← Them Before Us Podcast
Them Before Us Podcast
Them Before Us #080 | Conceiving Miracles: Dr. Jennifer Mercier on Healing & Hope in Fertility Care
00:33:38
Loading summary
Transcript41 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome to the Them Before Us podcast where we talk about all things children's rights and we love focusing on organizations and people doing pro life, pro family work. And today is no different. Today we have Dr. Jennifer Mercier with us who is a PhD and an ND and you're going to have to tell me what that means in a minute. But she's been in private practice for over two decades specializing in women's health, fertility and hormone balance. She's a pioneer in integrative reproductive care. And she is the creator of something called Mercier Therapy, which we're going to learn all about, which is a technique that's helped countless women conceive naturally or then Prepare for successful IVF. And Dr. Mercier is a passionate educator and trains healthcare professionals in this therapy for nearly 20 years. And then she is the author of books which we'll talk about. You've got a previous documentary and I think a new one coming out this year and lots of things. I saw that you have a fellowship, lots of things going on. So I'm so excited to hear from you. So thanks, Jenny, for joining us.
- [01:11]
B
It's my pleasure. And ND stands for Naturopathic Doctor. I practice holistic medicine.
- [01:18]
A
I've learned so many different acronyms, organizations. I've never heard of Crichton Method, you know, method, all these things. Things. Right. So I'm definitely here representing the lay people who listen to the podcast and we get to talk to the experts. I talk to the experts on behalf of our lay people who are listening. So we're so excited to hear from you today. I'd love to start. We always just ask folks to share just a little bit of your background. You can talk about where you grew up, what, what led you into medicine and particularly women's health and reproductive journey. You could talk about, you know, your family, marriage, family and things like that. We'd love to. Yeah, just get a background. Sure, sure.
- [01:58]
B
I grew up here in Illinois in a two parent family. I had four siblings. I'm the oldest. I have always loved medicine. I had a brother at age 3. Well, he was 18 months after his 18 month vaccines. Am I allowed to say that? Jen, the vaccine. Okay. At 18 months he was diagnosed with leukemia and he passed away at age 3. But since then I'd always had an interest in medicine and it's carried me all the way through to here I am now. But I decided that I wanted to go to medical school while I was in high school. I decided and I never did that, actually. I Applied to med school, I got in and then I decided, yeah, I think I want to be a midwife. I think I, I really felt like the call to be a midwife. And so I actually did do that, but backing up. I went to massage therapy school during my undergrad training and really enjoyed the hands on approach to healing and helping women heal. And not from a new age perspective whatsoever, but just hands on and using your brain to help someone get through a tough spot or pain in their body was what I wanted to do. But concurrently, as I was doing my undergrad and massage therapy school, I worked for a large ob GYN and reproductive endocrinology infertility practice. I was a clinician, I was 19. They trained me how to do pap smears, endometrial biopsies. I did semen analysis and IUIs. I monitored IVF cycles start to finish, went into egg retrievals and embryo transfers. And so from that early, from my early years, I learned how to speak that language, that reproductive medicine language, and learned all about fertility. And then fast forward, I just scrapped the medical school idea, trained to be a midwife and then I went on to naturopathic medical school and I did a concurrent PhD program in natural medicine. I've written and published research, I've written a couple of books. I've got another book coming out this fall and another documentary. My first documentary was released in 2014. And so last year I was thinking about it, I'm like, well, what do I do now? Like, what will be my next project? And I thought, okay, we need to do another documentary as a 10 year follow up. And so we've been shooting, we've been shooting footage and filming and doing all the good things since August of 2024. And we're expecting to release the new documentary film called Conceiving Miracles in the fall this year, 2025. So we're pretty excited about it. And I see patients as a clinician every day. In my practice I have created Mercier therapy, which is a deep pelvic organ visceral manipulation that helps to mobilize reproductive organs, restore blood flow to the organs. And I also am a bioidentical hormone specialist. So I do all things women's health. And I got here primarily of my own accord, my own journey with stage three endometriosis, which was diagnosed when I was 26. Fast forward three, three aggressive surgeries later and that brought me to about age 34. And then I'd gotten married at 35 and we wanted to have a baby. And it just wasn't happening. So I had my students use my therapy on me, and I teach Mercier therapy all over the world. So I had a group of my students work on me and we had conceived my next cycle. And I thought, okay, this is pretty interesting because the reproductive endocrinologist that did my third surgery told me that I would never have a baby without using ivf. I told him, I'm not using ivf. I will not do ivf. It was just morally and ethically a concern for me. So he never did it. So I told him, I'm not doing ivf. I will go about this my own way and I'll figure it out. And I did. I got pregnant seven times. I lost five pregnancies, but I ended up having my daughter when I was 37 and I had my son when I was 41. All naturally conceived. And, yeah, it was amazing.
