Phil: 0:03

Welcome to Take Your Medicine podcast. My name is Phillip Cowley. I've been a pharmacist for 25 years and I used to think I was real smart until I started listening to my patients and I realized the best wisdom you can gain is from the people that you talk to real people, real medical journeys. And from that, that wisdom is just huge. So today I'm going to welcome Lauren Stewart. She is absolutely wonderful in every way. However, Lauren, I want to start out real quick How long did you know your husband before you guys got married? I mean, got engaged?

Lauren: 0:38

We dated from Monday to Friday. So five days and we got engaged and we knew each other a little bit longer after that because then we got married like a couple months later, but we only dated for five days before we were like, let's get married.

Phil: 0:51

How many dates can you go on in five days?

Lauren: 0:54

Oh, we went on at least one day a day.

Phil: 0:56

At least one.

Lauren: 0:57

At least one.

Phil: 0:58

So you, once you've met him, you guys were, have basically been inseparable since then. Does that sound about right?

Lauren: 1:05

Yeah. We have, I was talking to him the other day and we have not spent more than like two or three nights away from each other in 16 years.

Phil: 1:14

Sixteen years. See, this is the thing. So, so you're making me feel like my engagement was really long because I met Andrea in April and we didn't get engaged until school got out, so that would have been like the first week of June, and I always tell my story as if it's like this really short period. I feel like we took too long listening to this.

Lauren: 1:31

No, you kind of, you did take a long time. You were dragging your feet.

Phil: 1:35

I had to get out of school because I had to go get a ring. So, you know, there was that, that school got the way. So, so your husband, what's his name? Sorry. I should have,

Lauren: 1:43

no, that's okay. So his name is Sean Stewart and now I get to be a Stewart.

Phil: 1:47

There we go. Right. And you've, you're like your Instagram presence is just amazing. Like you've been doing this for a little while on Instagram. From what I'm looking, I looked through a lot of them today.

Lauren: 1:57

Yeah, so for a really long time, I actually started sharing when I didn't realize, I started as a blogger, and I thought it was a journal, I didn't realize people could read what I was writing and putting on the internet, and I was like, deep in the trenches of infertility when this was happening, and I was like, I started my period today, and I had to buy tampons, and I was mortified when I discovered that people could read it.

Phil: 2:22

Yeah, that's the very beginning when everybody was using it just for like their memory books. It was easier than doing anything else. And it was every, it was so much better in a lot of ways back then because people just, they were so real. It was before everybody knew they had to make it so pretty all the time.

Lauren: 2:35

Yeah, for sure.

Phil: 2:37

I love that. I think that's fantastic. So, so you guys dated for five days. Got engaged. Yes. And then you waited a whole, about 90 days before you were married. Is that right?

Lauren: 2:48

Yeah. We were, we got married so fast and we figured the only time that would work, we probably would have gotten married sooner, but my parents and his parents, when we could all be in the same place at the same time was the week of Thanksgiving. And so we got married the, like the week before his first set of finals when he was in law school.

Phil: 3:06

Oh, so he first set of finals. So he was a little bit, he was a little bit older. Is that right?

Lauren: 3:11

Yeah, he was 25

Phil: 3:13

For Utah terms. 25 years old.

Lauren: 3:15

Like he was such an old man.

Phil: 3:18

And how old were you at the time? Cause this is like something that like intrigues so many people we talk about. So my wife and I, she was 19. We got engaged when she was 18 and I was 22. And then I, and I turned 23 right before. So, but we've been married now 27 years. So wonderful, but it's one of those things. I think it just intrigues people how fast it can go. So how old were you when you got engaged?

Lauren: 3:41

I was 21 and then happened to have a birthday in that like really short window. So when I got married, I was 22.

Phil: 3:48

See, see, that's the thing. So like, It most people think about the stories where you have the LDS couples meet together, right? The Mormon marriage and you're like, okay, she's barely out of high school and he's just off his mission. You guys, you guys had been out there. You know, it was already out on the field. Maybe that's why it worked so well.

Lauren: 4:03

Yeah. I remember after I met him, Sean's personality is so, so unique, at least in my family, my family, the personalities are really dynamic and there's a lot of like emotions that are kind of like this. Sean is just like this all the time. I think we've had a baby and he's just like this. He's got like this calming like wonderful gentle personality. And I remember thinking huh? I can't go without him anymore Just like his personality really settled me because I'm wound pretty tight and he's just not

Phil: 4:33

Don't you think though that there's a lot to do with the commitment? Like see here's the thing. I was just talking to somebody else and I know this is way deviate from where we're going. We're going into PCOS. We're going to talk infertility. But but a lot of time it's a mindset because I I've, I kind of read through, I've seen your whole story with your infertility, with PCOS, the whole thing. And what, what I see there is you have somebody who really needed somebody who was constant in their life in order to go through that whole system, because it's a huge roller coaster, you know, and so. I am underneath the belief system that what makes a marriage work or fail has more to do with the commitment to and, and the little things that work along the way there are, you start looking at somebody's marriages who struggle and I think to myself, every marriage struggles, the same in certain places, and then there's decisions to be made by the individuals that make it really hard. And I would never want to see inside of somebody else's houses. I wouldn't want to know their lives. But I just always look at somebody and they say, well, you got married too fast or you should have taken longer. And I think, would that actually make marriages better?

