like just logistical, practical information, but it's so important because if you find yourself after hours with a burning medication question

and you feel panicked, the last thing you want to do is feel confused about how you're supposed to get in contact with your clinic and what to do. It's just about mental preparation. It's very true. I never realized how high touch I wanted that experience to be, especially when you're injecting thousands of dollars of medication. You've got one shot to get this right in this cycle. And the amount of times that I reached out at 8 p.m. to make sure, is this my trigger shot? Or I have friends who have taken it the wrong time because they could not get a hold of somebody and they didn't have enough information. And that is a very expensive and also heartbreaking mistake. Yeah. Absolutely.

Okay. Let's talk sperm because I think we have been told that most infertility issues are a women's issue. Yeah. I always say it's shockingly shocking to see how people are surprised that it's 50-50, right? And I think it's this bias against women, the female biological clock, the fact that we carry the pregnancy, so much of the onus falls on the female partner. When in reality, just because men make new sperm all the time doesn't mean that they don't contribute to issues that can arise. And a lot of times patients will go through IVF, but maybe it's not even that there's any female factor. You know, a third of cases can be a male factor alone. So 50% will involve some level of a male factor issue. In 30% of cases, it'll be a male factor alone, but the burden of

treatment can often rest on the female partner. And it's really important because this idea that because you make new sperm all the time, unlike women who don't make new eggs and we have a biological clock, it doesn't make you immune or invincible to fertility issues. And for a long time, many men have been in denial about their fertility issues because they've been fed this narrative by society that when it comes to fertility and their biological clock, they're invincible. But health habits matter. Chronic exposures like cigarette smoking, being sedentary, obesity, not having controlled medical issues that have been really looked at properly, and not taking your medications to control those chronic medical conditions, that can all contribute

to sperm quality issues. And even if you have sperm, you're making sperm, and you're able to get someone pregnant, it's not irrelevant, right? Because it can also translate into problems with the placenta because the male contribution to the placenta is significant. And that is like a magical, mysterious, temporary organ that forms to connect mom to baby. And when things go awry with the placenta, particularly in the second and third trimester, that's where you can run into problems with growth. You can run into issues like preeclampsia, high blood pressure, because that's your body's way of saying, I need to get more blood flow to the baby, right?

So your blood pressure goes up, the person carrying the pregnancy, and it can be really dangerous. So it's really important to put your best foot forward, not just for the view of getting someone pregnant as a man, but also to really optimize the quality of that pregnancy. and for the health of your future child. You know, along with all of this like really informative, wonderful medical advice you give freely in this book, you touch a lot on the riding the emotional roller coaster

of what this journey can put you through. You also talk about signs to look out for when it's time to get some extra help with your mental health. And you kind of discuss a couple tools to use during the process. I'd love to touch on that. Yeah. And this is honestly my personal anecdotal information from my own journey going through

fertility treatment as an expert and the things that I still felt surprised about in terms of how I felt and reacted throughout the process. But also it's from helping so many of my patients walking alongside so many different types of journeys, not just talking about what people typically think about, you know, a fertility doctor treating like, you know, a heterosexual couple, but helping single, you know, people that are wanting to build their family and maybe they just haven't found the right person to do it with and they've decided to take that step on their own. I talk a lot in the book about how that particular journey, you require a lot of mental health support, you know, because it takes a village and that village doesn't have to include

a partner, but you want to make sure that you are equipped and have the emotional support along the way because it can have so many twists and turns, the path to getting pregnant. And it's really unpredictable. And I think it's also very unpredictable to know how you're going to feel in any given moment. And building resilience is extremely important because it takes grit with anything that doesn't have a guarantee of working the first time around. And we're telling you, okay, let's just keep going. Let's keep going. It can take so much stamina and grit. And it's important to be overprepared. I always say overprepare and overanticipate how this might affect you mentally and take care of yourself. Even just taking care of your basic needs,

