Dr. Alexandra Stockwell is back. In Part One, she and Dr. Erica tackled physical intimacy on the fertility journey. This conversation goes deeper — into the emotional disconnection that quietly builds when two people are navigating one of the hardest experiences of their lives together, but not quite together enough.

This episode is for the couple who still loves each other and is struggling to find their way back to each other in the middle of all of this.

In this episode:

• Why major stressors, and the fertility journey especially, bring the foundation of a relationship to the surface
• The pain of not feeling seen by the one person who is supposed to get it most
• Why men and women are culturally conditioned to feel different emotions and what that means for how couples navigate this together
• Unfelt emotions as energetic cysts: what happens when we lance them
• A simple exercise for reconnecting with your own emotional landscape, bonus points if TID (three times daily)
• The most consistently problematic thing in committed relationships: when two people think they're having different conversations
• How to name the kind of fertility conversation you want to have before you have it, and why that one shift changes everything
• What to do when you're on completely different pages about treatment: another cycle, donor egg, stopping altogether
• The practice of temporarily parking your own position and trying on your partner's perspective, and why it doesn't mean giving up your ground
• Why curiosity is the opposite of certainty, and how it opens doors that defensiveness keeps shut
• Zooming out to the shared vision: remembering what brought you here together before the fertility journey took over
• Appreciating who your partner is, not just what they do, and why that distinction matters more than you'd think

Find Part One HERE.

Find Dr. Alexandra Stockwell:

• Website: alexandrastockwell.com
• Instagram: @intimacydoctor
• Book: Uncompromising Intimacy
• Podcast: The Intimate Marriage Podcast
• App: Intimate Connection

Support the show

As always, please keep in mind that this is my perspective and nothing in this podcast is medical advice.

If you found this conversation valuable, book a consult call with me using this link:

https://www.loveandsciencefertility.com/private-fertility-consult

Follow us on social media:

IG: www.instagram.com/loveandsciencefertility

FB: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61553692167183

Please don’t let infertility have the final word. We are here to take the burden from you so that you can achieve your goal of building your family with confidence and compassion. I’m rooting for you always.

In Gratitude,

Dr. Erica Bove

This episode is part of the series on why certain specialties make the fertility journey uniquely painful. Today Dr. Erica turns her attention to ICU physicians and hospitalists, and the particular combination of analytical thinking, altered sleep, hospital environments, and rumination loops that makes this specialty uniquely challenging.

This episode is for the physician who can solve almost any clinical problem and is struggling with the fact that this one doesn't have a clear algorithm.

In this episode:

• Why the well-oiled analytical brain that excels in critical care can become its own worst enemy on the fertility journey
• The difference between internal medicine's relatively clear algorithms and the data-free zones of REI, and why that gap is so disorienting
• Analysis paralysis on the fertility journey: going down the PubMed rabbit hole at midnight and why it makes things worse, not better
• The hospital environment itself — fluorescent lights, altered sleep, limited food options, and a schedule that is hard on the body
• How altered Circadian rhythms increase cortisol, inflammation, and sympathetic tone, and what that means for fertility outcomes
• The hospitalist schedule: clustering appointments during off weeks, arranging call swaps, and what actually helps
• Why having a trusted REI and coach who can distill the science is the antidote to rumination, so you don't have to carry that mental load alone
• Embodiment as a tool, why some of the best thinkers have the hardest time dropping into their bodies, and why that matters for fertility
• Small acts of restoration in a hospital environment: finding a patch of sun, stepping outside, smelling the flowers by the cafeteria garden
• Food as medicine: why investing in healthy meals delivered to your door is not indulgent, it's strategic
• Turning the inner critic into an inner coach, and why self-compassion actually improves performance, not just wellbeing
• Trusting the process when the algorithm is infinite and how to make an empowered, values-based plan. Than, how to let go

With Love and Science,
💜 Dr. Erica

Support the show

As always, please keep in mind that this is my perspective and nothing in this podcast is medical advice.

If you found this conversation valuable, book a consult call with me using this link:

https://www.loveandsciencefertility.com/private-fertility-consult

Follow us on social media:

IG: www.instagram.com/loveandsciencefertility

FB: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61553692167183

Please don’t let infertility have the final word. We are here to take the burden from you so that you can achieve your goal of building your family with confidence and compassion. I’m rooting for you always.

In Gratitude,

Dr. Erica Bove

One in four female physicians has infertility. One in three female surgeons does. And when you control for age, female surgeons still have worse fertility outcomes than their age-matched peers.

