Fertility Docs Uncensored Today’s episode of Fertility Docs Uncensored is hosted by Dr. Carrie Bedient from the Fertility Center of Las Vegas, Dr. Susan Hudson from Texas Fertility Center, and Dr. Abby Eblen from Nashville Fertility Center, welcomes Rosanne Austin, founder of the Fearlessly Fertile Podcast and creator of the Fearlessly Fertile Method. In this episode, Rosanne discusses how stress, fear, shame, perfectionism, and negative self-talk can affect women struggling with infertility. Many of her clients are highly accomplished women with demanding careers who spend so much time caring for others that they forget to care for themselves emotionally. Rosanne explains how infertility can leave women feeling guilty, ashamed, or blindsided by difficulty conceiving later in life. She helps women identify the stories they tell themselves and replace fear-based thinking with self-compassion and confidence. Rosanne also discusses her eight-week online fertility mindset coaching program, in which women meet weekly in a supportive group setting to openly discuss what they truly want for their lives and families. The program teaches communication skills, emotional resilience, practical strategies, and healthier ways to handle mistakes, stress, and uncertainty during infertility treatment. Why do successful women often struggle emotionally with infertility? How can mindset coaching help during IVF and fertility treatment? What role do fear, anxiety, guilt, and shame play in infertility? How can women learn to prioritize themselves while pursuing both career success and motherhood? Rosanne shares how women can begin saying “yes, I can” while honoring their desire to build a family. Learn more through the Fearlessly Fertile podcast, website, and YouTube channel. This podcast was sponsored by the Reproductive Science Center.
Episode Transcript:
Susan Hudson (00:01)
You’re listening to the Fertility Docs Uncensored podcast, featuring insight on all things fertility from some of the top rated doctors around America. Whether you’re struggling to conceive or just planning for your future family, we’re here to guide you every step of the way.
Carrie Bedient MD (00:22)
Hello and welcome to another episode of Fertility Docs Uncensored. I am Dr. Carrie Bedient and I am joined by my two fantastically, fabulously funny co-hosts, Dr. Susan Hudson from Texas Fertility Center, and Dr. Abby Eblen from Nashville Fertility Center.
Susan Hudson MD (00:35)
Hello everyone.
Abby Eblen MD (00:39)
Hi everybody.
Carrie Bedient MD (00:40)
And today we are joined by Rosanne Austin, who is the creator of the Fearlessly Fertile method. Sorry, I’m going on the F theme today with the fantastically, fabulously Fearlessly Fertile. and we are delighted to have you with us, Rosanne. How are you doing today?
Rosanne (00:55)
I’m great. Just say it fast three times and it’ll be it’ll be even better. But I’m super excited to be here and having this conversation with all of you.
Carrie Bedient MD (01:05)
Well, it sounds like we managed to just get you in the perfect window of all of your travel schedule. You said that you just came back from Paris from filming a documentary that you are planning and organizing. What’s what is the story behind that? How did that come to be?
Rosanne (01:22)
Wow. Well, I certainly had no idea I would become a filmmaker, but the work that I’ve been doing over the past 12 years, I I felt I really needed to be documented. So so we decided to embark on the this Odyssey that would literally take me all over the world capturing the stories of the women who have come through my programs and have created success that they were once told was impossible. And I felt that that was a story worth telling.
Carrie Bedient MD (01:50)
So how many places have you been in in quest of this information?
Rosanne (01:56)
So we’ve been all over the United States, we’ve been all over Europe, and through that process, we’ve gotten emails, DMs, just so many different communications from women all over the world. And my programs have served women on six of seven continents, but I was informed a couple months ago that one of my clients was going back and forth to Antarctica, so maybe it’s seven continents. So Yeah, yeah, for her research. It was really it really has been a global endeavor, one that I didn’t know that I would be asked to to take on, but it has been my professional passion for over twelve years now. So we decided to capture it on film.
Susan Hudson MD (02:40)
For our listeners who aren’t familiar with your past work, what what is the main focus of that?
