112. When conventional fertility clinics tell you to just “keep transferring embryos” despite repeated failures, it is time to stop settling for the status quo and start digging deeper. In this episode, functional medicine provider Dr. Stephanie Gray blends her medical expertise with her raw personal journey to reveal the hidden variables—from silent uterine infections to blood clotting issues—that could be standing between you and your baby.
On episode 112, Dr. Stephanie Gray, a functional medicine practitioner, nurse practitioner, and author of Your Fertility Blueprint. After navigating a complex, 10-year secondary infertility battle that involved eight IUIs, two out-of-state surgeries for endometriosis, and a devastating standstill with multiple failed euploid embryo transfers, Stephanie had to become her own medical detective. She shares how she used PubMed research to advocate for her own health, eventually uncovering a chronic, low-grade uterine infection (endometritis) from a previous birth and a silent blood clotting condition that conventional doctors completely missed.
Stephanie shares the powerful cross-section where conventional reproductive endocrinology and functional medicine meet. Dr. Gray explains why she believes the global decline in fertility is being heavily driven by a toxic world, touching on environmental toxins, soil depletion, and EMF radiation. She also shares the exact high-dose antioxidant protocol she used to achieve an incredible 60% euploid embryo rate at age 39. From the traumatic reality of surviving a life-threatening postpartum hemorrhage to navigating a high-risk pregnancy with placenta previa, Stephanie’s story is a masterclass in patient self-advocacy. Tune in to discover the practical, root-cause steps you can take to optimize your egg quality and uterine environment, and get a heavy dose of encouragement to trust your intuition when something doesn’t feel right.
About the Guest
Dr. Stephanie Gray, DNP, MS, ARNP, AGNP-C, is a leading functional medicine provider, healthcare entrepreneur, and the author of Your Longevity Blueprint and Your Fertility Blueprint. As the founder of the Integrative Health and Hormone Clinic in Iowa, she specializes in hormone replacement therapy, root-cause infertility solutions, cognitive decline, and autoimmune disorders. Dr. Gray holds a Doctorate in Nursing Practice and utilizes an integrative approach that blends the preventative, investigative lens of functional medicine with necessary conventional medical treatments. Driven by her own intense 10-year struggle to complete her family—culminating in a miraculous pregnancy at age 39—she has dedicated her career to being a “hope dealer” for women and couples facing fertility hurdles over 40. She is also the host of the popular podcast Your Longevity Blueprint.
Connect with Stephanie:
- Instagram: @stephaniegraydnp
- Website: Integrative Health & Hormone Clinic
Key Topics
- The Fusion of Functional and Conventional Medicine: Why reproductive endocrinology and holistic therapies shouldn’t be opposing forces, but rather an integrated approach to maximize IVF success.
- Uncovering Chronic Endometritis: The danger of “blind” office biopsies missing localized uterine infections, and why persistent brown bleeding at the tail-end of your cycle shouldn’t be ignored.
- The Reality of Secondary Infertility & Birth Trauma: Processing how severe past delivery complications (like chorioamnionitis and hemorrhages) can trigger the nervous system to protect itself by blocking future conception.
- Hidden Variables of Repeat Implantation Failure: Navigating complex autoimmune markers like antiphospholipid syndrome and understanding why baby aspirin isn’t always strong enough to treat blood clotting issues in pregnancy.
- Saturating the Body with Antioxidants: A deep dive into the 100-day egg development window and the roles that CoQ10, C60, N-acetylcysteine, and alpha-lipoic acid play in drastically improving embryo euploidy rates later in life.
Resources & Links
Note: Some of the links below are affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you if you make a purchase. I only recommend products our guests truly love!
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Dr. Stephanie Gray’s Book: Your Fertility Blueprint
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Transcript
Jamie: Stephanie, welcome to the show!
Stephanie: Thanks for having me on. Excited to be here.
Jamie: We are sharing her story at 40, but before we do, Stephanie, will you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Stephanie: Sure. I’m Stephanie Gray. I’m a functional medicine provider from Iowa. I specialize in hormone replacement therapy and then also infertility and cognitive decline, autoimmune disorders. My story has really helped pilot that work because I didn’t really specialize in infertility before, but because I discovered so many challenges overcame so many hurdles, I really help share that with my patients.
Jamie: That’s awesome, and I love hearing from doctors about that, too. It’s really affecting everyone.
Yeah. Did you always want to have children? How did that conversation go about children? And then how does becoming a doctor fit into all this?
Stephanie: Yeah, I definitely always wanted children. I didn’t in hindsight, you don’t think you’re gonna have challenges with infertility until you have challenges with infertility.
So I went to grad school several times and I just figured, when I wanna have kids, I can have kids, and that’s not exactly how it works, right? So irony wasn’t lost on me. Even as a provider with a clinic specializing in optimizing hormones, I still had challenges.
Thinking back, we did get married a little later in life in our… we were about 30. My husband always wanted four kids. I wanted two to three kids. And started to try to conceive, and nothing was happening, and I… Meanwhile, my patients were getting pregnant and I wasn’t, so I was getting quite frustrated, right?
We always wanted children. It just didn’t happen quickly for us. That wasn’t in the cards for us. We eventually got there, but it didn’t happen quickly.
Jamie: How was your first pregnancy at 35?
Stephanie: So the pregnancy went great, but it was a journey to get there. I did have a couple surgeries for endometriosis. I knew I’d had heavy cycles for a very long time. Having had a hormone clinic, i knew I was estrogen dominant, low progesterone. I had myself on progesterone. I needed some hormones to help, right? Progesterone’s really important to get pregnant and to maintain a pregnancy.
I had some gastrointestinal issues. I had checked myself for celiac disease. That came back positive, so I had to go gluten-free. I went dairy-free. I had been dairy-free for at least a year before I had conceived William.
I really do think reducing stress in my life, getting on progesterone, creating a healthy uterine environment, reducing inflammation paved the way to be able to conceived at 34, had him at 35.
Jamie: So where in the timeline, you had him with an IUI. How did that fall in with your surgeries and stuff?
Stephanie: I think the IUI that took was the last one. It was IUI number five. So we did four, had the surgeries. So I had two surgeries. The second was a robotic surgery, and I actually sought out a surgeon out of state. So I’m in Iowa, but I sought out a surgeon. I just knew too much. I knew a lot of endometriosis surgeries, where they fry off the lesion they’re creating more scar tissue, and scar tissue is a big focus of my book ’cause that, I do think that hinders fertility in a lot of patients, and I didn’t wanna put myself in the position where, yeah, I’m trying to get rid of my endometriosis, but creating more scar tissue, at the same time.