This episode is part of the series on why certain specialties make the fertility journey uniquely painful, and today Dr. Erica discusses why female surgeons tend to have the worst statistics when it comes to fertility outcomes.

This episode is for the female surgeon who has proven she can handle anything and is exhausted by what that costs her body.

In this episode:

• The statistic that makes Dr. Erica want to punch a wall — and what the research actually shows about female surgeons and fertility
• Why age alone doesn't explain the gap: what else is going on physiologically
• Sleep dysregulation, long OR days, and call schedules that run through the night — and how that keeps the body in a constant state of stress
• Why the body may interpret a 16-hour surgical day as a famine and what that means for the reproductive axis
• The pattern Dr. Erica sees in surgeons: excessive exercise, often (but not always) low BMI, skipped meals, and a martyr complex that has become normalized
• What one client learned when she finally scrubbed out at regular intervals and what happened next
• Trauma from the job: why female surgeons carry a graveyard within them, and why that trauma has to go somewhere
• Why endometriosis may have a deeper connection to unprocessed trauma than we realize
• Trying to get pregnant like a man: the masculine energy that serves you in the OR and works against you in the fertility journey
• Conceiving is receiving — and what it actually takes to shift into a more receptive state without losing yourself
• Self-compassion as a clinical tool: why Dr. Erica will not do an embryo transfer until her patient is emotionally regulated
• Practical strategies: negotiating call schedules, protecting the two-week wait, going per diem, and preserving the asset
• Coming home to yourself: what it means to ask your body what it needs and actually listen

One in three is not acceptable. Dr. Erica is here to change it.

Support the show

As always, please keep in mind that this is my perspective and nothing in this podcast is medical advice.

If you found this conversation valuable, book a consult call with me using this link:

https://www.loveandsciencefertility.com/private-fertility-consult

Follow us on social media:

IG: www.instagram.com/loveandsciencefertility

FB: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61553692167183

Please don’t let infertility have the final word. We are here to take the burden from you so that you can achieve your goal of building your family with confidence and compassion. I’m rooting for you always.

In Gratitude,

Dr. Erica Bove

This episode is part of the series on why certain specialties make the fertility journey uniquely painful. Today Dr. Erica turns her attention to emergency medicine physicians and the particular combination of shift work, hyper vigilance, trauma exposure, and altered sleep that makes this one of the hardest lines of work to be in while trying to build a family.

This episode is for the ER doc who is brilliant under pressure at work and exhausted by what that costs her everywhere else.

In this episode:

• How shift work disrupts the circadian rhythm, increases inflammation, and keeps the body in a constant state of alert
• The mind warp of caring for patients with unplanned pregnancies when you would give anything to be in their shoes
• Why ER physicians are some of the most prepared, resourceful people on the planet and how that same hypervigilance works against them on the fertility journey
• The car full of emergency supplies: how disaster-prevention thinking translates into bracing for five failed transfers before the current one has even started
• Why ultrasounds in your work environment are not there for your use and how to define that relationship ahead of time
• Authentic hope as the antidote to hypervigilance: staying in the present moment rather than racing twenty steps ahead
• The importance of processing trauma — not stuffing it — when you work in one of the most abusive, high-acuity environments in medicine
• Why EMDR and trauma-informed therapy are especially relevant for ER physicians
• Practical sleep strategies: anchoring a post-call sleep schedule, building a bedtime routine, and discovering Yoga Nidra
• When going per diem is the right call and how to give yourself permission to make that choice
• How to use data on physician pregnancy outcomes to advocate for schedule modifications and why Dr. Erica helped a client write exactly that letter

There is a way through. Dr. Erica has seen it happen for ER physicians again and again, and she wants that for you too.

Support the show

As always, please keep in mind that this is my perspective and nothing in this podcast is medical advice.

If you found this conversation valuable, book a consult call with me using this link:

https://www.loveandsciencefertility.com/private-fertility-consult

Follow us on social media:

IG: www.instagram.com/loveandsciencefertility

FB: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61553692167183

Please don’t let infertility have the final word. We are here to take the burden from you so that you can achieve your goal of building your family with confidence and compassion. I’m rooting for you always.

In Gratitude,

Dr. Erica Bove

This one is personal.

Dr. Erica is an OBGYN and REI who has navigated her own fertility struggles — and in this solo episode, she speaks directly to one of the hardest intersections she knows: being an OBGYN while desperately wanting a pregnancy of your own.