Rosanne (02:47)
I help women with the mindset piece of the fertility puzzle. And like I say, whenever anyone asks me what I do, I start by saying that necessity is the mother of invention. Having lived my own seven-year fertility journey, I was trying every treatment, diet, lotion, potion, yoga pose, faith healer, spray. I was doing everything that I could.
Rosanne (03:11)
While I was working as a prosecutor in California, I was actually the lead trial attorney in a specialized sexual assault unit. And I figured there wasn’t a challenge I’d ever come up against where I didn’t absolutely crush it. I figured having a baby at 37 would just be, you know what, I’m gonna get pregnant, I’ll take that case to trial in May, and we’ll move on. But I was in for a wild ride, ladies.
I look back on that time of my life with so much compassion at my naivete at the time. It also was a it was something that really set me on a path of self-discovery, but also empowering myself in a way that I didn’t think I needed to be empowered. Because if you looked at me from the outside, you’re like, lead trial attorney, like what problems.
Abby Eblen MD (04:02)
Yeah, was going to say as a prosecutor, you’re not low on dealing with challenges, I’m sure.
Rosanne (04:08)
No, but what I found is that this journey was an invitation. It was an invitation to confront a lot of things that I didn’t know were going on in my life. Having to do with timeline, self-worth, so many things that from the outside didn’t seem to need quote unquote fixing. But as I learned over seven years, I mean, I had a great treatment team. I was being treated at a top 10 teaching hospital. We were sparing no expense. And what I learned was that while my team may have been excellent and they were bringing their A game, I was not. Because I was going into each one of those treatments quite literally, expecting to fail. And I also wasn’t managing the way that I was living my life very well. Nobody told me about the effects of cortisol.
Nobody told me that not sleeping, there’s gonna be a price that I would pay. I was doing all the physical things, but I was doing nothing to calm my nervous system, to do anything to support what was going on between my ears. And for me that was the key.
Susan Hudson MD (05:20)
How your brain functions and the positivity and the optimism can have a huge effect on your fertility journey.
Rosanne (05:29)
Absolutely. And it was funny because, a thousand years ago when I was doing this, I remember asking my RE, who was very well intentioned, amazing, amazing person, saying, Hey, could the fact that I’m working 80 hour weeks and not sleeping and being chased around the courthouse by homicidal maniacs suspects family, which did happen, could that have any impact on my ability to conceive? Nope. Just move on. And the story that I was told really at that time was that it must be egg quality and I must be old. But there was nothing, ladies, that about me that felt old. I’m 52 today and people mistake me for being in my 30s all the time. Something didn’t match up. What I did was I started to approach this like a trial attorney. Where were the holes in my case? Because I was doing all the treatments.
I wasn’t holding back there. My diet was so clean, sugar and gluten had not passed my lips in years. I was exercising occasionally when I wasn’t working, but there were so many physical things that I was doing, but nobody taught me about how to deal with the fear, the doubt, the negativity, the shame, the comparison.
And frankly, living with the idea that I was asking for too much. Here I was, just doing really well in my career, constantly performing. But inside I didn’t feel like I was enough. And this journey felt like punishment. It felt like I wanted too much. I had a career. I had love in my life. Who was I to ask for a child?
Susan Hudson MD (07:17)
If IVF has been living in the I’ll deal with it later category, summer might be your window to change that. Schedules shift, things slow down just enough and suddenly you’ve got the space to actually figure out what comes next. At Fertility Docs Uncensored, we’ve spent years helping patients cut through the noise and understand IVF for what it really is. Not overwhelming, not mysterious, just a series of steps you can learn and navigate. That’s exactly why we created the IVF Blueprint. It’s a straightforward, no-nonsense guide to the entire IVF process. What happens, what decisions you’ll face and how to think through them without second-guessing every move. Whether you’ve just started to seriously consider IVF or you’re already in it and want to feel more control, the IVF Blueprint helps you move from, I think I should, to, I know what I’m doing. You can find it in print, ebook, and audiobook with a bonus conversation from us at the end, wherever books are sold, and at Fertilitydocsuncensored.com.