making sure you're sleeping enough because that's like the first thing to go out the window when you're stressed, right? Making sure you're being kind to yourself and creating space in your life. I'm guilty of this. I remember having deadlines for work and research stuff that I had going on when I was going through an egg retrieval and being like, oh, it's fine. I'll be fine the next day to hand in that thing. And it was just so overwhelming. And there's ways to really clear space mentally to say, all right, I'm going through this thing. I know I can't take months and months off of work. I'm not saying everyone has to take a vacation. But there are very small, easy strategies, whether it be having a place to store your medications and ways to stay very

organized so that you're kind of mentally decluttering your mind and leaving space for all of the other things that might come up along the way. I think positive self-talk, it sounds really woo-woo, but I've seen it help my patients because I think we're so wired to equate getting pregnant, our fertility, our outcomes of treatment to the amount of effort we put in and our self-worth. And unlike so many areas in life where you put effort in and you get the results, this does not apply. And I think having a way to really make a concerted effort to talk in a positive way, whether that's using affirmations, I gave journaling prompts, right? Like for a lot of people, this is the hardest thing they've ever gone through. And they are

not mentally equipped. Not everyone has a therapist. Not everyone has had to go through challenges where they had to come up with these mechanisms to cope. And so I really tried to put like a mental health toolkit together, which is based on my personal and professional learnings and also everything I've learned from all the mental health experts I've collaborated and care with alongside my patients. Because I very early in my career recognized that this was a need. And we've always had mental health professionals working inside our clinic. And I know not every clinic has that model, but it's something that I think we as a field should aspire towards. That's amazing. Yeah. I just remember going through it. I don't know, year, I was year three

or something. And I felt, I kept envisioning myself as this like rotten piece of fruit, because I just think that women are told like, you know, your juicy fertility. There was something about that where I was like, oh my gosh, I'm already rotten inside. And I feel like I spent so much time with that visual. And I think it would have been really helpful to work with someone on, creating a new narrative of what that was. It sounds insane, but it really did become this thing that I felt very insecure about it too because we also have so much guilt with aging as women and starting so much later. Yeah. I loved this part of the book just really touching on how important it is to take care of yourself. It's not woo-woo. I think it makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, I think so too. I think a lot of people don't realize the role of resilience. And they've done studies on something that we call in our field prematurely dropping out of treatment. And I remember reading this paper. It was a big deal when it came out because no one had really looked at this longitudinally. What are the factors that are leading to people stopping their treatment, not because it wasn't working necessarily, but because they just stopped? And what were the factors when they actually surveyed these people? And I thought, oh, it'll be financial. But this was done in an insurance-mandated state where everyone has coverage. So it wasn't financial. It was psychological.

It was psychological was the number one cited reason. And I see it all the time when people have gaps. It's almost like a gap in the resume. When I'm kind of going through someone's history and I'm like, then you were at this other clinic and then what happened in the last two years? What other treatment? They're like, nothing. I got burnt out. I got burnt out. And that is valuable time when you think about your biological clock, right? And that burnout and aversion to, I can't even go back into a clinic because I almost have PTSD, that can lead people down a path where they just are kind of going further and further

from their goals. So we really have to kind of help support people and keep them in treatment because for so many people, that persistence will pay off. Success rates have really improved. If you think about embryo transfers for IVF, the average person with a high-graded tested embryo has about a 60% to 70% chance of live birth per embryo transferred. And if you did three back-to-back transfers because it took that many to get there, I would tell you studies have shown that there's a 92% chance of live birth rate, which is extraordinarily high. But it's not an easy thing that we should just take for granted the idea of going through three different transfer cycles that can really wear on a person. So I'm always like everyone's cheerleader trying to just

get them to stick with it and stay in it to win it. And I will say, I think the fertility journey, I mean, some of it not so much, but how they say that you have sort of amnesia after giving birth and you forget all of the gory details. I do feel, you know, mine was a little over five years and I always tell women that are in the thick of it, it does feel like this is a lifetime and it feels like you're never gonna get your baby. But in hindsight, my son is now four

and I feel like that was just this little blip on the radar. And meanwhile, I took years off in between failures. And I mean, I wish that I had not, but even with all of that time, I am, I'm so grateful I continued to push and push and, um, you know, I had a support system that I loved in a, in a fertility doctor that I loved and I was really lucky. And I know that's not always the case, but this does bring me to my final question, which I need your help in. I have so many people asking, um, you know, what, what's the one piece of advice you'd give

somebody who's in like the thick of it, who's in the throes of infertility. And I never want to sound like Pollyanna. And I also never want to sound too bad news bears or I don't know. I need something to say that is not inaccurate medically and also gives a little bit of optimism with the process. Well, I think encouraging them to compartmentalize and take it a day at a time because it can feel, especially if there's multiple factors that have been identified that are standing in your way, it can feel like this insurmountable challenge. Like you're at the foot of a mountain and you're looking at the peak like, how the hell am I going to get up there? That's not how you climb a mountain. That's not how you approach a complex challenge.

