5 Steps to prepare to start your family

30 July 2023

If you’re considering starting a family, it’s a good idea to begin preparing 6 to 12 months in advance. A great starting point is to consult with a practitioner who can evaluate your hormones and gut health. Given the challenges of questionable dietary choices and high toxic environmental loads, working on your health beforehand will give you the best chance of conceiving.

In my view, it’s more effective to make these improvements before you encounter potential challenges conceiving as wouldn’t you want to pass on the healthiest gut microbes possible to your future child.

It’s also important for your partner to follow similar steps, as his health impacts sperm quality and his overall ability to support you through pregnancy, childbirth, and parenthood. These are the steps I took to prepare for my pregnancy.

STEP 1:

Switch to a whole food diet – this means trying to eat food that hasn’t been processed or refined. As much as possible eat organic and choose hormone free grass fed meat. Unfortunately our food may be sprayed with pesticides and other chemicals which are toxic to our bodies. Try to consume filtered water. Take your prenatal vitamins and other key nutrients.

STEP 2:

Be present to your energy levels: Do you wake up feeling energized? Do you experience mid afternoon crashes? Are you wired or tired? Are you burnt out? If there are issues around energy levels, now is a good time to address them. In our clinic, we focus on improving energy by addressing stress, sleep, lifestyle factors and using targeted herbs, minerals and vitamins to build energy reserves back into your system.

STEP 3:

How is your gut health and vaginal health? Do you suffer from bloating, constipation, reflux, diarrhoea and those general IBS symptoms? Do you get thrush or bacterial vaginosis? These are all signs that your gut or vaginal microbiome are not balanced. At the clinic we use testing and treatment to balance this so that you feel good and you also pass on healthy microbes to your future baby.

STEP 4:

Stress is a major factor to optimising your body and preparing for fertility. Working through marital and family issues before conceiving and developing strategies for managing stress is really important. Regular acupuncture is a great way to balance the nervous system prior to conceiving. Brainstorming ideas with your partner on how you are both going to support each other during pregnancy and having a newborn is important. Things to chat about: meal services, family support or paid external support and who in your inner circle will be there for you?

STEP 5:

Hormone health can be a key issue for fertility. Exploring symptoms around your cycle and correcting these can be important. Do you have PMS, irregular cycles or period pain? We offer blood tests and specialised testing to look at these in more detail as well as looking at possibilities such as endometriosis and PCOS.

Addressing these things prior to conceiving places you in the best place to fall pregnant and even if you do not immediately, you are in the healthiest of places to support falling pregnant with medical fertility treatments with a network of practitioners, that you have built over this period, that you trust.

Theses blog posts are not there to treat or diagnose. Please always consult a medical practitioner in regards to any health concerns you have. If you would like to make an appointment please contact us on [email protected].

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