Nothing gives me more back shivers than helping a couple conceive.
But it’s such a misunderstood area in PCOS.
When we are diagnosed with PCOS, we’re told things like “You’re going to struggle to conceive”. But this doesn’t have to be the case.
While you might not be ovulating or getting pregnant at that time, it doesn’t mean that you’ll never be able to ovulate or get pregnant. In most cases just need to tweak a few parts of your diet and lifestyle.
The secret is to find out what’s going wrong and address the root cause.
So that’s exactly what I outline on today’s podcast.
In this episode I explain that baking a baby is like baking a cake. This may seem simplistic, especially when there are so many complicated medical tests and treatments, and given the harrowing years so many of you had with your fertility journey.
But when it comes down to it, the process is straight forward, we need to make sure you’ve got all the right ingredients.
The 3 fertile ingredients are:
1. You need enough good quality ingredients
You can’t make a cake if you’re missing eggs, flour and butter (or you’re trying to substitute margarine for butter, woof), and you can’t make a baby if you don’t have a good quality egg and sperm.
2. Correct timing
Just like you need to cream the butter and sugar together before adding the dry ingredients to bake a cake, you also need correct timing to make a baby. You need to make sure you’re timing sex correctly so there is sperm waiting for the egg to be released i.e. pre ovulation. And of course, your body also needs to get it’s hormonal orchestra in sync so that you can ovulate.
3. You need to have a cake tin that stays intact long enough for the cake to finish baking.
If not, you’re going to end up with a big pile of goo on the bottom of your oven. Similarly, you need your uterine lining to be a nice habitable nest and you need enough progesterone for it to stay in place long enough for that fertilised egg to burrow in there. If not, then you’ll get your period before it’s had a chance to burrow in, or before the baby is able to produce its own progesterone at 12 weeks.
I use these three steps like a decision tree with any of my patients to identify where we need to focus. We go through each step and find out where the problem is.
“Are you ovulating? No? Okay that’s where we are going to start”
Then I implement my 5 step process to address that root cause. This is what I also outline in today’s podcast.
And in the most fortuitous timing, I have a great story to share with you on this.
As I’m writing this, it’s 6am in New Zealand, it’s still dark outside so I’m putting off my workout until it’s light and in the meantime checked my emails to see the subject line:
“Positive Test”
From one of my clients, and then, “I’m in shock”.
This gave me all of the back shivers, and while I’m so incredibly delighted for her, I’m not shocked.
Like me, she was told “You’re going to struggle to conceive” and while this pregnancy has been a few months in the making, we had a plan to work to.
We identified what fertile ingredients weren’t working, we then identified why they weren’t working (the root cause),we changed her diet and lifestyle to suit, and gave her a few extra supplement boosts.
She put in the work, got back ovulating, and then we just&