Lauren: 5:38

So Sean always says, he's so smart. He's so smart. He's got the coolest brain, but he always says, he's like, you're going to change. Anyways, like you can't marry someone expecting them to stay the same. So if you felt like you needed however long of a lead up so you could know who they are, you have to still allow your partner to change and grow. And so to me, like, life was going to change and grow anyway. So I didn't need like that. I, I know I'm like, we got married so fast. So it is kind of the extreme on that end. But um, We have changed and grown so much. We would have changed and grown so much anyways, even in years leading up to getting married, if that makes sense.

Phil: 6:14

Absolutely. I think even the couples that take a long time before they get married, what you'll see is that they're already adapting to their partner and it's also, it's so hard to sacrifice some of the things that you're doing. It's hard because people have so many hard decisions in their life and there are lots of reasons why marriages fail, but for me, I always look at it and think, I don't think you can determine whether a marriage is going to be successful or a failure by the length of the engagement. I don't think that that's even a factor. I don't think that that would change anything.

Lauren: 6:40

Yeah, no, I agree with you so much.

Phil: 6:42

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Lauren: 7:55

Yeah. So I, with PCOS, I didn't start a cycle until I was like older and my doctor had immediately put me on birth control because it was like a really heavy cycle and I was in a lot of pain and they're like, oh, you need birth control. So at 17, they put me on birth control. And when we got married, we're like, well, we want to have kids. So we're not ever going to do birth control. Let's just have babies. And my cycles never came back after I got off of birth control at 22.

Phil: 8:23

Now that's like one of these things I always talk about. It's actually really disconcerting to me because the number of cases of PCOS that have occurred in later in life have almost doubled in the last 10 years. So it's one of these things that. I think by the time it's all said and done, we're going to have half of all women have some level of PCOS. I want to jump in this because you, you make your own soap. So this is really cool. Everybody's got to look at her soap. It's Tyme soap, but there's a Y so it's TymeSoap.Com. And so I want to lean into this like fairly early because I have, I have to assume that PCOS and PCOD had a lot to do with why you guys got into that to begin with.

Lauren: 8:59

Yeah, so what we had found was that everything that we were putting into or on our bodies, the way we were treating our bodies, And I say we because I always include Sean in all of it, even though he wasn't the one dealing with it. He was helping me that my body responded very strongly to anything that was going in that wasn't clean. So food that I was eating our soap. So he had designed these soaps. There's like seven ingredients and then they're all natural. And you're I mean, if you think about it, You're covered in skin from head to toe. And everything that you put on your body is just soaking straight in. And I was trying everything because one of the things with PCOS is you have, you can have really, really bad skin. Like I had masks of acne that were so bad that when someone would see me, they would be like, Oh, like it would take them back. It was so bad. And so I was trying lots of things. I was trying medicine. I was trying over the counter like and then prescription so many things and nothing got rid of it except for long term antibiotics. And so as we were trying to have a baby, it was so important to us that we just eliminated everything that we could that was within our control because the process was already so hard and there was so much outside of our control that we just felt like we had to do the best that we could and that included what we were putting on our bodies.

Phil: 10:19

Yeah, absolutely. It's kind of one of those things that initially, like if you, when we talked about hormone disruptors and we talked about the estrogenic effects of a lot of different like soys and things like that, but you talked about that 15, 20 years ago, you were looked at a little bit like a kook initially, like honestly, like people are like, whatever, that doesn't really make sense. It's, it's interesting to see how mainstream the idea that our food is becoming our worst nightmare.

Lauren: 10:46

Yeah, I feel like, um, I can definitely tell. It's easier for us actually here where we live to have like we get all of our meat from local farmers. We, all of our produce is really, really fresh. And so it's easy for me to say, oh, you need to change and you need to get your meat from a farmer. You need to get everything local and clean. And I know that that can be really hard depending on where you live. But when I tell you it's worth it. And the changes that you will see in your body from changing that, just changing to a locally sourced cow, my energy levels, which was something I had never taken into consideration, my energy levels went from this to like this.

Phil: 11:23

Right.

Lauren: 11:23

There was so many things besides just like creating a normal cycle for my body. My whole body felt better and was like, thank you for doing that.

Phil: 11:30

It's just such an interesting thing. I don't want to get completely away from your story. I just wanted to like bring that in because it's just one of those things that if you would have told me at the beginning of being a pharmacist that I would be talking about before we fix with medications or whatever, we've got to look at your diet. How many Takies have you eaten today? How many Doritos have been down? You know what I mean? And I love all this stuff. I do, but I also have got to the point where I'm like, okay, I'm eating this knowing that there's going to be recourse and I'll just, and then you start weighing out whether it really was worth it later. So it's one of those things that is just intriguing to me, right? Right now there's the lady who's pushing against Kellogg so hard in order to get all the dyes out, and there's a huge part of me that thinks, when did we start needing to have something be bright blue for us to eat it anyway? Like, that's just so weird that we needed it to begin with, because if you see a fruit out in your tree or someplace on the grass that looks like all blue, you're like, okay, that one's gone bad really fast, but we put it in our cereals all the time It's been super intriguing. Okay, so there you are at 21, you just got married, you decided you wanted to, you wanted to start having kids fairly early. And, and more importantly, you had to be like one thing I always worry about with, with when I talked to somebody with PCOS at a young age, is they don't understand any of it. So it's kind of a scary situation for a lot of girls when they first get told that.