So I sought out a surgeon out of state that had a non-scarring surgical technique. They excised, they cut out the lesions instead of burning them. They used a non-scarring solution. And I don’t know how to describe their full technique, but their endometriosis recurrent rates were very low compared to what I had available to me in Iowa.
So I sought that out, had two surgeries, and then I knew I was ovulating, so I didn’t wanna take any medications, but since I wasn’t conceiving on my timeline I wanted to conceive quickly I said, “Fine, we’ll do another IUI.” That’s what you had recommended before. I probably would’ve eventually gotten pregnant. We did IUI with no drugs, so I didn’t take any ovulation induction medication, whatnot, and we got pregnant with that- … fifth IUI.
Jamie: How long did y’all try to conceive before you went to other alternatives?
Stephanie: So it was, I guess I’d say four years. Four to five years. The surgery was probably in that fourth year.
In that fourth year. Sorry I don’t know the exact years, but I just, in my head I have this 10-year infertility time span where I had one kid in the middle and one at the end of that 10 years, but it was several years. It’s emotional turmoil, right? Every month you’re like trying to conceive and you’re wondering, “Why me? Why is this not happening?” When I knew my hormones looked good, having taken progesterone and whatnot. So that was frustrating. But after getting through that I assumed incorrectly that I wouldn’t have any challenges with the second one ’cause I thought, “Oh, I took care of this endometriosis. I had a baby. They say it’s easier to get pregnant the second time.” Not always. Secondary infertility is also on the rise, I had way more challenges with the second than the first.
Jamie: Yeah.
Stephanie: We got there, but it took another… took a long time again.
Jamie: Yeah, so what happened? You thought it was gonna be easy. I thought the same thing. My body knows what to do now.
Stephanie: Yes. Yes.
Jamie: Yeah.
Stephanie: So I saw a reproductive endocrinology and of course they say, “With your age, geriatric you need to go right to IVF,” and I said, “Oh no. Let’s not go there yet.” So we did three more IUIs. So I’ve done a total of eight IUI. So we did three more.
Those didn’t take. And of course again, a handful of my patients are getting pregnant doing the things that I’m recommending to them that I’m also doing for myself, yet I’m still not conceiving. So I was getting frustrated, and years went by here, right? But I said, “Fine. I will consider IVF.” And I know with IVF they many times say this is a numbers game, right? You get the numbers, you’re gonna get pregnant. Not everybody has the numbers, so I feel very fortunate and very blessed that I had decent numbers. I did greatly improve those, and we can get to that between-
Jamie: Yeah
Stephanie: IVF cycles. But with my first I had the exact same amount of eggs retrieved with both egg retrievals, but the amount of euploid embryos I made with my second round was significantly higher than my first, and my first was still good.
Jamie: And how old were you whenever you started your egg retrieval, your first one?
Stephanie: Yeah, they were six months apart, but I got pregnant when I was 39, so late 38 or 39 for those for the egg retrievals.
But the embryo transfers didn’t take. And, essentially the doctor said, “You have a 97% chance of, success rate with euploid embryos. If you have three euploid embryos transferred, you will get pregnant.”
I had the numbers, and I didn’t get pregnant. I had, after five actu- it was five or six transfers, I wasn’t pregnant, and I’m like something’s wrong here.” I have what other women don’t have, and I’m not getting pregnant. My problem was not the eggs, the, or the egg quality, my problem was the uterus.
Being a provider, I’m not a reproductive endocrinologist, but I am a hormone specialist. I could do my own research on PubMed, right? And I had researched repeat implantation failure, and there were a couple things that were popping up. One was low-grade uterine infection. I don’t know if you’ve talked much about this on your show.
Jamie: No. No, we haven’t.
Stephanie: So I can go into this. So with my first child, I had a very long labor. He was huge. I’m… You can’t tell, but I’m pretty short. And I had a nine 12 baby.
Jamie: Oh, gosh.
Stephanie: He was huge. I had a C-section, very long labor, then emergency C-section. That’s a whole nother story. But how this plays into secondary infertility is I had chorioamnionitis, which is an infection of the placenta.
And at that time, I always wondered, I was just so thankful to finally have gotten pregnant and had a baby, but in the back of my head, I was thinking, “Is this infection ever gonna impede my future ability to conceive?” I’m in a healthcare entrepreneur mastermind group. I asked probably six different OBGYNs, “Have you heard of this, history of chorioamnionitis? I still can’t get pregnant. Could that be playing a role in me not being able to conceive and having secondary infertility?” And they all said, “Oh, no, you’ll be fine.” I have lots of patients with chorioamnionitis who have been able to conceive again. And I asked a reproductive endocrinology, and they said the same thing.
But in the back of my head, I thought, “But I’m not getting pregnant, so we need to dig deeper.” That’s what I do in my practice. We dig deeper. We figure out the root cause. So I said, “Can you just do a biopsy of my uterus? That will tell us if I have endometritis,” which is low-grade inflammation of the uterus that never got resolved from…
It can be from lots of things that I talk about in my book, from even from STDs from group B strep, right? A lot of women have had that. But mine was from this chorioamnionitis. So interestingly, they did a bi- a blind biopsy in office That came back negative.
When you have a blind biopsy, they can’t see where they’re biopsying, right? They’re not seeing affected, damaged tissue that they’re biopsying. They’re just going up there, which is not pleasant, taking a biopsy, which is not pleasant. Yeah. And they said, “You know what? Your biopsy came back negative.” So I put that hypothesis to rest. So this was probably after three or four euploid transfers. I said, you gotta do a biopsy.” The biopsy came back negative.
Jamie: This test inflammation, was it like an Alice test or one of those standard tests?
Stephanie: So I, so they actually took samples, so through a hysteroscopy. They actually they go up there and
Jamie: Right
Stephanie: I don’t do these procedures, but they actually took a biopsy. Unfortunately, they didn’t get affected tissue. I don’t know what exact type of testing it is, but-
Jamie: Okay
Stephanie: … but basically they took a biopsy of the tissue sample- … looked at it under a microscope, said, “It’s not inflamed, it’s normal tissue.” So we transferred more embryos, and they didn’t, also didn’t take. And I just said, “I just feel like you need to open me up.” Which many patients probably don’t say that, but listeners, follow your intuition.
