The great BPA purge of 2018
In my “We’re Trying” post I provided a teaser of some of the things we did to (we hoped) optimize our chances of getting pregnant without medical intervention. Then, in late 2018, enter the Cadillac of medical intervention for fertility treatments: IVF. Do you think this meant we would relax and trust the medical process, including all of the medical professionals who told us “no, there are no supplements you can take or extra things you should do to increase your odds.” Me, relax? No way.
Well. December 2018 rolled around and we were in it. We were handed our IVF calendar and I sobbed looking at the months of treatment stretching out ahead of us, after already having been through several months of IUIs. Not to mention all of the drugs they’d have me on. Before all of this, I didn’t like taking Advil if I had a headache. I stopped birth control several times because I didn’t like the effect it had on my mood. Now? I was about to willingly pump my body full of hormones at much higher levels than I’d ever been on for birth control. More about all of that in a future post, but the relevant point here is that it was a lot to handle. So, naturally (for me) I sought somewhere where I could exert control. Something that didn’t make me feel like the world was ending and there was nothing I could do about it.
Enter: Research on optimizing egg and sperm quality ahead of IVF. In particular, the book “It Starts with the Egg” that I mentioned in my Fertility Resources post. This book is essentially dedicated to the steps you can take to increase your odds of having healthy eggs and sperm for an IVF cycle, and man did I go all in on this. I will note here that the things I did are, according to this book, supported by scientific research - but I am by no means a medical professional.
It started innocently enough, by buying a COQ10 supplement ($40+ for a not-so-large bottle of vitamins..). This supplement was supposed to help my eggs have more energy - to sustain an embryo before it implants in your uterus. Well, after that - the floodgates opened. Soon I was scouring our house for all manner of BPA, phthalates, parabens, and other chemicals that supposedly impacted fertility. We replaced our mixing bowls (plastic..) with stainless steel, we replaced our pans (the non-stick coating was slightly scratched), we replaced plastic cutting boards with bamboo ones, we tossed all plastic cups, we replaced plastic spatulas with metal ones, plastic measuring cups and spoons with stainless steel, bought stainless steel straws, threw out old plastic (reusable) water bottles, got rid of any lingering plastic tupperware and replaced with glass pyrex. I had already done a pretty extensive clean out of my makeup/beauty products in the fall - so.. check! I convinced my husband to switch to a natural deodorant, we both switched shampoo, body wash, etc. to phthalate free versions, I stopped wearing perfume, got new fragrance-free all natural moisturizer, went through our cleaning products, detergents, etc. to clear out chemicals… it was a process. I began scouring labels of all canned goods for whether they were BPA free (did you know that this is most important in acidic foods, like tomatoes, lemon/lime juice, etc?) Well, once we finished our plastic-filled containers of lemon/lime juice and cans of black beans, etc. we replaced them with glass or BPA-free cans (I’m still my father’s daughter and it pains me to waste food). We replaced our shower curtain liner with a non-plastic liner. I started to be weird about touching receipts at stores (did you know that many of them are covered in BPA??!?!). I mean… I was a crazy person for a few months.
Aside from all the BPA-purging, I also pretty strictly cut out alcohol, gluten, and dairy, and my husband cut out alcohol the month before our egg retrieval. I even went so far as to have my primary care doctor test me for Celiac’s disease. I have some family history of similar gluten-intestinal issues, so it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, but I had no symptoms that would have triggered a test otherwise. However, I read that there are several common-and-seemingly-unrelated issues that can impact fertility but are usually not tested for. Exhibit A: Celiac’s. Exhibit B: an inability to process folic acid (a key ingredient in most prenatal vitamins). Did you know that some people can’t metabolize folic acid?? Well, apparently its true. I then spent an evening searching for prenatal vitamins that contained folate instead of folic acid - harder than you’d think. Meanwhile, I also got myself back into a regular exercise schedule. Between all of the treatments, I’d slipped a little and I decided that on top of all of the other things I was doing, I needed to add in more exercise. Honestly, the exercise is probably what helped retain and restore my sanity the most in the lead up to IVF. Not all of this ^. But all of that gave me the feeling like I was truly doing everything I could, and the rest was up to someone else.
What’s the takeaway here? I’m not sure. I don’t know if I was projecting calm, cool, and collected on the outside during this process (probably not) but I wanted to share the “behind the scenes” - the rest of the iceberg from the saying “oh, that’s only the tip of the iceberg.” Because I think that everyone probably has an example like this where what you presented to the world was a put together, “can do” attitude when really you were just barely holding it together and grasping at straws (or in my case throwing the straws out) for some sense of control in a crappy situation.
