Finding Hope and Support Through Infertility Journey with Dr. Brenna Squires

To every couple facing infertility, remember that you have the power to advocate and find strength together.

In this episode of The EmPOWERed Half Hour, Becca talks with Dr. Brenna Squires, a clinical psychologist and life coach, about her personal and professional journey through infertility. 

Dr. Squires and her husband have endured seven years of unexplained infertility, leading them to embrace self-advocacy and hope. She opens up about the emotional and mental toll of their struggle and their decision to take control of their fertility journey. 

This conversation highlights the importance of becoming your own health advocate and the crucial role of partnership in this process. If you or someone you know is navigating similar challenges, this episode is a must-listen.

The Power of Self-Advocacy

Dr. Squires shares how she and her husband took control of their fertility journey by becoming their own advocates, researching and questioning medical advice to find the best path forward.

The Emotional Toll of Infertility

The episode sheds light on the emotional and mental challenges that accompany infertility, offering insights into how couples can cope and find hope.

Navigating Conventional Medicine

Dr. Squires discusses the limitations and frustrations of traditional medical approaches to infertility and how they sought alternative solutions when conventional methods fell short.

The Role of Partnership

They emphasize the importance of a strong partnership in navigating infertility, highlighting how Dr. Squires and her husband worked together to support each other throughout their journey.

A Strategic Approach to Fertility

Through their experience, Dr. Squires and her husband developed a strategic plan that combined research, healthcare provider changes, and unwavering faith to navigate the challenges of infertility.

Welcome to another episode of The Empowered Half-Hour. I am so excited for today's conversation because I have not had the opportunity to bring you, the listeners. And today I bring you Dr. Brenna Squires. Hello, Brenna, welcome to the show.

Hello. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

I'm excited too. So I want to give you guys a little bit of background about Brenna and how we came in contact because I do this on every show. She reached out to me on Instagram. She has a really powerful message and the more I started reviewing her profile and some of the notes she sent over, I was like, yes, I'd love to have you on the show. The reason I think this topic is really important is because it's not one that's often talked about. 

Brenna, I'm going to let her share her background, but today's topic is going to be around infertility for women and bringing that back around to hope. And I just think that through her own experience, I'm going to let her share more, but she has had an experience that makes her passionate about this topic.

So Brenna, let me turn it over to you. Let's share with the audience a little bit about your background and why this topic became so passionate for you to share and speak about.

Navigating Infertility Through Self-Advocacy

So it all started, a couple of years ago, but my husband and I have been trying to get pregnant for about seven years now, and this began about four years ago when my husband and I were sitting in the doctor's office.

I could see the books and paperwork on his desk and my chart was open. I was excited because I was going to finally get some answers. We were there for a plan, we were there for answers, but I honestly wasn't expecting what he said next. He said, Brenna, I don't know why you can't get pregnant and then he had a few options about what to do next.

And honestly, I was just so overwhelmed with emotions because we had been trying to get pregnant for three years at that point. And he just told me, I don't know why you can't get pregnant and then proceeded to give me options. The options he gave me were expensive, invasive, had a small percentage of working, and still didn't answer most of my queries. And then he asked us, so what do you want to do? Gonna need to think about it for a minute.

And all of these thoughts and emotions started going through my mind and my body and I'm feeling sad and angry and confused. All I could think was you don't know what's wrong. You've done all of these tests and yet you're still giving me some solutions that are all terrible, in my opinion, none of which are helping.

And we went home, I mean feeling discouraged. We went home feeling so discouraged, so defeated and we just started to discuss what we do. And we just kept coming back to the idea of really is this it? Like is this all you have as a professional? All you have is after all of these tests and years of looking at stuff. You don't know what's going on and you don't have any options for us.

So we started to research and found more options, but then we got to the next hurdle and said, now there's no one to talk to, right? There's no one to talk to about if these are good ideas or effective strategies. And then I started looking into groups and realized, there's nothing that seems to match what I'm going through that some of the groups are making me feel worse.

When I would talk to family or friends, they would be, as empathetic as they could, but a lot of times I would get, that's never happened to me. So you're like, now what? So that's not happened to you. So you don't know what I'm going through. I just started feeling more and more alone.