As a woman, if you have intuition that something is not right, just do not… I couldn’t sleep at night. I couldn’t put this to rest, and I’m a believer, I have strong faith, and I just feel like God was telling me, “There’s an unturned stone here. You need to pursue this.” So I said, “Put me under.” I said, “Go in there. I don’t want blind biopsies. I wanna know what’s happening in my uterus.”
I’ll never forget, the reproductive endocrinologist came back to me after surgery, and he said, “You’re right. You’re right.” So I was on an unlucky one where the blind biopsies were negative, but when he was actually in there, in the upper pole of my uterus where they deploy embryos, I had chronic low-grade endometritis, which you can treat with antibiotics. I could have just taken antibiotics and not had to go through all this and spend, hundreds of thousands of dollars, to get to this point.
Jamie: Yeah.
Stephanie: But one cue to the listeners that you could have this low-grade endometritis, endometritis is brown bleeding. Oh. So your cycle should be bright, healthy, red blood. And if you have tail end brown bleeding, so after you have a normal period, right?
If you still keep bleeding and you’re, you have that darker brown blood, that can say, that can suggest that you have this low-grade infection. And I had that, and I also told my providers and they said, “You’re fine. You’re fine. It’s just old oxidized blood.” It’s not always old oxidized blood. In my case, I did have this infection so I was treated. They treated, they cut out in the, during the surgery, they cut out some of the affected tissue. But I was also treated with antibiotics, and we got rid of that. I had six major hurdles in my story in my book that I share, but that was one of them.
That I had a low-grade chronic infection residual from the infection of the placenta with my first child impeding and causing secondary infertility.
Jamie: Wow.
Stephanie: That gets missed a lot.
Jamie: Yeah.
Stephanie: That was a big tangent, but okay.
Jamie: No, it’s fascinating. Tell us what else-
Stephanie: Other struggles I had or-
Jamie: … was challenging. Yeah
Stephanie: Yeah. One was stress. I have a practice. I’m a mom. I just,
Jamie: yeah.
Stephanie: I really need to focus on calming my nervous system, so there are a lot of things that I place, and you probably have talked about this most. Anyone who is trying to get pregnant, they know the importance of stress reduction, right? That’s something that I had to schedule in time for.
I also, I do feel like birth trauma can impair the ability to get pregnant. Your body remembering- … I went through something dangerous before. I had postpartum hemorrhage with that child. I lost two liters of blood. My body may say, “I don’t wanna do that again until I’ve worked through that trauma and I feel safe to conceive again.” So I actually went and I don’t know if you talked about that on your show either, but I went and talked to someone specifically about that, and really got my mind in the state of this is not gonna happen again.
My body feels safe to conceive. Really spoke positive affirmations over myself to get myself over that because past traumas can truly impact, your ability to conceive.
I did mention the structural issues I had, I had endometriosis- I drastically changed my diet, I was on progesterone . We took care of the infection through the surgery and the antibiotics. That’s another hurdle. I do think toxins are very much overlooked. I talk about this to my male and female patients all the time. Toxins are what contribute to things like premature ovarian failure and polycystic ovarian syndrome and endometriosis.
When I, thankfully I had the knowledge when I was understanding that I was having infertility issues to get the chlorine-rich tampons out of my vagina, right? To start cleaning up my lifestyle.
Jamie: Yeah.
Stephanie: Quit drinking out of plastic, and I made, really drastic changes in our family’s lives to detoxify my body. We test for all those toxins. So if patients come back with a heavy toxin burden, we work to get those toxins out of the patient’s life. One of the- Examples in my book is I had a patient with premature ovarian failure. Her hormones looked menopausal, and she had mold toxicity.
So once we identified she had mold exposure, we got the mold. I actually interviewed her on my podcast, and she shared her story crying “I thought I was menopausal,” we detoxed her from mold. Her hormones kicked back in, and she got pregnant. So it is possible. I just for your listeners to know, like there are so many things that can impede fertility.
I think once you get to IVF, the reproductive endocrinologist doesn’t really care why you have infertility because they feel like they’re overcoming all the hurdles by doing IVF. But there’s no guarantee IVF’s gonna work, right? The success rate’s still like 20, 30% a cycle. You’re spending a lot of money and putting your body through a lot. You wanna get your body in the best shape for that IVF to be a success. You want the highest egg quality. You want the best uterine environment. You want all these things, right?
Jamie: Yeah.
Stephanie: To get your body just in that safe place to conceive. So those are five of the hurdles that I overcame.
Jamie: I was gonna say I read I mostly read It Starts With the Egg, and they- yes … she really stresses toxins also. Yep. And so I’m reading this, and I’m like, “Why aren’t we testing for this?” So it is refreshing to hear that you are testing for that.
Stephanie: Her book is amazing and inspiring, and of course, I- that’s the book that I did share with patients for years. I don’t wanna say my book’s better. My book is different. We talk about egg quality, but I talk about all these other things also. The, because the egg is important, but let’s face it, the sperm and the uterus are also –
Jamie: Right
Stephanie: also important. The other big hurdle was with me, again, having had repeated euploid transfer failures, I knew, and this is why patients have, can have miscarriages too, I knew I could have some blood clotting issues. Again, knowing too much, reproductive endocrinology didn’t bring this up, but I tested myself for antiphospholipid syndrome, which is an autoimmune disease where you can have where essentially you can have, more clotting than you should have, so the blood supply to the fetus gets cut off, so you can e- end up having a miscarriage.
I, my blood markers came back positive, and I thought, “Are you freaking kidding me? First I have celiac, and now I have these positive markers.” So I took that to University of Iowa and said, “Okay, now we’re dealing with something else.” Long story short, we repeated the levels again. You have to repeat them 12 weeks a- apart, and I didn’t meet all the criteria for antiphospholipid syndrome because I hadn’t had a miscarriage over 10 weeks. I had one early, but not over 10 weeks, and I hadn’t had another blood clot yet. There’s another one in my story, but that’s coming later. I had to see fetal-maternal medicine ’cause I also had placenta previa with this, which we can talk about also. But I needed to go on blood thinners.
I really think if I would’ve had that infection appropriately treated, if I would’ve been on appropriate blood thinners, I could have conceived naturally because I had the eggs.
That wasn’t the problem, right? I had all along been working on egg quality ’cause I, we run nutritional analyses on all our patients to test them for what antioxidants they need. I was taking all the stuff to help, but I didn’t know I had these other hidden variables. So essentially I had to go on Lovenox and blood thinning injections through the pregnancy, which was- Also controversial for me because I had placenta previa.