Lauren: 12:45

Yeah, so it's interesting because my doctor didn't tell me what my diagnosis was. She just started having me do different things. I went into an OBGYN in Provo Utah because that's where we were living and appointments were very fast and I didn't get to ask questions about what she was telling me. She's like, okay, I'm gonna put you on, Clomid. I did not know what Clomid was. She didn't explain really what it was. She's just like, you're going to take it. But I wasn't having a cycle. So then I also had to be put on progesterone and it was like, so there were so many things being thrown at me immediately with zero context. I had no idea what was going on. And then she added Metformin, which when I went to pick up Metformin from the pharmacist, he was like, okay. And started talking to me about diabetes. And he told me that I had diabetes at the pharmacy counter. And I called my mom. I was like, Oh my gosh, mom, I have diabetes. I didn't know I had diabetes. My doctor didn't tell me I don't have diabetes, but it was a treatment for PCOS. And at the time she still hadn't told me that I had PCOS, just that Clomid would help me so that I could have a baby.

Phil: 13:50

Right.

Lauren: 13:50

And it didn't, but.

Phil: 13:52

Well, and the Metformin thing is such a tricky thing because it took a lot, a lot of years. So we dealt with a lot of infertility. So I was, I was fairly sensitive to it. So when I had somebody coming in with Clomid and Metformin, I already knew what it was, but there's, it's interesting how many people got put on medications or still do out of a pure, and I think we should trust our doctors, but I think it's also okay to trust your doctor enough to say, I don't understand what are we doing here?

Lauren: 14:18

Yeah. I feel like my doctor, um, where they were, they saw so many patients and so many women that were just having babies. It was like I said, it was right in Provo and eventually it got to the point where my questions I could tell were really bothering her. And we've been trying for a while, like we started trying immediately. So then six months in, you know, that's when they really start starting to prescribe you medications. And she didn't have any of the monitoring capability to like, check my ovaries and see what was actually going on. Um, but she never went into details of like, there are specialists who actually can monitor you, who are specifically for trying to have babies, not just delivering babies or like your yearly or bi yearly pap smear or whatever. There are people that are there to help you. And they never told me. Anything they didn't give me any other, um, like outlet or information. And at that time, this was in 2009, 2010. Also, so 2008, 9 and 10 people were not talking about this on the Internet. This was not like, oh, I could open my phone and do a little bit of research. People were not talking about it. Um, and she basically was so sick of my questions. She's like, well, you're just depressed and I can give you depression, like prescribe anxiety meds or you just need to get a puppy. Like this is getting really like it was too much for her that I was having a hard time with it.

Phil: 15:43

Well, and they, they lean really quickly and you can't get pregnant if you're stressed. It's almost like they put this guilt and shame on the patient. Like we heard it a bunch of times. Yeah. It's, you know, I look back at it and. And I, I think to myself, I don't blame the individual, the physician. I actually blame the whole system because they get paid to deliver babies. And then like, it's almost like a side gig. They do gynecology work. Like it's almost like, it's not even like, like the combination seems to be detrimental. I, I never had to go to an OBGYN, but I have noticed that they seem to really be more OB than they are GYN in most cases.

Lauren: 16:18

Yeah, that is definitely how I felt across the board, really.

Phil: 16:22

It's just such an interesting thing because I, the more women that I talk to, the more women who have a story of an OBGYN that kind of wrecked them, at least for a little while, till they got back on their feet.

Lauren: 16:35

We have, I think you and I had talked about this a little bit before. I've been through so many OBGYNs that it's, I mean, 10 OBGYNs. I have had seen so many doctors and I found that for me, again, I think it's the system and it's the way that it's all put together and the way that they make their money. Um, but I found that nobody was going to advocate for me or push for me or have the same urgency that I felt because all I wanted was to be a mother. And that's a wonderful thing, but the urgency that I felt was never matched until I found a reproductive specialist and I was able to change the entire, um, experience because I was going to someone who was there to solve my problem, which even still it wasn't solving all the symptoms of PCOS. They weren't changing all the symptoms. She finally was able to help me have a baby, but even still, none of the symptoms were treated or taken care of.

Phil: 17:32

The core problem is often overlooked. I do want to give a shout out to all the good OBs out there because the thing is they're really, really good at what they do when they do OBs. It's just that they don't get reimbursed. I would love to see a system in which patient satisfaction played into how well the doctor got reimbursed. Because that would take those people who always wanted to help people and it would be financially beneficial. for them to help somebody. Right now, if you don't deliver eight babies this week, you can't pay your staff. And so it's the whole system is just kind of a wreck.

Lauren: 18:05

Yeah, that's awful.

