Getting on the same page – how to talk to your partner about infertility

Talking about infertility with your partner can feel overwhelming, but open and honest communication is one of the most important steps you can take when trying to conceive (TTC).

If you’re starting to wonder whether lifestyle changes or medical support might help, navigating that conversation together can strengthen your connection and get you on the same page.

For guidance from the best-of-the-best, we sat down to chat with Dr Carmen Messerlian, founder of Vie, the AI-powered fertility platform that empowers couples through actionable insights and lifestyle-based, data-driven interventions.

Watch as we cover

Navigating relationships and fertility conversations, including:

• Common “difficult conversations” couples face while TTC, and why they arise.
• Why approaching lifestyle changes, like diet and exercise, can feel especially challenging within a relationship.

We also chat through practical tips and tools for how to talk to your partner about infertility, including:

• How to bring up lifestyle changes without the conversation feeling confrontational.
• Ways to align on fertility goals as a couple without creating feelings of pressure or blame.
• Strategies for addressing sensitive topics when one partner is hesitant to make changes.
• How technology, like Vie, can guide and support couples to have productive conversations and maintain accountability.

Opening up about infertility isn’t always easy, but it’s a conversation that can bring you closer as a couple. Remember, you’re in this journey together, and approaching it as a team makes all the difference.

Small steps – like setting goals or making lifestyle changes together – can make a big impact.

Ready to take control of your fertility journey together? Join the waitlist here to nab a spot on the next cohort to get access Vie’s AI-powered platform, and align with your partner on your journey to parenthood.

Transcript

Eloise Edington 

Hello, good afternoon, good morning for everyone around the world joining today. It’s going to be a great one, a really important one, as we’re fresh into the New Year.

All around tips for difficult conversations when you’re trying to conceive.

And I’m going to be joined—here she is now—by  Dr. Carmen Messerlian, who is the founder of the AI-powered app, and we will be talking today about the tips and everything that you can do to gain that control back in your fertility journey.

Hello, how are you?

Dr. Carmen Messerlian

Hey Eloise, it’s nice to be here today.

Eloise Edington 

Welcome everyone. Thank you so much for joining me today. I’ve just given a brief introduction, very, very brief introduction to me and yourself.

But please, could you start by telling us a bit about your background in the medical field at Harvard?

And then let’s talk a little bit about empowering people with those difficult conversations, especially from loved ones who don’t necessarily mean to say these things, and how Vie Science can help people by joining the waitlist.

Dr. Carmen Messerlian

That’s amazing. So thank you so much for this opportunity. I’m Carmen Messerlian. I’m a professor at Harvard University. I study reproductive epidemiology and how the environment impacts your fertility.

The environment is your natural, built, and social environment. So everything outside of your biology is your environment. My work at Harvard and the studies that I’ve conducted across the last 15 to 20 years have given me deep insights on the factors that you could modify each and every day to improve the chances of getting pregnant.

And I’ve launched a company, Vie, to be able to offer you the solutions in a precise and very data-driven way, to you, in your hand, so that you could get guidance on all the things you could modify each and every day to improve your chances of getting pregnant, having a healthy baby.

Eloise Edington 

Which is amazing. I certainly didn’t have that when I was going through IVF and trying to conceive over the last decade.

So to have something that is so intuitive and something that is AI-driven is really, really going to be very helpful for people. So I’m so excited to hear about it today.

If we could start by telling us a little bit about Vie and what you’re launching, and the 12-week program and how people can sign up, that would be great. We’ve also linked it in our bio for people to check out.

 Dr. Carmen Messerlian

So I’m really excited to offer the world Vie Science, this platform that allows you and your partner to join me and the resources and the data that we’re collecting to be able to optimize your fertility.

Now, when you have challenges with your fertility, you have a lot of questions and you don’t know where to go to be able to get the answers. So Vie allows you to ask those questions in an automated way and get support and answers that are data-driven, evidence-based.

Moreover, we provide support each and every day to you through content that we’ve curated that’s about holistic wellness around your fertility. So it’s about the mind, the body, and the spirit.

And we work on each and every one of these things. We want to create life and we want to create health within you and your partner so that you can bring a baby into this world.