When you have placenta previa, you have greater risk of hemorrhaging. So here I am, 39 years old, high-risk pregnancy that took another five years to achieve. I’m told you need to be on blood thinners, but you also have high risk for hemorrhage, so with placenta previa. So it was a stressful…
It wasn’t as easy as the first pregnancy.
Jamie: Yeah.
Stephanie: The first pregnancy I didn’t have nausea. I got through great. Had a horrendous delivery, but the pregnancy itself was great. The second pregnancy was a little more stressful just because, I don’t know if you’ve had many guests who’ve had placenta previa, but, the placenta’s in the wrong place. It’s blocking the exit of the baby. So you have to have a C-section. So I have this, holistic clinic. Of course, I wanna deliver naturally. Nope, I’m super high risk. No midwives will take me. I have to see, a high risk OB, which I understand. I wanted to go as long as possible.
I thought, “Can we please not take my baby till 37 weeks?” I wanted to let him mature as long as possible, but the hospital policy is you’re too high risk for hemorrhaging. We have to take the baby at 36 weeks. We had to stop the blood thinner. I think it was in the 20s, 26 weeks or something like that.
I was able to stop the blood thinner once, once we knew the blood supply to the baby was fully developed, nothing was gonna clot off, right? Since I was high risk for hemorrhaging, they said, “Okay, you can stop the blood thinner.” So I’m just so thankful I got to 36 weeks. I had to have a scheduled C-section.
Jamie: I have a question on the blood thinners because I think- Yeah probably a lot of women are saying I take aspirin for that.” That, would that not be strong enough?
Stephanie: Not, no, not, that’s not strong enough. Okay. So if you have MTHFR genetic variants, if you have some mild clotting issues, fish oil, which everybody needs fish oil. That’s gonna help the cognitive development of the child. You’ve got to be on fish oil ahead of as you’re ready to conceive, as you conceive, through pregnancy, postpartum because your baby, if you’re breastfeeding, he’s getting, those omegas. You’ve gotta be taking fish oil. Aspirin is a second blood thinner. The labs that I had were, again, just higher risk.
I needed something. The research shows Lovenox is the treatment there.
Jamie: Okay.
Stephanie: Which is enoxaparin, so an injection. So yeah, I didn’t have to go on super high dose, but I did have to take it. And I do think, I got pregnant, so the first transfer I had after being on blood thinners and taking the antibiotics, it took, right?
All along I feel like our first transfer should’ve took if these other things were in place, or maybe I wouldn’t have needed the IVF, but it’s part of my story. Because I learned all this, I can share that with others, and hopefully they don’t have to go through all of what I went through. So there’s always purpose in the pain when we share our story, which is why you have your show.
Jamie: Yeah. Tell us what number transfer was this, and what were you feeling after you saw that positive test or got the news?
Stephanie: I was feeling transfer after transfer, you just get discouraged.
Each time you wanna be so hopeful, but yet when they don’t take or you have a early loss, you just get discouraged. For this transfer, it was the seventh embryo. It was the seventh transfer-
Jamie: Wow
Stephanie: which is a miraculous number in the Bible. But actually had six transfers Six transfers, but seven embryos because the first one I had two transferred at once, and then I had-
Jamie: Okay …
Stephanie: solo since then. Yeah.
So- Okay … but I was feeling more confident because I knew, by golly, we’ve addressed this infection. I can lay that to rest. That’s been taken care of. I’m on blood thinners. This is a euploid embryo. I was finally more confident that this could actually freaking work, and my husband, we leave the transfer and, they say, “Pregnant until proven otherwise,” and my husband said, “You’re pregnant.
We are gonna believe this. This is happening.” And so it was. So you’re almost in disbelief when you see that faint line. You’re like, “Wait,” “Is this really true?” Yeah. And you’re looking at the line every day, testing it to see if it gets darker. Yeah. And, I’d had that once before because I had an early loss, and so you, you try to not get your hopes up.
But I just had this feeling, and so did my mom. My mom’s a strong prayer warrior, and she just said, “This is it,” “This is, you’re pregnant. This is lasting.” And so faith and prayer were certainly part of our equation, but of course we were ecstatic. I was like, “Freaking finally.” “Finally we’re, it’s been worth it. All this has been worth it, finally.”
Jamie: Yeah, that’s awesome that you had so much confidence behind it ’cause it, it almost made me worry more. But I love that, that you were just so confident, like you fixed everything. This is the one.
Stephanie: Not everyone’s journey ends with a biologic child. Everybody’s journey to, parenthood is different. It might be- Yeah … adoption. It might be donor eggs. Everyone has a different journey, but I think we all, at least how I live my life, is I keep taking steps forward. If I wanna see progress isn’t gonna happen unless I take a step forward. I step out in faith. I keep moving forward and telling that peace is this where I stay, right? And a lot of people, even my husband at times, were like, You’re putting your body through a lot here. We don’t have to continue. Th- we could, we’re fine with one kid. We can just lay this journey to rest.
But I just, I wasn’t at peace. I knew God had another child for us, and I just knew. I said, I just thought, Follow your intuition. You’re not there yet. Your family’s not complete. We press forward. We keep going. And- … that’s a message to the listeners. You may be at peace that you have done enough, and this is where you are to stop your journey or to s- you know, pivot and try something different. But if you’re not at peace, look for the answers. Keep digging because they are there. My story is a great example of finally digging and, persistence finally getting us the family that we desired and prayed for.
Jamie: So when you were talking to your doctor the fertility doctor- yeah you were really the one advocating do this, right? Yeah.
Stephanie: They couldn’t really a- argue with me when I’m saying like- I’ve had repeated euploid embryo transfer fails. What is the next step? They’re saying, transfer more,” and I’m like, “No.” Let’s look at this article and let’s explore. S- there are some IVF clinics that they won’t even transfer embryos until you’ve had a hysteroscopy where they’ve actually looked in the uterus- Oh … and th- they know you don’t have an infection. But University of Iowa said there’s not enough research, to show that it’s worth doing.
In my case, it would’ve been worth it, but in someone else’s case, maybe it wouldn’t have been worth it. But yes, I was surprised that I had to advocate so heavily for myself, but I’m also extremely thankful that I had them, that they were able to do the surgery. I couldn’t have gotten pregnant without conventional medicine, right?
Jamie: Yeah.
Stephanie: My story’s a perfect blend of some natural things, the supplements functional medicine, building a healthier body, but I also needed conventional medicine. I needed that integrative approach.
