NLP and Fertility

17/02/2011 by admin.

I have recently been using NLP (neuro linguistic programming ) to help me lose weight and have been really impressed with how effective it is a re-programming my brain to approach eating differently.

I did not realise immediately that it was NLP I was using, until I was chatting to my hairdresser at my last visit, and casually mentioned that I was using a hypnosis cd to help me lose weight post christmas, and that it was working ! She them smiled and said ‘Oh you are using NLP. I am training to be an NLP therapist’. We then chatted animately for the next couple of hours about NLP and while I was there I suspect she tested her powers on me, as I had the very bad habit (which I had had for about 10 years) of using my laptop while exercising on my exercise bike  She suggested that I might get more from my workout if I was not surfing the net at the same time. And do you know I have not done so since that appointment . The powers of persuasion. An added bonus is my back has also been much better, which I think may be due to my better posture while I am on my exercise bike.

Anyway I digress. The reason I am writing today is that many cases of infertility or subfertility are unexplained and in these cases NLP may have a positive role to play. The power of the mind to affect our health has been well documented, and the role stress plays in our fertility has also been well documented.

The defintion of NLP according to Wikipedia is

NLP is a controversial approach to psychotherapy and organizational change based on “a model of interpersonal communication chiefly concerned with the relationship between successful patterns of behaviour and the subjective experiences (esp. patterns of thought) underlying them” and “a system of alternative therapy based on this which seeks to educate people in self-awareness and effective communication, and to change their patterns of mental and emotional behaviour”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming

Whoo thats quite a mouthful, lets see if we can simplify it

Here is my definition of NLP as I understand it (please correct me if I’m wrong)

NLP is an alternative therapy based on reprogramming your mind, thoughts and words for success.

How can I learn NLP techniques ?

• NLP book
• NLP audiotapes or cds or via a download on your ipod
• NLP workshops
• from an NLP practioner

I have been using a book that I borrowed from our local library (Hypnodiet), which came with an audiobook on cd, which I loaded on to my ipod. I have found the audio very effective, and listen to it every morning before getting out of bed. Once I reach my target weight (nearly there), I should only need to listen to it once or twice a week or as required, if I feel myself slipping back into my old self defeating habits.

How can NLP help my fertility ?

1. In cases of unexplained infertility there may be a lot of stress which can iteself impair conception. Trying to conceive itself can be very stressful, and many couples feel pressure for it to happen quickly. There are many cases of couples with unexplained infertility trying for a long time without success and yet conceieving when they give up trying, take a break from trying or are referred for IVF. Using NLP techniques can help to relax the mind and body and prepare for natural conception and may remove some psychological barriers to conception that we are only recently beginning to recognise & understand.
2. NLP can be very helpful to couples going through IVF. Anyone who has been through IVF will tell you how stressful it is. Manageing the stress of the IVF process is very important and NLP as well as many other alternative therapies can help. NLP  for IVF would focus on keeping an open mind, visualising success and learning relaxation techniques as well as helping to cope with the bumpy ride.
3. NLP can be useful for couples who are trying again either after miscarriage or a failed IVF attempt when the pressure to succeed may seem all the more intense.

I am not an expert on NLP, and have only recently learned some of the techniques. I am hoping to learn a lot more about this interesting subject, as I have always believed that the mind plays an important role in our health & wellbeing.

If you are an NLP practitioner or have used NLP to help you either with fertility or other issues, then please do get in touch, we would love to hear from you. You can either leave a message in comments or e-mail us.

Posted in NLP & Fertility, NLP, Slimming, Weight loss, Womens Health | Print | 1 Comment »

Access Diagnostics ‘deal of the month’

15/02/2011 by Access Diagnostics Fertility.

This month we have introduced a ‘deal of the month’ to our fertility websites. It was originally going to be a deal of the week but a week seemed just too short, so it has evolved into ‘deal of the month’

We will have a different deal each month-if you have any suggestions for which products you would like us to offer as our ‘deal of the month’ then please do get in touch by e-mail or leave us a message in comments.

This months deal is 6 pre-filled Pre-Seed applicators for just £11.99          (this deal has now finished )

We guarantee that you will not find Pre-Seed cheaper anywhere in the UK. Order the 3 pack and get 5 Free ultra pregnancy tests packed with your order.