And so to me, the solution is not IVF. IVF should not be the first place to go when you’ve had a fertility challenge. The first place to go is to build health and wellness in yourself and in your partner and in your relationship and optimize your health so that you have the best chances of conceiving, either naturally or with support.

If you need support, you can join Vie. We’ve actually maxed out the 12-week program. The 12-week program’s filled up for this first session, but we’re collecting new names for the next cohort. And you can join us at join. on Instagram, and you can sign up on our website as well.

We are offering in the next cohort a very sophisticated metric to be able to measure your fertility called the Vie Score.

The Vie Score is based on data—your data and data that we’ve collected over years. And we can understand your fertility, your precise areas and the areas you need to work on so that you can optimize your Vie Score. And the higher your Vie Score, the higher your chance of getting pregnant—that’s what we hope.

And we want to guide you each and every day towards that. And that’s what the 12-week process is about. That’s what the 12-week program is about. You get contact with live events with myself.

You can also book one-on-one sessions with me, and we have other experts that you could book with as well. But we have an automated system that’s free for everyone. We want to be able to offer this to every single person that wants help—can get evidence-based, data-driven support in their hands with a tool.

Eloise Edington

So I would suggest anyone check it out. You can head to our link in bio as well to read more and sign up. You may as well to hear what’s coming. Like you said, the first cohort has maxed out, but ready for the next is a really exciting opportunity.

Difficult conversations—whether you’re trying to conceive with someone else or solo—you can get into conversations that may not be where you want to be, especially for people who may have just experienced after their holidays. So it’s actually quite timely that we’re having this conversation now, as a new year starts.

When you have seen couples or anyone trying to conceive in whatever shape or form struggling, what are these tricky conversations that you’ve heard? And if people have experienced them themselves—I know I have—please feel free to comment and let us know difficult things you’ve heard and how you’ve navigated that.

 Dr. Carmen Messerlian

So one of the goals of Vie, one of the missions of Vie, one of the things I’m so excited about is being able to be the voice for women. Because women have had the burden of being responsible for all the information about fertility—the education, the management of their bodies, the management of their environment, the purchasing of items and solutions and supplements.

I want to take that job on for those women because I want to convey it to the male partner. Because what we know through the science I published at Harvard and through science that’s published by other people is that the male’s impact—the male part—because every baby comes with a male contribution, right?

Even same-sex couples, and we support same-sex couples—we want them to be part of the Vie journey as well—but there’s always a male factor.

And the male factor and the male partner contribute enormous amounts of epigenetic information to the chances of getting pregnant, the chances of having a miscarriage, the chances of having a healthy baby.

And so I want to be able to have that difficult conversation. I want Vie to be the provider of education and information to the male partner, to take down the pressure from women.

So that those difficult conversations—like, “I don’t want you having trans fats,” or, “I want you to exercise more,” or, “I think you should stop smoking”—that puts a lot of pressure on the woman to convey that. And that creates tension, right?

That creates tension in the couple, where now the male partner feels like the female partner wants them to change their behaviors and they’re not good enough and feel blamed and don’t feel supported. And men are sensitive to those things.

But if it comes from a neutral place, if it comes from an educated platform that’s data-driven and science-based, it’s neutral. It takes the emotion part out of it. And we can support the female partner with that. So we can provide that information and support to the male partner, which is a huge part of Vie.

Now, the other part is that we have a really important part of Vie that is about relationships.

How important is your relationship with baby-making? And to me, this is a critical missing part of the IVF space—that we don’t talk about relationships. We don’t talk about bonding. We don’t talk about love-making. We don’t talk about intimacy and pleasure.

So we want to bring that conversation and make it so that women feel they can have that voice, but also that men feel empowered to make a baby with their partner, if it’s a heterosexual relationship.

And so now we want to give insights to the male partner on the female’s fertility, on her libido, on interests that she might have sexually—other things that can allow the process of baby-making to become more humanized, more grounded in love-making, more grounded in bonding with your partner, in connecting.

All the things that support health and wellness in the relationship, which will translate into benefits to the couple’s chances of having babies.

