I always advocate for my patients to assemble their fertility TEAM, and for some that might also include getting a fertility coach. Today I’m so excited to be sharing this conversation with Brittany Hawkins, co-founder and CEO of ELANZA Wellness, about how a fertility coach can help you along this journey.
After Brittany met co-founder Catherine Hendy, they set out to make fertility treatment simpler, clearer, and more empowering for women.
Brittany is also the coauthor of the book titled Everything Egg Freezing: The Essential Step-by-Step Guide to Doing It Right, (which I’m honored to have been asked to contribute to!) The book is an incredible one-stop science-based guide for any woman considering that treatment.
Brittany also has personal experience freezing her own eggs, and I am so thrilled to have her on the show to share her experience with you along with her expertise in fertility coaching.
Dr. Aimee: I am so excited to have Brittany Hawkins, co-founder and CEO of ELANZA Wellness. Brittany, thank you so much for joining us as we talk about how to find the best fertility coach.
Brittany Hawkins: Thanks so much for having me.
Dr. Aimee: Of course. Can you tell us about your own experience with egg freezing and what you’ve learned as an egg freezing patient?
Brittany Hawkins: Yes. I started looking into egg freezing around age 33. Like many people, I was just really overwhelmed by the headlines in the news about plummeting fertility and what my family could look like if I was able to have one, all of these really scary and confusing questions that I feel like many people my age are grappling with right now. I took the plunge and got an appointment with a fertility doctor.
It was actually in that appointment that I found out that I have something called Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. It affects about 1 out of 10 women. Just a simple Antral Follicle Count (AFC) conducted by the doctor found this out, but I actually couldn’t believe this was something that I had been really struggling with for 33 years and had no support in finding.
It took me about a year to really go through the motions, decide what mattered to me, and follow through with egg freezing. I had some issues with the injections, nearly botched my treatment, and also had some ovarian hyperstimulation, which is something that’s often more of an issue for people with PCOS. So, I had a little bit of a rough go of it, but in the end I’m really glad that I did it.
Dr. Aimee: How did you meet Catherine, how did you guys forge this relationship that you decided to coauthor a book and co-found ELANZA?
Brittany Hawkins: You actually wouldn’t believe it, but we met on a reality TV show about what it’s like to be on safari. It was conducted by National Geographic and it was essentially a free safari. We ended up sitting next to each other for about four days without showering, and you learn a lot about someone just sitting in the same car and pointing out fictitious animals. Not your typical co-founder meeting story, but it was great.
Dr. Aimee: That’s fun. How did you guys start it, what did you do?
Brittany Hawkins: I would say that we and many of our friends were just going through this time when everyone was trying to figure out what was what in reproductive health and fertility. She had also had some relationship shifts in her life and went through the treatment process herself. To be honest, a lot of our drive comes from frustration and just knowing that there has to be a better solution, and a lot of the time there isn’t someone else who is going to do it, we have to do it ourselves. That’s really where we began the journey in writing the book.
Dr. Aimee: What do you feel is missing from some of the conversations between patients and doctors, what’s missing from those conversations about fertility treatment currently, and how do you guys bridge that gap?
Brittany Hawkins: That’s a really good question, and one that I think I’d never really seen so clearly from my conversation with my fertility doctor. It’s not that my fertility doctor was doing a bad job. It’s just that often a doctor is trained in the clinical aspects of care and often with fertility treatment, especially something like egg freezing, there are so many larger questions like: “How do I feel about family?” or “What does my relationship look like now…do I freeze eggs versus embryos?” There are so many considerations that doctors are put into a position where they have to be counselors.
Honestly, that’s what patients and people just need, they need some of that more personalized thinking and counseling as to what matters to them and if this is right for them, but often those conversations are not in the purview of the doctor. That’s where a coach can step in. A coach is really there to help you make sense of all of the other variables in your life, whether you just found out your AMH from a test and you don’t know what that means to you, or maybe you’re trying to go through the financials of whether or not you can afford fertility treatment.