If you’ve been waiting for the right moment to get clarity, this might be it.
Carrie Bedient MD (08:24)
So before we dive further into how you got through all of that, because that’s really the the bulk of today’s episode, which I’m sure is gonna resonate with all of our listeners, because everybody who comes to fertility treatment, like these are women who have their lives together. So before we dive into that, Susan, do we have a question for today?
Susan Hudson MD (08:45)
I do. All right. Our question for today is, hi there. I have been loving your podcast. Thank you so much for listening. I loved your episode from 2021 on nicotine and alcohol. My husband does ZYN nicotine patches and he’s unwilling to stop them, saying it’s not harmful, way less harmful than smoking. A few months ago I had a miscarriage.
Intuitively, I feel that nicotine pouches are not helpful when it comes to fertility, but I can’t find studies or data that say so. I can only find research on smoking. Do you have any information, resources, or simply tips when it comes to nicotine patches and their impact on fertility? I’d be so grateful for any information that I could share with my husband. Wow, how many times a day do we hear this story?
Carrie Bedient MD (09:29)
Every day, all day. This is such a common question. This is such a theme that goes through everybody’s journey. So Abby, how do you approach your patients who are on nicotine patches?
Abby Eblen MD (09:43)
Well, I think being on nicotine patches is better than smoking because smoking has so many other carcinogens when you smoke that not only impacts your esophagus, affects your reproductive tract. We know that there’s increased cancers in women that are smokers. So all those breakdown products of smoking are really bad. Nicotine is not good either, So never do we tell people it’s good to use nicotine.
But I think ultimately the goal with nicotine patches would be to transition from smoking, use the nicotine patches, and then ultimately try and get off of those as quickly as you can, because I don’t think those are helpful for baby in any way.
Susan Hudson MD (10:21)
Say that realize that nicotine is nicotine is nicotine. So whether it’s in pouches, patches, vapes, whatever it is, we know that this specific chemical actually can change things, especially in the male reproductive system, that can increase the risk of recurrent miscarriage. So there is some data to say that nicotine is related to DNA fragmentation, and DNA fragmentation does have a relationship to miscarriages. Now, with that being said, there are a lot of things that are tied to miscarriage. Most of the time, there are multiple things going on. And so we can’t say you had this miscarriage because he’s using nicotine. But I also think that it it is part of one of those we’re trying to put our best foot forward and using nicotine is not going to be helpful.
And I hate to use this word excuse, but the the excuse of nicotine and smoking are not equal. Yes, as Abby said, they are not apples and oranges, but it’s more like fruit salad and apples. Apples are in the fruit salad.
Abby Eblen MD (11:26)
Yeah, I mean, I look at nicotine patches as really just a way to transition from smoking to not smoking, not something that you’re going to use long term.
Carrie Bedient MD (11:37)
So there’s there is a definitive effect of nicotine on vascularity and vasoconstriction and oxidative damage to sperm specifically. So it can have an impact on the reproductive hormones in both men and women. But if you give us the option of smoking versus nicotine patches, absolutely it’s nicotine patches. But if you give us the option of nicotine patches or nothing, the answer is nothing. Because we want to maximize everything and people who are exposed to that oftentimes require more IVF cycles, they have more sperm parameters, and you’re you’re putting all into this effort to get pregnant. And while we may not be able to say, you have XYZ sperm number, and that is a direct relationship to the nicotine you’re using, it’s not doing you any favors.
It’s the question of you can do the hard thing now or you can do the hard thing later, but you’re gonna do the hard thing. So when do you wanna do it?
And for something like this, it’s a relatively clear slam dunk. Whereas a lot of the other things that we talk about are not. The question of whether or not you need seven and a half hours of sleep versus eight and a half hours of sleep and what kind of environment you’re in. And a lot of the things that we’re going to talk about with Rosanne today, those things are much harder to control. Not that stopping nicotine is easy in any way, shape, or form. It is addictive for a reason and those patches exist for a reason.
