How to support a friend or loved one going through (in) fertility💕.
If you’re friend or loved one still isn’t holding her baby in her arms, it’s likely she’s still in her fertility journey.
Reach out to her your support can make all the difference while she’s trying to navigate this very difficult time💕.
I remember a client telling me she was finding it hard that her friends who had initially supported her after her miscarriage, had stopped checking in with her.
Often I believe people are coming from a good place, and it can be that they simply don’t know what to say to someone experiencing loss or grief, and may be concerned what they say could upset that person, unintentionally. Sometimes in these cases we may need to reach out for support ourselves, tell a supportive friend how we are feeling, or that we are struggling.
Finding the right words to say to your friend or a loved one on their fertility journey can be difficult, so here’s some ideas:
💕Ask your friend how they are.
💕Let them know you care.
💕If they are having a difficult time, tell them your sorry to hear that...
💕Ask them if there’s anything they need.
💕Understand if they need space.
💕Let them feel heard if they want to talk, whether that’s about their ferility jouney or something else.
💕Let them know you support their decision whatever that may be.
💕Don’t be tempted to give advise unless they ask you specifically, they’ve likely researched anything and everything already, and everyone’s fertility journey is different and very personal to them.
💕Even if you’ve been through something very similar yourself, their experience and how they are coping may be very different to yours.
💕And lastly if your friend has experienced pregnancy loss, please don’t tell her at least she knows she can get pregnant, or at least she lost it early. Believe me this won’t be helpful to them, and will totally dismiss and undermine how they may be feeling.
Ultimately it’s just about being there for them💕.
I know from listening to my clients, for many women losing a pregnancy no matter how early on, it changes them, they felt like a mum from the moment they saw that positive pregnancy test. And many will still recall their due date and this can be very difficult for them when they hear friends around them have got pregnant in general, but especially if it’s a similar due date to theirs.
What have you found has helped you?
Recurring UTIs due to vaginal dysbiosis
Recurring UTIs is a subject I am extremely passionate about, having suffered the excruciating agony of chronic UTIs myself for many many years. Around the age of 35 I was told there was nothing they could do for me other than to take antibiotics. Fortunately my life journey led me to train in the area of reproductive holistic health and I’m now UTI free😊🙏.
Urinary tract infections are a bacterial infection, that plague so many women (men, children and the elderly too for that matter) around the world.
I literally feel nauseous when I look at my old packets of antibiotics prescribed to me whenever I had cystitis, and then as a long term preventative to take prior to sex to prevent the onset of another one.
They make me feel nauseous not only because of the association of fear attached to them with the UTIs, which takes me right back to the hell I use to go through when I’d get that first sensation of another UTI coming on, but also because that is how they would literally make me feel after I took one, one of the many side effects.
I only got a UTI when I was in a relationship brought on after having sex. I tried everything over the years, cranberry juice, D-mannose, peeing immediately after sex, making sure my partner was keeping as clean as he could, but nothing touched it. The only thing that worked for me, and for the many other women I’ve spoken to with chronic UTIs, was a 5 day course of ABs, or taking a low dose before sex to as a preventative, or using a barrier (condoms).
Through further training in the reproductive microbiome I discovered I had vaginal dysbiosis, a displacement of optimal vaginal microflora, basically I had more of the bad guys and not enough of the good guys.
I changed my internal environment, specifically the environment of my vagina by repopulating it with more of the good guys, and maintaining it. I now want to get the message out there to other women with similar issues to me, that there is a more natural, holistic and effective way to eradicate recurring UTIs from your life, by simply bringing your body back into balance..
Gaynor x
Fertility Mindset💜
How can I get into a positive mindset when I’ve been trying to conceive for such a long time?
I’m going to give one of my clients as an example to help answer this question. When my client came to see me she had been TTC for 4 years, had low AMH, a short cycle, and diagnosed with ‘unexplained infertility’, told in no uncertain terms she needed to have IVF. At that moment in time IVF wasn’t the route my client was ready to take, she wanted to know why she couldn’t get pregnant, and felt there must be other ways, more natural ways out there to help her. My client reached out to her family and was recommended to try reflexology, searched google and found me.
Every time I saw my client she would try her best to be positive, but after 4 years TTC unsuccessfully, understandably it wasn’t easy for her, often saying it’s never going to happen 😔. I would try to explain that every single cell in her body was listening to everything she was saying, feeling, believing, and how her body could interpret that as danger, being under threat, not the right time to be making a baby, and just try to be a little more conscious of that as hard as that can be at times.