Phil: 18:07

Like just awful. But I do think what you brought up with the fact that they don't look like we always look at like most of the medicine that we talk about. It's all a band aid approach. We don't really go into the core. Why, why is this happening? Instead, we're like, okay, let's just get you to the end goal. Let's not worry about why. And I think that that's a huge point to be made up because if you knew your body's menstrual cycle, a cycle that should be core to everything that is being human, isn't working. It should be setting off alarms that I'm going to have more problems down the road. This is just the first alarm going off before the big flood comes in.

Lauren: 18:47

Yeah, I had not one doctor mentioned to me and I have actually had, I should stop and say I have had wonderful OBGYNs like this sounds like I haven't, but I really have had wonderful OBGYNs and I remember when my OBGYN later on when we'd moved from because we lived, we've moved a lot of times. But when we were in Maryland, that's the first time that a doctor had told me that it was a problem that I wasn't having a cycle beyond the fact that I just couldn't have a baby that it was bad for my body. No one had ever said that to me before.

Phil: 19:19

I had a girl come in once and she, uh, she'd been to the OB and she'd been other places and she was looking for some iron and she said, can I just ask you a question? And to be honest, this was like, it's weird because there you are a male pharmacist inside of a store with other people around and they get so desperate. She said, is it normal to bleed for three months? Oh, and I said, I said, absolutely not. And she goes, well, I told my OB and they weren't concerned. I'm like, well, and I didn't know who their OB was. I didn't know everything else. I said, I don't have all the details, but nobody should be bleeding for three months. Like that's not a normal thing. There's a problem. So it's funny how often. The OB understands what's going on. These doctors do. And they're probably right. They probably had something in place. They'd figured it out. But they, they don't disseminate that information to a patient. And that's a really disconcerting, like I see so many people who just, um, who just beg for knowledge. And that's what you kind of gave them inadvertently, because that's the time when you went on Instagram way back when, right?

Lauren: 20:19

Mm hmm. So I felt like, It was so hard for me that if I just told one person that she needed to find a new doctor and it helped her have a baby that it was okay that I had to wait so long to have my babies like I started posting it online and I remember it. The feedback from people, was either really wonderful or like you cannot talk about that on the internet. It was like a mix of both, but I found that the ones who were just so grateful that I was willing to share what I had to do, to get the care that I needed and to have my babies. So I, I talked about everything and I definitely know that my, my doctors didn't always love that because they. Found it online, but I needed that community. And I felt like that community needed me so that we can share it.

Phil: 21:13

Do you think that things have got better? So I, you know, we, we dealt with it with infertility quite a bit too. And I was always very outspoken in the pharmacy, but I stayed away from social media because I've been told that it's the devil and we had to stay away from it. So, you know what I mean? I'm like, and then I got on, I got on social media. I'm like, I don't know where the devil's at. Cause this is just awesome. But I think that people like you that have went out initially now, Before we move forward, it's@Lauren.Stewart.Living. And she's got all sorts of really cool stuff. You get to see her whole journey. It's great. But do you think things have got better? Like, have you found a lot of good support now online? Are you part of groups that help people with this?

Lauren: 21:49

So, yes, so I felt like we needed something more personal than just Instagram. So as when I was doing treatments, I always opened up a Facebook group so that women who were also doing treatments could have a sounding board that wasn't just me. So they could also find each other and talk to each other. So, Facebook groups, I feel like we're a huge, huge, um, stress reliever and like saving grace for me when I felt like even though my husband was trying so hard to understand he wasn't the one injecting his belly and

Phil: 22:23

He wasn't getting it anyway, like I was there. There's a reason why men that go to battle only want to talk about being in battle with somebody else who's been there. Yeah, it plays the same for women and infertility because I can say I'm so sorry and I love you as many times as I want and you just don't get it.

Lauren: 22:40

No, and it's so hard. And on top of that, you're pumping yourself full of hormones. So you're going to have a harder time anyways. But I felt like there is such a huge support network online, which was so crazy to me, because I was told by people probably people closer to me like in real life that it was inappropriate or that it was like just such an overstep or an overshare or something that you would just do for attention. When clearly like they don't understand that you had felt so alone at some point with Just hoping that you could find someone who could relate to you, that you don't care if it seems that way to other people, you will stand up and speak up for people who can't share it online. And that's what I did.

Phil: 23:21

Don't you think that that term, don't share your dirty laundry. Remember when that was like a big push? And I always thought to myself, what one person's dirty laundry is, is somebody else's saving grace. Like, it's not, that's not a fair play, cause you haven't, when you talk to somebody who's got like, suicide ideation, they feel like their ideation is, is dirty laundry.

Lauren: 23:42

Mm hmm.

Phil: 23:43

And that's so dangerous, because, You know, you probably shouldn't be sharing everything all of the time, but there probably are areas and groups that you can share almost anything to once you find them.

Lauren: 23:56

Oh, no, I agree. And I feel like what a blessing that, I mean, the internet has, you know, good and bad as with, really everything. It depends on how you use it. But the idea that you can find a group of women to say, or, and I really liked local groups of women because they could say, don't use this OB or use this OB or, you know, we had this experience here, but our friends have gone and they've said, it's been okay. Finding that doctor and finding that fit. Actually, I found a lot of information from being online.

