Why Smart Women Stay Stuck in Fertility Treatment (And the Pattern That Keeps Repeating)

👉 Learn more about the Functional Fertility Second Opinion

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Timestamps

00:00 – Why effort isn’t the problem in fertility treatment
Most people don’t stay stuck because they aren’t trying hard enough. They stay stuck because the same decision logic keeps repeating.

01:00 – Why fertility systems reward compliance over understanding
Clinics are optimized for protocols and throughput, not for helping patients interpret why outcomes didn’t change.

02:00 – Outsourcing thinking to authority and why it feels safe
How “bad luck” and “poor egg quality” become default explanations instead of deeper investigation.

03:00 – Mistaking motion for progress in IVF and fertility care
New clinics, new protocols, new supplements — without measuring whether anything actually changed.

03:45 – Why being busy feels productive but doesn’t shift biology
Action brings emotional relief, but relief is not the same as biological change.

04:30 – Status quo bias and fear of deviating from conventional fertility logic
Why familiar disappointment often feels safer than stepping into uncertainty.

05:30 – The invisible cost of delay in fertility decisions
Time, money, and emotional energy continue to accumulate even when nothing changes.

06:15 – Why the Embryo Audit Checklist exists
How organizing past cycles and outcomes helps reveal patterns instead of reacting to recommendations.

07:15 – Pattern recognition versus changing protocols
Why progress comes from changing how decisions are made, not just what is tried next.

08:00 – What a Functional Fertility Second Opinion is designed to do
A clinical review focused on interpreting history, labs, and outcomes rather than repeating treatment.

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Transcription 

[00:00:00] Most people don't get stuck on the fertility journey because they aren't trying hard enough. They get stuck because they keep repeating the same decision logic. That's why doing more isn't fixing your fertility results. It's more cycles, more supplements, more opinions, but the way decisions are made never actually changes.

So if you look back over the last year and your outcomes have not meaningfully shifted, the issue isn't usually effort. It's interpretation. You're waiting for a clarity to arrive instead of learning how to extract it from the data you actually have. Let's go.

 Welcome back. I'm Sarah Clark, founder of Fab Fertile. For over a decade, my team and I have worked with individuals and couples navigating complex fertility issues where conventional medicine runs out of meaningful explanations.

Our work focuses on helping people interpret what their body is actually showing them so they can make better decisions. This episode is not about what supplement to take. Or what protocol to [00:01:00] request. It's about thinking in patterns that quietly keep people locked inside the treatment loop.

Long after the data suggests something else deserves attention. Pattern number one. Some of this could be a little uncomfortable, right? Outsourcing, thinking to an authority. Clinics are optimized for throughput and protocol standardization. It's the typical one size fits all approach.

Patients are trained to comply, not to interpret. You know the doctor, the gatekeeper. You ask why things didn't work. You're told bad luck, or it's poor egg quality. We just keep trying. Again, we're going to change the protocol. We're going to change the treatment. Off we go. When something fails, a system defaults to escalation, not investigation, not well, why didn't it work?

We don't back it up. We just keep going. And then people confuse medical confidence with completeness. So even though following the plan feels safe. Even when the plan keeps producing the same outcome. So I know we're in the era that [00:02:00] we used to be in the era where we trusted doctors. Now it's, we have the doctor on our team, but we need to listen to our body.

And medical gas lighting is real. Sometimes the medical authorities can keep the information behind the gate. And we're like, gimme our blood work. What does this mean? And we're rushed along out of appointments and kind of dismissed and we start to second guess our own intuition.

And our knowingness, and then we get stuck doing these treatments. Oh, they must know what they're doing. So yes, people in the clinic can be experts in what they're doing with medication and surgeries and being able to push the body. But if the majority of us can get pregnant naturally.

What is stopping this from happening? To step back and look at the systems in the body and the patterns that may have been missed. Pattern number two. Mistaking motion for progress. I get this a lot. I'm very action oriented. You probably are too.

That's why you're here. So action oriented, we keep doing this, but we didn't actually look to see, why wasn't that working? [00:03:00] Did we measure it? Did we look at the data? Did we see improvements? No stone left unturned here. If you've gone to a new clinic, they're using the same logic to use medication stimulation, protocols and drugs.

Or taking more supplements. That's the same kind of a approach. If you take a bunch of supplements, similar to taking a bunch of drugs, right? We need to look at the foundation, so then the supplements can actually do their work. And then if we've got the same biological environment where the eggs and the sperm are developing a new protocol, medication potentially is not going to change the outcome.

We're taking action. So for an action oriented person. That can, create emotional relief, but not necessarily the biological change that you need in the body for the egg and sperm to to be at optimal health. Pattern number three, the status quo bias and the fear of deviating.

So leaving conventional medicine logic sometimes feels risky. Oh, wait a minute. What is all this stuff over here? What do you mean I gotta change my diet [00:04:00] and my ferritin, vitamin D or B12? You've listened to the podcast I've gone into some of the minutia, some of the things that we see.

But we're stepping back now to look more at patterns because it can be risky to just do one little thing and think if you take thyroid medication that's going to solve it. Sometimes it does. I got people telling me all the time where they listen to my podcast and it worked.