- [06:29]
A
Wow, that's incredible. I mean, it's so fascinating that this is both your interest, your profession, you're developing ways, a new way to try and heal some of the things that are going wrong. And then you're also experiencing it on the personal level and seeing it actually work for you personally. I mean, it doesn't feel like many people can. They're on both sides of these coins, right?
- [06:54]
B
Exactly. I mean, to be on both sides. As the receiver of my work and reaping the benefit which was getting pregnant and then also carrying it into practice and allowing for other women to receive and also gain the benefit, I thought, oh, my goodness, I'm onto something here. And the first time I implemented Mercier therapy sequence into my practice, it was typically received as pelvic pain relief. And these women that had aggressive stage 4 endometriosis cases and pelvic pain, they were getting pregnant and they were also told, you're going to need ibs. And I mean, I don't know how much you know about IVF and women with endometriosis, but we're raising the estrogen levels up into the thousands to stimulate as many eggs as possible. And when you do that, you literally light up the belly of a woman with endo because it's such an immense amount of estrogen that all of those little hormone sensitive patches that have attached themselves from the endo on the outside of the organs will weep fluid at the same time that estrogen is rising. And that's where all of the pain and scar tissue comes from. So, I mean, if IVF needs to be done for one time to retrieve eggs for a medically indicated reason, then so be it. But going over round after round after round of retrieval and preparation for frozen embryo transfer is just, it's a headache.
- [08:27]
A
Yeah, yeah. We just did, I think, nine, seven and nine video series on IVF where we interviewed a few different professionals and we had, you know, a researcher who focuses on surrogacy and how IVF has to be used for that, obviously.
- [08:43]
B
Sure.
- [08:43]
A
And doctors who are focused on restorative reproductive medicine. And so I'd be curious what your take is as someone who's kind of seen the industry in a lot of different ways. Does it feel like women are often just getting thrown into the, hey, let's go just do ivf and you know, here, here's the number to call and just get right into that cycle. Versus more of an investigative, let's figure out what's going wrong and let's try to heal these underlying issues. Have you seen one versus the other?
- [09:15]
B
Yeah. Option A, the one you described. First off the bat, you walk into the clinic, you're worked up, the end result is, okay, you're a great candidate for ivf. Let's get you started. Call our, call our office with your period and the nurse will give you your calendar of meds, we'll get your meds ordered. It's not even a question of have you considered ivf. We think this might be the best route for you. And then open up the floor for questions for the consumer rather, this is what we recommend, this is what we're going to do. And it's not even a conversation because, Jen, this is a multibillion dollar industry. It, it just is. When I worked in the industry, our fertility, our IVF cycles were about 8,000. Now they're about anywhere in upwards of $30,000. And so it's a big, it's a big money, revenue building industry. That's all it is.
- [10:11]
A
And we get customer. Right.
- [10:12]
B
I mean, 100 coming back 100%, because pretty much the first cycle is not going to do too much for you. And now we're not doing frozen embryo transfer after the first cycle. We're wanting to bank embryos. So you go in, you get stemmed, you get retrieved, they make the embryos, they freeze the embryos. You go right back into another retrieval cycle, they make the embryos, they freeze them. And again, and now we have all these embryos on ice, which is a major moral concern. And if it isn't to anyone else out there, which I think it is, then we have an issue here. If we've got 30 embryos that are frozen from one couple, and they transfer one or two, and they end up with twins and decide that their family's complete. We've got 29 frozen embryos sitting on ice. And what are. Like, what are. What are we supposed to do with them? Are we going to donate them for stem cell research? Are we going to adapt them out to another couple? Are we going to discard them right in the trash? I mean, I've seen all three, so it's. It. It's a huge moral and ethical dilemma. Huge.