Phil: 24:28

And how much of that really has changed the way that you see medicine? Like for me, it's the other individuals. Like I start this podcast by saying that I thought I knew all this stuff, and then I talked to people. That's really what I figured. I, the more people I talked to, the more I always, medicine is like a gumbo. Like you've got to throw everything in the pot. If you only have one flavor, it tastes terrible. You have to put them all in there. You have to have the little kooky in there. Because it gives you flavor, but not too much kooky because there's too much flavor and you need some of the potatoes, which is just the boring, like normal stuff, like just the run on the mill. Just go to the OB, take your Clomid. But I feel like even more than finding good doctors, finding good people in your life is almost more important in learning about who you are and what you need from a healthcare standpoint.

Lauren: 25:12

Oh, for sure. And I feel like you, there are things that like, you've heard the saying, you don't know what you don't know.

Phil: 25:17

Yeah.

Lauren: 25:18

So that was so huge for us. I mean, just the idea that I didn't know there was a reproductive specialist, like, are you kidding me? How could I not know that?

Phil: 25:26

Right.

Lauren: 25:27

But I didn't.

Phil: 25:28

Well, you know, then you jump into the fact that even with reproductive specialists, you're like, there's some of them that are just cookie cutter. They're going to put you in, they're going to, and there's others that will sit with you. And the idea that you don't have to stay with one doctor is that thing we all have to learn. I think the idea that I love you as a person, you're probably a great doctor for other people, but for me, I'm going elsewhere. That's well within your rights seems like something people just have to get their head wrapped around.

Lauren: 25:50

Yeah, and I think a lot of times it feels like it's too much work to change doctors because you kind of, like, even if they send over your records, it feels like you're starting over. But that's okay because what if you didn't start over or what if you what if you did start over and that is like at the point where everything shifted for you and you have a doctor that you can relate to and understands and treats you as a person with a soul and feelings, because especially in where you're speaking about mental health, but all with infertility, it's so personal and it's so scary. And you're giving them like all of your hopes and dreams. It's like, please just help me.

Phil: 26:31

Right. The half the time you just need to say, we're going to figure it out. This'll be okay. We'll find something for you because you know, you get to that point with infertility and, and you get it with everything, but for my wife and I had a while where we, we disagreed because I was ready to adopt. And I didn't understand, and I still don't think I could, what it meant to her when I said let's just adopt, we can get babies anyway. And that, to me, that was a very insensitive thing that I said to her, now, when I said it, it wasn't, but now I'm like, oh, no wonder she was angry.

Lauren: 27:00

That's so, that's so hard because I feel like as a husband, your job is to be the fixer, right? Like, okay, this is causing my wife so much grief. I've got to solve this problem for her. And then I have actually talked to so Shawn and I actually were also going to adopt. We had had like four failed cycles and we went to adopt and the mom and the baby actually were in a car accident and we lost everything at that point. I mean, we, I felt like every door was shut. We were never going to have kids. Like, you know,

Phil: 27:29

That's, that felt personal there. It's almost like God was saying, no, like that for real, that would, I would have walked away from there and said, I think that means no. And that would have been hard. Like that would have been just so crushing.

Lauren: 27:41

It was, it was really hard for us. But then I feel like also to remember, like adoption is a whole thing in and of itself and so separate from infertility. It's involved so many people and so many other things that I feel like it does seem to be a catch all for women who can't have children, like, oh, you should definitely adopt, and I feel like there is a calling for so many people to do that, but also, not everyone is called to adopt, and so, that is, that's tricky, you know?

Phil: 28:08

It's such a different game, like, we looked at it pretty close too, and I know a lot of people that have adopted, and a lot of people that had kids and adopted, and those parents are an amazing, but they're not, They're a different breed, you know, they're a little, they're built different because of what comes their way. If you, if you're going to go into that adoption, you better really talk to people in groups that have done that. Here's what you expect. Here's the pitfalls because it's its own ball of wax.

Lauren: 28:32

Yeah, it is. It's a, and it's not a guarantee that you will actually end up with a baby then either.

Phil: 28:38

No, and then you have to also, there's so many things to play. Like, this still goes back to the idea that you empower yourself and you get people who are, especially people that are local. So when you're, when you do adopt, you can call somebody and say, okay, what am I going to like? Is this normal the dad's reaching out to me or whatever it may be.

Lauren: 28:54

Yeah Yeah, I have a friend who has gone through and she's had a handful of adoptions that have just last minute the the birth family has changed their minds or something and she's been through this so many times that it's just like your heart is so broken and at what point do you protect yourself and say, no, we're not going to do this anymore.

Phil: 29:16

Yeah, absolutely. Now I love the fact that you went through 10 different OBs. So when you now as an expert at 10, you're an expert. I am. Um, when you go into an OBs office, what do you, uh, any physician really, but we're gonna talk OBs because you're an expert here. What would you tell people to look for in their physician? Like you've done this enough now where the first time it was tricky by the 10th time, you're like, you know what? I can break up with this doctor in 10 minutes if I need to find a new one. So walk them through what they need to know, how they figure out whether it's a good doctor or a bad doctor, what you would suggest to them, because I think that that skillset you have is huge.

