Episode 192: Behind the Scenes with IVF and Fertility Specialist Tasha Blasi
About eight years ago, I spoke at a local conference called Redefining Success. I remember looking down to see a woman crying in the front row. I remember thinking, I'm going to hear from that person, and I did. Tasha Blasi is now an IVF and fertility consultant.
We looked at her own experience – 10 rounds of IVF – and then we took her talents, her humor, and her past work as a biology teacher together in a way that serves the world at an extraordinary level.
What she has done with her life experience and talents is the secret sauce I want to help more women achieve. In this episode, we'll be very honest about the bumps and challenges along the way.
Journey to IVF and fertility specialist
Tasha has a course for women using using IVF called Fertilitites Unite – or FU for short. That was intentional because that's how you feel when trying to get pregnant. She is also a fertility advocate who is taking her experience and science to Congress and doctors. There are now more than 300 babies who were born because of Tasha's work.
She describes her journey as a calling and an accumulation of her life's work. She began as a biology and chemistry major, teaching for years before moving to the East Coast and working in advertising. She also went through a five-year fertility journey when she met and started working with me (Sarah Walton).
Tasha says the sooner the better to call a fertility specialist when people are looking to get pregnant. Whether you’re starting IVF for the first time, you're looking for a new doctor, or you're asking for strategies of “why isn't this working!” Tasha uses her background in science and charting data to help her clients ask their doctors the right questions.
How to be more fertile
Her goal is to make them the most healthy, happy people. She is intentionally focusing on the wellness of the whole human. She says the reason why people have trouble getting pregnant quickly, can't make eggs easily, have endometriosis, PCOS, or heavy periods is biology. Tasha helps her clients with biology to improve their chances of getting and staying pregnant.
Tasha says the one thing you need to get pregnant is energy. Energy and nutrients in. Toxins out. And that’s physical and mental.
“We are giving and doing so much energy out, so many toxins in. That’s what I call survival mode,” says Tasha. “Your body is working for you with what it has.”
Working with Sarah Walton
I will never forget what Tasha said when I asked what people call her for. She told me people from across the United States called her to talk about her IVF journey and that it took her 10 transfers to have her two children.
I almost fell off my chair.
With her significant biology background, Tasha understood and could explain the questions that confused others. She also understood what it was like to experience primary and secondary infertility – that depth of experience brings so much to her clients.
“I’ll never forget when you came up with that idea for me … ‘You need to be a fertility coach.’ and I was like that’s not a thing, and you said well you’ll make it a thing,” says Tasha. “The key part being, I would never have thought of that on my own.”
Tasha thinks people limit themselves to possibilities because they can't consciously figure it out by themselves. In her case, she was sharing her IVF journey; she was already helping others, but it never occurred to her that this could be her job and she could make money doing it. That's where I stepped in.
Now, Tasha has multiple experts – nutritionists, mindset coaches, and alternative therapists – helping her analyze results, answer questions and set up customized plans for her clients depending on their needs.
Investing in coaching programs
Tasha says she's been in the position of spending thousands on a program that didn't work for her. She followed it up with another and was trying to get out of it, having just paid so much cash, but the organizers offered to give her a refund if it wasn't working. She stuck it out, and it did work for her.
For Tasha, she finds that when she's not working with the person who built the program, it's not as successful. Having access to the founder, hearing from them, and having the founder solve your problems makes a difference.
You have to have someone who's walked the path and knows what they're talking about because then the coaching can move you down the path faster.
Tasha says her IVF journey isn't one to copy. But she does understand the mental state of how a client might feel when they know they won't have a baby and the inkling of hope that one day they might. What Tasha's journey did offer was credibility. It gave her compassion and taught her that her body was in survival mode and what she needed to do to get and stay pregnant.
“You have to go into this journey, knowing it's not going to be easy and guess what, these crazy obstacles, these lessons, these people that come into your life … They will ultimately help you restructure your business, your mind, your life more the better if you know why it’s happening,” says Tasha.
Breaking the fertility industry
Tasha says the fertility industry can't keep going how it is now. The reason is because the patient knows so little compared to the doctor. Her goal moving forward is to teach the patient everything they need to know.
“If I can level the playing field, what the patient knows and what the doctor knows and what the embryologists know, and can’t be this unsuccessful for that long,” says Tasha.
According to the CDC, in 2020, the national IVF success rates were around 35% for people between 35 and 37 years of age, and if a doctor is at 50%, they are considered rock stars. Tasha is working to partner with the industry to help teach what she knows.
We can't wait to have her back on the podcast to hear how it goes!