Jamie: Yeah, definitely. Are you ready to talk about your birth story? Sure. Do you wanna say anything else?
Stephanie: No. Go for it.
Jamie: Yeah. Tell us, at 36 weeks, you planned to do- Had a sched- … your C-section.
Stephanie: Yep, yep. So we had a scheduled C-section at the hospital. And again, I had postpartum hemorrhage with my first, and so- And of course, with my first I had this beautiful birth plan, gonna have this natural delivery.
Things didn’t go that way, so like I knew … of course all my patients, “Oh, did you have a natural delivery?” Did you have a midwife? Did you have a home birth?” Nope didn’t. That is not how my story went. And props to those of you who can do that, like that’s incredible. But I was worried about postpartum hemorrhage again, and so that was really something that I was, like they literally pre-medicated me for.
They had blood in the OR ready, for me. My doctor was highly recommended to me. Like she was high-risk OB, and she said she, her belief was that, “You’re not gonna hemorrhage again because we can prevent this. You’re having a planned C-section. You’re not gonna labor. This is gonna be okay. This is gonna be a beautiful delivery. You’re gonna be that mom holding your baby,” like after the C-section, “with your makeup on looking great. This is gonna be this, pretty story,” like so many of my friends who also had a rough first delivery but had a scheduled C-section for their second.
So I felt like mentally I was in really good shape. Like I felt like I did the work, that I was like, you know what, I was just so thankful to have finally have been there. You’re, finally pregnant. We’re finally at this 36 weeks. I was naturally worried, ’cause I had placenta previa, about, bleeding. And I did have one episode of bleeding earlier in the pregnancy. We had the scheduled C-section, and mentally my nurse was amazing. So we have, we do IV nutritional therapy, we used to at our clinic, and one of our nurse’s sisters was an OB nurse who helped deliver my first child, and she actually came back. She wasn’t supposed to work the shift, but she scheduled herself for the shift to help me with my second, and I felt very blessed that she was there for that. Of course she too was saying, “We’re not gonna have the same repeat story. We won’t. This is gonna be different. You’re not gonna hemorrhage, right?”
And so I felt like I had a great team. She said, “You have the best anesthesiology team on right now. We were just … I had my mind right for this C-section.” Let me tell you, it didn’t go so, so well. So I could tell, I, I just knew, for those of you who have the C-section, the curts- curtains over your face. And you feel tugging and pulling and, it’s like I’d had this before. And I knew, they got the baby out, but I … You can hear the doctor saying You’re … She’s bleeding. She’s bleeding. And and that’s scary. You’re like- Yeah … facially paralyzed, laying down, my husband got rushed to the NICU, so they took my husband away from me. So the anesthesiologist and I were best friends, ’cause I’m like, “Dude, you gotta talk to me here ’cause I’m freaking out.”
Jamie: Distract my brain.
Stephanie: Exactly. What’s happening? Is my son okay? I was already worried about him being born early at 36 weeks. Yeah. That’s really early. Are his lungs developed? I know too much to make me worry about- Yeah … other things. But I s- but Eric said, “Do you want me to stay with you? Do you want me to go with him?” And I said, “Go with him. Go see our baby.” You hear him cry, you’re like, “He’s alive. He’s here.” And I wish they would’ve brought him to me, but they were too worried.
I didn’t even get to see him. Away he goes. Oh, wow. Away my husband goes. I can tell I’m bleeding out, essentially. They take me to recovery. They think I’m done bleeding, and can I get graphic here? Is that okay?
Jamie: Sure.
Stephanie: Okay. I can tell she’s just like putting her hand in and pulling out clots.
Like it is like I’m seeing these clots. I’m like, “Am I gonna pass out?” Because I am seeing how much blood I’m losing here. And and she said, “I’m sorry, we gotta take you back to the OR.” And at that point I was like, “Call my mom.” I need someone here with me here. I need emotional support.”
My husband’s in the NICU with my son. My mother was already at the hospital just waiting for me also. So she comes in. She’s with me. I get to see her, but then they rush me back into, I don’t even remember. I’m I was so delirious. But it was either back into the OR, another procedure room, and high-risk OB was there.
Anesthesiology was there. They were debating whether they were gonna have to put me under again. I was worried I was gonna end up with a hysterectomy if they couldn’t get the bleeding to stop. They were worried my anesthesia was gonna wear off, but they basically said they kept trying to put this Jada in. I don’t know if you know what a Jada is. But it’s basically like a balloon they blow up in your uterus. They blow it up and it stops the bleeding, and they couldn’t get it in. I was puking profusely, I’m in shock ’cause I’ve lost so much blood. I’m sick from the anesthesia. You’re like, you have no modesty, right?
You’re just like everything, you’re just naked. It’s just like this is the most humiliating part of my life. Is my baby okay? Like-
Jamie: Yeah
Stephanie: … so I’m, they can’t even do what they need to do because I won’t stop throwing up. When I can actually stop, like heaving and hold still, like they eventually get this Jada in. But by that point I had lost three liters of blood. I could already see they’re giving me, packed units. So they take me to, back to recovery. You don’t wanna think about the hard part because we finally got this beautiful, healthy baby, yeah. It took a freaking lot on your body to get there.
Jamie: Yeah.
Stephanie: S- so I’m in recovery with my mom. She’s still, they still don’t know if this thing is gonna work. And, the residents are coming in, and I feel like at this point I know more than they do. I don’t even know if they know they’re checking the amount of blood I’m losing appropriately.
I’m getting very worried. Finally, they’re like, “I think your blood has slowed down enough that we’re gonna keep this…” They kept it in longer than they normally would have, but they said, We’re gonna finally move you to a room. So between 12… So to be clear, I went into the hospital that l- mid-morning.
C-section was, like, 11 or 12. He was born at 2 or 3 in the afternoon. This is mid, like between 12 and 3:00 AM, still haven’t seen the baby. I’m taken finally into an actual hospital room. I had been in recovery, and back in the OR and in recovery for so long. But they thought, “You’re stable enough. We’re gonna take you into a room.” So my mom’s “Really? In the middle of the night right now? Okay, fine.” So we pack everything up and they take me to a room.