Lauren: 29:52

Oh, thank you. So, okay. I think it is so important to have a referral. Not necessarily and not a referral from a doctor like, oh, you need a referral to go to this doctor. I mean get your girlfriend's ears and ask them who they went to, what they liked about it, talk to them about their care before you do anything or in a local Facebook group So that's one of the reasons I love The Facebook group setting is because women talk and women will tell you about their experience whether it was good whether it was bad and so for me, if I had women who were willing to recommend a doctor for a pregnancy, or something along the lines where it's so personal, that that was always the best first step for me, not just looking on Google and finding a doctor that was as close as possible to me. Um, so that was the first thing was a referral. And the next thing that I found, and I feel like this can work Across the board with multiple doctors. So like if you were in the military and you do have more limited, resources with who you can see, is that I found that even if the doctor and I weren't a perfect match, I had a better experience. If I set the expectation that I needed to be able to ask questions at the end of the visit.

Phil: 31:03

I love this. Okay. So this is like a big thing. I always tell everybody, you should never go into a doctor's office without having five to 10 questions written out that you want to make sure you get answered.

Lauren: 31:13

I have my journal. That's what I do.

Phil: 31:15

That is such good advice. So listen to that a 100%. Okay. So now we're asking people who've been there and we're going in with expectations.

Lauren: 31:24

So when you go in and you have your appointment set, I appreciate a doctor who agrees with that and says, yes. Okay. That's fine. When you come in, I know I'll make sure I set aside five to 10 minutes at the end of our visit. And I can tell you that I have actually not had a bad experience. Since I set that expectation with my doctor. So for me, those two things were so important. And going off that first referral and the next one is I don't expect my doctor to be perfect. I, I think it would set us up for failure if we're like, well, I'm not a perfect person, but I expect this doctor to be a 100% perfect at everything. They can't be, there's no way it's like when you're a teenager and you realize your parents don't actually know everything, but they're trying really hard.

Phil: 32:05

Right.

Lauren: 32:05

You've got to give your doctor that same. And I don't mean like with negligence or with anything like that, but you it's okay for them to have to do research for you. They say they don't know the answer to the question you're asking, but they will figure it out. And you guys will make a game plan about whatever that question is. Someone who actively shows how willing they are to work with you so that your care is like at the forefront of your, appointments with them.

Phil: 32:31

See, I love that too, because I think most physicians want that. I think most doctors and most neck, they want that because it allows them room to grow within the relationship because the doctor patient is a relationship and giving them that room to grow makes them feel what you don't want to do is have somebody come in and say, we're going to try this and then turn around and say, well, Google says. Right to their face. Instead, if you go in and say, This is what I'm expecting, and they say, We're gonna try this, and you come back and say, It didn't work, and they're like, Okay, let's try this. That feels like a relationship. I think that this, it's a kind of a two way street, because I think people get so burned out on the medical system. They come in, both guns loaded, ready to go at their doctor, and they expect something different sometimes. And it's not a surprise to me that it turns out poorly in those situations.

Lauren: 33:13

Yeah, I just think it's so important, especially the world that we live in right now. It seems everyone is held to such a high standard that they forget that like it's impossible for people to be perfect. And so if you go in with an open mind and you communicate that you want to be active in your care, I feel like the experience is just going to be so, so, so much better for both you and your doctor. Well, I feel like your doctor will be so like, they will love treating you, they will love being able to care with you, and they will care when you hit those success milestones with your, whatever it is that you are working on with them.

Phil: 33:48

For sure. So, I gotta get to your story, because we're gonna run out of time, because we've gone so far. Okay, so there you are at 21. Okay. to get your first baby?

Lauren: 33:57

So we had our first baby three years later.

Phil: 34:01

Oh, that's a long time. That's how long we went on our first two. Did you have to do, if I can ask, did you have to do IVF the first time around?

Lauren: 34:09

So we have, thankfully actually been able to do, IUIs, but I have to do a load, a load, a load of injections. My follicles just like, do not grow. And you know that once they start growing, if it's like more than one is growing with PCOS. A lot of them will grow. So we've had lots of cancelled cycles, lots of, um, cycles that took. I think my ovulation, you know, when you take the ovulation injection.

Phil: 34:35

Yeah

Lauren: 34:35

I think it was like on day 59 with Chase, my first baby.

Phil: 34:39

Oh, really? So you were on FSH and LH for that long. So your, your belly would have been like distended by that point. You would have been so overstimulated. It would have been like, you would have been able to like grapefruit size ovaries at that point.

Lauren: 34:52

Yeah. And I've had with PCOS, you have to be so careful because if you stimulate it too much and then everything's hyper stimulated and I have actually had that where I had both my ovaries were the size of footballs.

Phil: 35:02

Yeah. It takes so long to get down.

Lauren: 35:04

Oh, so bad. And I was pregnant with the twins at the time. So it was like, so I was in so much pain, but that's actually, I found out that I was having twins in the hospital by myself because I went in for overstimulated ovaries.

Phil: 35:18

Well, I mean, honestly, if you're going to get noticed that you have overstimulated ovaries, the best way to just find out you're pregnant. So especially with twins, cause at that point you're like, maybe this game can finally be over too, you know?