I would remind her at each session to give it time, we needed to work through at least 3 cycles first to help regulate her cycle, so let’s see how we get on and we can review after that, perhaps see what other further diagnostic testing we could get. I also told her not to rule out IVF completely, if we neeed to call on it down the line it was there.
My client was so dedicated with everything else, taking onboard every single one of my recommendations to the letter, hydration, nutrition, to getting into good sleeping patterns, but was still struggling with her mindset, but each week she came we talked a little more, reinforcing the importance of that gut-brain connection via the vagus nerve, how the body receives messages.
We talked about how if you wanted a particular thing like a career move, or if someone wanted to attract the right partner into their life for example, they would imagine what they would look like, their personality, ethics, their outlook on life, and be focused on attracting that sort of person, setting the intention, even make space for that person to come into their life, their home, putting the intention out there to the universe, doing everything they could to attract that man. Yet women can struggle when it comes to setting those similar intentions for their baby, the idea of imaging that baby in their arms, what it looks and smells like, can be a step too far for some women, and yet it wouldn’t necessarily be a step too far when used for imaging what your future partner would look like, so why can’t it be used here?
Some women may buy a gift for their baby, a tangible object, I had another client do this when preparing for her IVF treatment, she had got herself in the right mindset and this felt right for her.
We talked about affirmations, giving yourself a little affirmation to do each day, repeating it over and over till you really start to believe it, reminding yourself of just how far you’ve come with all the healthy lifestyle changes you’ve made. This felt more comfortable for my client, and she had one along the lines of she was in happy place. her body was healthy and nourished and ready for her baby.
Eventually she bought herself a little bracelet, with a little message engraved on a charm, so she could touch it every day to remind herself her mind and body was in a good place.
My client is now pregnant, she’s seen the baby’s heartbeat, and she’s now able to share her wonderful news with her loved ones💜
The Two Week Wait
When my clients ask me if there’s anything else they can be doing during the two week wait, my tips are:
1. Keep busy, whether that’s with your work, projects, organising your paperwork, tidying out your drawers, kitchen cupboards, anything to keep your mind off thinking about it.
This isn’t about keeping busy to distract from painful feelings, this is purely about keeping to a good routine.
2. Talk to someone you trust about how your feeling.
3. Go for daily walks in nature, breathing in all that lovely fresh air, and walking helps to promote circulation/blood flow around the body including the uterus.
4. Do more of whatever makes you feel happy😊💕.
5. Continue with your fertility yoga🧘♀️.
6. If you enjoy meditating continue with that, or listen to a calming podcast to help you stay relaxed, maybe try @calm you can try it for free for 7 days.
7. Stay off google, you’ve done everything you can now to get to this point so there’s nothing more to add into the mix.
8. Continue with your healthy eating making sure to include lots of warming, nourishing foods like soups, casseroles, and fish pie, made with salmon and mackerel and a lovely sweet potato mash topping😋. Warming foods help to keep you and your uterus warm, as you are in the luteal stage of your cycle now so we need temperatures to stay elevated.
And keep your feet nice and warm too, as the feet are the channel to the uterus, via the kidney channel that originates from the sole of the foot and runs up the ankle and calf to the pubic area.
9. Stay hydrated, by now you’ll be adverse to drinking your room temp, 2L per day filtered water.
10. Keep to your routine, getting up at the same-time everyday, and asleep by 10:30pm the latest, taking in 8-9 hrs sleep every night.
11. Have a break from social media, it’ll do you the world of good.
12. Only connect with friends and family who are supportive of your fertility journey, and aren’t going to bombard you with loads of questions.
13. Take a nice soak in an epsom salt bath 🛀 (make sure it’s not too hot) .
Most of all know you’ve done everything you can up to this point to help your fertility💜.
Love Gaynor x
#twoweekwait
PCOS and promoting ovulation naturally when TTC
PCOS and ovulation
I’ve been working with clients who have been diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) for a while now, often symptomatic of irregular/prolonged cycles, anovulatory cycles (no ovulation), or excess male hormone (androgen) levels, and high AMH. Weight gain can be another factor but not necessarily, certainly not with all the clients I’ve worked with.You may also have polycystic ovaries, when your ovaries develop fluid-filled follicles, which can hinder ovulation.
