What Everyone Should Know about Fertility and Infertility with Sophie Byfield

Christine Li  0:01  
Welcome back to the Make Time for Success podcast. This is episode number 119. 

On the Make Time for Success podcast, you hear about people's journeys and the twists and turns that often come when people are trying to find their purpose. In this episode with Sophie Byfield, you're going to hear her journey of trying to find herself first as a woman in the work world and then as a woman wishing to become pregnant. Sophie is a fertility expert and Doula who believes in the power of creating the healthiest version of yourself so that you can finally see those two pink lines. With over 20 years of experience as a nutritionist, personal trainer, and yoga instructor, Sophie discovered the secret world of infertility when she finally decided that she was ready to become a mom. For the last five years she has been entrenched in the world of fertility and has noticed areas that impact your fertility and a woman's ability to conceive. And she believes that if you take these areas and heal them one at a time, you can create miracles beyond your wildest dreams. Her mission is to help as many women as possible to bring babies into the world so they can finally become the mama their heart is longing them to be. I had the most wonderful time getting to know Sophie in this episode, you're going to just love her. Let's go listen to this episode now.

Hi, I'm Dr. Christine Li, and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped 1000s of people move past procrastination and overwhelm so they can begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn a powerful strategies for getting your mind, body and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important and accomplish the goals you want to achieve. When you start living within your full power. You're going to see how being productive can be easy, and how you can create success on demand. Welcome to the Make Time for Success podcast. 

Hello, everyone. Today we have the wonderful Sophie Byfield here with us to share everything that she knows in terms of her experience as a fertility expert and Doula. And her experience is even beyond those two titles, but I'm gonna have Sophie, tell us about all the things that she knows all the things that she wants to help women in our world with. Welcome to the show. Sophie,

Sophie Byfield  2:50  
Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Christine Li  2:54  
I'm excited to get into this. Let us know how you got here how you got to be a fertility expert and doula and all the things we should know about your backstory so that we can really dig deep.

Sophie Byfield  3:06  
Okay, so my journey is very, very interesting and twisty turny. My background is in kinesiology, fitness, nutrition. When I left, you know, high school with big dreams and big goals, I decided I was going to work in television. And my heart didn't speak to and it didn't sing. And I went back to my dad and I said, Dad, I'm really not enjoying this program, like, what do I do? And he said, You need to find something you love to do, and then find someone to pay you for it. Like that is the key to success. So I had been a dancer my whole life. And I said, I really love you know, fitness and wellness sees like find something you love to do find someone to pay for it. So I went back to school for the body. And I became obsessed with the body and helping women create the healthiest version of themselves. And for 20 years, I was this personal trainer. And you know, I've helped 1000s of women lose weight, get healthy and create their dream self inside and out. Then I got married. And I was like okay, I am ready to start my family this is that this is the next chapter in my life. And it wasn't so easy for me. And once I stepped into this world of fertility and infertility is when I discovered that there's this whole secret society of women that are struggling with this. And because of my research and my understanding of the body. I started digging in and researching and getting deep into it because they said there has to be so much more to this than just me going to a fertility clinic. From there, I became obsessed she don't tell anybody Hey, I became completely and absolutely obsessed with everything reproduction and the body. And it morphed into me discovering these five key areas, these five key things that we need to work on as women to improve our for our fertility. I became a fertility doula and fertility expert I did courses after course, to to be able to bring my own baby home. But in doing that, and meeting women and talking about it, it just grew and blossomed into this amazing business.

Christine Li  5:36  
That's a wonderful story, and twisty turny. I love the data advice, what smart advice that really do what you love, first, and then find people to pay for it. And I loved hearing the part where you became obsessed in a very natural way that it was really the work that you were just inherently connected to in your soul, which is wonderful to hear as well. Let us know how you were able to kind of guide yourself through this journey through the ups and downs, what kinds of things did you have to go through and what tools you relied on and what you learned.

