Of all of life’s challenges, your fertility journey is one that may just test in ways that take you to the brink.
All the challenges that come with conceiving can give rise to so many highly charged emotions. It’s an often hidden experience, and can at times be excruciating, and lonely, and all-consuming.
There is now an entire industry available to help medically with fertility . The journey can become one of a regime of charting everything that your body produces, from temperature to mucus; perhaps being faced with boxes and boxes of medication to increase the success of the various methods of assisted reproduction techniques which are available.
It’s overwhelming.
But. Where are YOU in all of this? Where is the WOMAN that you are?
The seeds of my passion for working with fertility come from my parents’ struggle with having a baby.
They were married in 1955 when the vast networks of fertility clinics and support that we have in 2015 didn’t exist. With my parents no longer alive to really gain an insight to their struggle, a dear family friend shared recently that it appeared anxiety was the main reason for my Mum and Dad not being able to conceive. Today they would have received the unexplained infertility diagnosis.
After 12 years of “trying” they took the adoption route and my older brother into their lives. Once they had their darling son to lavish their love and attention on, the focus changed. They did want another baby but still conceiving naturally was alluding them. They were about to start the process of adopting a baby girl three years after my brother when my Mum fell pregnant with me.
My parent’s story is heart-warming and inspiring. But it is also heart-breaking to know that anxiety was a huge contributing factor and the support for this back in the day was lacking.
If my passion for the work wasn’t strong enough, hearing that emotional aspects played such a huge role for them, it was truly career-affirming. Couples deserve the opportunity to find an oasis of peace when they are wading through such muddy waters.
And this is precisely what we have to offer at our next Love Your Belly workshop Your Road to Fertility Health. A place of calm and an opportunity to reconnect with yourself through learning abdominal massage.
Absolutely, the massage has physical benefits, but the emotional gains are really not to be underestimated. We really hope you can join us on Sunday 4 October.
I want to end this by thanking my big brother for supporting me in sharing our story. As he so generously said, even if it helps just one couple it’s done the job.
Leora is co-founder of Love Your Belly Workshops, and as the owner of Aura Mama offers Abdominal and Fertility Massage, EFT and Aromatherapy, all to support women’s health at all stages of life.