- [11:29]
A
Do you feel like you are. You have a lot of colleagues around you who have the same view of things? I remember talking to one of the doctors, and she was saying she definitely doesn't go to any of the IVF conferences anymore. She's like, there's. They only talk about research that affirms what they think anyway. And she said, you know, you don't have a voice there. And it just feels like maybe there's not a ton of people that have more of the perspective, like you're sharing that we really need to investigate underlying issues, not just throw people to ivf?
- [12:01]
B
Right. Restorative reproductive medicine is what I really, really love. I don't know if you've interviewed Dr. Naomi Whitaker, but she is. She's incredible, right?
- [12:13]
A
She's the one I'm talking about in our series.
- [12:14]
B
Okay, yeah, Naomi. Naomi's a friend, and she's also in my upcoming documentary. But restorative reproductive medicine is the thing that we need to be focusing on. And reproductive endocrinology in fertility physicians are not. They're not. I would. I would tell you that a majority, hands down, are not focusing on that. They're just focusing on forcing pregnancies and just completely negating underlying causes. They're just not focusing on the rrm. And I think, like Lila Rose and Ali Beth Stuckey and a bunch of other really great podcasters are shining a light on this and able to really broadcast what's going on in the industry. And I thank you guys as well for doing that, because it is something that needs to be looked at. I mean, there is a clip on Vice. I think I sent it to you, Jen. Vice is the investigative journalism show on hbo, and they have a whole clip about the surrogacy industry. And predominantly they're focusing on India. But what if you go to India because it's cheaper and you do IVF and they have 10 of your embryos on ice and you go home and you're pregnant?
- [13:30]
A
Pregnant.
- [13:30]
B
Or maybe it's too expensive for you to travel back to have another embryo transfer and you just tell the clinic to discard the embryos. Well, their standards aren't like ours. They can do whatever they want with them. And you can't bring those embryos into the United States. You could bring them across state lines, but you can't bring them in from another country. Because the standards, the embryology clinics are the standards there are completely different than they are here. So if you have frozen embryos, what's happening? They're taking your embryos and putting them into surrogates. And those babies are being trafficked, they're being sold.
- [14:07]
A
Right.
- [14:07]
B
And this is not a, this is nothing new. I'm certain that this has been going on for a long, long time. And it's egregious. It's got to stop. And I mean, for those of us who are aware of what's going on, it, it really, it really hurts to know that this is, this is, this is industry standard for, you know, other countries. It's, it's poor form. It's poor form.
- [14:36]
A
There's been some pretty horrific stories recently of finding buildings with women basically being held hostage to be used as surrogates. Right. And so you're seeing a lot of rich Americans contracting and using women of color from other countries, impoverished women that don't have other options. Because we want to talk about it's altruistic. And the stories that are popular here is my sister, my mom is willing to carry my baby for me, right? Which is by the stats that we have, 2% of surrogacy is altruistic. And then, you know, states are just now re legalizing commercial altruistic was already legal. So, oh, the sister wants to help someone already legal. But no, they need to get that extra 98% because as we're talking about, this is a billion dollar industry. So we're seeing, you know, rich primarily, probably white people using poor people of color in other states. And when we try to talk about the problem is a lot of people want to argue about IVF from just kind of think about it in the most ethical way possible. And they don't sort of understand, though we're talking about an industry that's pretty unregulated and is being used to do all these other really unethical things. Even if the person that might be talking to us is saying, I did it the ethical way.
- [15:53]
B
I mean, when we speak ethically, I mean, is gender selection, eye color selection, is that ethical? Is discarding embryos because they're females ethical? Is transferring only male embryos because you want a boy ethical? Because that's what's going on. We're doing it every single day. How about this Lila Rose? Was it Lila Rose? No, I think it was Alex Clark. It was Alex Clark. She just had a physician on. And he talked about specifics of using skin cells to make gametes, eggs and sperm cells. And you could take a cup. You could take a. Two couples, so two females and two males. And you could make gamete cells from gamete cells from their skin. And you could inject one cell from. From a sperm into another sperm and make an egg. And then the genetic material from all four of these individuals could be in one. One embryo. It's incredible. Like, why would we do that? And then. And then he talked about something like, well, these would be. This embryo would be the grandparent of this embryo. I'm like, what in the world are. What in the world? So he can explain it much better than me. And he was on Alex Clark, if you want to find it dilemmas, I can send it to you too, Jen.