And like many couples, struggling with infertility, we felt overwhelmed with all of this information. We felt overwhelmed with emotion, we sat in the doctor's office and didn't get any answers. And there were times when our situation was just hopeless. So without a clear path, without clear answers, and limited support, we decided, I guess it's me and you, my husband and I just came together.

And we prayed and we decided we're going to figure this out because what else are we going to do? As a psychologist, I'm a psychologist. My husband is a cybersecurity analyst. We problem-solve for a living. So we're like, let's just use us as a case study number one, right? We're going to just look at our problem and try to figure out what we can do about it.

So we went to the doctor, we went to different doctors and healthcare providers. We started reading books, articles, and educational programs. I signed up for so many different educational programs to try to figure out what's going on in my body and what's going on in his body. Try to find the answers that doctors couldn't figure out. 

And with all of this knowledge, we became our best advocates. And now instead of navigating this journey, feeling overwhelmed, we feel equipped because we have this roadmap and we have this specific strategy and plan that we've put in place that if something goes wrong, we can easily pivot.

We want to do the same thing for other couples in this situation. We want to help them move from being depressed and discouraged to having hope and joy again. We want to help them have a plan. We want to help couples struggling with infertility who have tried everything and feel like nothing works.

We want them to feel like they have a plan. When doctors aren't listening to them, we want to help them learn to advocate for themselves and have a support system. 

I feel like becoming your advocate and for the listeners out there it's so important when it comes to any aspect of your health to take the approach that Brenna's talking about. So even though I haven't experienced any infertility issues, 

I had an autoimmune disease. Right now it's in remission, but I was very sick for quite a few years, about three years. And I had gone to doctor after doctor, everybody saying that I'm fine. No one could tell me why my bones hurt, why I was so tired that I couldn't get out of bed. My hair was falling out in clumps.

It took me to finally get fed up like you and extremely discouraged to put the power back into my own hands and say, I'm going to start reading about this. And then like it might be autoimmune related, went to a functional medicine doctor, and started looking at what was going on from a completely different lens.

And through that, I found out another issue that's not often talked about that should be talked about is that in addition to having an active autoimmune disease, which he finally tested me for, and confirmed that I had something going on. I also had breast implant illness and none of my doctors asked if I had breast implants.

None of them really compared the symptoms and it was my advocacy and then finding someone that would listen that got me on my healing journey. And most of my healing came from supplements, the way I worked out like slower, less hit stuff. I had to do a lot, I love yoga anyway, but I did a lot of yoga and then obviously my diet, and after about two years of really working on that, I got into remission, and almost all my symptoms are gone.

So I just wanted to share, I was resonating with what you were sharing and I'm hoping that the listeners can too, that you really can put your health and the outcomes into your own hands. You might not be able to control everything, but I appreciate what you said because I don't think people realize that they have as much power in their own advocacy for health. So anyway, my two cents. 

That's wonderful and that is so important and very accurate that not many people realize how much power they have in their own hands. And like you said, you had to do the research and the best way you became an advocate was knowledge. Like you had to know what you were looking for.

You had to know what to ask and then you had to find the right support system, the right person to listen. So not only did you have to learn how to be an advocate, but you had to find somebody who was willing to be a good support system. 

I just got goosebumps. Yes. All of that. So bring it back to your journey. Where are you guys now? So that's what you went through now. Fast forward four years, and you're in an active advocacy role, right? You're here on this podcast. Where are you guys now? With regards to just recap the audience probably is like, where is she now with her situation? But also like, where are you with helping people and where are you guys taking things?

Building Stronger Relationships Through Infertility

So right now where we are in our specific fertility journey is we've gone through meetings with traditional doctors. We've met with integrative health and homeopathic health, and we are in that homeopathic realm right now where we're still having faith and believing in the hope that we will still have children.

And we're as excited today as we were when we first started because we have a strategic plan that we're following that we're able to easily pivot. When someone says, okay, this doesn't work. Okay, now let's go somewhere else. So we're still on that path and we're still having hope. And we're excited because like I said, we know sometimes soon things are going to work out and all of it's going to fall into place.