Eric slept in the NICU with our son, so he wasn’t alone, right? But I hadn’t seen him or our son, and at this point, I remember this from the first time I hemorrhaged, but this time I hemorrhaged more. You’re just, you’re so weak. You’re like, you c- you don’t even wanna lift your arm. You’re just so weak. I’m like, “How am I gonna hold my baby?” And then it’s now I gotta pump, right? Then they want you to pump ’cause you got, you want your milk to come in. With the first baby, they said, “Oh, your milk won’t even come in. You lost so much blood you probably won’t be able to breastfeed.” I’m like yeah I’m gonna try.” And I did just fine. My milk came in. I had great volume. And so with the second one, I just thank God that my milk came in. It, I was, even though I lost that much blood, granted they were pumping me full of fluids and I had blood transfusions, right? But my milk came in, and they d- you, as you get your, just, you get colostrum at first. My husband came down and he, we gave him the colostrum or the medi- medical assistants, whatever, would take the baby the colostrum. As I’m pumping through the night, whatnot.
I feel like I was barely alive at this point ’cause you’re just so freaking tired and whatnot. The next day they gave me an iron infusion in my left arm.
They, so they gave me some packed red blood cells, then they gave me iron, and then they gave me more blood again ’cause my numbers weren’t coming up to where they wanted.
But I ended up with a blood clot in this arm from the iron infusion. I had mastitis twice, and I had, oh, I just had the long, very long story. But I know what you wanna ask probably is when did you get to see your baby?
Jamie: Yeah.
Stephanie: So the next day, I wasn’t considered stable enough until the afternoon, and, the photos of me are just, I’m just gray as all can be. I can barely get into a wheelchair, but they pushed me. I got to go to the NICU, and I got to feed him. You’re just, you’re exhausted, but you’re just crying what you can cry, and you just wanna see him and hear him and smell him, and, you get to feed him and it was beautiful. I got to stay for 10 minutes, and they made me go back to my room, but- Oh. But my, both my parents were there, and so my parents and my husband were taking shifts, so someone was with him in the NICU, and then someone was with me, too.
Even with my first kid, baby got discharged before I did ’cause I wasn’t stable enough to leave the hospital. And with the second kid, same thing happened. Baby gets discharged, and I had to stabilize before I could go. But thankfully, given all that we went through, today he and I are healthy. My doctor definitely said, “You’re not having any more kids. You lost too much blood. This is too risky. She basically advised against… I still have embryos, but she advised- Ooh … against another child.
Which I would really, I would still have another one, but that, internal- conflict dilemma. I was like, “Do I put myself, my parents?” My husband say, “No way, Jose. You are not. We are done. We are not going through that again.”
It was too scary. But I do feel like my family is complete. After, after all that, when you’re going through it, you just, you don’t know what the outcome’s gonna be, but you trust and believe and just have peace and follow your intuition, and we got there.
Jamie: Yeah. How was it when you got home?
Stephanie: Yeah, normal C-section, although that was- Okay … literally the worst of my problems, ’cause my arm, within a couple days I’m like, “Something’s not right with my arm.” It was all red and hard. I’m like, “Pretty sure this is a blood clot.” So I ended up having to go back on blood thinners again. They were gonna probably put me on them anyways, but it’s ’cause I had to get rid of this clot in my arm. So it was hard. Pumping, I had a business and I had a full docket of patients that count on me.
I had planned to have a maternity leave ’cause I took four weeks with my first one, and I was hoping to take a couple months with the second one. I had a provider leave two weeks before I had this baby, which was not really happy about. It was not good timing, but that’s life of an entrepreneur. And then the provider we had scheduled to cover maternity leave ended up not working out, had some major health issues, so I ended up having to go back to work way sooner than I had anticipated. So it was a very short stint. I thought I had things planned out, but life just throws you a lemon sometimes. So I wish I had a longer maternity leave. But what my husband and I really choose to do is we be ve- we are very intentional with our time. Yes, I’m at work during the day, but after work I am home, I’m reading books, playing with my kids.
I’m scheduling in that margin with them because, ’cause I do have to work. And so when I’m at home or my weekends, that is kid time. So but postpartum was hard. I was exhausted. It took me a long time to feel like I was mentally back in the game and, I had to go back to work and I’m pumping mult- four times a day at work and, it’s a lot.
Jamie: Yeah.
Stephanie: But would I change it? No. My, that baby deserved that breast milk. I wanted to give that to him and, that was my last chance to do that on this earth so I did it.
Jamie: Yeah. How long did you breastfeed him for?
Stephanie: So breastfeeding didn’t go super well because he was born a month early, and the lactation consultants kept saying, “Oh, stick with it. Stick with it. He’ll mature. He’ll be able to latch,” and he just never latched really well. I really only breastfed him for a couple months, but I pumped for 10 to 12 months. I did 14 months with my first one, and then yeah, it was more like 10 because I wanted to be done by spring break, I think. So I finished in March, and he was born in May, so it was 10 months. And again, I like… Maybe in hindsight I would’ve went back and pumped longer, but I also had a freezer full of milk. I had ample, supply. So that’s the silver lining of it.
Jamie: That’s great. Yeah. And no supply issues.
Stephanie: No, which I really think that I attribute that to my nutrition and all, supplements, and just what I do with my patients. We focus on nutrition, and I feel like that paid off in the long run with the nutrition I was able to provide my baby.
Jamie: And mentally, how were you during postpartum?
Stephanie: Oh, all over the place. I definitely worried. I think I was just overwhelmed. I just had way too much on my plate, and since then i’ve had a couple rough years. That year I had mastitis twice, and it’s like you gotta empty but you gotta go see a patient and you got…
i’m just… I was prioritizing work sometimes, and I, as of really this year, and my, patients, if they listen to this, they’ll know, like I… We’ve rearranged things differently at the practice to give me more margin.. And so this is my year of more margin, and I’m not gonna be that stressed anymore. I’m just… I’m not.
Jamie: Good. Good. Is there anything else you wanna mention about postpartum or birth?
Stephanie: I will say since you asked postpartum, back to I mentioned fish oil is really important. Not just for the cognitive development of the child through pregnancy, but you wanna give the baby those, the fish oil, as he develops after.
Both of our boys’ teachers are like, “What do you give these boys? They’re so smart.” And I’m like, “Boatloads of fish oil, just boatloads of fish oil.” But also progesterone. I took progesterone immediately postpartum. Oh. You don’t have to wait, until you’re depressed or anxious. Progesterone versus SSRIs or other medications, which some people need, absolutely, like you, you can take those, although there are al- alternative supplements, but progesterone is so safe.
Your baby’s bathed in progesterone in the womb, so if you need it postpartum, that was my first go-to, and that was very helpful, and that’s what I recommend to a lot of my patients for postpartum. Natural bioidentical progesterone.