Lauren: 35:28

Yeah.

Phil: 35:28

It's so hard that that cycle, I hate that cycle where the ups and downs and you get just so used to disappointment. Okay, so you had Chase, he was 13 now, right?

Lauren: 35:38

Yeah.

Phil: 35:38

Now you've got a total of five kids, is that correct?

Lauren: 35:41

Yes, so I have five. So I've done treatments for every single one of my babies. So Chase took me three years and a lot of failed cycles. And in that time, we also had the adoption that we had been pursuing. With Lila, Lila is just a miracle. We had, our insurance was changing so Sean worked for the government for a really long time and our insurance was phenomenal at the time. And when the Affordable Care Act went into place, we got a notice saying that starting in, 2014, our infertility coverage was going to be completely taken away. So if I did not get pregnant that month, it was in November. I got pregnant in November of 2013. That was like my last try. Or otherwise we would have had to pay for it out of pocket. And I don't know if you know what they pay staffers on the Hill, but we, there's no way we could have afforded having children at that point.

Phil: 36:32

No, if you stay clean on the Hill, there's no money there. So I've always been curious about the people. Some people make a lot of money up there. I'm like, yeah, I've seen the, they, they publicly give out staffers numbers. Like, you know, what people make, I'm like. It doesn't make any sense. Anyway, that's a whole other, we'll just leave that to the side, so.

Lauren: 36:46

Yeah, it was, yeah, so hard, and to raise a family on it, so people obviously thought we were nuts, and nobody out there has kids that young, so. my fertility doctor was like, okay, we're gonna try really hard, and we'll try to get you pregnant, because in January, your coverage is gone. So, we got pregnant with Lila on one try. Never again and never before had ever even crossed my mind that I could just try to get pregnant and have a baby. Even though it was still with medication.

Phil: 37:09

So Lila is your number two. Is that right?

Lauren: 37:11

Yeah. So Lila is number two. So at this point I had one boy and one girl and this is actually where I began. I felt like I had more issues with obese after I had one boy and one girl because where we live, that was perfect and you shouldn't want any more kids and you should be done. So my next OB, I started trying when Lila was one and there is a five year age gap between Lila and Dawson. So Dawson took me a really long time, but I went to an OB and she was like, why are you even here? You have two kids. You have one boy and one girl and that's perfect. You should be done. And she didn't want to help me at all.

Phil: 37:45

Which is, you know, what I love about your story is, is you're like, okay, you don't want to help me. I'm on my way to the next one. And how important that is to say, you're still a good person. You're still a good doctor. I'm going to go find somebody new. Like if I was going to say anything with Lauren's story, I would say it's, Keep looking because it's so important that you just said, okay, good for you. I'm out.

Lauren: 38:05

Yeah. I mean, and to her, like, it was very black and white. It wasn't an offensive thing. She wasn't trying to be rude. She wasn't mad at me for wanting more kids. It wasn't supposed to be like, you know, Anything other than you do have two kids, you have a one boy and one girl. That should be so fine. And for me, I'm coming from the background that I come from. I come from a huge family and so does Sean and we both wanted more children. And so I just felt like, okay, so I'll find someone who is a little bit of a better fit for me. So I did change OBGYNs again there. And then I changed OBGYNs again one more time because he retired. He was older. He was a little bit more old school and I really loved him. And I wish that he would have stayed, practicing because I felt like he would have been such a good fit. And then we also moved. So we changed OBs again. And again, well, there's a five year age gap between Lila and Dawson. So I did this for a really long time. And during this time is when I discovered online, I finally started seeing people talking about what you're eating, what you're putting in your bodies. Getting exercise, and I'm a pretty active person, like, I love to work out, I did mixed martial arts for a long time, I, like, I feel like I can really get stuff done physically, I'm pretty strong, and I enjoy that part of my life, but it wasn't something I'd ever seen of in conjunction with infertility.

Phil: 39:22

Right. Well, and it's funny because they don't speak of it that way either. They almost keep it completely separate. And this is a huge thing. So this is what I'm bringing back. Again, the company's called Tyme Soap, T Y M E, Soap. And the reason why I love it is because it's only got seven ingredients. Because I'm sure you've done what I've done, and you look at the back of a soap ingredient, and you're like, there are seriously 52 ingredients in this. What did they even do?

Lauren: 39:45

And you can't say any of them.

Phil: 39:46

And if you do know what they are, they make you more concerned because I'm looking at it and saying, okay, there's a Benzene group in this. Why did they even put that in there? Like that for me at my end. So I've learned not to read them if I don't want to know, because it's almost worse.

Lauren: 39:59

Yeah. Sometimes ignorance feels like bliss, doesn't it?

Phil: 40:02

Well, you know, unless you're willing to make the change. I mean, that's the thing that makes it hard. So you guys decided, Hey, we're going to make this change. But what you did, you were working in a bank. He's up in intelligence, right? Is where he was at.