But when it’s just a straight-up argument of harm or no harm, it it falls much more in the harm category than the no harm. And so if you’re about to go through big treatments, even if you’re not, I would go ahead and stop that because who wants vascular problems? Like your blood vessels are important. You need them everywhere. And gentlemen, and that includes your penis. You know, that’s how erections come about. It’s a way to safeguard all of your reproductive health.
Susan Hudson MD (13:34)
I always say that quitting nicotine, you know all the bad reasons to stop. This is a good reason.
Carrie Bedient MD (13:41)
Rosanne, you were living a wild and crazy life with wild and crazy hours and it sounds like contacts with people and stress is sounds like it was in your daily diet, whether or not anything else was, certainly stress was. How how did you find yourself in this fertility journey where you’re a high powered woman getting everything right and nailing everything you want and all of a sudden this isn’t coming?
Rosanne (14:09)
Well, it was kind of a shock to my system. I mean, and I’ll be honest, ladies, like I wasn’t the poster child for mothering, okay? Like, it took the right man to come into my life. I was pretty set on living a relatively jet-set life when I wasn’t in trial. But like so many women who are like the women that I serve, we’re all lovably type A control freaky professionals. We have a really clear vision for our lives, and sometimes really interesting things come into them. So that was me. I met my husband and my ovaries kind of went. And I’m like, I want to have a baby with this man. I’ll get back to my plan of world domination later, but I want to have a family. And that was actually the first time that it ever was. I mean, I had heard that getting pregnant later in life, whatever that means, could be more difficult, but I don’t think I fully appreciated the statistics. And what was interesting, again, I was going through this in what I consider the Stone Age. So many things have changed since then. There’s a lot more information, and I think frankly, there’s a lot more compassion. But I was on a very clear career path and I was having to make some choices.
Geez, you know, am I gonna have to start taking better care of myself? I’m gonna get into a system that’s gonna tell me right off the bat that I’m over the hill. I had no idea that if you’re over 35, the label of advanced maternal age gets tossed around. So
Susan Hudson MD (15:45)
What’s worse is the one geriatric pregnancy.
Rosanne (15:48)
Yeah. Yeah, advanced maternal age is gentle by comparison for sure. At the end of the day, I mean the cat’s out of the bag. I ended up ha getting pregnant naturally and having my son shortly before turning 44 after years of treatment failure. And I wasn’t even the oldest woman in the labor and delivery. That was really an interesting kind of situation in my life. I just started pushing. I figured, Look, I’ve never held back anywhere. I’m gonna drop an atom bomb in the center of my life and I’m just gonna go for it. Ovaries deep, as I say. And I was just getting, punched like left and right. I don’t even remember what my numbers were, but they were pretty horrific. And I remember being 37 and being told I needed donor eggs, which I remember sitting in the RE’s office fairly catatonic and like, what am I gonna do?
I just started researching. When I wasn’t in trial, I was working on my degree in reproductive endocrinology. I didn’t see myself as against my team. I wanted to be a really great contributor.
That’s what I teach my clients all the time. This is not an us versus them thing. Now, I’m going to be honest, before I had fully digested this, I felt I was in a very kind of combative place because I was like, No, you don’t know me. I don’t fail. It was very difficult for me. to
Carrie Bedient MD (17:11)
Do you think you were fighting you or you were fighting your team more? Like what did it seem like at the time and then in retrospect.
Rosanne (17:18)
I think it was a little bit of both, which again, I will say this, and I am so grateful to my team. They know what they know, and they were doing their best, but they didn’t know me and they didn’t know what was going on inside of me. And part of the work that I do now is about bridging that gap and really empowering women to be a contributor. And I think I would have been a much better patient, ladies, had I really become more invested in seeing myself as an equal.