And what we know through data is that couples that work together have higher success rates, have lower stress levels, and both of those factors increase the probability of success.

Eloise Edington

Interesting. You mentioned helping, if there’s a male in the relationship, if there is a relationship, then being able to have those difficult conversations to get an action taken.

I remember really struggling to even get my husband to go and have a fertility test at the beginning. So I think sometimes in a relationship it can be tricky to navigate even those initial steps of when is the right time to get this checked out.

 Dr. Carmen Messerlian

Absolutely. So that’s one of the jobs of Vie. Having that conversation with the male partner, saying: we have a male partner, companies that we’ve partnered with that we recommend, we’ve curated—we know that they provide a solution and information that can help you get the sperm that you want and the health that you want.

Because it’s not just about the sperm health. It’s about overall men’s health as well. Because the healthier man produces healthier sperm, produces a healthier baby.

And so we want to elevate a man’s health. We can’t have women elevate their health and have men down here.

So we want to bring men up and bring their health up and let them become educated on their fertility wellness, on their sexual wellness, on their men’s health wellness, on their vitality. We want to elevate them so they provide the best optimal conditions to be able to make a healthy baby for their partner and for themselves.

And so that is what we’re doing. We’re telling the male partner, “We think you need to get your mail tested. Here’s a company that we’ve partnered with that’s in your local area that you can work with to get your sperm tested.” That information might help solve the challenges that you’re facing right now.

And so this is one of the roles of Vie—to be that translator, be that mediator for the relationship, and provide the supports and tools for each member of the couple to be able to engage in a healthier, aligned way toward their fertility goals.

Eloise Edington

Love that. Why do you think it can be so tricky to have these conversations as a couple, if you’re in a relationship?

It’s sometimes helpful to have a mediator or a third-party platform or like Vie Science there to kind of guide you in those decisions and conversations.

 Dr. Carmen Messerlian

This is a great question because society has made this a woman’s problem, right? And so one of the goals that I have, one of the visions that I have for Vie, is to bring balance to the discussion, bring balance to the problem. Understand it from a couple-based perspective—not a woman’s health issue. It is a woman’s health issue, but a woman’s reproduction is guided by male’s health.

So let’s change the dialogue, change the paradigm on this, and not make it all about women. Let’s balance this out. Let’s translate this in a way that gives power to the man, gives power to the woman, have balanced power and have the opportunity.

And those conversations are hard because we live in a sexist society. At the end of the day, this is the truth. And I want for every woman to have the best outcomes they possibly can—that’s my goal.

But my goal is to support the male partner so that the woman has the best outcome. Because I know the impact of the male on her health. And if I’m focused on women’s health, I have to be focused on men’s health.

Because every baby comes from a man, and so that male partner is impacting that woman’s chances of having a miscarriage—and that impacts her health and her life.

And so giving that information back to the male partner, helping that conversation come through a neutral party, I think will help solve part of it.

But there’s a lot more work to do in society to try to change our thoughts on this, change the paradigm on it, and kind of reestablish the paradigm.

Eloise Edington

Someone just said it’s a two-way street. The male factor gets overlooked so often, which is so true. And I have that conversation with doctors all the time about when is the right time to test for men as well.

And, you know, as we all know, it takes two to tango, and sperm has 50% of what makes a baby. So it’s hugely important.

I think before we go on, what’s interesting is I was actually having this conversation with my husband recently. We have been together for 15 years, and we had a 10-year fertility journey during that time, which recently ended last year when we had a second set of twins.

But during that time, there was a lot of heartache to get there. And there were a lot of decisions to make—really, really, really, really tough decisions—that will last in our memory and in our hearts forever. And when you’re going through that, and people—I’m sure—will relate to this, please let me know if you do too.

But you feel like this pain and this anguish is never going to go away, and you’re wondering how it’s going to get better. I feel like, looking back—looking back on parts of it—we have grown stronger as a couple. But at the time, there were really difficult moments where it could have broken us apart.

Yeah, and you’ve probably seen that a lot in terms of relationships, where it kind of can be a bit make-or-break in terms of what happens. Because there are so many relationships that don’t go through infertility, and it’s such a huge thing to impact you—as a couple, if you’re in a couple, or individually.

