I’ve been doing a lot of podcasts recently where I have the incredible privilege to share about pre-pregnancy wellness. On these podcasts, I get to dive into some concepts that I wasn’t able to cover in the book.
One of these that I’ve been reflecting on recently is the planes of change - and how that relates to fertility.
Within the domain of health, I think there are generally 3 planes of intervention:
- Physiological
- Psychological / emotional
- Spiritual
Let’s discuss each briefly.
The physiological plane is the one that I discussed the most in the book. These are chemical or structural changes in your body that can hamper your ability to conceive, such as inflammation, blood sugar dysregulation or hormone imbalances.
I also touched on the psychological piece in the book. This is where reproductive anxiety comes in. There are mental and emotional stressors that can come along with trying to conceive. For example, media messages may have you worrying that you “waited too long” or that you are “too old”. It is also true that stress can manifest physiologically (through cortisol).
Lastly, there is the spiritual piece, which I haven’t touched on much. After working with many couples struggling to conceive, I understand that often when we cannot identify challenges on the physiological or psychological planes, the challenge may reside on the spiritual plane. What do I mean by this? I’ll give you one example - years ago, I worked with a woman who had been trying to conceive for 18 months at the time she came to see me. We worked together for 6 months on diet, lifestyle and supplementation interventions. She made incredible progress on her lab markers. Then, one day, she came to see me to share the following: they just found out that her partner had no viable sperm…and in reflecting upon their experience, she realized that she was no longer attracted to her partner. Coincidence? Likely not. I understand that trying to conceive can be an incredibly taxing time for a couple - and it is bound to shake things up. And attraction can be a fluid thing over the course of a relationship. However, there may also be another level to consider where our bodies are incredibly wise and they are trying to tell us something. I’ve also seen this happen where someone has deep-seated, unresolved issues with their own parents - and it feels like they’re being called to address that before stepping into a parenthood role of their own. Again, we all have stuff with our parents, but that's not what I'm talking about. You'll know if this applies to you. In other instances, I have seen highly type A women with no apparent physiological dysregulation who try to control every step of the journey - and it is only when they completely surrender that they conceive.
Obviously, these are just hypotheses. Unlike with the physiological side of health and fertility, I can’t confirm that any of this is true. I can just make observations - and notice if things resolve once someone focuses on the spiritual side of the equation as well. If we take a step back, sometimes there are lessons waiting for us in these experiences if we are willing to see them.
Anyway, this probably took a turn that you weren’t expecting, so I will leave it at that for now. Just some food for thought. I am a HUGE fan of testing as you know, but I think I would be remiss not to mention that getting pregnant can be about more than just your iron levels. We are interconnected beings and these different planes interact with and influence one another.