I’m one of eight children, so when it came to a time in my life that I was ready to have children, I didn’t foresee that falling pregnant would be an issue for me, sure I had ‘Mum’s Genes I thought, it will be grand! How wrong I was!
I was 38 years old, married 5 years but still no success in a positive pregnancy test! I was certainly feeling the pressure of the old ticking clock by this stage. We both desperately wanted a family. With friends and family falling pregnant what seemed like all around me. I felt lost, incredibly sad, confused as to why my body wasn’t working, worried if we would ever fall pregnant and have a family.
We decided to try IVF given my age, my follicle reserve was also very low. I had a 0.04% chance of falling pregnant the specialist told me. After our first failed cycle we looked to see what other therapies we could do to improve our chances of conception. We learned Transcendental Meditation (TM) and cleaned up our diet (apart from the odd takeout and eating out, we felt we ate really clean).
We had a much more successful 2nd IVF cycle, increased number of embryos better quality and higher grades but sadly our implantation was not successful at all, we were left devastated and lost again. Even in this despair time, I recognised that the small changes we had made with cleaning up our diet and learning TM had given influenced the increase and quality of our embryos.
Six months later, we decided to give my body a break and just focus on ourselves, which we did, out of the blue were lucky to fall pregnant naturally but sadly miscarried, 3 months later. It felt bittersweet to receive a positive pregnancy result only for it to be taken away from us. I found this time upsetting and challenging we had come so close. It was hard to come to terms with the loss, I felt like everywhere I looked during this time in my life, there was a pregnant woman. Although I was happy for them, inside I felt awful.
It was on recovery from our miscarriage and failed IVF attempts that a friend recommended seeing a Naturopathic Nutritionist. I’d never heard of them before but was open to trying anything to increase our chances of conception.
We felt we had nothing to lose, we had spent 10,000’s of our money on IVF cycles. So, spending on our own health seemed like a positive move anyway.
We were both seen individually by the Nutritionist and given a tailored Nutritional, Supplement and Lifestyle plan specific to our own needs. Within a couple of weeks of starting our plan, we both felt so much more energetic, our sleep had improved, we felt less stressed and more able to cope with the challenges of our demanding jobs. We both experienced weight loss, which was a huge bonus. I felt my head was clearer at work in comparison to the brain fog I’d experience previously. I was less anxious and much more balanced. Overall, we both felt the best we had in our whole life.
After 3.5 months, keeping with the diet and lifestyle recommendations by the Naturopathic Nutritionist, I fell pregnant naturally. It was totally unexpected, and we were just over the moon. I had the healthiest pregnancy and labour, my first child Erin, at the age of 40.
The education and learnings we experienced when trying to conceive, feeding our bodies the right nutrients they needed to thrive and grow a baby stayed with us and helped us a 2nd time to conceive naturally with my son Ewan, I was aged 44 then and again my pregnancy was just amazing , baby arrived happy and healthy.
As a result of this positive experience, I felt so strongly that our chances of conception had increased due to the changes we made individually to our Nutrition and Lifestyle. How jointly this gave us a better chance of conception. I also felt it gave us some control back at a time we had lost all control in our life.
I was passionate about wanting to educate others who felt lost on their fertility journey. I wanted to help them realise that there is always hope that they can take back some control of their bodies, feed it the right nutrients for them and improve their chances of conception naturally or with the support of IVF.
I returned to my studies again when my youngest was 1.5years old and qualified as a Naturopathic Nutritionist at the College of Natural Medicine in Edinburgh. It was an incredible hard graft, tougher than my degree or post graduate course. So, I was delighted to qualify in December 2020, and now work with many women and sometimes men on their Hormone issues, and fertility journey.
If you’re interested to finding out how to prepare your body for conception and improving your chances of a healthy pregnancy, labour, and post pregnancy. Send me a DM or click on the link in my bio for my website. There you can book a free 30-minute discovery call to find out more, about how I can support you.
Comments