Jamie: I’ve never heard of that.
Stephanie: Oh yes. Great for sleep, great for anxiety. It’s just wonderful. So that’s something that I did that I would also mention postpartum. And what was your other question, or was that the question?
Jamie: I asked mentally. What else did I ask?
Stephanie: I talk fast too. I don’t know.
Jamie: I’m just in your story right now. What has been your biggest challenge being pregnant in your 40s?
Stephanie: This may sound silly, but I think mine was my commitments. It really was. I’m so fortunate to have a loyal client base. I love my practice, but that was the hardest part is, almost like being overcommitted, but that’s how I feed my family. That’s my job, right? Yeah. So I wish I would have done, set the boundaries that I have set this year, I wish I would’ve set them and done this a couple years ago ’cause it would’ve afforded me more margin, but you can’t go back. I can’t have that regret. I have since pivoted, and I have to move forward.
Jamie: Yeah. Is there anything you’d recommend that would prepare someone for pregnancy and birth over 40?
Stephanie: Yeah, my book. No, just kidding. Antioxidants are so important. You had talked about the book, It Starts with the Egg. If you are older like us, more mature, more wise, and you wanna start a family, it takes 100 days for eggs to develop, right?
So the eggs you’re ovulating today were developing starting 100 days ago. You have that opportunity, that 100-day window to really improve egg quality, and I really improved my numbers even on the supplements I was taking between my IVF cycles, and I share all that in the book too. But CoQ10, so much research on egg quality, and a lot of people, a lot of my patients even come to me taking CoQ10, and I say, “How much,” right?
A lot of times we need to up the dose. N-acetylcysteine, alpha-lipoic acid, resveratrol, vitamin C, vitamin E. There are so many antioxidants that will help improve egg quality that you and your partner need to be taking, right? ‘Cause to make an embryo you need healthy eggs and sperm.
Jamie: Right.
Stephanie: So I cannot stress enough nutrition, and then also creating a healthy uterine environment like I had to do, really reducing inflammation.
For one person that may be going gluten-free, for another person it may have nothing to do with gluten. But that’s where finding a functional medicine provider can come in ’cause they can test you to see what antioxidants you need, right? They can ask about your stress, even do heart rate variability testing, see if you need to reduce your stress, see what’s causing inflammation in your body.
They can test you for toxins. They can test your hormones. I would set yourself up for success as by those things.
Jamie: That’s great. And what advice would you give yourself when you were pregnant if you could go back?
Stephanie: This is the hardest question I think I would tell myself that no matter what, it’s gonna be okay.
Jamie: Yeah.
Stephanie: No matter what, no matter how this journey ends it’s gonna be okay. God has plans for you either way. So yes, you can push forward, but I think I would just tell myself, “Take a chill pill.” I’m kidding. It’s- … easier said than done, but, just that it’s gonna be okay.
Jamie: That’s good.
Let’s shift more towards your book. Sure. What’s the difference between functional and conventional medicine?
Stephanie: Yeah. So there’s an analogy that I use with my patients to share this, ’cause some of your listeners may, maybe they’ve already sought out functional medicine or maybe they’ve never heard of it.
But I like to describe conventional medicine as being more the fire department, so they’re here to put out big, bad, ugly fires, like you get in a car accident or you have a heart attack, whatnot, right? And their two tools are drugs and I say an ax and a hose, AKA drugs and surgery, which I’ve needed.
I’ve taken the drugs, right? I’ve had blood clot. I needed the blood thinners, right? I’ve had the surgeries, right? But upon discharge from the hospital, if you do have a heart attack, you’re not always taught how to prevent future heart attacks, right? So functional medicine is more looking for, preventing the faulty circuitry in the house that led to the fire, if that makes sense, right? Functional medicine asks how and why the illness occurred, and tries to get the r- to the root cause of the problem. So that’s what I practice, but I also practice integrated medicine. So integrated medicine integrates or combines conventional medicine with natural and complementary methods, and I believe that is where the secret sauce is, right? The benefit of all worlds combined really lies in integrated medicine.
Jamie: Did you always know that this is what you wanted to do, or did your journey and everything lead you to this?
Stephanie: Yeah. To some degree, yes. So I was born and raised in the Midwest in a healthy family. My parents had us on vitamins, took us to the chiropractor, right?
They had a high deductible back then, so they wanted to keep us as healthy as possible. I thought I’d end up being a chiropractor, but I wanted to be able to prescribe drugs and to take patients off drugs, so I figured I better get prescriptive privileges, and a chiropractor can’t do that. To some degree, I knew I was gonna be practicing more holistically, but I still wanted to be able to prescribe, if that makes sense.
Today you got to hear my fertility story, but that’s part of my story. My first story was when I had very fast heart rate, tachycardia, just sitting at my desk one day. I had lots of belching and burping. I had SIBO. I kinda shared that I had tested myself for celiac disease. But long story short when I had the fast heart rate I was taken to Mayo Clinic because I didn’t have an arrhythmia that you could ablate. Cardiology had referred me there, and Mayo basically just told me, take a medication to control your heart rate.” And I thought I wanna figure out why this is happening to me and not just take the Band-Aid approach, right? Which can be helpful, but I wanna get to the root cause of the problem.
And so this was early on in my career. I’d already chosen to go this route with functional medicine, but your own struggles always solidify your passion and like what you wanna do. And so at that point my husband said we gotta figure you out, and we need to create a map, an outline, some roadmap or blueprint for our patients.
And so that’s when I wrote my first book, Your Longevity Blueprint, where I compare… I have this, again, this house analogy where I’m comparing every aspect of the house to an organ system in your body. You need a strong foundation of the house upon which to build the house so the house lasts a long time.
Same is true with your body. You need a strong gastrointestinal system, a foundation upon which to build good health. And so that’s kinda where my functional medicine journey just progressed, because I had to restore my health, and then I wrote this book for patients. And chapter six in that book is all about the heating and cooling system in the home, which I compare it to the endocrine system in the body. And so the second book is a spoof off that chapter, just the endocrine system chapter Your Fertility Blueprint, after I had those struggles. Does that answer your question? That’s kinda how I got into what I’m doing.
Jamie: Yeah. Tell us more about your book, Your Fertility Blueprint.
Stephanie: Yeah, so it’s available everywhere. If you go to yourlongevityblueprint.com, you’ll see both my books, or you can just go to yourfertilityblueprint.com also. So you can watch that book launch video. It’s available everywhere, Amazon or our website, whatnot. And I really wrote it just to give patients hope.