- [17:33]
A
Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah. It's interesting. When did. When did experimentation on humans become a thing? We were. You know, that used to be the stuff of. It was the people who were mistreating black Americans as slaves were, you know, justifying all sorts of things because they were saying, well, they're not really human. And the way that the Nazis did a lot of research on people they thought were undesirable. But typically, I thought we were supposed to be against, you know, experimenting on humans. But apparently, as long as it's in a petri dish and it's in a lab where we don't know what's happening, then, now people think it's okay. And, you know, about the eye color thing you mentioned. I thought at some level we were going in and sort of clipping and fixing all the different genetic issues which we had. Dr. David Prentice was on our IVF series, and we interviewed him, and he talked about some elements of CRISPR being able to go and clip something out. So that's part of it. But even then he said we were trying, you know, one doctor that the Chinese guy who was doing stuff illegally clipped something out, and then it caused. The embryos were more likely he clipped out. I think it was multiple sclerosis, but it made the embryos more likely to get West Nile virus something. So there's some of that clipping, but with eye color and things like that, it's. It was actually not. We're clipping out your eye color and putting in the eye color. It's like. No, we're discarding the ones with brown eyes. We're discarding ones with genetic abnormalities or that won't be viable. We're discarding males or females. So it's not as sophisticated as someone might think that. No, we're just editing. Which would be a problem anyway. We're editing humans, right? No, you're just discarding the ones you don't want human beings discarded. Yeah, crazy.
- [19:21]
B
That's the, that's the problem. I mean, there's multi, multiple problems with, with creating humans at the hand of another human outside of the body. There's multiple problems with that. But you know what? People are going to do it. They're going to keep doing it. And here's the thing. I have a couple right now. He had an issue, testicular cancer, as a young man. And he was not, he was azoospermia. So they had to do a testicular extraction of sperm and then retrieve her eggs and make the embryo. There are medically indicated cases like that where they're not going to have a baby if they don't do that. So I'm okay for that. And you know what? I work to prepare women for cycles like that. So they're good receivers. They're good receivers of their embryos. And then we can lessen or hopefully lessen the amount of cycles that we would need to do for them. So I don't know, just like, where do we end though? And I think in the last 10 years we've seen some pretty aggressively selective programs where we could do PGT PGS testing. And if the embryo doesn't seem like it's genetically perfect, we could just discard it. And you know, I don't think that that science is the best science either where we're taking a cell from an embryo and basing everything on one cell. I mean, certainly there are geneticists that are able to see different things that aren't maybe compatible with life or cystic fibrosis, that kind of thing that will be fatal to the child. But I think that's where good genetic testing comes in on both mom and dad prior and then to kind of have a heads up and know what they could potentially be in for with a natural conception. So I do think that some of it is valid and good. I think that doing IVF on every couple that walks in the clinic is not good. I think it's not good. And then also I made a Video on my own Instagram platform about three weeks ago or so. And I was saying, I think the kind way, the most concerned kind way to do IVF is to retrieve the eggs, freeze the eggs and make the embryos as they're needed. So we don't have a bunch of frozen embryos sitting in the freezer. If we have a lot of eggs sitting there, well then so be it. And then discard them. But at least they're not fully genetically human beings. They're just eggs.
- [22:06]
A
Right? Yeah. A lot of people will conflate our, the ethical considerations we're trying to bring up for embryos on ice with wool. Do you care about sperm and do you care about eggs? And it's like, well, we care about especially you mentioned egg extraction can be harmful to women. And like you're saying, it's especially when they have these other issues and you're stimulating and putting all these hormones in. Like Dr. Whitaker, I think talks about a lot of that is actually making your infertility way worse than it would be if you were going about it to try and restore the body to natural functioning. But an egg is not a human, though. It's still a human byproduct. And there's, you know, we have an issue then for us, we do not want people donating eggs and sperm because ultimately that will be a motherless or a fatherless child. Someone's not gonna be able to find you until they go and do 23andMe, you know.