And with regards to helping clients with advocacy, we're launching a brand new program specifically for couples in September, because we want to get couples on the same page. After all, fertility is about the couple as a collective and from our experience and from the experience I hear from a lot of couples, that's not what's happening where a lot of it is heavy on the woman and specific things, but a whole bunch is missing that they're not testing for, that they're not looking for, that they're not treating for the woman. And there's a whole bunch missing when it comes to the man, that's 50 percent that we're just not even looking at.

So we want to help couples in that arena with what you can do to advocate for themselves. How do we get that support? And how can we create that roadmap for you so that you're not stressed?

Your husband a lot too, because with the traditional model, it is very heavy on women, on the woman to take care of it or to figure it out. And meanwhile, the husband's left on the side just for updates. And he's maybe, I would assume I never really thought about it until you started talking about it, but you might even feel a little disconnected from his wife because I know like in my girlfriends, I was telling you, on our pre-prep for this that I've had a lot of family and girlfriends who have had infertility issues and I see them rightfully so get very obsessive about it, but their husbands are more just like in a side support role rather than part of the process. So how has that impacted your relationship? I'm just curious.

So from the beginning, we have always been a really good team. That's one thing that I love about my husband. We have been a really good team and we've tried to look at it through the lens of a team. So even when doctors would heavily focus on me, I would say, what about him? What does he get to do? And when they didn't give him things, as funny as it sounds, I had him involved in what I was doing.

I said, okay, I'm taking my temperature, remind me to take my temperature. I have to track X, Y, and Z. And I want you to know what X, Y, and Z mean. We're on this journey together. After all, as you said, they put such a strong emphasis on the woman that the woman almost feels overwhelmed because it's like her own problem, so to speak.

And so I thought, this is 50 50. We're supposed to be doing this together. So you're going to know what's going on and you're going to do all the same treatment I'm doing to the extent that you can. So he has been my number one support throughout the whole process. 

Instead of potentially dividing, I've seen it cause fights in relationships too.

You guys are on the same team and I think that's important. And for you listeners out there, whether you experience infertility or some type of other health issue, maybe, including your partner as part of the process might have a little bit more positive outcome for you. So that's a good way to look at it.

Yeah, absolutely. When I work closely with couples, that's one of the things that I emphasize every single time is you are a team. When one goes down, you both go down. When one is struggling, you're both struggling. So you should both know, and that's one of the shoulds, I don't like talking about shoulds, but one of the shoulds is it's helpful for you to both know what's going on. 

If your temperatures are erratic, you both need to know and figure out what's going on. If you're feeling emotional, it's not helpful for the husband to just guess, but then that's one of the things that causes friction and strife in a relationship when you make the other person guess what's going on because they don't know unless you tell them.

It's so true. I love that you're saying that because of the guessing, we create stories when we don't have information. So ladies out there, if you're not communicating with your partner. there might be some stories and some gaps happening in their head. 

Let's go into a different part. I'm curious to see what is a major, now that you have been on this journey for seven years, what's a major lesson that you've learned?

Exploring Alternative Fertility Solutions

The major lesson that I've learned is that there are so many more options out there than we are being told. There are thousands of doctors across the world, helping millions of couples get pregnant with treatments that most of us have never heard of because our doctors have never shared with us.

And so that's the biggest thing that I've learned is that each doctor is trained on something different. And if we don't know that, we're just going to say, okay, whatever options they give me, that's it. When that's not exactly true. That's it for that doctor. If you go to a different doctor, they're going to give you completely different options that may be better. But you don't know, because we don't know how to go there.

What's an example of a solution that you were like, wow, I didn't know that was a possibility.

The Surprising Impact of Chiropractic Care on Fertility

Chiropractic care. So recently I started getting adjusted and I've been getting adjusted for a couple of years, but this is the first time I met with a chiropractor who was able to connect the dots for me by explaining how all of our organs in our body are connected to nerves, our nerves are connected to our spine. If our spine is not straight or is not aligned correctly. Then if you think about it, if it's straight or proper, everything is flowing correctly. 