Overall clients tend to have high fertility which is a bonus, but all the follicles are competing to reach maturity and as a result they may not ovulate, or if they are it’s pretty hard to pinpoint due to irregularity of their cycles, so can make timing sex difficult,
The first thing I focus on when working with clients who have PCOS is their diet, just checking they are following a healthy, predominantly organic plant based diet, by following the rainbow to incorporate all the different colours of fruits (typically apples and berries low GI), and vegetables with their abundance of fibre, nutrients and antioxidants. Diets high in fibre including legumes, chickpeas, kidney’s beans, lentils, nuts and seeds, is crucial for anyone with PCOS as it helps to support insulin sensitivity, and oestrogen excretion from the body by way of our stools. Flaxseeds in particular contain lignans that bind to testosterone for excretion from the body.
A diet high in omega-3 is essential too to make tissue hormones and cell membranes, flaxseeds, chia seeds, hemp seeds are great plant-based sources of omega-3s, as are oily fish like SMASH, salmon (organic), mackerel, anchovies, sardines, and herring, as well as great sources of protein. You should include a good quality protein with each meal, plant-based protein, and if consuming fish or meat, ideally it needs to be organic or ‘proper’ free range so you aren’t taking in any excess hormones, or antibiotics.
The more varied your diet is, consuming an array of plant-based foods, the better your gut health will be, as low diversity gut microbiome has been linked to type 2 diabetes, women with high insulin are at risk gestational disbetes during pregnancy.
Women with PCOS also need to be having healthy fats with each meal to ensure their blood sugars stay nice and stable, such as cold-pressed olive oil, avocado oil, flaxseeds, walnuts, chia seeds, hemps seeds, coconut oil, pumpkin seeds, avocados. Cutting out any processed sugar, processed foods, wheat and gluten and pasteurised dairy, that can irritate the delicate gut lining leading to a leaky gut, and cause excess mucous and inflammation in the body. Stick to pseudo-grains instead of wheat, like amaranth, quinoa and buckwheat, considered complete proteins because they contain all 9 essential amino-acids like lysine, they also contain folic acid, zinc and B vitamins, and vitamins E and C, are rich in flavonoids and phytonutrients, and have a low-glycemic index to avoid those sugar spikes.
I also look at reducing their exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which can override their own endocrine system. So exposure to non-organic chemicals in skin, hair and cleaning products, bleached sanitary towels, tap water, chlorine (get a filter), and BPA plastics (read my blog on my website re heavy metals https://www.gaynoralmondreflexology.co.uk/phdi/p1.nsf/supppages/6332?opendocument&part=6 )
We also look at their hydration to help get everything flowing in and out of the cells, staying hydrated also helps with their stress levels too.
I then focus on promoting ovulation, helping to regulate their cycle using natural stimulation, incorporating relaxing techniques to help with stress, activating the parasympathetic nervous system, so they move away from ‘fight, flight, or freeze’ mode,Into rest and repair. Working on all the areas on the feet that relate to all the systems in the body, in an attempt to get things moving.
Charting basal body temperature can be difficult for clients with PCOS, so I tend to tell them to follow the fertile cervical mucous, egg white, for timing sex.
90 days is a good starting point, by then some clients cycles may have become more regulated, showing signs of clear ovulation detected by OPK’s, scans, fertile cervical mucous. And for many of my clients with PCOS this has resulted in natural conception. If clients cycles are proving difficult to regulate, with no clear ovulation, it may be that we refer them back to their GP for further testing, often Clomid may be prescribed to help promote ovulation, in addition to continuing with refkexology treatments.
“Toxic metals may induce hormonal changes affecting the menstrual cycle, ovulation, and female fertility.”
What extra things can you do to help make your body as fertile as possible to get you even closer to having a baby?
Spending lots of money on supplements because you’ve read about their benefits online or on a fertility group, isn't always the best approach if you havent tried to reduce your personal toxic load first.
Studies have shown that heavy metals can impact both male and female fertility, not only can we be exposed to toxins in the work place, living near a chemical plant, or a main road, but they can be found in our home too.
So I challenge you to take a look around your house today and just see if there’s anything you can replace for a non-toxic version. You don’t have to do it all it once (unless you’re ready to hit the ground running 🏃🏻♀️), you can do it bit-by-bit, as and when they need replacing and swap for a natural version
The Kitchen cupboard under the sink
What toxic heavy metal cleaning products do you keep in there, could you change for a natural organic version? Furniture spray, air-fresheners, bleach, clothes washing tablets.
Cookware
Aluminium pans and Teflon non-stick pans, contain heavy metals which will impact your fertility, substitute for stainless-steel, cast iron, glass. What about your kettle is it plastic, would you be ready to swap it for a glass kettle? https://www.beeco.green/best-plastic-free-kettles/
While we are in the kitchen, do you drink tap water or use a water filter?
By drinking tap water you may be ingesting chlorine, fluoride and mercury.