A lot of these things take re-prioritization of your life, your relationships, and your own understanding of what family means. That’s where a coach can really provide that structure and that framework that is completely complementary to your clinical care.
Dr. Aimee: I love how you said that. It’s complementary, you’re not challenging the physician, you’re not replacing the physician. I see my patients more than 90% of doctors in this country. I have patients that come to me from all over and they say things like, “I only had a phone call that lasted five minutes with my doctor twice throughout my entire relationship with that fertility clinic,” and that is normal now.
That’s really hard because, like you said, you don’t have a relationship with someone where you can talk to them about your priorities. You don’t even know what questions to ask if no one is telling you what you should know. That’s why I feel like bringing you on right now is really important to me, because I think there is a shortage of fertility doctors out there, there are a lot of patients, and people need people, just like you said. We don’t need to integrate with technology. We need people to help us decide what we should be doing when it comes to family.
How does coaching work with ELANZA?
Brittany Hawkins: At ELANZA, we are really believers in the idea of coaching people, not problems. The term coaching has kind of grown and morphed into a variety of different things as of late. I think one framework to think about coaching is in comparison to mental health. If you go see a therapist or a psychologist, their job is to look back into your life, to look into your childhood, your family, your upbringing, and understand more about that in order to make sense of where you are in that moment. They’re also there to help with clinical depression and anxiety. Those are really important moments when having a therapist is crucial.
On the other hand, an ELANZA coach is on the emotional health side. That means managing your stress, reframing and building resilience in who you are in this moment, and also looking forward, where you want to go, your goals. Also, being your coach literally, how do you win your own life, how do you create that path that works best for you and you only, and then how to get there. That’s where a coach really steps in.
At ELANZA, we only use board-certified health and wellbeing coaches. That means that they have gone through the highest level of certification and they have hundreds of hours of experience. Beyond that, we also do a lot of ongoing specialized training in things like trans fertility and holding place for pregnancy loss, a lot of those really specialized aspects of fertility that are super important for people to just know that whatever their background, their sexuality, their gender, there is a place for them at ELANZA.
We are completely, to use technical terms, HIPAA compliant in everything. Trust is crucial for us. Providing that safe place to then provide that emotional health support and meeting people wherever they’re at in that journey and giving them the tools to actually really move forward.
Dr. Aimee: You’re not just dealing with people who are freezing eggs, it’s for all types of fertility treatment. Right?
Brittany Hawkins: Exactly. I could tell you a million stories about how much we’re able to transform the experience for people in a variety of different fertility journeys. We often find that people really gain a lot of benefit in the exploration phase. Is this right for me? Am I ready to go through another round? Do I want another baby? There’s a lot of questions in just that initial mapping things out in your brain.
Then, we really make sure that you have your coach in place during fertility treatment, whatever type, IVF, IUI, etc. A lot of those moments can be really scary and there is a lot of vulnerability in those moments and a lot of emotions that are high. Having a safe place to really express those has been really beneficial.
We see people throughout their entire reproductive lifespan, so not just after the retrieval. Of course, you want the best outcome, but sometimes that means you have to go through another round. Having the strength and the confidence to continue and to feel like you have this support team to help you manage whatever comes, we see a massive amount of benefit.
Like I said before, inclusivity is really important for us. Whether you’re a same-sex couple going through surrogacy, or you’re an intended parent… Intended parents benefit massively from having a coach. Then on the other side, gestational carriers. There are so many people in every phase of this journey that are grappling with a variety of different emotions. That’s where we go back to coaching people, not problems.
Dr. Aimee: Let’s just give you a scenario right now. I’m 46 years old, I’m thinking about having a baby, I just don’t know where to start, but I really think that I want a coach. What happens next once I go to your website?
Brittany Hawkins: You would book what we call a starter pack. There’s usually a cumulative effect for multiple sessions. In your first session, you’re going to have a 45-minute conversation with a coach. You’re going to be matched with a coach. In that conversation, it’s a lot about where you are on your journey, what your goals are, and getting to know the person on the other side of the video chat.