When it starts to bend, then it puts pressure on the nerves. And if it's putting pressure on the nerves, it's like kinking the nerves, kinking a hose, putting pressure on them, and they're not able to send the signals properly to those organs. And if the signals are not getting properly sent, they're not working at their optimal level. And so you can imagine if you have a slight adjustment like one of the adjustments that I have is in my hips. So my hips were misaligned, so one was a little higher, and that contributed to a slight curve in my back and a slight curve in my neck.

And the curves that were not supposed to be there. And when he did, she showed me on the chart, specifically what nerves were connected to that. It's again, your gut, it's my ovaries, it's my uterus. It's all of those things that are supposed to be functioning optimally or fertility, but because all of these things are slightly off, they're not getting all the proper signals that they should be.

Man, that's so wild. And that's like, when I was going through my autoimmune stuff, mine was in the connective tissue family. And yeah, I learned that everything was so interconnected. During my healing journey, too, I was doing chiropractic, and acupuncture, like I had so many modalities going at the same time, but it took this multi-modality approach to heal.

It wasn't just one thing. Like I have people who are like, what's the one thing that you did? I'm like, what about the 20 things that I did? And I really can't tell you which one it was. But it was probably all of it, so that's interesting. It's interesting how that's what we want. 

And in reality, there is no one magic pill because we are all different. That's the biggest takeaway I can share is we are all different, so there's not one magic pill that's going to work for everybody. It's a collection of puzzle pieces and the puzzle pieces may be different for you than they are for me, but having to know that there are different puzzle pieces than just the three or four you're given, just widens the scope to be able to put it together. 

So what is an aha that's up for you now? What's that current, like aha, or like new thought that's up for you right now? Like an aha moment.

Learning When to Pivot and When to Pause

An aha moment for me that's going on right now is learning when to pivot and when to pause because there are some times when we need to quickly pivot and say, this isn't working. We need to go in a different direction and there are times when we need to pause, let the dust settle, and then see where to go. Cause if we're always running, we may be going in circles.

I think that's important because not only for infertility, but I think that's like an important life lesson is starting to learn when to pivot and when to pause, so I think I'm like, that is dope.

So let's talk a little bit about why, again, it bled through our conversation, but why are you passionate about this topic?

Embracing the Journey and Finding Community

I'm so passionate about this topic because it's honestly a very lonely road. After all, there's a lot of shame that goes into it and people feel embarrassed because when you're younger, you're told that you can get pregnant right away. And then when that doesn't happen for so many couples, you think something's wrong with me. And when we start bringing light to these things that were put shame upon, we take the shame away and say, this is something very common.

This is something that we don't exactly know why it's happening, but many people are experiencing this. And so taking that shame away and bringing in the community helps. So I'm so passionate about it because I want to let other people know you're not the only one and there's nothing wrong with you.

There's just something that we're just missing a couple of pieces that some people found earlier than you did, but there's a big community out there and that's something that we're building as well, to be able to support other people along this journey.

Let's talk about the community a little bit because I assume that there's going to be some listeners that are identifying with what you're saying.

And then, like you said, they probably are hanging back because they have been in shame and they don't know who to trust or who to talk to. So let's talk about your community a little bit. What are you looking to put in place and what are you working on?

Uniting Couples in the Journey of Infertility

The three main things that we focus on, and I've been focusing on this for years but I'm narrowing this down for the couples in this particular community which is having a strategic plan. Like I said, the strategic plan of all the options we have, and then how to navigate that plan for you individually, because that's what we need to know. You as an individual, how do we navigate it? When to go left, when to go right, when to pause, and then how to advocate for yourself is a big thing that's missing in the marketplace right now. How to advocate for yourself, for what you could say for yourself and your spouse.

And then that support, that unconditional support of whichever option you choose is okay. And all of these things, I feel like I never got that, which is why I wanted to bring it to other people with whatever option you choose. If you want to do IVF, we're going to support you through that. And we're going to tell you, we're going to recommend a couple of things that can help that succeed better.

If you're saying, I don't want IVF, I want natural, We're going to come around you and support you and say, how can we increase your likelihood through the natural process? And so this support and this guidance that I feel like I said is missing especially from a couple of standpoints because I'm going to be doing this with my husband. Me and my husband, we're gonna be leading this group, and I, with a psychology background, and him with an ethics background, and cyber security analyst background, know how to help you pivot and support each other because we don't want this to ruin your relationship.