Your bathroom
What products do you use to wash your hair and body, brush your teeth, clean the loo and bath with? What about your sanitary towels/tampax, are they non-toxic, organic versions, or have they been chemically treated with bleach to make them whiter than white? What about toilet roll, if you’re using a scented version get rid of it now and swap for an unbleached version. Make-up, moisturiser, false-tan, all of these products contain oestrogen disrupting chemicals, and some can be carcinogenic, which will override your own hormones.
What about your garden? Are you using anything toxic to kill you weeds that you could be inhaling? Glyphosate found in weed killer might kill the weeds but what’s it doing to your insides when inhaled?
What about large fish consumption?
Eating tuna, swordfish, non-organic salmon, you are at risk of ingesting mercury.
Pesticides and herbicides
Taking in glyphosate-based herbicides and other pesticides when consuming non-organic fruit and vegetables, wheat based products.
Doing anything and everything you can to make you and your partners body as fertile as possible, to improve your chances of carrying a healthy baby to term is sometimes exactly what it takes😊💜.
Quote reference: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4673771/
How can I help support you on your fertility journey?
My role in your fertility journey is very much about supporting and empowering you to take back control of your own body, by actively doing something to help improve your health both physically and emotionally, to optimise your chances of a positive outcome, whether that be natural conception or assisted fertility such as Clomid, IUI, IVF, ICSI, or egg or sperm donation💜.
How can clinical reflexology help my fertility?
I’ve been working with couples on their fertility journey for over 7 years now, and what I actually do is a little bit more involved than simply pressing this point to get that result. However that said, fertility reflexology is pretty awesome in its own right, working on an energetic level, it really does help to get ‘things moving’ quickly, unblocking emotions to get energy flowing freely around the body.. Promoting blood flow to all the systems in our body, carrying oxygen, nutrients, glucose and hormones to every single one of our 100 trillion cells, like the cells in our brain, ovaries, and testes, crucial for reproductive health. It also helps to shift sluggish, stagnant lymph to encourage the elimination of toxins from our body, so our liver works more effectively able to rid the body of excess hormones, and able to deal better with any IVF drugs (if that’s a route you are taking). It has a real calming effect on our body-mind, helping us to feel less stressed by encouraging the release of the neurotransmitters dopamine, the ‘feel good hormone’, serotonin which helps to regulate our mood and sleep, oxytocin which helps promote bonding with our partner (so we can get down to trying for a baby), and endorphins, our body’s natural pain relief, the happy hormones, which can be suppressed by elevated levels of cortisol when we feel stressed. Even with all of this, it still blows me away every time I get a client messaging me to say they’re pregnant. But this is just one aspect of what’s involved when you start working with me to help you get closer to achieving your baby goals.
Taking a holistic approach
I take a completely holistic approach to my treatments when working with fertility clients, looking at all aspects of your health as I believe nothing ever happens in isolation. This is why we shouldn’t just zone in on one particular system such as the endocrine system, or the reproductive system to help clients presenting with infertility, unexplained infertility, sub-fertility, or other reproductive issues. Although these systems are pretty important for fertility, and we may have issues manifesting there like fibroids, cysts, irregular or painful periods, and conditions such as PCOS or endometriosis, these are actually symptomatic of something else that’s going on in the body-mind, as not only can the kind of food we eat affect our health, but what we are thinking and feeling too.
Homeostasis
Our body is constantly trying to achieve homeostasis, but unfortunately if we are not giving our body the raw ingredients it needs to thrive, constantly stressed, dehydrated, and flooding our body with toxins on a daily basis, problems can start to occur. Eating processed foods, damaged fats, drinking too much alcohol, smoking, vaping, exposing ourselves to the damaging effects of radiation on a daily basis from microwaves, mobile phones, X-rays. The chemicals that we breathe in from the cleaning products we use in the home or at work, what we put on our hair and skin, medication such as the contraceptive pill, antibiotics, pesticides sprayed on the food we eat, plastic that we drink water from, or wrap our food in (think you get the idea), all contain endocrine disrupting chemicals, constantly putting our body under stress, increasing dehydration, impacting our gut health, hormones, energy and wellbeing, and eventually imbalances can manifest and disease can develop.
Reproductive System
Sadly it’s often the reproductive system that can take the hit first as it’s not considered crucial for survival. It can become an ideal dumping ground for the liver to store any built-up toxins it’s unable to eliminate properly from the body, and for the record stress is a massive toxin too. It may be a slow process at first built up over the years, and sadly it’s not until we start to try to conceive, that 1 in 7 of us suddenly find it’s not as easy as we first thought it might be.