From there, you map out your plan. A lot of people have what we call generative or magical moments, where I can only describe them as a series of light bulb moments. They all of a sudden are able to reframe something and have that ability to reframe the way they’re experiencing their own journey.
From there, you have subsequent three to five sessions, and those are 30 minutes. Your coach follows up with a recap of what you discussed. You and your coach design a specialized plan that helps you meet your needs based on your goals.
Dr. Aimee: That sounds very nurturing, I imagine for a patient to have someone like that with you during the journey. You used a lot of my own buzzwords, like resilience. I love magical moments. Someone at their transfer brought me chocolate that said Dr. Magic on it, so that’s one of my favorite words. Then you just said another word that I loved, team. Magic, team, resilience.
I have something called Fertility TEAM, and I feel like somehow we have to put a C in there somewhere. The T for TEAM is therapy, but I also think that it should be therapy and a fertility coach now. I wasn’t feeling like my patients really needed a coach maybe five years ago, but I feel like patients need a coach now. It’s almost like a fertility doula, someone who is listening, helping you prioritize and re-prioritize, pre-plan your plan before the plan. It’s so important that you guys are doing this.
I know that you know I’m a doctor, but don’t feel like you’re going to insult me. Just say what you feel and think. What do you wish doctors knew and addressed about fertility that they’re just not addressing now?
Brittany Hawkins: That’s a really good question. I think, as I touched on before, this idea that people need some of that counseling.
I think a lot of what’s happening is stress. I know we did a ton of research around this, you saw it from our book. We talk a lot about stress because who hasn’t heard the story of someone who went through multiple rounds of IVF and then they stopped trying, their stress went down, and then they had a baby. I think it’s still impossible to say if infertility causes stress or if stress causes infertility. At the end of the day, stress is stress, and it impacts everything about your experience.
Whether you’re undergoing IVF, or egg freezing, or IUI, or surrogacy, stress is something that I think is a bit discounted by doctors. Because the role is more so clinical or completely clinical, they kind of dismiss stress. They’re like, “That’s not something that I can help you manage.”
Dr. Aimee, you’re a different breed, you are way more in the weeds with your patients, and that is amazing. But most doctors aren’t. They’re just like, “Come to me for the clinical,” and then everything else, “get out of my office.”
So, it’s really hard for people in a place where you’re feeling extremely vulnerable, you have no control, to just give people tools to feel like they are more a partner in their care and that their stress is valid and that whatever the good data and the science says, it doesn’t matter because they’re still feeling it. I do talk to doctors about this, but it also impacts the way that clinics operate. If I’m feeling really stressed, I’m going to be calling the clinic constantly because I need answers. I’m building up my own narrative that I can’t figure out, so I’m Googling, which is the worst thing that you can do because you read all these crazy headlines, and then you’re asking friends and they have completely different experiences.
You want to be able to go to your doctor, but often they can’t provide that information. I feel like patients are feeling so just left out, left behind, they’re not getting the support that they need, and that’s where we’ve found this huge gap in the clinical care paradigm.
Dr. Aimee: I’m glad that you brought that up, honestly. I’m wondering: is there any feedback between the coaches and the doctors, is there a HIPAA or medical release form where a patient will say, “Can you talk to my coach,” and does that happen?
Brittany Hawkins: No. It often doesn’t. Usually, the doctor just says talk to your coach. If the person is having more acute depression or anxiety, then we will also bring in a therapist or we will recommend or actually coach around finding a therapist, because often that has a lot more effectiveness if the person seeks out that support themselves. It’s actually never been the case where there is a direct conversation between the doctor and the coach. I think for the most part the doctors are like, “My job is done here, I’ve done the clinical, the rest is for your coach.”
