Hi I'm Rachael, a Fertility Nutritionist, currently undertaking a MSc in Clinical Nutrition and here to share my story, knowledge and experience as a way to help others.
To say that our journey to having a baby was brutal would be an understatement. My life was like an extended episode of Game of Thrones for the 3.5 years.
Shortly after my husband and I started trying to conceive I found out that I have a low egg reserve and we were told to move straight to IVF.
Our first clinic included immune tests, blood tests at 730am daily, sometimes twice a day, injections at 5am, lunchtime and in the evening. We only had 2 eggs retrieved, both fertilised but neither took. I felt like a huge failure.
3 months later I was ready to go again when I found out that we had fallen pregnant naturally- with twins, but neither developed a heartbeat. I had a D+C, heartbroken.
3 months after this we went for our second cycle. We had a much better cycle this time and I just knew it would work. The IVF “worked” but ended in an ectopic.
I needed two injections of methotrexate because an ectopic baby can’t be saved and my life was at risk because the first injection didn’t work. I didn’t have time to grieve the loss of the baby because I was being called to the hospital to be monitored twice daily.
6 months later I moved clinics and did another cycle. We genetically tested the embryos with PGT-A testing. I had 3 abnormal and one mosaic which was not a good start.
We agreed to do another cycle - we only had two embryos and they hatched on day 6 so I wasn’t hopeful. I was wrong, we had one normal.
We did two more cycles to try and bank more embryos but my body stopped responding to the medication.
We transferred my one normal, and got the gift of positive test. A lot of the trauma of the last 3 years hit me at what should have been a happy time.
297 injections, 6 IVF cycles and 3 lost babies later Felix came into the world.
Tailored nutrition paved the way for my body to heal physically and emotionally and I am lucky enough to be able to help my clients by understanding their bodies and genetic makeup and tailoring programmes for them. I work with clients to help at all stages of a fertility journey from pre-conception to taking them through an IVF cycle.
My clients get the benefit that I’ve lived it, I get it. I still have an embryo in storage and Felix is only a baby so this is still very current and real for me.
Here I will share useful tips, information and my experience as a way to try and help others desperately scrolling for hope.