 Dr. Carmen Messerlian

Thank you, thank you, thank you for raising this, because this is what the data show—that actual infertility is one of the major causes of divorce and breakup, really, in couples.

I can imagine that, for so many reasons. Financial troubles, because it’s very expensive. The tension and the pain. And I want to acknowledge and recognize how painful infertility is—for the female and for the male.

We don’t have enough attention to the fact that it’s painful for the man, and he does not know how to process both his own pain in it and his own suffering, but also watching his female partner suffer through those experiences.

And so, one of the things that I care about deeply is bringing the mental health question up, bringing the relationship question up, and addressing the trauma that’s associated with lost cycles, failed cycles, missed cycles, miscarriages, and donor conception, or doing things that you didn’t necessarily know you would be doing.

Because not every couple will end up with a biological baby. Not every couple will end up giving birth to their own child. They might need surrogacy. And not every couple—some couples—will end up needing to adopt. And that is valid.

So we need to help and support every journey, every couple. We can’t leave those couples out. We can’t ignore the fact that they have deep pain and disappointment.

And that disappointment can impact a life course—for that marriage, a life course for that relationship, and a life course for how you identify as a person, as a woman or a man.

And so humanizing that experience, acknowledging the pain, healing that pain—so the mind, body, and spirit—we’re very focused on the unification of all three.

For me, as a scientist and as a person who practices a lot of meditation and mind-body kind of work, the unification of the mind, body, and spirit and the wholeness that you feel allows for growth, allows for healing, and allows for manifestation of the outcome that you desire.

And if you’re not prepared on all three levels, there’s going to be blockages and challenges in getting the child that you want. So working with the mind, working with visualizing, working with understanding and accepting is so important.

Acknowledging that it’s traumatic, acknowledging that there’s pain, and helping that couple heal—because without the healing, bringing a baby in—that pain is also challenging, right?

Being in a relationship is hard, and so we want to think very holistically. We want to think about the whole person, and the whole couple, and the whole family. Because we’re creating an environment that a baby’s being born into. And the couple creates that environment.

And so for me, when I talk about the environment, it’s the environment that this baby will be born into. It starts in the preconception period. It starts before you conceive that baby. And how can we educate the couple around that environment and creating health and wellness in the environment, and then bring the baby into a healthy nest?

Because we’re creating a nest at the end of the day. And that nest is a lifelong nest, and it’s emotional, it’s psychological, it’s physical, it’s spiritual. There’s so many elements. And we’ve lost sight of that in the last 30–40 years.

IVF has solved for so much. It’s a critical element of infertility treatment and care, but it’s one part of the equation. And we’ve lost sort of the contextualization of family and the holistic of that.

And I’m trying to humanize that for people. I’m trying to bring the story in a way that we can love each other through this and we can heal each other through this. And I want to provide those tools to couples.

Eloise Edington

Amazing, amazing. For anyone who has recently joined, please head to our link in bio to learn more about Vie Science.

A very exciting opportunity for you, where you can sign up to a 12-week program. Free to sign up, but the waitlist is full—is that right, Carmen?

 Dr. Carmen Messerlian

So the next cohort will be in about two months from now. Okay, but you can still put your name down. It’ll be fully web-based by then.

And maybe try out some of the—because we’re developing a full-based app—but right now we’re creating the web-based platform that allows amazing AI, amazing, very sophisticated data analysis on you and personalized and precision medicine towards you and your partner.

So you could really understand where your needs are and where your gaps are in terms of your health and wellness, and what you can do to fix that. What you can do each and every day—little tiny steps.

Everybody can do small things every day to feel the power and the control that they need to feel like they’re doing something to improve their chances. And that’s what we want to give. We want to give hope and strength to each and every couple.

Eloise Edington

In terms of first steps—diet, lifestyle, stress—what’s the best way, if you’re in a relationship, to navigate those conversations as a starting point?

 Dr. Carmen Messerlian

So, you know, education on just the simple biology is first step, right? So what makes a sperm and what makes an egg, and how many weeks and days and months does that take to be able to create a healthy sperm and healthy egg? We want the best egg and the best sperm to meet, right?