We can’t possibly eliminate our exposure to every toxin out there, but with awareness we can certainly help to ‘reduce’ our exposure, and potentially turn things around, as our body has the ability to heal itself given half the chance.
Leaky Gut
As all the systems in our body are linked via a network of sophisticated pathways, all working in harmony together, what’s going on in one system will naturally have an impact on all the other systems, upsetting the apple cart so to speak. If we are eating an unhealthy diet with a limited variety of plant based foods, needed for their high fibre content for our gut microbiome to thrive, and teaming with nutrients needed for our cells to function optimally, it’s going to lead to poor gut health, low diversity of our gut microbiome, and gut permeability, aka a ‘leaky gut’. This allows undigested particles of food, bacteria and viruses, to pass across into the bloodstream, causing increased inflammation and mucous to form in the body, leading to ill health. Excess inflammation in the body caused by poor gut health, has been linked to many diseases such as depression, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and infertility.
Metabolism
Metabolism is the key to optimum health, the ability of our cells to convert the micronutrients we absorb through the intestinal wall, from the food we eat into energy. When our digestive system is compromised we won’t be eliminating toxins properly or absorbing nutrients effectively, which can impact the quality of our eggs and sperm. We need nutrients to help thicken up our endometrium ready to nourish a growing baby, without sufficient nutrients it can hinder implantation, and may increase our chances of miscarriage. Our liver may become sluggish as it becomes overwhelmed by all the excess toxins, and will also struggle to remove excess hormones from our body, impacting our endocrine system, leading to oestrogen dominance, inflammation, and weakening our immune system. We may start to see problems with our menstrual cycle, becoming irregular, painful or heavy, we may even stop ovulating, hindering our ability to conceive. Hopefully you can see how our gut health is pretty key not only to our reproductive health, but for our whole body-mind to maintain optimum health and wellbeing.
Emotional Stressors
But it’s not just the physical aspects like diet, or lifestyle that can impact our fertility, it’s the emotional stressors too, although the two are most certainly linked. Our body is made up of 100 trillion cells constantly in communication with one another, literally listening to everything we say, think and feel. If you’re not in the best place emotionally, feeling stressed, anxious, or fearful, your gut-brain axis linked via the vagus nerve, (it’s a thing hence why we get the term ‘a gut feeling’), will translate these messages to all the systems in your body to be on alert as things aren’t quite right, ready for “fight, flight or freeze” when that tiger arrives.
Fight Flight or Freeze
When your body’s in ‘defence‘ mode, rather than ‘growth and repair’, it’s less likely to want to start helping you to create a baby, your immune system becomes overactive, ready to jump on anything that it thinks shouldn’t be there, in some cases this could be a developing embryo (you may've heard of natural killer cells). Your reproductive system gets neglected, blood flow is diverted elsewhere to where it’s needed most to make haste your escape, instead of flowing to the ovaries or testes, to help nourish developing new follicles, and healthy new sperm with nutrients and oxygen, to be converted into energy by our mitochondria (the little powerhouses of our cells). Sperm cells need more energy than any other cell in the body, to be able to swim the long journey all the way up to the Fallopian tubes, ready to fertilise an egg, it’s pretty much a triathlon.
Positive Changes
Now we know a little bit more about the factors at play impacting your fertility, we can start to implement some positive changes to help your body to work more harmoniously. Alongside regular fertility reflexology treatments to help regulate your cycle, we also look at your hydration levels, our cells would like to be around 70% water to function optimally, if not this will have an impact on egg and sperm quality. We also need proper hydration for fertile cervical mucous, so sperm can swim up it like a ladder leading up to the cervix. We look at your nutrition, you may be super healthy to begin with, but sometimes it’s helpful to get someone to look at your diet with fresh eyes just to see if anything can be improved upon, we recommend your partner takes onboard these healthy life style changes too, as it’s a 50:50 job making a baby😊. We look at your lifestyle incase anything pops up there that might be getting in the way of you conceiving, review any diagnostic tests you've had or haven’t had. And we look at your emotional health, as it’s so important to get in the right mindset ready for conception, talking through any external stressors, or emotional stressors that you may be carrying with you that could be getting in the way of you conceiving. Using my knowledge and experience of working with fertility clients both naturally and during medicated cycles (such as IVF and ICSI), to signpost you on to the right people to get any additional help that you may need.
If you would like more information please get in touch with me, you can drop me a text message, or call me on 07895 756252, or email me at hello@gaynoralmondreflexology.co.uk
I look forward to hearing from you,
Gaynor
© Copyright 2020 Gaynor Almond Reflexology