Cause as you said, we've seen these ruin relationships to the point where people will say, I don't want to have kids anymore, or I'm just going to adopt, or I'm just taking a break and I don't know what to do anymore. They fall into depression and anxiety and we don't want to see that.

A hundred percent. I even have had friends get divorced, which is very sad. Just because you think about it, it's like you're getting divorced because you wanted to have a baby together and then it caused so much friction that you fell out of love. That's sad. So in essence, to be able to not only help people can potentially conceive with more options, but then also to preserve their relationship healthily.

Like I commend what you and your husband are doing. It's awesome.

Thank you so much, and like you said, I feel like that's the core of what's missing. There's a lot of pressure put on the woman. And then honestly, it's odd where they have you at odds where, oh, it's the man's problem. There's a low sperm count and now we're looking at the man or no, it's the woman. There's a low egg reserve, and there's a lot of pinning people against each other, which is not helpful. And we're trying to bring people together. We're trying to bring husband and wife together and unify them.

And then we're trying to unify them with other couples who are going through the same thing to say, we're all on the same road. We might just be taking different paths to get there.

I love that. So what would be an empowering message you would want to share with a couple that's struggling with infertility right now?

The Power of Hope and Endless Options

There is always hope. Never give up because there is one more option, two more options, and probably a hundred options that you haven't tried that no one is telling you about. 

And rather than getting upset about the fact that no one's telling you this, I want you to get excited. Excited and say, oh my goodness, there's something out there that can not only help me increase my chances, but it'll heal my body and bring me closer together with my husband. And so that excitement of rather than division, there's unity out there and there's also hope for you to get what you want, which is again, healing your body and having that child that God promised.

That is awesome and when is your next, like you said, you're going to release something in September. Tell me a little bit about that.

Fertility Empowerment Program for Couples

Yes, we're launching a fertility empowerment program and it's going to be a two-month program starting in September. Right now we're leaning towards either the mid beginning or mid-September.

We don't have an official launch date just yet. But that program is going to be two months long and it's going to be virtual. So you can join from anywhere in the world and it'll be for couples. Now, if your couple, if your partner can't join the whole time, that's perfectly okay, because we're going to record it so you can watch it later.

But as I mentioned, we're going to focus on those three main things, helping you widen your scope about your options and then how to navigate through them, how to advocate with the different doctors, because there are different ones, and then how to navigate support, specifically how to give support to your partner, how to find helpful support systems, and how to remove toxic support systems. 

There are some toxic people in your life who may not need to know everything about your fertility journey, but we need to put them to the side and only bring in people who are going to be life-giving, helpful, and encouraging. And so that's what we're starting with September

When you are on a journey that requires you to have a very positive and hopeful mindset. Whether it's infertility or health, or you're looking to advance your career, whatever, there's a message that Brenna is sharing that is universal.

And that is, you don't need to share your sh*t with everybody. Okay sorry, just to say it so bluntly, but that is just true. And because a lot of people don't know, they don't have the expertise or they haven't been through it. So they're not in a position. It's not that people are bad, it's just they're not the right people that support your journey. So I love that you went there.

I'm glad you're saying that because a lot of it doesn't matter. They’re family, they're supposed to be there for me. Not every family member will understand, nor will every family member be helpful for this.

Just like certain friends, some friends are great for some journeys, but for this journey, they will immediately say, I don't understand. I don't know, just get over it. And they will be so discouraging when you're feeling worse. And so that's the part we need to navigate, we don't need to kick them all to the curb. We don't need to get rid of these family members or friends. We just need to learn how to set them aside and set proper boundaries so they're not giving us those negative thoughts and discouragement when we don't need more, we only need good.

Yes, exactly. We're already in a difficult situation and you're trying to go up.

Yeah, we're trying to go up. So we want everybody that's going to push us up and anyone that's going to bring us down or just hold us at the status level. They're just going to be put to the side for something else.

Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to be able to share this message and hopefully encourage couples struggling with infertility to hold on and find the right support system because they're out there.