- [22:59]
B
But as a human being, I agree, I agree. I think anonymous gene exchange is really dangerous business. And I think eventually when you're watering down the gene pool and you're getting a little too close, meaning if I donated eggs and, and had like 20 eggs out there for donation and they were distributed among three different couples and they all had babies from my biological material, could any. Could there ever be a chance of those siblings in life meeting one another? Because if you donate to a clinic in Illinois, chances are all of those patients are going to go to a clinic in Illinois and get your eggs. Could they ever. Could a sister and a brother ever meet up from a batch of my eggs at two different families and then come together, become a married couple, and then co create a baby and they're actually biologically related in some way? What is that going to do to our population? Is that going to increase risk of diseases? Is that going to. What, what is it gonna do? Right.
- [24:09]
A
And we've heard stories like that. There's, I think recently there was a news story Where. Or it was a podcast. Someone had emailed into a podcast that she had learned that she and her husband shared a genetic father because the guy was a sperm donor and they didn't know the dad. Yeah, they were married. I think they had kids. And it's interesting from, like, this Christian, Judeo Christian perspective where we. We don't like divorce. I mean, divorce for no. We don't want just to divorce for no reason. Married to a half sibling and you have kids. It's a. It's very ethically questionable. What should you or shouldn't you do? Well, and how do you feel about the person after you realize that this is your half sibling? It's just very messy. Yeah.
- [24:49]
B
That could become an emotional nightmare.
- [24:51]
A
Yeah.
- [24:52]
B
You know.
- [24:52]
A
Yeah.
- [24:53]
B
Yeah.
- [24:54]
A
This is a lot of the things, you know, these are the unintended consequences of a lot of this technology. As a final thought, I'd love to know from you, you're a person who's one of those adults that's going through something hard, but doing the hard thing on behalf of your kids. You've both struggled with some aspects of infertility, and you have shared about going through a divorce, and you're still an adult that's choosing to do the right thing. I'd love to know just from your perspective. A lot of people say that you can only agree with sort of this them before us perspective if you've never experienced it. Right. And you're an adult that has experienced some hard things, and you're still saying, well, I've gone through the hard stuff, but I'm still doing what's right on behalf of my kids. And I asked if I could ask you this before. We saw. This isn't putting you on the spot to just people listening. They're like, what. How are you gonna make her answer this? But no, no warning. But if there's anything about that you'd love to share, just. I know that the things we share can hit people hard sometimes because these are touching, really tender topics for people and the struggles that we're going through. So I just love to hear, you know, as you saw our stuff about divorce, about infertility, how did that hit you? And. Yeah. What. What made you want to sort of lend support to it to them for us?
- [26:10]
B
Yeah. Well, let me just say I married a man who was not a Christian, and we had gone all through middle school, high school together. He pursued me pretty hard, and I was very comfortable with him, although I knew he wasn't a Christian, and that was a Big sticking point. But we got married anyway, had seven pregnancies and five losses. And I didn't feel real supported through my. Through any of that with him, although I tried for the grace of my family to just raise my little ones. And then he ended up leaving. He walked right out the door. He texted me that he filed for divorce. And then he never gave me the light of day in talking to me about why he lives with a girlfriend now. And, I mean, he does whatever he wants to do. And I'm my children's primary parent. I always have been. I raised them in a Christian home. We go to church. My daughter works in the nursery at church and babysits for families there as well. And, you know, in this situation, I just have to stay strong and anchored in my faith and also counsel other women to try and repair marriage the best that they can given their circumstance. Now, there are biblical grounds for divorce, and I honor that and respect that. But I think that there's too much divorce in our society. I think people, because we live in a society of convenience are just too, too. It's too easy to leave and too easy to not work things out and too easy to not be accountable to God. And I think that as a society, that men and women need to be held accountable by their Christian sisters and brothers. And the sooner the better, the more accountability that we can be held to in recognizing the value of our family. And our marriage could only be something that would. That. That would make society better, where, you know, even if it takes, like, a few months just to get through something in. In a marriage where it's not going right or whatever it is, I believe that it can be worked out. I really. If you're putting Christ at the center of your marriage, I do think that it can be worked out. And to leave is not going to behoove the family unit because kids then are left without a dad or a mom. And I think that when you leave kids like that, it can be greatly detrimental to them growing up. But I have. I'm nine years divorced. I have not gotten remarried. I've gone on several dates. But none of these men are. I mean, some of them are very nice, but none of them are really, you know, worthy of. Of being in a relationship that. I mean, I date to be married. I'm not out there a serial dater. And so I want to really display these behaviors for my children because I need them to choose really good people to marry. And I always tell them that, too. They're. They're 13 and 10 now. But I'm like, guys, you've got to choose someone that is a faithful believer and build on that and make. And make that. Make Christ to be like the center of your marriage. So I'm doing my best, and I think I'm raising really strong, solid kids. I've got them in a Christian school, and we talk about just. Just about everything. So. And I'm. I'm also. I get up and I go to work every day, and I take good care of people. I have a servant's heart, and I know that they see that, too. So divorce isn't ideal, but sometimes it has to happen, and especially if it's forced upon you. You know, there was nothing that I could do. I tried. I tried to, you know, ask him, hey, let's do restoration. But he wasn't interested.