I talk a lot about the infertility statistics and why I think this is on the rise, this toxic world we live in, what, how we’ve gotten to where we’re at. And I don’t leave males out of the book ’cause again, males are part of the equation that are overlooked. I just wrote the book to be a hope dealer for fertility because it is possible later in life.
So many women are waiting till later in life to get pregnant now and-
Jamie: Yeah
Stephanie: … but we do have some hurdles we need to overcome, but guess what? We can overcome them. So I just wanted this to be encouragement. I just wanted to put… It’s over 400 pages, like as much information in there as possible. There’s so much in here that I guarantee you haven’t heard of.
So if you’re listening to this, and maybe you’ve had one child, and you wanna have another, just don’t underestimate yeah the knowledge that’s in this book because it could really help you, yeah, overturn those unturned stones to figure out what your hindering variables are.
Jamie: Yeah. So it took you 10 years to have your two children. How did this really shape your understanding of fertility?
Stephanie: It certainly didn’t discriminate against me, right? Again, this provider who’s living the health- healthy lifestyle, who has access to all the tests and the tools, yet I had infertility.
Nobody’s immune to it. Yeah. So it was a very humbling experience, and I told God if you help me get pregnant, I will share my story with the world.” Did I wanna admit, as a owner of a hormone clinic, that I went through IVF and a more holistic hormone clinic that I went through IVF? No. But I got, I had to put my story out there because, like, how could I not share this information when it could help so many other women?
Jamie: Yeah. What do you think is driving this decline of fertility?
Stephanie: I think it’s primarily our toxic world. We didn’t have this degree of toxicity years ago, right?
Every year, more and more chemicals that have not been tested for safety are introduced. So I think environmental factors are huge. I just yesterday had a patient, she’s a pilot, right? I’ve had a couple patients who who are trying to conceive who both female and males are both pilots, and they’re exposed to lots of radiation, right?
Jamie: Yeah.
Stephanie: I can’t help but wonder, okay, is that why they’re not able to conceive? We have unprecedented exposure to radiation from EMFs from our phones, which you should never carry near your crotch or your ovaries, whatnot. We just live in a toxic world. I talk tons about that in both of my books, I won’t b- go off on too large of a tangent.
Yeah. But I do think it’s a perfect storm of toxicity. I think we have really foods that are nutritionally not as dense as they used to be, right? An apple isn’t what it was for our grandma a couple decades back. We have more processed diets soil depletion, our gut microbiome.
That’s a whole nother really important topic for fertility. Our gut microbiome has been disrupted from antibiotics, food additives, stress, whatnot. And then we have inflammation ’cause we’re eating genetically modified, pesticide-ridden, grains and whatnot. And then there’s an increasing rise of autoimmune diseases, right?
That’s part of my story, having those antiphospholipid markers that were elevated. And stress is at a all-time high, right? So that doesn’t help. Yeah. So I think it’s just the combination of all the above.
Jamie: Yeah. And you say there’s a- always a root cause to infertility even when patients are told nothing wrong, nothing is wrong. Can you explain that a little bit?
Stephanie: Yeah, I think I, I kinda mentioned this w- as we opened the interview. Yeah. Whether it’s fatigue or headaches or acne or, bloating or infertility there’s always a root cause. With infertility it can be more complicated. There may be many contributors to the body saying “We’re not ready to grow new life, but we need to figure that out.” So inflammation, gut dysbiosis, toxic burden, nutritional deficiencies, stress, birth trauma, infections, blood clotting issues all the things I mentioned. There’s always a reason why, so we just have to figure that out.
Jamie: Yeah. And many people see functional medicine and conventional fertility treatments as opposing approaches. How do you view that relationship?
Stephanie: Yeah, I don’t think they should be oppos- opposing. I think they should work together. That’s how we get the best outcome, right?
Jamie: Yeah.
Stephanie: If someone has to pursue IVF, great, but let’s get their body in shape to have the best outcomes possible with IVF. So those worlds should not be opposed. They should be combined for the best success of the patient.
Jamie: Yeah. And tell us what you did between those two cycles to get more eggs.
Stephanie: Yeah, so antioxidants. So one thing that I did, and I share all the exact numbers in the book I took C60, so that’s a specific antioxidant. I even have podcasts on… but I think that was a big variable. I also will say my husband had his gallbladder removed. His gallbladder was, like, dying inside him. It was really inflamed really bad, and I think that was actually… He was… He’s never been a skinny guy, but he was getting pretty skinny when his gallbladder was not functioning very well.
So he was very malnourished, and he had his gallbladder removed. His nutrition improved, right? We focused. He also took antioxidants. I took boatloads. I was taking C60 every day, and I had, so at 39, I had nine euploid embryos. That’s insane. Yeah. That’s like a 60 per- I had a 60% euploid rate.
Those numbers are not common. Now, I didn’t get pregnant right away. You heard my story. I took seven transfers several years to finally get there but that second egg retrieval and that process, those numbers were, Those were amazing numbers. Yeah. So there’s proof in that pudding that those an- that saturating my body with those antioxidants was huge.
Jamie: And you were just doing that with supplements.
Stephanie: Yes. Yeah. Okay. And I eat well too, but yes- i do think for us, again, aging women, I think it’s pretty hard to get from food what you need. You just, you can’t get CoQ10 from food. As much as you need, you really do need to supplement in this situation.
Jamie: Yeah. That’s great. I’m excited to read your book. I can add it on right after… Hopefully it’s not as overwhelming as It Starts With The Egg is, ’cause that was really overwhelming.
Stephanie: I’m not gonna lie, it’s a lot. There’s a lot in here, but just take it in chunks.
Jamie: Yeah. Okay. I’m excited about it. Yeah. Do you wanna tell us, like, where our listeners can connect with you?
Stephanie: Yes. I say the easiest thing, my clinic is in Iowa, but I am licensed in multiple states, so ihhclinic.com is my clinic, and then yourlongevityblueprint.com is where my podcast is, which is called Your Longevity Blueprint, the name of my first book. Your Fertility Blueprint book is there as well.
On Instagram, I’m StephanieGrayDNP, so you can find me there and on Facebook. And yeah, I think that’s it.
Jamie: Awesome. Stephanie, thank you so much for sharing all this knowledge and wisdom and your story with us.
Stephanie: Thanks for having me on. Follow your intuition and do not give up. I always tell patients wellness is waiting and so is your family.