Susan Hudson MD (17:52)
Big news for the Bay Area, Reproductive Science Center of the San Francisco Bay Area is expanding. A brand new state-of-the-art IVF lab is now open in Menlo Park, RSC’s second in the region. With advanced fertility treatments, a high success rate, and flexible financial options, RSC helps hopeful parents take control of their family building journey. Visit rscbayarea.com to schedule your consultation. RSC is proud to lead the way in West Coast fertility care.
Abby Eblen MD (18:26)
Tell me what you mean by your method. You call it your fearlessly fertile method. Do you have like specific steps that your patients or your clients follow or?
Rosanne (18:35)
Yeah, I walk my clients through a process, and it’s really about getting themselves to completely change their perception of what’s happening. Because look, when we’re faced with the idea that we cannot accomplish something, I mean, I work specifically with women that are high performers, and it becomes an identity crisis, which I don’t think many people appreciate.
I work with women in the C-suite, leaders of Fortune 500 companies, these are women who slay all day. So when you come up against a reality that, look, lady, you might not be able to accomplish this, it really becomes an existential crisis. It’s not just the stress of the treatment. That we can handle. Okay, if we can handle mergers and acquisitions, things like that.
We’re primed for that. But I believe that the desire to be a mom is really heart-based and speaks directly to our sense of self-worth. And that that side of us that we don’t get to indulge in as professionals. As a prosecutor, I couldn’t cry when I was presenting the testimony of a little girl who was molested. I couldn’t hold her hand. I couldn’t do any of that.
So many of my clients who are high performers like I was, we compartmentalize this aspect of ourselves. And then we we have a pattern of taking care of everyone else before we take care of ourselves. And that becomes a crutch. By the time we find ourselves on the journey, most of the time we’re kind of tapped out. And our friends, our family come to know us as
The problem solvers, the rescuer, the the person that’s so strong. But we don’t have a place to speak about this. It takes an alpha female to hold space for another alpha. And that’s where I found a gap. That’s where I found that there was a real need.
Abby Eblen MD (20:44)
So tell me some of the specific steps that you tell your clients when you go through this process.
Rosanne (20:53)
Well, one of the primary ones is to begin to understand the current stories they’re telling themselves about what it means to be on this journey. Because if you see this journey as a failure, as a rejection, as something to be ashamed of, to hold guilt over, or as, and I told you so. Especially if you’re the first woman in your family.
To have higher education, to be in a leadership role. There’s a lot, there’s still, even in 2026, there’s this interesting kind of dichotomy where women are told to achieve this is the right thing for you to do. But when we get around to wanting the other things, we are often slapped in the face with it’s too late. So it creates a lot of conflict. So the first step in that is identifying and becoming cognizant of what are the stories you’re telling yourself about even being on this journey, which is a powerful awareness.
Carrie Bedient MD (21:57)
Are your your clients able to identify pretty readily what they’re telling themselves? Or do you find that you really have to dig to get it out of them?
Rosanne (22:06)
Well, I work with women that are ready for this work. They’ve known. It’s not a surprise to them that something is going on, because typically the women that come to me, they’ve had at least two rounds of failed IVF. They’re over 40. Like time is of the essence. And they have a sinking suspicion that something else is going on. If they are otherwise healthy and they have a great team around them.
So it’s really giving them a place where they can actually put the words to it. And that’s a critical piece of the work.
Susan Hudson MD (22:43)
What type of time frame I I almost think of your clients going through a journey to get from when they contact you to when they’re at whatever point to kind of blast off. What time frame do you see that most people needing to take for this type of delving into their innermost self?
Rosanne (23:06)
Well, I do an eight-week program because I don’t believe it needs to take longer than that. I think that there are wild changes that can be made very quickly when the environment is created for honesty, for them owning what’s real for them. And for a lot of women, this is the first time that they speak out loud about what they really want. What’s interesting too is one of the other things that I’ve noticed.