I think an interesting statistic is that 30% of patients drop out of treatment specifically due to emotional distress. I don’t know how doctors aren’t seeing this as an important part of their clinical care. They’re losing patients, patients are going elsewhere because they’re trying to find doctors such as yourself that actually meet them where they’re at and see them as a whole person and actually support them in their journey in totality. I think doctors are starting to really see that they can’t do things the same as they’ve always done.
Dr. Aimee: I think you’re right. Just so you know, if you ever have a patient of mine who is working with an ELANZA coach and we ever need to have a conference call or exchange information with my patient’s permission, I’m all in.
Brittany Hawkins: Perfect. I love that. It will be the first time.
Dr. Aimee: We talked about doctors and what they should know, but what do you think people need to know about fertility that they’re just missing right now?
Brittany Hawkins: This term stress is sort of a weird one, because it’s so different for everyone. I think that often we see maybe somebody else who objectively is potentially worse off, or we feel almost invalid in our own journey and we don’t feel like it’s okay to not feel okay. I think that you just don’t know what you don’t know when you’re entering into fertility treatment.
I can tell you that in normal times I feel like a very stable person. If I’m injecting myself with hormones in my abdomen, let me tell you, I am not in my normal mind, I am just not okay. You can read as much as you can read, and your doctor can try to prepare you, but until you’re in that moment and you’re feeling that level of stress, it’s just hard to know. Really being thoughtful, whether it’s a coach or not, just having a support system of people that you know you can trust and that will validate whatever you’re going through is really important because no one expects to need fertility treatment or want this journey.
I think it’s going to be our new normal. I don’t know if you’ve seen that stat that by 2025 most couples may need assisted reproduction. We have to start normalizing this and realizing that it’s not a journey full of rainbows and butterflies, and that’s okay.
Dr. Aimee: We want magical moments. Even when the treatment doesn’t work out, we want them to feel like they have no regrets, that they were heard, and that they’re not traumatized about the experience.
I really am so glad that you and Catherine met. That’s a really fun story that you met on a reality TV show. I think you guys are doing great work. I hope that people will listen to this show, I hope they will reach out to you guys and work with one of your coaches through treatment.
I also love that you mentioned egg freezers, surrogates, gestational carriers can work with a coach during their journey and pregnancy. I’m going to start suggesting that as well, because not everyone has access to a psychologist from their agency that they’re going to be talking to the entire time, so I think that’s really important. That you’re LGBTQ friendly is really important to me as well, because I think that having a coach when you’re a trans male going through egg freezing could be so helpful for so many.
Thank you, Brittany, for all that you do. Can you just share with us, if someone is curious about working with an ELANZA coach, what can they do, where should they go?
Brittany Hawkins: It’s super easy. You just go to our website at ELANZAwellness.com and sign up for a starter package and experience it for yourself. I think coaching is one of those things that it’s not a laundry list of product attributes, you have to experience it. I think it’s going to change your life, I have no doubt in the world. If it doesn’t, then you will get a full refund.
Dr. Aimee: That sounds like a pretty good guarantee. I like that. I’m just curious real quick. Where did the name ELANZA come from?
Brittany Hawkins: I’m glad you asked. I love our name. We wanted this to feel, first of all, not challenging. We wanted it to feel more like a spa experience. So, it’s to be positive and uplifting. The word elan means to do something with enthusiasm and grace, and then the Z and the A are actually the acronym of South Africa, which is where Catherine and I met on our little safari adventure, so it’s sort of an amalgamation of those. For us, it’s just about creating something that is truly positive and transformative out of something that you maybe didn’t expect would be part of your life.
Dr. Aimee: I love it. That’s great. I thought you were going to say the Z and the A are after Eyvazzadeh. Just kidding. Thank you, Brittany, for joining us, and thank you for all of the work that you and Catherine are doing to make the experience of being a fertility patient better for everyone everywhere.
Brittany Hawkins: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate you expanding awareness around emotional health and fertility coaching.
Dr. Aimee: Thanks again, Brittany. Have a great day.
Brittany Hawkins: You too.
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