Sophie Byfield  6:19  
So when I first stepped into trying to get pregnant, you know, you spent so many years trying to avoid getting pregnant. That's what you're taught in health class, right? Like abstinence, avoidance, birth control, you're never really taught about your body and all the different cycles that we go through as women. So for myself, honestly, I expected to get pregnant right away off birth control, three months declare the system right away. And the thing about infertility is that it's such a journey of shame, and heartache, and pain because as a society, we believe that you know, we're destined to be a mother and you get to make a choice whether you want to be or you don't want to be. When you're in infertility, when you're in this world, your choice is taken away. And then as society, it's like when are you having kids? When are you going to be a mom. So there's this level of shame and pain and devastation that you go through as you realize, like, it's not going to happen easy for me. So for me, a big part of it was the mindset piece. After you know, three years into the journey, and still getting negative tests, I had to really sit down and take a look at you know, my journaling avenues to help my mindset, my my self talk, because I didn't realize by saying things like, I'm never going to be a mom, it's never going to happen for me that my actions were actually lining up with that statement. So if I was saying, I'm never going to be a mom, it's never going to happen for me, I wouldn't take my supplements that I needed to take regularly. Right. And it just started to unfold when it was like a flower opening up or flower blossoming. When I realized that I needed to start peeling back the layers of what I truly believed and what I was saying to myself. That is when I realized that I could bring my miracle into my life, if I could just connect with that part a little bit differently.

Christine Li  8:37  
I love that. And that was you teaching yourself you weren't learning that from anyone.

Sophie Byfield  8:43  
It's funny when I was not learning it from anyone, but you know, you hear all the gurus and you hear everyone talk about how you talk to yourself. It's your mindset, you know, rah, rah, rah, you can do it. But I was like, okay, yeah, sure, but I still need to get pregnant. So right, I did not connect the two. And when I started connecting the two is when I started seeing a difference when my body when my numbers were starting to go up, when that my egg quality was improving my egg reserve account was going up. So you really I find that on this journey. There's this whole aspect of the woowoo, as we like to call it, that we need to kind of center ourselves into and be willing to be open to it.

Christine Li  9:30  
Absolutely, because the whole conception and birthing process is a complete miracle. That is, it's not completely understood. Right? And I think that's the thing about anything Woo is that most of the things that we hold dear, and are so important in life are the things that we cannot see or feel or actually fully understand. And so yes, there is a mindset component and how we're guiding our energy perceiving our possibilities is really a fundamental tool that we have. So I'm very happy. You mentioned this mindset tool, because I think it is something that everyone has access to, it's a matter of, are you using it to your benefit? Are you supporting yourself through how you're thinking, because our thoughts determined so much

Sophie Byfield  10:22  
100% 100%. And a lot of women in this space, want to focus on the science aspect of it, which is still a huge part of it, healing the body through nutrition, exercise, supplements, sleep, stress management is a huge portion. But there's also healing the mind and doing that inner work. And when you can actually build the two and make them work together. What I've seen with my clients, it's a miracle, it honestly is a miracle, when we step into that, that realm,

Christine Li  10:56  
that is wonderful. And it literally is a miracle, right? When you get these kinds of results. Can you comment on the relationship between stress and infertility? Since we're talking about mindset, and kind of altering how we're thinking and how we're treating our bodies?

Sophie Byfield  11:14  
100% So, you know, my grandma, when I first started my journey, my grandma said to me, you know, if you just stop stressing about it, it will happen. And I got so upset, because I was like, how tell you, right? I'm not stressing about it. And stress does impact infertility. But as I dug into my Doula training and fertility, I learned something very important. So we've got this amazing brain. And when you're stressed out, your cortisol levels, shoot through the roof, and your brain doesn't really realize that your stress isn't necessarily running away from a tiger. It just feels the stress and the cortisone Co Op. So what it does is your hypothalamus, and it's like this whole access and some stuff going on in your brain, but it shuts down your reproductive system, it actually stops it, because it's really just What am I, what do I need to do and maintain to survive, right, so it's ready to go, it's ready to run, it's ready to hide, but you reproduction is shut off. So because of that, because of that, the stress in our daily lives, the work stress, when you're in a high stress environment, it doesn't know the difference between running from a tiger and you know, running from your boss. So what happens is it still limits the hormone production of reproduction. So my grandma's comment, as she probably won't listen to this. So she was kind of right. But it still hurt like.