We also have the Pre-Seed 40g multi-use tubes with 9 applicators in stock for just £13.49 with free 1st class UK Delivery

Remember to use online coupon code CJG5 to get an extra 5% discount on your Pre-Seed, and 1st class UK delivery is currently Free at our fertility website www.accessdiagnostics.co.uk

Click here to see Access Diagnostics Pre-Seed deal

Posted in Access Diagnostics Discount, Pre-Seed coupon, Access Diagnostics voucher, Fertility Lubricant, Access Diagnostics Coupon Code, Pre-Seed Lubricant | Print | 1 Comment »

Fertility World / April 15th & 16th 2011 / London Olympia

07/02/2011 by Fertility Road.

       

Fertility Road Magazine (Europe’s Number 1 Fertility Magazine) is excited to announce the “Fertility World Show in Association with Fertility Road” at London Olympia on April 15th & 16th 2011.

Fertility World ( www.Fertility-World.co.uk ) be a section of this year’s Destination Health Show and dedicated to helping people on their path to parenthood.  Fertility World will cover a number of subjects in the “Fertility Road Seminar Theatre” including cross-border reproductive care, IVF, PCOS & ‘Expectant Management’ an overview of options for couples trying to conceive in the current climate of NHS cut backs.One in six couples now face infertility in the UK, and the problem is growing. Looking to start a family? Join us at Fertility World and visit the Fertility Road Seminar Theatre.

                

Fertility Road Magazine is aimed at helping women and men on their journey to parenthood. The Magazine provides not only information on the latest treatments and drugs to help people conceive, but natural conception options as well, such as healthy eating and fantastic places to conceive written by Doctors and Industry specialists. Other features include book reviews, cooking to conceive with Dr. Marilyn Glenville, Zita West (Pregnancy Author) is our “Expert Witness” answering your questions, alternative options, celebrity births, success stories, as well as a cutting edge science section.  

For more information please visit FertilityRoad or contact us at info@FertilityRoad.com 

Posted in Fertility World, Fertility Road, Fertility Blogger, Fertility news, Fertility, Infertility | Print | 1 Comment »

Flower Power Moms: The Emerging Generation of Mothers Over 40

02/02/2011 by flowerpowermom.

By Angel La Liberte, www.flowerpowermom.com

The Wake-up Call.

One day, back in 2008 when I was still forty-seven—and my son Alex was five and daughter Lizzie two—I was delivered a life-changing blow. Or, you could call it a wake-up crack in the head.

In that honeyed-little-kid voice, Alex suddenly piped up and said to me: “Hey, Mama, do you know what you’re going to be when I grow up?”

I was in the kitchen (where I usually live these days, but not barefoot because washing the kitchen floor is somewhere in the proximity tooth-brushing the knobs on the toilet base on the domestic priority list), practicing the fine art of domestic “multi-tasking”.

Ergo, I was mentally AWOL. It was a good time and place for a kid to nail me if they happened upon a fortuitous opening. And that’s just what he had that very night. A fortuitous opening. And he took it.

Vaguely amused, I asked, “No, Alex, what am I going to be when you grow up?”

“My grandma!” he replied, grinning triumphantly from ear to ear, evidently expecting a round of applause.

I froze on the spot with a spaghetti spoon in mid-dangle, thunderstruck. As if the moment were divinely ordained, I remembered the oft quoted verse from the bible: “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, thou has perfected praise”

“Grandma…,” repeated the grinner. Suddenly I saw the light.

Everything that had made me often and inexplicably miserable, profoundly exhausted, a parental outsider in the pre-school playground, paranoid about disease, dying, and mortality in general, all laced with nostalgic longing for a dose of familiar camaraderie lost somewhere in my youth—well, it all boiled down to that one, simple truth: I was mother to my five and three-year-old children.

And I was already old enough to be their grandmother.

How I Got Here.

Let me begin with the single, most important, axiom of midlife motherhood:

No woman kicks back in her twenties and plans the course of her life just to cram in popping a few kids sometime after she’s forty or fifty, like a sad afterthought—the “red-haired stepchild” of life’s priorities.

It doesn’t work like that. Having a child is—and always will be—the most important choice of a woman’s life.

I was born in 1960, a child of the Flower Power generation. It would be the next millennium before I had my first child.

