Elsie Storm's Fertility Journey and How She Got Pregnant
Elsie Storm is a life coach whose business “Turning Life Gold” focuses on serving people through major life transitions. She describes coaching as, “having someone who believes in you.” We recently sat down with Elsie to hear more about her journey through a life of service toward personal and spiritual growth and development, including her own fertility journey.
ALMEDA: HOW DID YOU INITIALLY MEET THE TEAM AT ALMEDA?
ELSIE: I met Stacy and Kylie at a wellness retreat in Georgia last fall. I was working at the retreat and Stacy and Kylie were there with Almeda. It was a really busy event, and behind the scenes was a little stressful, as any big event can be. Stacy was going around giving people Encarna samples, saying, “It’s going to support your immune system and help calm you down a little bit." It made me feel great.
In January, I was pregnant, and I ended up losing that pregnancy. I think it's important to share about pregnancy loss because it's not something that's widely talked about.
After I lost that baby in January, I somehow got back connected with Stacy again. And I told her that we had just experienced another loss. She said, "I think you need to try Encarna."
We started talking about how I have the MTHFR gene and how Encarna is really, in some ways, developed to support people who have MTHFR, especially women during pregnancy. Stacy said, “I want you to try this, and I want you to give it to Johnny as well because the man's sperm, it’s so important that it's as healthy as it can be, as well as you being healthy.”
I showed it to my functional medicine practitioner who works specifically with the prenatal mama's throughout their pregnancy, and she was like, "This is an incredible prenatal." She's like, "I love this. This is amazing."
Within a week of using it all these weird health ailments that I had always had, went away. I was like, "Woah, what's happening here?" Then I was taking Kasvi on a daily basis and Encarna on a daily basis. It was like, so much shifted.
I started taking that in February. Then I got pregnant in May and have been taking Encarna as my prenatal supplement this whole time.
There are a lot of different things that went into this pregnancy. I think honestly, part of it too is I'm not traveling. I used to be on an airplane all the time. My body's slowed down. But I attribute so much of it to the Almeda products. Boosting my nutrition through Kasvi and Encarna, and now really sustaining it through Encarna.
Knock on wood, but I’ve felt amazing. I've had hardly any morning sickness. I have great energy for how much I've gone through… I just feel so grateful to just feel so healthy. I think Encarna has so much to do with it.
ALMEDA: WHAT DID YOUR FERTILITY JOURNEY LOOK LIKE?
ELSIE: I’ll share a little bit about my story and what I've learned, especially in the past year, about female health and male health and creating a healthy baby, because I didn't know this.
So my husband and I first started trying to get pregnant after we got married, and it took us two and a half years to get pregnant. Everything was more or less testing normal with me. My husband had some low sperm count, which by the way, if people are struggling to get pregnant, make sure that you get your husband's sperm tested because it's 50% of the equation, ladies. 50% of the equation. It's not all on you.
We got pregnant in September of 2018. So excited, I didn't even think miscarriage... I think I knew about it but I was like, "That won't happen to me."
Then we lost that baby at nine weeks. It was devastating. I started really looking at my health and nutrition. I did a big candida cleanse to get rid of a lot of candida and yeast that I found out was in my body that can really affect fertility, in men and women. My husband did the cleanse with me. It's a 17-week cleanse.
I ended up getting pregnant at the end of that. But then lost that baby as well. I also got a really bad virus and was really sick at the beginning of the pregnancy. That may have affected it, we don't know.
Then I then had an ectopic pregnancy, which resulted in an emergency surgery of my left fallopian tube, then got pregnant again, and that baby didn't make it.
After the fourth loss, I really started looking at egg health and sperm health, because I didn't realize... I didn't know, no one ever told me like, "You can improve your egg health, you may have eggs that aren't super healthy."
I started listening to natural practitioners and I started really digging into books around egg health and around... “yes, you can get pregnant after 35 with low AMH and FSH levels.”
I started religiously using the Kasvi and Encarna and other supplements to really support that.
Stacy, it was so funny when she gave us Encarna she was like, "Johnny's gonna have super sperm now!” Stacy, direct quote.
I had my husband on that, I really did a lot of research on things to improve his motility with his sperm, and both of us got really healthy. We cut out gluten completely, 100%. I knew that was creating inflammation in my body, but I didn't really wanna give up gluten because it's so good.
We [researched a] bunch of science, we got a ton of things tested, our chromosomes, our genes, all these different things. Started looking into IVF, and the doctor said, "Well, you have a 30% chance of having a successful IVF procedure." And I thought, screw that, I'm not paying 25 grand for 30%. I was like, if this keeps happening, maybe. But I just... I really tuned into my body and I really listened to my intuition and spiritually, and I did not get a clear green light to do IVF.
My husband and I said, "Well, let's try again, naturally. We've really shifted some things with our physical health, let's try naturally. I got pregnant the first time, and currently am 21 weeks pregnant with a healthy baby.
We've continued doing all these things, including some deep spiritual work and really surrendering and letting go of control and all of it. But I wish someone would have told me earlier that you can improve these things in your body.
The IVF doctor had also said, you have a 5% to 10% chance of getting pregnant naturally, and I said immediately, "That's your diagnosis, and I'm not choosing to receive it." I was just like, "That is your opinion, and I'm not gonna receive that." Literally a month after he told us that, we got pregnant with this baby.
I was taking other supplements that said they were safe for MTHFR, but none of it was working. So it was like, keep trying, keep trying different things. Everything shifted for me with Encarna.
There's a couple of things that I added on, but what's great about Encarna was that I got to actually take out all these other supplements that I was buying because it was all in Encarna already. So it actually saved me a lot money because I wasn't buying a million different supplements every month... But those three things, and the...
Ben Lynch's information about MTHFR is... It's deep, it goes deep into the science of it, and it can be a little overwhelming, but was helpful just for me to now get an idea of what's going on. I think it had a huge thing to do with my pregnancy.
ALMEDA: DO YOU HAVE ADVICE TO OTHERS ON A SIMILAR JOURNEY?
ELSIE: I have people write me all the time about this. Two books that really supported me in getting pregnant were, “It Starts with the Egg,” which is all about egg health, and then “Yes, You Can Get Pregnant,” which is all for specifically for women who are over 35. Both of those talk about incorporating a lot of different supplements and things that both Kasvi and Encarna have in them.
Read those two books, change your nutrition, start taking Kasvi and Encarna. I've also started taking a really high quality omega-3 supplement because that really affects both my egg health and Johnny's sperm health.
Make sure that your husband is healthy. Do whatever needs to happen to support him so that he has, as Stacy said, “super sperm.”
If they've been on the journey for a long time, and has either experienced infertility or pregnancy loss, get a therapist. I hired a fertility coach. Her name is Briana Williams, and she was really supportive. Having a space where you can talk to someone who's not your partner, that can just hold for whatever feelings you have because it's a very emotional ride, is really helpful if you've been on the journey for a while.
The other thing I would say is, if someone's wanting to get pregnant, start with these things, start with Kasvi, Encarna, with reading the books, at least three to four months before you wanna get pregnant so that you're really boosting your nutritional source, because it takes 90 days for the sperm and the egg to... for the health of them to turn over.
You want a full three months of really having incredible nutrition, and that's a big reason why too we waited a while after we'd been taking the Encarna and Kasvi, just to make sure that we were pretty well-boosted in terms of nutritional value before we'd start trying to get pregnant again. So we weren't trying on empty reserves.