Is sometimes there’s even shame around wanting a family because a lot of women are like, well, does that make me less successful? Or, if me not progressing to the head of my department because I want to have a family, have I given up in some way? So it’s a really interesting thing, the the kind of conflict that surfaces when we start to ask these questions. But going back to the original question, we do it deep and we do it quick.
Carrie Bedient MD (24:00)
How does someone manage the the desire to have the high power career, the being the prosecutor, running the world, and also wanting to do this family thing that takes all of your energy, mental, physical, emotional, all of that? How do you live in those two worlds simultaneously and and how do you not completely give up on the one in order to get the other?
Rosanne (24:26)
Well, first of all, I don’t see there being a conflict. I see it as a yes and. Yes, I can serve my community at the highest level and I can honor myself and honor the family that I created by being present with them and pursuing this desire. I think that’s one of the messages that is really harmful to women that you have to pick or that we have to choose.
For us as women, the idea that there’s only one path to success, and I think that women who are really masterful in their lives find the place and the space to say yes to both and really refuse to be pigeonholed into one or the other.
Susan Hudson MD (25:06)
What are some of the changes that you see women go through during this eight-week course?
Rosanne (25:12)
Well, it’s funny, usually on the first call, because we do this in a group, and it’s done that way intentionally, because women of this wiring, I’ll say, we tend to be very siloed, kind of lone wolf. That’s how we make it through medical school, that’s how we make it through law school, that’s how we get our MBA. We’re not used to asking for help. So for a lot of women, just by the first call, looking around in the room.
And seeing that they could be sitting next to a heart surgeon, a CEO, a pediatric specialist, women who own businesses, you look around and you see these other successful women, you’re like, I’m not a freak. This is and I’m not alone. And being able to really ask the kinds of questions that very few people around them, if anyone, can ask is a huge relief.
And then we just build on that. They learn skills, strategies, structures for how to live this journey successfully because success leaves clues. And this is the piece that people don’t talk about. And when they start applying it, they start to see insane results in how they feel, their outlook, the way they communicate with their partner if they happen to be partnered.
And even with the way that they communicate with their treatment team. And it’s fascinating because the husbands, if they happen to be partnered, they’ve come onto my podcast talking about the rather miraculous shifts they see in their their wife or their partner in just a matter of weeks.
Carrie Bedient MD (26:55)
What’s an example of a strategy shift that you use with your clients?
Rosanne (27:00)
So, one of the things that we really look at is a question that I ask them to tuck into their back pocket all the time. And I’ll tell you, ladies, it’s one of the most annoying questions you could ever ask. But it is imperative if you’re going to take your own authority on this journey. And it is what do I really want here? Not what my mama wants.
Not what my husband wants, not what worked for my aunts. What do you want? And it’s such an intimate question that when these women stop to ask it, light bulbs go off. And they start to really think about who am I doing this for? Am I doing this for myself? And what’s the truth about how I want to pursue this?
Because there’s so much pressure coming in from so many different angles. As achievers, we want to please everybody. And which is another interesting pattern that we unwind is we get out of the pattern of people pleasing, ladies, which is completely toxic to a woman’s soul.
Carrie Bedient MD (28:15)
So how do you help someone identify what it is that they want when they’re afraid to admit it? Or they’re so used to people pleasing that they don’t know how to it’s not that they don’t know how to think for themselves. It’s that they are so unused to thinking about their preferences and their desires that it’s like telling someone, go run an ultra marathon after the only running you’ve done is between the couch and the refrigerator. I mean it’s just it’s an absolutely foreign world. So how how do you get someone through that fear?
Rosanne (28:42)
Carrie, that is the power of a coach that lived this journey, is we establish rapport very quickly. I don’t sit in judgment of anybody who comes through my programs and we make it really clear that the most important thing to me is that they find the truth for them. And they’re they just for the first time have an opportunity to be completely free. And I’ll tell you that 10 years in the courtroom will make you a very excellent and loving.