Lauren: 40:13

Yeah. So he worked for, he worked on the Hill. He worked for two different senators and a congressman. And then he went and he worked with, the government essentially with the military. And I believe it was probably the most soul sucking five years of his life was this, even though working on the Hill is terrible because it's like so corrupt in the, it's like a power vortex of, Oh, like you can feel it when you get off the plane in DC. Yes. It's crazy. It's crazy. I really appreciate that he was able to stick it out because the insurance benefits, even though we did lose a lot of benefits, in 2013, it was still better than, you know, private insurance and what we would have been stuck with so.

Phil: 40:53

But that, see, that's the thing. So we all hit these catalysts in life. So there's Sean and he's got this job and it's fine. And he could have done it for 25 years and gotten his retirement and been fine.

Lauren: 41:03

Yeah, he could have.

Phil: 41:05

But you guys didn't want to be fine. And it's funny how sometimes you have to get to that point where I don't care if we're broke. I don't care what happens. I just can't do this anymore. Because if not, we don't make change.

Lauren: 41:15

For sure. So very interesting in during covid, they shut everything down on the east coast and it was shut down. So, um, like for two years. I mean, it was a really long time. Everything was shut down and they shut down his offices and he was not allowed to go to work. And during this time, we decided we're going to buy a farm and we sold our house that was in the city, moved out to a farm, started milking our goats, started making our soaps and changed our entire lives. It was like such a huge catalyst for us. And then that's when the twins came.

Phil: 41:50

One thing I really do love is that every one of your babies came through infertility treatment one way or the other. So you made these lifestyle changes and you started seeing your skin get better. You started feeling better, but even at that, you still did everything you could on a natural thing, knowing you had to lean on the medical system too. I love the fact that you wanted to intertwine it. Everything you could do, you're eating more natural. You're using soaps that you should be using. You're using cosmetics. You, you watch out for the soda, which we all love, but you also know exactly what's in it. You did that. Plus you did the medical treatment. I think that's a big lesson that I think all of us can learn from.

Lauren: 42:26

I think it was it for me, the steps that I needed to take in order to have my children. I was willing to do whatever it was that I needed to do to completely Change my life in such a way where my meals were harder. My, um, eventually it's not the case, right? Eventually it gets easier as you know what to look for and how to prep your meals and how to cook the, these things that are, and what to look for in the supermarket. But then even though that didn't a hundred percent fix what I had was years of, I feel like, build up in my body, that. I don't know the cause of PCOS. I can't begin to say that I do, but I feel like the way I treated my body before I made these changes has a lot to do with the way that my body still responds now. But needing medication was not a bad thing. Needing to have a little bit extra help was not a bad thing. And I think that's something like in the crunchy community online, it's all or nothing. And I think that that is, It's silly. I think that it is such a gift to have modern medicine as well as the knowledge of how we can change what we're doing at home to help modern medicine help us.

Phil: 43:34

Absolutely. So I have, first of all, the most important thing is, is you have so much you can share with all of us. So how do they find you? What's the best way to look you up so they can find you?

Lauren: 43:44

Okay, so I am on Instagram so much. That's my, that's the best spot. So Lauren.Stewart.Living,@Lauren.Stewart.Living on Instagram, and then TymeSoap, just@TymeSoap on Instagram as well. Um, that is where I am. I am really, really good about my DMs, especially on Tyme Soap. It's easier because it's a smaller following, so the DMs are easier to filter through there. But if you have questions, or if you are in the trenches of infertility, and you If I want to talk to someone that is something that I make it my utmost priority if I'm ever going to give my time away from my family, it's going to be for something that is just as important and to me, women out there who are trying to have babies or who are struggling with miscarriage and things like that. That is what I would hope that you know that you can find me and I would love to talk to you through that.

Phil: 44:37

See, see how awesome she is. She's just so awesome. Okay, last question I ask everybody. When I went on social media, I did it to save my pharmacy, and then we started getting a following. I had some friends say to me, you have to find a platform. He said, you have a voice, now you need a platform. What do you really want from this? I thought to myself, I can't change the world, but I can make it 1% kinder. The last question I ask everybody is what advice do you give to people who are listening on how to make the world just 1 percent kinder?

Lauren: 45:07

Oh, I believe that the way that you treat your children is going to be an extension of you. And so if you remember to speak with kindness and less sharpness, you are raising children who are quite literally going to be going out into the world, and making it better. So just love your family harder. And don't forget that even though someone looks like they might not be having a hard time, chances are in this day and age, there's something going on. So kindness and love goes such a long way.

Phil: 45:34

There was advice that was given early on when we were kids, when me and my wife were kids, we hadn't even had any yet, and they told us that don't be surprised when your kids yell all the time if you're yelling at your kids all the time. And I thought to myself, the way that you speak to your children, it reflects it. So when I find somebody whose children are just extraordinarily kind, you know the parents are there too. Well, thank you so much. Make sure you check it out. Go look at Tyme Soap look at, look at her Instagram, Lauren.Stewart.Living. There's dots in between there. Go see her. And most of all, thank you for spending the time with us today.

Lauren: 46:08

Oh, thank you for having me. It's like such a joy to chat with you.

Phil: 46:12

Well, if you've enjoyed the podcast, this is Take Your Medicine podcast. Give us a subscribe, like it, give a review and we'll be back next week as well.