That’s our goal. That’s our evolutionary reproductive capacity—is to bring the best chance of survival to that offspring.

And so how do we create that? What is the knowledge that we have? We know that eggs take not just one cycle to ovulate—you ovulate every cycle—but those eggs were in your body from when—actually from your grandmother onward. So it’s been a while that that DNA has been passed on.

But the egg also carries—and the sperm also carry—epigenetic information. Epigenetic information is basically signatures that you capture from your environment that tell that genome, tell that DNA, how to register and what to express and not express.

And so you have control over the expression of those genes. And that is in the three months, six months before you conceive a pregnancy—a year before you conceive a pregnancy. So there’s lots of things you could do each and every day.

And if you’re a planner—not even trying—things like lifestyle. So educating first is saying: your sperm takes about 90 days to produce. You have the capacity to make better sperm. Here are the things that you could do to create optimal sperm.

So reframe it from a pause—not like, “you’ve got damaged sperm,” “your eggs are damaged,” “your sperm’s damaged.” No. We’re saying: you have the power to make this better. Here are tools. Here are solutions. Here are things you can do today to optimize your sperm—10 things you do, or five things you do, or one thing you can do.

Do one thing and you’re moving the needle forward. Do two things and you’re moving the needle forward, right? So every little step you take towards health benefits your sperm, benefits egg.

And so that’s how we frame it. We don’t guarantee that this is going to create the perfect outcome, but you’re optimizing the chances. And that’s a goal that you could focus on—optimizing your chances.

Eloise Edington

Absolutely. And these difficult conversations—and then setting goals—without making or not intentionally one person in a relationship feeling blamed or pressured.

What would you recommend for those kinds of conversations?

 Dr. Carmen Messerlian

So I think it’s always good to have a resource. Instead of first offering your opinion as a partner, saying, “Here’s my opinion, I think you should stop smoking or stop drinking alcohol”—that feels like an attack.

Instead, say: “Did you know that alcohol consumption while you’re trying to get pregnant can affect your sperm? I just read something about this. Can I share it with you?” That type of thing is a little bit easier, more neutralized, right?

And so sharing a finding, or sharing a— we have guides on this. We have guides on every topic. So sharing the guide, for example, the guide on alcohol and sperm: “Can I share this with you? Read it to yourself, think about it, ask the questions.”

Instead of providing input on behavior change directly, offer education. Awareness. Because behavior change requires knowledge, right?

First is awareness. Second is intention. There’s intention, and there’s preparation for behavior change. And those steps are required. You can’t just go to action. You need to go to contemplation—pre-contemplation, contemplation, action, right?

So the pre-contemplation is kind of like where you’re educating. Then you’re starting to think about it more critically—that’s contemplation. Then you go, “You know what, I think I should cut down on my alcohol.” So it’s not overnight, right? It’s a process.

And that’s what we help the couples with—is giving them the tools to help those communication points become a little more neutral, a little more simplified, and guiding.

Guiding those conversations with the couple and suggesting neutral positions, and supporting the couple through the stressful aspects of that dialogue.

Eloise Edington

Also, for people who have a personality like my husband does—where he likes to come to decisions by himself—I sort of know, after 15 years, that if I plant a seed, he then needs to think about it himself.

And then, later down the line, he’ll come back to me and say, “Oh, okay, maybe we should explore this,” or, “That might be a conversation worth having,” rather than me just going full force, being like, “I think we should do this,” and applying the pressure immediately.

 Dr. Carmen Messerlian

This is such a good point. So you’re an intelligent woman, and you figured out your male partner’s personality triggers, relationship style, communication style.

That’s a successful aspect of your relationship, because you read him and you know how to work with his style of how to convey that.

And so part of that is learning, right? Learning as a female partner or learning as a male partner: What are your female partner’s triggers? What are your male partner’s triggers? What are the ways that they digest information? How do they become engaged with information in a way that changes their behavior?

Because a lot of people just don’t know that or haven’t had the awareness on it. But teaching them, and giving them the awareness on it, and saying: “How does your male partner best receive information?” in the past, right? Usually, for most guys, telling them what to do does not work.