Cross-examiner. So I’ll pull it out. I’ll tell women, like, nah, that’s not what you really want. Tell me what you really want. And but it’s coming from such a place of love and such a place of understanding that being able to hold the space for what a woman really wants without judgment is an incredible gift. And when they when they realize that, the game changes.
Abby Eblen MD (29:15)
So it sounds like emotionally you’re working really closely with them and you’re kind of getting these pieces of information from them. Are there any other specific strategies that you use? Things like mindfulness or do you recommend exercise? Are there any other pieces of this other than kind of the group therapy part?
Rosanne (29:57)
It’s so this is decidedly different than therapy. because I’m not a therapist. I am somebody that works with women and and teaching them specific strategies. I don’t approach this as if there’s a pathology. They have a goal. This would be no different than somebody coaching Venus or Serena. You have raw talent. So it’s really about taking what’s amazing about these women and pulling it out of their fear, doubt, negativity, and shame, and really getting that that drive that they naturally have as achievers and honing it and pointing it in a direction that actually works for them. Because most of us were conditioned to pursue success like men. But that’s not what that doesn’t work on the fertility journey. This is the most feminine thing you could possibly do. So we get them back into connection with that.
By understanding what the stories are that they’re telling, by refocusing on what it is that they truly want, learning new communication styles so that they can communicate with their employer, their treatment team, their partner, their friends, their family, and for probably the first time in their lives, actually truly get their needs met. And it’s a revelation.
Susan Hudson MD (31:19)
When you talk about changing communication styles, can you give us some examples of that?
Rosanne (31:24)
Yeah, so a lot of women think that, I mean, at least the women that I work with, that there’s weakness to showing their emotions. Because, we can’t show our emotions at work. Not if you want to be seen as a freaking professional. You gotta hold it together. You gotta compartmentalize. If you’re giving a patient a diagnosis of cancer, you can’t really break that fourth wall.
It’s a way of saying, look, I have a persona at work, but when I’m not at work, I’m gonna create a space where I can ask people for what I really want, communicate with my partner, like they are a partner, not a child, which a lot of women do, and it’s it’s not a criticism, it’s just we get into a place where we don’t want to share what’s really going on with us because we think we’re going to burden somebody. It’s also changing that perception. And also, more importantly, with our treatment team, if these women are seeking treatment, is don’t be afraid of the white coat. They’re human too. And I think that when the communication is open, there’s less room for misunderstanding. So one of the things that I always encourage them to do is.
Look, when you’re talking with your physician, remember that they’re human and generally speaking, they want to serve you. So if you’re gonna tell anybody the truth, tell them.
So those are those are some of the very basic strategies and ways of changing communication style. But another really important one, which you guys might find surprising, is changing the relationship with making mistakes. Because so many women at this level are terrified of making mistakes. When we shift that and show them another way of approaching that, it changes their willingness to communicate more openly, which is powerful.
Carrie Bedient MD (33:23)
How do you get someone from the C-suite to be willing and able to admit that she made a mistake, is going to make a mistake, might be in the middle of a mistake, and not completely spiral when that realization or even the potential for that realization hits?
Rosanne (33:40)
Well, first of all, by disconnecting from the mistake as a personality flaw. We all make mistakes and we’re human. Just because you’re in the C-suite doesn’t mean you escape that reality. In fact, to be a really good leader, you better be making mistakes. Because I’m sorry, but I don’t want to go to war with somebody that just read about it in a book at West Point. I want somebody who knows the streets, who actually walked that path.
And I think that’s what brings a lot of women into my work is because I’m not sitting on a high horse pretending that there’s only one way to be. The only thing that I care about is they’re showing up as themselves.
Abby Eblen MD (34:22)
So how often do you do your classes and are people in person? So if people are listening to this and they’re interested, would they come to Texas to see you or how does that work?
