Fertility: From Preconception Through Pregnancy and Postpartum

Factors that contribute to our fertility, Image of woman holding her belly

There are many complex factors that contribute to our fertility. Physically, we can’t really isolate the factors that contribute to fertility from those that influence a healthy pregnancy and postpartum period. Our bodies do not operate as independent units, but as a complex, orchestrated symphony of chemical signaling, each part playing its piece, carefully coordinated with all the other parts. When a few trombones and a couple of clarinets are not playing in sync, the whole symphony is disrupted.

Whether you and your partner choose to use fertility assistance or not, optimizing key areas of your health will help ensure the best possible outcomes.

These areas include:

  • Hormone health: This includes not just our main sex hormones, such as estrogens and progesterone, but also thyroid and adrenal hormones.

  • Inflammation: Inflammation simply refers to any action taken by the immune system to try and correct an underlying trigger. Since 75-80% of the immune system is in the gut, optimizing the gut microbiome is foundational to optimizing your fertility and postpartum experience.

  • Stress: It’s not just ‘in your head.’ Whether psychological/emotional or physical, stressors create physical changes in our body’s chemistry. This in turn influences our hormones and inflammation.

Some examples of areas we know how to investigate and treat that can have significant impacts on your fertility, pregnancy experience and postpartum health:

When should you consider focusing on these areas to support you and your partner’s optimal fertility? While it is never too late to support these areas of your health, the preconception period (6 months to 2 years before attempting to get pregnant) is the best time to lay these foundations. It can take time to understand what factors may benefit from the attention, as well as for the body to respond to therapeutic protocols. Often these areas took some time to get dysregulated, and may take some time to rebalance.

What can you do about it right now?

What you put in your mouth feeds both your gut microbiome and provides the building blocks and co-factors you need for your busy metabolism.

  • Eat a nutrient-dense, fiber-rich, plant-based diet. This means choosing whole foods over processed foods, eliminating flours and sugar and including nutritious animal products such as organic eggs, full-fat fermented dairy (such as yogurt and kefir), meat and fish.

Be mindful of mindfulness.

  • Many of us don’t even realize how busy we are, because we have lived in such a low to moderate state of stress and constant doing. Add in 1 to 3 ten minute ‘breaks’ in your day, such as a breathing exercise, a meditation app, or simply time when you do nothing. We can’t expect our body to know how to relax if we never let it practice.

While there is a lot more to fertility, pregnancy and the postpartum period (and a lot more which we need to know) these areas can have a big impact on your fertility journey.

Curious to learn more?

Join us for a talk on Saturday, November 16th at 1:30pm at the University of Richmond’s Jepson Alumni Center. More information coming soon here.

Want more support in understanding these factors in your health and fertility? Check out the Functional medicine approach here, and drop us an email at tressa@inhealthrva.com.

Tressa Breindel