They need to make the decision for themselves, based on their knowledge and integrating that knowledge.

So leave it with them. Sit with them. Let them digest it—might be a great strategy for some people.

Other men just want a formula. They’re like, “I’ll follow it. Tell me what I need to do,” right? So it depends on who you’re working with. But you’re right—personality has a big part to do with it.

Eloise Edington

Interestingly, it was actually my mother that noticed that trait when we were wedding planning. And it’s something that has helped me through our marriage.

I think that you can actually lean on others that are around you, can’t you, for guidance as well, in terms of an outlooker looking in on your relationship, to say, “Have you thought about doing this?” So exactly what you’re doing at Vie Science—being able to give another perspective.

 Dr. Carmen Messerlian

Totally true. I love that also because your family can be great reflectors for you, right? They’re like a mirror to you.

And your partner’s a mirror to you too, because they’re mirroring things that might be hard for you and triggering you. And so you’re learning from yourself through what your partner might say to you that makes you feel hurt or sad or upset or not respected.

And so why is that a trigger? And can you respond to them in a way that allows you to educate him on how you want to receive information? There’s so much there.

And one of the parts—it’s not going to be central in this first cohort or the second cohort—but one of the parts that we are working with

And we have a clinical psychologist. We’re going to be inviting them to do live events as part of our offer to our members that knows these kinds of things and knows how to teach and educate.

Because we all need education—even after 20 years of marriage, you still are puzzled, right? You still need big help. So how do we educate on relationships? This is a big factor.

And there’s great podcasts out there that I listen to, great Instagram sites that I think are amazing, that offer really good strategies on how to manage triggers and attachment issues.

And it’s a painful thing, right? You feel responsible, but you also feel like you want to blame. But then you also feel that it’s your fault somehow too. And trying to just neutralize it—it’s absolutely just how it is. And let’s solve for it together as a team.

How do we create a team sport out of it instead of making it all about me or all about you? One of the things that I love about Vie, and one of the things that I want to express in this company—because for me it’s a creative process, this company, it’s all my vision of how I think life should be formed on this planet and what are those essential elements—is just the idea of letting go of the goal of baby-making and focusing on pleasure and love-making. Because pleasure and love create life, right?

The act of sex does not create life. It can, if you’re hyper fertile. We know this because you put the perfect egg and sperm in a Petri dish and life does not form.

Most cycles fail—80% of cycles fail. So bonding, attachment, loving, cuddling, not even having intercourse, your microbiomes merging together through contact and physical touch and cuddling and kissing and all of that stuff and pleasure—and teaching your partner how to pleasure you and vice versa—those are so important to the fertility equation.

And we leave it out completely. We left it out completely. We don’t talk about intercourse for the sake of enjoyment and pleasure and connecting. That is so important.

So we’re going to be including this in Vie—about loving each other. How do we do that? What makes you feel good? What about nonsexual acts like cuddling in bed or going for a walk or sitting on a bench or meditating together, breathing together?

Those kinds of holistic methodologies have a lot of deep wisdom in them. They create alignment between you and your partner. You feel more connected. And the more connected you are, the more your body wants to reproduce with the person that you’re with.

There’s a biological drive to reproducing in each and every one of us—till, for men, until they die; for women, until they become menopausal. But there’s a biological, extreme pressure biologically in our systems to want to reproduce, to make eggs, to make sperm. That’s what we’re here for on this earth. That’s what we are born to do.

And the more you feel safe and cared for and loved, the more your body feels ready to allow this experience to happen. That is a big part of mind-body-spirit connection that we’re trying to educate couples on.

Eloise Edington

Amazing. Someone has asked a great question: What if my husband says alcohol helps him relax and it’s a reward?

 Dr. Carmen Messerlian

Oh, that’s such a good one. So it’s true—balance in that, right? One or two drinks might be okay. But drinking every night—two drinks—probably does affect. Not probably—we know through research that it can affect male sperm quality.

Are there other things that they can incorporate? To me, it’s all about harm minimization. You don’t have to go to zero. Let’s put you down—let’s go from five drinks a week to four, and maybe four to three.

