Baby steps to boost fertility

FEAR, failure, loneliness — the emotional fall out of infertility is described in How to Get Pregnant, a new ebook.

Author and natural fertility practitioner, Sarah Leather, right, reflects the trials of thousands of Irish couples, through the stories of her clients.

How to get pregnant — 10 baby making success stories offers practical and emotional support to couples trying to conceive, and advice on diet, lifestyle, planning and psychological wellbeing. But it’s the honest, open accounts that make this ebook engrossing.

The stories follow multiple, failed fertility treatments, miscarriage, complications following a D&C after a miscarriage, and late pregnancies, and details the realities faced by women, and couples, in these situations. The stories relate the highs and lows of conception, the hormones, the hoping, the pregnancy tests, the doctor appointments, the scans and the juggling of all this with work and social constraints and, in many cases, caring for existing families.

Leather’s ebook features ten success stories, so while it can be difficult reading, at times, it remains upbeat. She peppers the ten success stories with practical tips on how to get pregnant, drawing on her 20 years of experience in natural-fertility treatments.

This is the latest resource manual available in her ebook series, following her 28-day conception guide, The Ultimate Fertility Diet. The previous ebook took couples through a lifestyle overhaul in four steps, beginning by setting goals and completing a life audit, followed by a full detox and new diet plan.

It forms part of her comprehensive, online advice service, thebabymakingclub.com, for couples seeking answers on issues surrounding infertility.

Through the website, and her online and personal clinics, Leather, also a trained nurse and homeopath, debunks the many myths surrounding infertility and sets couples on a practical path to optimise their chances of having a baby.

“My main motivation is to help and inspire women, and couples, who feel there is no hope for them. It’s just to give them inspiration to keep going,” she says.

“The stories are accounts from women conceiving in their 30s and 40s, up to the age of 49. I’m limited in how much I can actually tell people when I see them [during appointments], so the book serves as an additional point of reference,” she says.

Leather relies on her own experience, and on research carried out by Foresight, in Britain, and the Harvard Nurses Study, to back up her advice on the importance of diet and supplements, before and during pregnancy.

Besides a chapter on the benefits of acupuncture — which Leather says is reputed to help fertility by improving the function of the ovaries to produce better quality eggs, increase the blood flow to the uterus, and relax the patient — there is little advice from other ‘experts’.

“I didn’t want to blind anyone with science, or make the book too medically based. It’s a practical guide for people to use and move on with,” she says.

Though she’s a champion of the natural approach, Leather accepts that sometimes there’s no other option than fertility treatment.

“Many times, I’ve seen couples trying for three or four years who have not yet seen a doctor,” she says.

“But taking the IVF route can be made significantly more smooth by following the same principles of the natural method — diet, homeopathic supplements, minimal stress and an awareness of the potentially massive emotional fallout of failure.

“I would say between 40% and 50% of the people I see these days are either going to have, or are having, IVF treatments. Doing the groundwork first does seem to have an effect on the IVF treatment.”

The recurring theme in How to get pregnant – 10 baby making success stories is Leather’s ability to put clients at ease. Most of the ten case studies have gone through various stages of grief, or trauma, having experienced miscarriage or failure to conceive. The overriding theme through these clients’ personal accounts is Leather’s nurturing approach.

Siobhan’s story tells how, during an appointment, Leather promised to support the couple through their journey.

‘That was a huge comfort to us,’ she wrote.

A year after her initial consultation, Siobhan documented the changes she’d undergone, capturing, succinctly, the service that Leather offers.

‘By the time I went back for my first follow-up visit, in May, I felt great, had lost nearly a stone, had lots of energy, but, most importantly, I felt well emotionally.’

* www.babymakingclub.com