This episode is part of a series on why certain specialties make the fertility journey uniquely painful — and obstetrics and gynecology may be at the top of that list.

In this episode:

• The cognitive dissonance of caring for unplanned pregnancies and complicated OB patients when you would give anything to be in their shoes
• Why being surrounded by pregnant people all day is genuinely triggering — and what one OBGYN client did about it
• The OBGYN schedule: twenty-four hour call, no eighty-hour cap as an attending, altered sleep, and cumulative burnout
• The brilliant advice Dr. Erica received as a pregnant fellow: be the patient, don't scan yourself
• Dr. Robin Tiger's story: what happens when an unsupported scan reveals something unexpected
• The privacy paradox: wanting separation between your personal and professional life when your colleagues are also your doctors
• Why OBGYNs almost never have an uncomplicated pregnancy — and what birth trauma looks like when it's your own specialty
• Colleagues who are unsupportive — sometimes the least compassionate people in the building — and how to protect yourself from that
• The mantra that changed everything for one client: I am them, just not yet
• Ways to tweak the job, bolster the mindset, and find a way through

If this is your situation, Dr. Erica sees you — and wants to talk.

Mentioned in this episode:
Dr. Dympna Weil Episode

Support the show

As always, please keep in mind that this is my perspective and nothing in this podcast is medical advice.

If you found this conversation valuable, book a consult call with me using this link:

https://www.loveandsciencefertility.com/private-fertility-consult

Follow us on social media:

IG: www.instagram.com/loveandsciencefertility

FB: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61553692167183

Please don’t let infertility have the final word. We are here to take the burden from you so that you can achieve your goal of building your family with confidence and compassion. I’m rooting for you always.

In Gratitude,

Dr. Erica Bove

Dr. Alexandra Stockwell is a physician coach, intimacy and marriage expert, bestselling author of Uncompromising Intimacy, and host of the Intimate Marriage Podcast — ranked in the top one percent of podcasts globally. For over twenty years, she has helped high-achieving couples bring real connection back into every aspect of their relationship. In this episode, she and Dr. Erica tackle one of the most tender and rarely discussed topics on the fertility journey: what happens to intimacy when sex becomes either a medical protocol or something to be avoided entirely?

This episode is for every couple who has felt the warmth and passion slowly drain out of their relationship — and wants it back.

In this episode:

• Why sex during fertility treatment is fundamentally incongruent — and why naming that plainly is the first step toward changing it
• How the binary thinking of "we can't have sex, so we stop touching altogether" quietly erodes connection — and what to do instead
• Why rules against ejaculation are not rules against pleasure — and what that distinction actually opens up
• The upstream effect: how fertility treatment shrinks affection, non-sexual touch, and flirtation long before anyone realizes it's happening
• Why a woman's experience of genuine pleasure is one of the most generous things she can offer her partner — and how high-achieving women tend to skip past it
• Receptivity vs. passivity: why these are not the same thing, and how cultivating receptivity changes everything
• The mindfulness practice that takes thirty seconds and immediately increases sensation and connection
• How COVID-era dating accidentally created deeper relationships — and what couples on the fertility journey can learn from that
• Practical next steps: holding hands, a real embrace, one small act of affection that doesn't create an existential crisis
• How to listen to this episode together as a couple — and why you shouldn't do it like a good high-achieving student from start to finish
• Why the fertility journey, as painful as it is, can become an opportunity for deeper intimacy than you've ever had

Find Dr. Alexandra Stockwell:

• Website: alexandrastockwell.com
• Instagram: @intimacydoctor
• Book: Uncompromising Intimacy
• Podcast: The Intimate Marriage Podcast
• App: Intimate Connection

Support the show

As always, please keep in mind that this is my perspective and nothing in this podcast is medical advice.

If you found this conversation valuable, book a consult call with me using this link:

https://www.loveandsciencefertility.com/private-fertility-consult

Follow us on social media:

IG: www.instagram.com/loveandsciencefertility

FB: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61553692167183

Please don’t let infertility have the final word. We are here to take the burden from you so that you can achieve your goal of building your family with confidence and compassion. I’m rooting for you always.

In Gratitude,

Dr. Erica Bove

Dr. Dina Wilson is a hospitalist physician in Oregon, a fierce advocate for fertility awareness, and a mother who waited eighteen years to hold her son. Her journey spans misdiagnoses, six IVF cycles across multiple clinics, complete embryo arrest — cycle after cycle — a pandemic pregnancy, and a six-figure bill paid entirely out of pocket. She is now in the middle of trying for a second child.

