Would NOT Recommend at This Price
Would 1,000,000% not recommend this program at this price point--I did not feel I received my money's worth. There was regional chaos during my months with the Functional Fertility Method (affecting myself as well as the team in the UAE), resulting in shipping delays for supplements/tests and canceled group meetings on Sandra's end. I fully understand FFM not being able to keep things business as usual (not their fault), but there was no real effort to take accountability for the way those failures affected us, or to work around it. There were four group/expert calls in the ~4 months I had access to the site (there was some wiggle room with time, which I appreciated--though it was also suggested I pay for continued access to the portal...), which was exactly half of the promised biweekly group calls. The vibe mostly felt like "Everyone just go look at the materials on the site" rather than a community of any kind. Given the conflict in the Gulf, the full experience we paid for may not have been achievable within the expected time frame, but Sandra did little to build goodwill or make us feel truly cared for by acknowledging that or working with it. She was instead incredibly defensive (even abrasive) when I mentioned my frustrations.
Which leads to the primary frustration: FFM's social media/website promises to listen to and really focus on the women that conventional medicine has failed, and yet Sandra made me feel in large part ignored and insignificant--not a priority but an afterthought, which made the whole thing feel more predatory than supportive. Key pieces of information were neglected. The first led to utter panic because I wasn't told to stop trying to conceive during my gut protocol, and a mistimed, excruciating period made me scared I was miscarrying again. The second--not being told prior to testing that the biotin in my supplements would lead to a skewed thyroid panel among other things--resulted in my spending hundreds more to do repeat blood tests.
I got some useful nutritional info out of the program, and a handful of great recipes (my nutrition point person, Loren, was great), and the GI map was good, but we are not wildly rich people: overall, the thousands I spent on FFM would've been much better spent going straight to IVF. Hoping we can still afford it.
Some resources I've found that could be just as helpful for thousands of dollars less: The Fertility Formula by Natalie Crawford, MD, and her "As a Woman" podcast; The Lucky Egg by Dr. Lucky Sekhon. Also possibly (haven't read it yet, but it seems to hit a lot of the nutritional notes we covered in FFM) 9 Months That Count Forever: How Your Pregnancy Diet Shapes Your Baby's Future by Jessie Inchauspé.