Rosanne (34:31)
No, no, no. I do a weekly group call for my Fearlessly Fertile Method program, which it’s super fun. It’s the one place these women can go every week where they don’t have to wear the CEO hat, where they can put down their armor. And look, it’s not a sob fest. This is not one of those weird online groups where it’s the blind leading the freaking blind. ⁓
Rosanne (34:56)
It’s it’s intelligent women seeking intelligent solutions and getting to be themselves and talking about a very real problem in a place that they don’t have outside of that. And I do retreats. In fact, I’m doing one in September called the Fearlessly Fertile Limitless Retreat. And we have women flying in from all over the world to spend three days together. And because our groups are ideally tailored for women who are high achieving. This isn’t one of those weird online groups where someone’s gonna ask them to look at their cervical mucus. We don’t do that. ⁓ That’s not our place. What we’re doing is yeah, I’m like, I don’t yeah. You’d be surprised, ladies, you’d be surprised, but it’s it’s really a very well-curated group of women coming together to really, with a history of success, and now they’re learning to translate it into their journey. So they can make really great choices for themselves, choices they feel great about, and empower themselves, empower their team, and really create another path for themselves.
Susan Hudson MD (36:07)
So if our listeners are interested in listening to your podcast or participating in one of these groups or going to your retreat, what is the best way for them to learn more?
Rosanne (36:18)
I always encourage women to go check out the Fearlessly Fertile podcast first if they can make it through a couple episodes because 10 years in the courtroom will make you a little salty. And I don’t hold I don’t hold much back. I’m very clear about what I’ve learned over the past 12 years about what makes women successful. I’d encourage them to check out the Fearlessly Fertile podcast. They can always go to the Fearlessly Fertile website and check it out. We have loads of free content.
Ways that women can get to know what the method is about and hear hundreds of success stories on my YouTube channel and really get to see that this isn’t a fluke. It’s a it’s a phenomenon that women are tapping into and supporting themselves and supporting their team to create a new set of results.
Carrie Bedient MD (37:02)
Thank you so much, Rosanne. I very much hope that our listeners get get some good help, get some good moral, moral support, a good boost from all of this. Even just thinking about some of the very basic skills that you’ve talked about here, whether that’s reframing failures as learning experiences, or just changing their their mindset and at being able to ask, what is it that I really want? So we are very appreciative for you joining us today. Thank you so much.
Rosanne (37:32)
You’re very welcome. One other thing that I wanted to make sure that I touched on, because this was something that I think you wanted to ask me about, was the cost. And one of the things that we definitely cover in the work that I do is the cost, the the very real cost of the fertility journey as well as the emotional one. We talked a lot about the emotional one. But I think that there’s a lot of fear and doubt and shame.
About that. But when women are making investments that are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, one of the things that I encourage them to remember is there was no shame in making the investment in your education. And that served one part of your life. And when it comes to the fertility journey, I mean, certainly not something unless you have a diagnosis very early that we anticipate, or that you have insurance that happens to cover it.
This is an investment in your happiness. This is an investment in your life’s purpose. I think anyone that becomes a mom or has the calling, no matter how they get to that place, it’s an essential part of women living a full and complete life if they desire it. So instead of looking at, no, I’m having to spend all this money, look at it as an investment in another aspect of your life.
And be willing to do it. Do what it takes because there’s nothing more expensive than regret.
Abby Eblen MD (38:59)
Good point.
Carrie Bedient MD (38:59)
Amen to that. Amen to that. Well, thank you so much, Rosanne.
To our audience, thanks for listening and subscribe to Apple Podcasts to have next Tuesday’s episode pop up automatically for you. Please be sure to subscribe to YouTube, really helps us spread reliable information and help as many people as possible.
Abby Eblen MD (39:16)
Visit us on fertilitydocsuncensored.com to submit specific questions you have or to sign up for our email list. Check out our new book, the IVF Blueprint at all major book sellers, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and bookshop.org. Check out YouTube or Instagram for another hit of Infertility This Week.
Susan Hudson MD (39:34)
As always, this podcast is intended for entertainment and is not a substitute for medical advice from your own physician. Subscribe, sign up for emails, and we’ll talk to you soon. Bye!