The ideal way mentally to get through it is to really just say, okay, what is my first goal? Now I'm going to get there. What's my next goal after that? And I think taking a stepwise approach and compartmentalizing is really good advice that I would give, that I do give to my patients. I think as someone who's not coming from the medical perspective, who's just trying to be a good support system for their friend or family member to lean on, it's not so much what you're saying, but what you're doing. And what you need to be doing is listening. And you need to be listening in a way that's not just passive, but active. You need to be showing and demonstrating that you are understanding what they're going through. And I think the best thing to do is

listen and validate. You don't have to slap a Band-Aid on it. There's this tendency for people to give platitudes, over-the-top toxic positivity, like it's going to work out. No, that sounds empty. And it may enrage someone that's like, no, how do you know that? Don't just say things to say them. I think you really need to just say like, this is really hard. What you're going through is tough, but you're doing great. Like considering all of what you're telling me and everything you're going through, you are doing so well. And it sounds like you are so strong and you are up for this challenge. And I'm here for you for whatever you need. And don't just say it open-ended. Maybe come up with some very discrete examples of things you could do. If

someone's going through treatment or they're having a procedure they're going to be recovering from, maybe you offer to bring dinner over or you are checking in. You're texting them and giving them an out and saying, hey, I know you had your retrieval. I know you might not be feeling great right now. I'm here if you want to talk. But just checking in and thinking of you, no need to respond. Because I think that's another thing that makes people feel really overwhelmed is they don't always feel like sharing and giving updates along the way. And I think it's important for us to do whatever we can, whatever's conducive to them bringing more people into their orbit and disclosing what they're going through.

And I think one way to encourage them to do that is to not make it feel like a burden that they end up regretting because now they have all these people that they have to update. So true. You don't want to overassume. Sometimes people kind of shrink away and they're like, I just didn't want to bother you because you were so stressed. and it's like, you don't really know what that person needs, but social isolation is probably not at the top of the list. So err on the side of communicating, but give them an out. If you're

worried about annoying them, say, hey, you don't need to respond. And I think that that works really well. That's great advice. Okay. So where can everyone find you? Where can everyone buy this book? Please tell us, because I think everybody needs a little bit of Dr. Lucky in their lives. I love that. I mean, I do think that this is a book that's going to be changing the landscape of the conversations people have when they walk into their doctor's office and the decisions they make and the overall big picture view that they take of their fertility journey so that they can make really wise decisions from the get-go, not just for baby number one, but for what their overall goal looks like. And I hope that people who aren't even going

through this journey are reading this because as you just asked about, there are so many ways that we can better show up and support people. One in six couples have infertility, one in four pregnancies end in loss. I mean, if you think that you're someone listening to this who's unaffected or people in your life are not affected, you probably just don't know about it. And so we all need to be better educated so we can show up for each other and make it a more supportive, sensitive environment. My book is everywhere that books are sold and there's an audio book that I narrated. So you can listen if you like to listen more than read. Um, you can find me online. I'm still making content. I make a lot of short form videos to answer commonly asked

questions. Um, but this is really, my book is really the most comprehensive form of education that I could have ever put together. And I really think it's, it is a fertility Bible. It covers everything you could possibly need to know and you can get it now. It's out. The lucky egg. Okay. Well, thank you so much. Thank you, Lady Gang, for listening. I hope that this got to the right people. I have faith that it did. Please feel free to share the episode with someone in your life. This is a good way to just check in and say, no pressure to listen, but I found this very informative and all that jazz. So thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me and for using your platform to share such vital,

important information. Thank you. Thank you.