This episode is for anyone who has ever felt like the system is not designed for them, but they're not quite ready to give up on their dream of parenthood.

In this episode:

• How Dina was sent away by three OBGYNs in her 20's without an infertility evaluation
• Why she and her husband shelved fertility treatment through medical school, residency, and debt repayment — and what that cost them
• Walking into her first IVF cycle completely naive — and planning a party around the retrieval date
• The phone call on day three that changed everything: complete embryo arrest, then cycle after cycle, across multiple clinics
• What it felt like to be told by one of the most prominent REIs in the country that he wasn’t sure he had anything else to offer
• How in vitro maturation (IVM) — a low-stimulation protocol with early retrieval — finally produced embryos that implanted
• Getting pregnant on her sixth IVF cycle with day three embryos, against all odds, right before the pandemic shut everything down
• The guilt and shame that comes with being a physician who didn’t know what she didn’t know — and why that guilt is so expensive
• Secondary infertility: what it’s like to want another child, and how the grief shifts but doesn’t disappear
• How Dina finally learned to set boundaries at work so she could show up for her fertility treatment — including switching jobs to get the flexibility she needed
• Why shame cannot survive in community — and what it means to share your story when you’re still in the middle of it

Find Dr. Dina Wilson:

• Instagram: @doctordina

Support the show

As always, please keep in mind that this is my perspective and nothing in this podcast is medical advice.

If you found this conversation valuable, book a consult call with me using this link:

https://www.loveandsciencefertility.com/private-fertility-consult

Follow us on social media:

IG: www.instagram.com/loveandsciencefertility

FB: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61553692167183

Please don’t let infertility have the final word. We are here to take the burden from you so that you can achieve your goal of building your family with confidence and compassion. I’m rooting for you always.

In Gratitude,

Dr. Erica Bove

Male factor infertility accounts for nearly half of all infertility cases — and yet the male partner’s experience is often an afterthought, from the design of the collection room to the timing of the workup.

Dr. James Kuan is a board certified urologist with more than twenty years of experience in men’s sexual health, founder and CEO of Sexual Medicine for Men in Seattle, and medical director of the Seattle Sperm Bank. He joined Dr. Erica for an incredibly candid conversation.

This episode is for couples navigating the fertility journey together — and especially for the male partner who has been quietly struggling on the sidelines.

In this episode:

• Why male factor evaluation is still treated as an afterthought — and why that needs to change
• The parking lot moment: what happens when a male partner can’t produce a sample on retrieval day, and why it’s more common than anyone talks about
• Nearly a third of men develop new onset erectile dysfunction during fertility treatment — and what to do about it
• Why simply being told “this is normal” resolves ED in a third of those men without any medication
• The case for REIs prescribing Viagra: it’s safe, it doesn’t affect sperm, and it’s no different than a pair of crutches for a sprained ankle
• Why the male workup should happen in parallel with the female workup — not as an afterthought
• Sperm as more than a USB drive: new data on what healthy sperm actually contribute to conception
• The four I’s framework for inviting male partners into the process: invite, inform, involve, intervene
• Why sex during fertility treatment shouldn’t only be mechanical — and what actually happens to outcomes when intimacy declines
• The two to four day rule for abstinence before a sample — and how most couples are making it harder than it needs to be
• Desire mismatch, communication, and why foreplay starts at the kitchen sink
• ED and abnormal semen analysis as canaries in the coal mine for broader men’s health — including cardiovascular disease and testicular cancer
• A critical warning: testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) is bad for sperm — if your partner is on it and you’re trying to conceive, see a urologist now
• Why it’s okay for the fertility journey to be a little messy — and why that messiness doesn’t mean you caused it to fail

Find Dr. James Kuan:

• Instagram: @drjameskuan
• Newsletter: sexafterretirement.com
• Practice: https://jameskuanmd.carrd.co/ (Washington state patients only)

Support the show

As always, please keep in mind that this is my perspective and nothing in this podcast is medical advice.

If you found this conversation valuable, book a consult call with me using this link:

https://www.loveandsciencefertility.com/private-fertility-consult

Follow us on social media:

IG: www.instagram.com/loveandsciencefertility

FB: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61553692167183

Please don’t let infertility have the final word. We are here to take the burden from you so that you can achieve your goal of building your family with confidence and compassion. I’m rooting for you always.

In Gratitude,

Dr. Erica Bove