And what can we replace those two drinks with instead? Can we replace it with something else, something that’s mindful, something that’s relaxing—television, or even listening to favorite music, or dancing or exercising? Other things.

So going down from ten drinks to nine, or six to five—that’s a win. That’s a win in your relationship. Celebrate those little tiny steps in the right direction. And they accumulate because you start adding them together. They’re multiplicative—they don’t add, they actually multiply in terms of the impact.

And the Vie Core that we have is actually helping us understand how powerful those changes are to the outcome. I agree with you—even for everyone, if you like alcohol, it could be a relaxer.

But at the same time, we know the data. We know the research. So can we, in those parameters, stay within that range of what we think is safe and encourage some positive behavior? Go with it, and decrease a little bit the stuff that we know is harmful.

Absolutely. Vie Score is comprehensive about all these things. So you might increase your exercise. Even if you take your drink down one, that has a big impact on your chances—or can.

Eloise Edington

And for everything we’ve discussed today, if anyone has any questions for Carmen, please do feel free to share, ask, DM, and we can put you in touch. Also, link is in the bio.

In terms of AI and how Vie Science helps people—couples—navigate this journey, what would you say the structure of this is?

For anyone who’s joining this conversation and hasn’t heard what we’ve been discussing to date, what would you say to help people make that decision to come and have a look at it and get empowered?

 Dr. Carmen Messerlian

If you want an alternative to what’s been offered up until now and you want to care for your body in a very holistic way and help your partner engage with you in a process of fertility, Vie is your answer.

Why is it your answer? It’s because we use your data and we personalize the solutions based on what your body and what your environment looks like. We help guide you with solutions that are actionable and integrated with your overall wellness.

And we support you through the process—through a community, through education and information. And we use intelligent algorithms to help us get there. We use intelligent algorithms to understand each and every one of you so that we can personalize the solutions toward your goals.

Eloise Edington

Amazing. They said thank you, that sounds great. So, yeah—check it out. Head to our link in bio and you can put your name down for everything that’s about to come, which is super exciting for 2025.

I know that you’ve been working on this for a long time, so it’s so exciting to see this come to life and to be supporting people in the community with this.

Yeah. Is there anything else that you want to say in terms of what’s coming and what people can do to advocate for themselves and get help?

 Dr. Carmen Messerlian

Yeah, so for me, one of the biggest parts about Vie is about democratizing fertility care. I’m very passionate about this work. It’s a dream of mine to have this come through.

The reason why is because IVF is not affordable. And there are so many barriers. Most couples on this planet don’t have access to IVF. And the fact that we’ve only innovated in this one area where there are so many limitations for most people to be able to access—that, to me, is a failure of the system.

And the goal of Vie is to care for everybody. Everybody who can’t afford IVF—we’re offering you a solution that helps guide you to optimize your chances of natural success.

And if you need IVF, you can still get the support. It’s not that you have to go through IVF—it’s that if you need it, we can support you through. But we’re caring for all those people.

We’re democratizing fertility care because we’re offering this through a very simple model. In terms of monetization, in terms of making money, we’re offering a solution that’s affordable for everyone. Everyone can get the base model for free.

Then you can get a subscription model that’s paid, that has additional features. And the price point is going to be at a level that everybody can afford. And if you can’t afford it, we’re offering scholarships and other opportunities to help.

Eloise Edington

Amazing. Okay, yeah—that’s good to know. Really good to know. Well, I’m sure this has been super helpful for everyone else.

I’ve learned loads too, so thank you so much for your time, Carmen.

It’s always a pleasure chatting with you, and I’m really, really excited to see what’s just around the corner as you launch this.

 Dr. Carmen Messerlian

Thank you, Eloise. It was great to be part of your journey as well, and congratulations on the babies.

Thank you for the opportunity to share my wisdom with your audience. It’s been wonderful.

Eloise Edington

We’ll speak very soon. Thanks, everyone, for joining.

Thank you.

Bye.

Want to hear more from Dr Carmen Messerlian?

Read this next: The AI-powered fertility platform for couples that puts you both in control