Christine Li  12:52  
Yeah. So I guess you're touching on having safety in going through the infertility and fertility journey is also a key element of finding success, that you have to believe that there is no blame, there is no thing that you did, and that everything is going to work out that mindset is actually mindset with a capital M, that everything is being healed all together, it sounds like

Sophie Byfield  13:22  
100%. So there's layers to it. There's first a layer of not blaming yourself, and not blaming your body, then the next layer is understanding that this is your journey, and not comparing yourself to someone else's journey. Because a lot of women who are on this journey for a while we'll start to see their friends, and their family members get pregnant, and it hurts, it hurts because you know, why isn't it working for me? Why can I bring my baby home, and you can still experience that pain, I would never take that away from someone, like those are your feelings, those are your emotions, you still experience those, but we tend to live in them. And what we learn is that if we can experience it, and then either journal on it, meditate on it and sort of find a way to either come to terms with it and sort of let it go. In a sense, we can take ourselves to another level. And it's about learning how to activate your parasympathetic nervous system. So your nervous system that starts to calm you down, and turn off that stress response. And then that helps to bring in your your miracle, it helps to stop your body from turning off reproduction.

Christine Li  14:36  
Yes. Makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Yeah. And that we need to feel well, to, I think be generative. That's my whole sense with productivity and procrastination, that if we're constantly keeping ourselves in a state of unwellness unpreparedness feeling not good enough. And then there's less room, I think you can certainly be productive in that state. But it's a lot easier. If you can expand your space, feel calm, feel like you can survive any outcome, which is a trick, but it is a good trick because it really allows you to say, Okay, I am fully myself, I am fully Okay, and I'm fully Alright, with moving forward. Are there ways in which the women that you're working with might be holding themselves back out of fear? Do you see things like that?

Sophie Byfield  15:36  
Yes, I call blocking your blessing. There's so many layers, there's, with blocking your blessing, I find that women, you know, either feel like they don't deserve to be a mom, because something happened in their past, and they made a decision. They don't feel safe with their partner or their relationships. So part of their mind is saying, Yes, I want to be a mom. But other actions are not allowing them to make that step. There are women who every fiber in their being wants to be a mom, but they're actually terrified to get off the journey to be a mom, and then terrified to be a mom on top of that. And all of this mindset piece, is stuff that we have to dig into as a community to kind of bring your blessing in, because then you, you block it, you stop it from coming. And I mean, back to the woowoo. But when you have that deep subconscious block there, the universe, God, your daddy cannot bring it into you, it cannot put you on the path to connect with it. So you really, if we can start to peel away those onions, because when we dig deep, I find a lot of it comes down to that I'm not good enough. Yes,

Christine Li  16:50  
and ambivalence, which is a very human thing to have to experience and go through, especially around such a big decision as to having a child and when and how to do it. And I think that whole part of loving yourself. I'm imagining you also teach people through other routes, like the nutrition and the exercise, the wellness principles, can you tell us about the kinds of things that you show your clients and students how to do?

Sophie Byfield  17:24  
Yeah, so if we start at the bottom of it, sort of like a pyramid, we start at the bottom of the pyramid, we look at your nutrition, because nutrition touches every aspect of your body, and your womb. And when it comes to fertility, depending on what's going on with your body, there's three sort of main and I want to say the words, diets, but I use diet and lifestyle interchangeably, not diet, I'm going on a diet. So sort of a lifestyle of a Mediterranean, they find that a Mediterranean type lifestyle is really good introduction or baseline for people that are struggling with infertility. And then we what we choose, we start to personalize, and we explore what works best for someone else's body. Because if let's say you have PCOS, the Mediterranean diet isn't going to help you because of your insulin spikes and insulin resistance. So we need to look something more like a low carb. And then if your micronutrients or your vitamins and minerals are low, we look at something that's more pro fertility. So what we do in, in the program is sort of teach you how to analyze and pivot and make a roadmap for yourself to increase your fertility. Then we look at exercise, if you're not doing exercise, all right, like already, you're not starting with CrossFit. We're taking walks, we're doing yoga, pilates, we're easing into things, because we want to move your body, we think of the womb as a basket. And we want to make our basket as strong and as healthy as possible. So that means giving it the right nutrients. That means giving it the right foundation of oxygen and support through exercise. That means thickening your lining that means doing everything possible, decreasing your stress, taking your supplements. So we built this pyramid, this foundation of health is what I call it, foundation of health and we work our way up slowly layering things on top of each other to build the healthiest vessel as well as basket possible.