The 1960’s marked the beginning of an era when women were expected to do something with their lives other than planting themselves, “barefoot and pregnant”, in the kitchen baking brownies.

Back in those days, everyone was gung-ho that some book learning and a career more lofty than bottom feeding in a corporate typing pool while waiting for a Jimmy Stewart clone to come along, should come first.

Even so, my first marriage took place at the socially correct age of twenty-six, after I’d managed a BA (Hons) in Psych. But the fairy tale ended abruptly there.

The union promptly crashed on the rocks of Failure-To-Communicate when I discovered that my (then) husband didn’t want kids—along with a host of other little unexpected surprises I won’t delve into here.

Exit stage left, at age thirty.

It then took another ten years, including some relationships best defined as “learning experiences” or even “cul-de-sacs” (not to mention the de rigeuer kissing of a few unprincely frogs) before I met the Real Deal.

There he was: Frank. My new husband. The Man-Who-Would-Be-Father. And I knew it the minute I clapped eyes on him. We were inseparable from our first date.

It was 2001. I was forty, and finally on the road to motherhood.

And I was blessed with the “mother” lode: first with a son, just before I turned forty-two in 2002 and then with a daughter, when I was almost forty-five in 2005.

Miraculously, they were conceived without the need of ART (Assisted Reproductive Technologies). I was of the blessed and fortunate few in the “grandma class” of expectant mothers.

In fact, they were created “artlessly”, with a load of love and a heaping helping of elbow grease (literally).

Now I’m pushing fifty. I’m truly a midlife mom. A Flower Power Mom.

The Birth of Flower Power Mom.

I’ve learned some hard facts since having my kids: it’s a brave new world that will judge you without a hearing on your choice to become a midlife mom.

Don’t expect anyone to cut you a break—you chose to have a child when you were supposed to be harboring a growing fear of pushing up daisies instead.

You made your (flower) bed and now you’re going to lie in it with all of the sagging cellulite, aching arthritis and second chins your body can muster. After all, you’re a misfit who refused to subjugate your maternal urges to the “natural order”.

At least, that’s what some say.

What I say is that you can’t crush a growing army. Over 40s motherhood is changing the demographic of the American, British—and global—family.

Despite the lack of welcome—my ineligibility to be a member of the under-40 Stepford Moms—I felt inspired to celebrate. Women having babies after forty represent the neo-liberating force of our generation.

The return of Flower Power.

The power unleashed by the Age of Aquarius—an era spawning the scientific inventions that have empowered a woman’s life to blossom after forty—a watershed moment when our liberating foremothers were already fading away.

We are Renaissance Moms.

Motherhood after forty and longer life expectancy for women are here to stay. And if we ever needed the compassion of our age-related peers (other new 40+ moms), it is here and now, in the daily trenches of midlife motherhood.

To prove the point, I tested it out:

Most any mother under the age of thirty-five who heard Alex’s “Grandma Story”, would gasp (horrified) and whisper “Oh no!”. (Like, how revolting!)

Any mother (or grandmother) over fifty would immediately fall over laughing. (What a gas!)

Reactions were defined by age.

Ergo, that single, defining moment in 2008 was the birth of a mission. Alex had woken up the so-called sleeping dragon (or old dragon, in my case).

It is a mission to reveal the truth, to share, to commiserate and, ultimately, to unveil and celebrate the secret life of Flower Power Moms, as it is lived behind closed doors.

So, welcome to the club—the Flower Power Mom Club.

It’s a place where you can find the honest reality in motherhood after 40, share the pain (bitch if you need to), strive to be your finest, remember the old days, and have some laughs together.

And, oh yeah, there are only two requirements of membership:

1.    Acknowledge your gift: A mother’s fierce, tender love, entwined with a “grandmother’s” cup brimming with life’s wisdom. (How fine is that?)

2.    Keep your dreams alive: remember—most of all—to “stay gold”. (Recommended remedy: The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton)

Notes for this bl

Angel La Liberte is the founder of the website Flower Power Mom—The Truth About Motherhood After 40 (www.flowerpowermom.com), a regular blog featuring news, commentary, real mom stories and expert advice about motherhood after 40.

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Posted in Motherhood over 40, Older Mums | Print | 1 Comment »