Learning to take care of yourself while trying to conceive will lay the groundwork for taking care of yourself when you're finally a par

Five Ways To Help A Friend Through Pregnancy Loss This week Homegrown Babies of Asheville published a guest blog I wrote on the topic of perinatal loss. Click here to read more. Allison Ramsey is a licensed professional counselor and fertility counseling specialist in the Asheville area. She’s a member of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, and completed their certificate training in mental health counseling for infertility. Contact her to start feeling better. #A

A Diet Hack for Fertility I'm not usually one for diet hacks of any kind, but when I read this blogpost from Creating a Family I knew I had to share it. So often when women have trouble conceiving they start investigating all the things they shouldn't do - don't drink alcohol, don't over exercise, don't stay up too late, don't google all of your symptoms, all of this don'ting feels like deprivation. Finally we have some research-backed information on something to add to your

Do What Works You're here again. At that milestone that was once way out into the future when you thought for sure you'd be pregnant. Maybe it's a significant birthday or the day after a friend's wedding. Maybe your best friend has had 2 children all during the time you've been trying to conceive. You're frustrated that you've done everything you can to get to where you want to be and you feel like you've been standing still for months, or even years. Women who are trying to

Coping with Infertility as a Stepparent Creating a family certainly doesn't always go the way people expect it will. Some people are lucky to find each other a little later in life and there are a lot of benefits of that - knowing yourselves better, having careers, being more grown up! And sometimes relationships bring with them step children. Anyone who has had this experience knows there are pros and cons. And that is definitely the case when it comes to infertility. Often

Envisioning Fertility Success Like a good Ashevillian I was mountain biking this weekend. I’m newish to the sport and was becoming aware of the process of my mind looking for hazards and trying to avoid them. I started to notice that sometimes when I saw a rock I’d like to avoid, I ended up hitting it directly. So I started trying instead to look at the path I wanted to take. Focusing intently on the clear path in front of me as a opposed to the obstacle I didn’t want to get

Facebook is Ruining Your Life It’s happening on a daily basis now. You open up Facebook and see your friend from high school with her precious family of 4. That coworker who got married at the same time you did, is pregnant with her second child in the time it’s taken you to not have any children. You see these women have the thing you want - pregnancy, a family. And despite your hard work you haven’t been able to achieve it. You feel like a failure in the face of their succe

Tired of Driving to the Fertility Clinic There are roughly 1,028 fertility clinics in the United States. That’s great news if you live in a city with one. But for residents of certain cities or states, you’re probably driving an hour or two to the closest center for your treatment. Deciding to move on from your gynecologist to a reproductive endocrinologist is daunting on it’s own. You must make more time for appointments, scheduling tests, recovery, and potentially ultrasoun

When To Switch From Your Gynecologist to a Fertility Clinic When women begin thinking about starting a family, it is exciting and scary at first. They might go to their gynecologist for a check up and make sure everything is good to go. The gynecologist gives the greenlight and says come back in six months (if you’re over 35) or a year (if you’re under 35). However, these are rough estimates. If you feel like something is wrong, you can request more in depth testing to see wh

Infertility is Officially a Disease I was excited to read this article last week that reports the American Medical Association supporting the World Health Organization designation of infertility as a disease. Okay, excited is a strong word, but let me explain. One of the biggest complaints I hear from my counseling clients with infertility is how lonely it is. Because major medical establishments have declared it a disease, there may be impact on how infertility is seen by ou

Insurance Coverage for Infertility Expanded in New Jersey On May 1, 2017, the New Jersey Governor Chris Christie signed a law that improves and expands infertility coverage. This is exciting news because of the inclusivity it offers. The highlights are: Women with same sex partners and women without partners can now qualify for infertility coverage. The law adopts a medical definition of infertility - “a disease or condition that results in the abnormal function of the reprod

Infertility Awareness Week - Zoom Out, There's More to Life Than Trying To Conceive It's Infertility Awareness week again, and this post is for all of you who have been all too well aware of infertility in the past months or years. Let's take this Awareness Week to have a different take on TTC. Having a baby means everything. You want it more than you’ve wanted anything and you’re willing to do anything to have one. But when you’re working to get something you want, your view

Infertility: Should You Go To A Baby Shower? Anyone who has ever had difficulty conceiving knows going to a baby shower can be the apex of pain. You have come to find yourself doing everything you can to avoid babies and pregnant people most of the time, and baby showers are all about both. An easy answer to the invitation is “politely decline.” But when you are working on trying to conceive (TTC), it is all too easy to make your focus like a laser beam on getting pregnant. Y

The Grief of Infertility The road to have a child looks different for everyone. However for those that didn’t get pregnant in their first six to twelve months of trying, it can look more different than you ever imagined. As with any road trip, you need pit stops. There are so many times along the journey that you need to stop, collect yourself, grieve, and consciously move into the next phase of trying to conceive. When I was younger my family and I would take a five hour ro