Christine Li  19:28  
I love it. And the reason why I asked is because I'm assuming that anyone who follows your lead is going to learn to love their bodies and themselves that much more. Even just taking supplements with the intention of improving your chances improving the health of your room, improving your fertility. That's the Wuhan practice that saying, I have options. I have power. I have a plan and these are all wonderful things for your mindset. I think it's all like working together all of the same time when we allow it to. And I really am so thankful that there are people like you in the world who understand this who are so compassionate, are so lovely and who get it, and who are unafraid of digging deep and holding people while they're on such an important part of the journey of their lives.

Sophie Byfield  20:24  
I you know what, I absolutely love the words, I have power. Because when you're on this journey, you feel like your powers been taken away, and that you have no control. And when you step into my world, or this world of support, and community, you get your power back, you get to fall back in love with your body, because you have so much shame and hurt around your body. And we do it in a supportive way with all of these women who are on the same journey as you. And you know, you may be having a bad day, we call it vent day or vent session, and you put vent, and then everybody shows so much love and support to help you and bring you back up. And it's all about community and taking back control of your body and taking your power back. And I will say, you know, Christine, you may end up at the end with without having a baby like that is still a possibility. But the journey doesn't have to take you out or be absolutely devastating along the way.

Christine Li  21:30  
I am so glad you mentioned that because there can absolutely be success without a baby as well a successful journey of healing and of going through the process. Absolutely. I know that from other colleagues that I have worked with. And, again, just thank you for the work that you do, because it's so meaningful. And it's so generous, I think because you're really sharing with women how to be well. And I think any healer needs to be recognized and embraced. So thank you. Thank you. Are there things that we haven't touched upon that you think really, our listeners should know, in terms of maybe how people can work with you, but also maybe first level access to support and assistance and information?

Sophie Byfield  22:22  
Yeah, so the first thing I want people to know is that they don't have to go through this journey alone. And they don't have to feel shame that they're in this journey. So if you'd like to reach out to me personally, I'm on Instagram, I mostly live on Tik Tok. I love the ticky tacky. So everywhere you can find me as fertility coach Sophie, and I spell Sophie with a pH. So fertility coach Sophie, and I'm on the Instagram, I'm on the tiki Toki as well as on Facebook. However, I do have something for your listeners. It is the five mistakes that I made and I have found that my clients have made when beginning their fertility journey, and it's something that everybody should know that we're never taught. And it's it's stuff like you know, it takes to to get pregnant. And you know, your partner needs to be tested as well. And not two years in and not you know, five years and down the line, where you find out that his sperm count is low. We do this right at the beginning. So it's this mistakes to see them the most common mistakes that I see in a fertility journey. So you can grab that you can download it at Sophie byfield.com/five mistakes and let me spell that out for you. So S O P h, i e, B as in BB y F as in Frank i eld.com. So, Sophie Byfield exactly how it sounds.com/five mistakes, and I would love for you to grab it.

Christine Li  24:05  
I would love for anyone who is interested in finding information support the loveliest woman to work with and please send Sophie a message on Instagram and connect with her there and or get this free resource the five mistakes resource at Sophie byfield.com/five mistakes. I will have all this information in the show notes. I am so glad Sophia and I got this chance to get to know each other better. In this conversation. We're going to stay connected, moving forward. And I just want to thank you Sophie, you're the best.

Sophie Byfield  24:39  
Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much.

Christine Li  24:44  
All right, everyone. We've learned a lot today with Sophie. Let's continue to learn please continue to show up and listen to the Make Time for Success podcast. We've got new episodes every Thursday. If you loved this episode, and I hope you did please subscribe. to rate and review the podcast that would really help us to get our messages out to the universe out to the women who need to hear this information. Love you so much, everyone. Take care. Bye bye. 

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Make Time for Success podcast. If you enjoyed what you've heard, you can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also visit our website maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com for past episodes, show notes and all the resources we mentioned on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram too. You can find me there under the name procrastination coach. Send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes you've been listening to. And let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making time for success. We'll talk to you soon!

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