But typically the body is a system, right? We don't just do it in silo. Doing one thing then impacts the rest of the body. So depending on your timeline if you want to fast track things to having someone be able to interpret which system of the body is off and then move forward. You may fear being judged or blamed or, feel like you're wasting time.

If you deviate from the status quo. You go to the ob, GYN, they tell you've gotta go to the fertility clinic and off you go. And I'll say to people, how'd you get there? I'm like, I don't know. I just had a low AMH diagnosis. Next thing I was doing IVF. There is a lot of uncertainty in this, right?

Familiar disappointment, maybe feel safer than unfamiliar. Uncertainty. What is all this stuff over here? Functional medicine, functional nutrition, looking at the [00:05:00] systems in the body I don't know. Staying in a system that isn't helping often feels safer than stepping into a new way of thinking.

That's what I'll say to people. We'll talk to them. We'll see what's happening in their situation. Talk about the stress, look at their blood work. Look at what they're telling me from if their embryo didn't make it or if they've had pregnancy loss. And then we'll say, depending if this is true or not, and if I feel I can help them.

We have a team here with an OB/Gyn with a functional medicine background, functional nutrition practitioners, nervous support specialist to be able to, put this all together. So if I feel I can help them, I say, provided you're ready to look at this completely differently.

Because if you just keep doing the same thing, you get the same results. The invisible cost of this delay, so time is the biological currency. And a lot of times people are like, I can't do this. I gotta do the IVF next month. We want you the 20,000 or whatever you're spending on this.

Next IVF. We want this to work. In this complete panic, that's not how we receive our child. And then just changing the [00:06:00] medication, so repeated cycles, and the financial and the emotional exhaustion with this.

Doing nothing different is still a decision. We just keep doing it. We keep doing the medication and the protocols and we change things here, but we haven't actually looked at the biology, the environment of the egg and sperm. We've got an embryo audit checklist and that's exactly why I created this.

Not to give you more things to try, but to help you step outside the treatment loop and actually look to see what your data is telling you. So it helps you organize, your cycles the outcomes, missing information so you can see the patterns. Instead of just reacting to the next recommendation. Send me a message at hello@fabfertile.ca, subject line CHECKLIST

And I will send you that embryo audit checklist. This whole thing can be confusing and overwhelming. There is a lot of uncertainty. People's hope, a lot of time has been dashed. We work a lot of nurses and doctors. Their fertility has been compromised, helping others, all the stress we're under.

And so if you have a medical background that can make it even worse, you [00:07:00] will default to your medical training and start to question, what do you mean. 'Cause you've been indoctrinated into that environment. It is your strong suit. A lot of people like this way of thinking in our Fab Fertile Method because it's all about data.

The data can help you make informed decisions to look at the systems in the body, what are the patterns for you and what you can actually do to improve the chances of this next one working. If you would like have a functional fertility second opinion, this is really where that comes in right now.

So it's not about changing protocols, it's about changing how the decisions are made. You are in the driver's seat. We're going to review your history. Your labs, some outcomes and your physiology together. So your next move is grounded in understanding instead of just oh wait, I'm just going to do the same thing again and just change a few things and maybe I'll do an a AIP diet or I'll take some omega, some coq 10.

Yeah, some of that stuff can be good, but we need to make informed decisions. So if you and your partner are ready for a level of clarity, you can apply in the show notes. Just go to the functional fertility [00:08:00] second opinion. You can apply there with your partner, send in your blood work, and we'll look at the themes.

We're not diagnosing anything here. This is pattern recognition. What's being missed. A lot of this is some low hanging fruit that we can make some changes in a short period of time. Or you can send me a message at hello@fabfertile. ca, subject line FERTILE. Tell me a little bit about your journey.

Tell me about what you've experienced, and I can point you in the right direction. So at this point progress requires changing the frame you're operating inside. Thanks for being here. Take care.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Does this mean IVF doesn’t work?

No. IVF can be effective. The issue is repeating IVF cycles without understanding why previous cycles failed.

How do I know if I’m stuck in a pattern?

If outcomes keep repeating despite new protocols, clinics, or supplements, it’s usually a sign the decision framework hasn’t changed.

Do I always need more testing?

Not necessarily. Sometimes the issue isn’t missing data, but how existing data is being interpreted.

Is this about changing protocols?

No. It’s about changing how decisions are made, not just what is chosen next.

Key Takeaways

• Repeating effort without new insight rarely changes fertility outcomes

• Clinics are designed for treatment delivery, not pattern recognition

• Activity can feel productive while masking stalled progress

• Interpretation matters more than escalation

• Pausing to reassess is often the most strategic move

Final Thoughts

If you’ve been doing everything “right” but outcomes haven’t shifted, it may be time to ask a different question.

Not:
What should I try next?

But:
What pattern am I still operating inside?

Progress often begins when the frame guiding decisions changes.

If you want your fertility history interpreted rather than repeated, that’s where a Functional Fertility Second Opinion fits.

Apply here with your partner for our Functional Fertility Second Opinion