- [30:06]
A
Yeah, right. Well, and just thank you so much for sharing, Jenny, and just. I hope people hear from that, too, Vemba, for us. So we're like this organization, right? People see a social media post, they don't necessarily see a face, or they see us responding to a clip about, you know, especially. We've been going. We've been responding to a bunch of clips of the women who are kind of saying, hey, I'm not happy, and the most important thing is me being happy, so it's time for me to kind of cut my losses sort of thing. We. We hate that kind of thing. And the same men aren't posting it on social media, probably, but there's a lot of men kind of like you're describing, doing the same thing. Hey, this is hard, or I want to find a new person or whatever, but I just. We want people to know we are on the side of the adults who want to do the right thing. It doesn't. No, no. Marriage is perfect. There's always two sides to a story. But at the end of the day, there's sometimes an adult that's willing to stay, and I will try to figure it out and let's make it better. And there's sometimes an adult that's checking out and bailing. And we're saying divorce is bad for kids, but the person who knows that the best is the adult who wants to stick it out and do what's right, you know, and you're dealing with the consequences of it. But we just want people to know we're on your side. We're on that person's side. And I think, too, though, adults like you that are doing the hard thing are never saying, my kids are Resilient divorce is like it's not going to matter. You can acknowledge it's hard and it's not ideal and you're still saying you're doing your best. And, and it's cool too to hear just your, the aspect of faith integrating with that, that it will not, you know, Christian. I'm Christian as well and I've seen this play out in my parents life and things where it's like that faithful spouse that's willing to do what's right. I just think God really is caring for you and will reward your faithfulness and like the person who doesn't want a part of that, I think God's kind of like, yeah, they're going to reap what they sow. At the end of the day, you know, that's, that's more of a personal thought about it.
- [32:01]
B
But totally though, he is good and he has blessed me and he has given me the ability to provide for my children and give them a good upbringing, a solid, strong upbringing. So grateful. Yeah.
- [32:13]
A
Well, thank you so much for sharing. Just share as our final thought where people can find you online and social media and then about your documentary coming out. What's the name of that? Where can we be looking for that?
- [32:27]
B
Yeah, so my practice website is Expect a Miracle Life and my training website where if you wanted to train as a mercy a therapy provider is mercier therapy.com and then I have created a fellowship program for healthcare professionals to learn more about restorative reproductive medicine. And that's mercierwhf.com the film is called Conceiving Miracles and it will be released early this fall 2025. And I'll be posting that all over social. My Instagram handle is Dr. Dr. Jennifer Mercier.
- [33:10]
A
Awesome. And we're gonna, we'll make sure all the links are in here and then when your documentary comes out, we can put that in our newsletter and stuff as well. So we'd love to continue to share.
- [33:20]
B
Thank you so much.
- [33:22]
A
Thanks for your time, Dr. Mercier. We're gonna make sure everyone can come and find you. We hope all of you appreciated this conversation. Thanks so much for being with us.