The role of a fertility naturopath in your fertility journey

As a naturopath specialising in natural fertility care with extensive experience in this area, it is important that patients seeking naturopathic fertility care understand the nuances and role that an appropriately qualified naturopath can have in their fertility journey.

You can seek this care at any stage of a fertility journey- from even just thinking about potentially starting to try to conceive, to being under the care of a medical fertility specialist, and anything in between. Our role includes:

Collaborative Care

The role of a fertility naturopath is to work alongside your conventional doctors (GP or fertility specialist) and complement their support.

At the start of a journey, we facilitate investigations to understand the pieces of a fertility puzzle or where there may be barriers to conception that we can address.

If you are under the care of a fertility specialist, there is so much we can do to support optimising your fertility outcomes.

Responsible naturopathic fertility support also involves knowing when to refer for medical fertility assistance and what is best for our patients to get the desired outcome.

Supporting Preconception and Pre-IVF Health

In the preconception and pre-IVF period (at least 3 months prior), we support:

• Overall nutritional status

• Optimising cycles and hormones

• Supporting egg quality

• Improving sperm quality

• Reducing environmental toxin and endocrine disruptor exposure

• Ensuring your foundations of health are optimal: sleep, stress, diet, bowels etc

  
  

Supporting Sperm issues

Your partner’s health is paramount in fertility outcomes. Ideally, we test via a semen analysis with DNA fragmentation through an andrology lab.

We can support:

• Low sperm concentration

• Low sperm motility

• Low morphology

• High DNA fragmentation

• Seminal microbiome issues

• Low testosterone

• His overall health

Supporting Ovulation and Hormones

If you are not ovulating regularly then a major goal is to support regular cyclical ovulation each cycle.

From this we work to optimise post-ovulation hormone production- progesterone and oestrogen.

Teaching you to understand your cycle via cervical mucus and basal body temperature tracking is important too to ensure you can identify your fertile window each cycle.

Supporting egg quality

Supporting egg quality is important in both natural and assisted fertility outcomes.

There are a wide range of evidence-based nutrients and anti-oxidants we use to support ovarian health, endometrial receptivity, hormone production and egg quality.

Addressing individual vaginal microbiome issues

The health of the vaginal microbiome is closely related to the uterine microbiome. Dysbiosis in these areas may affect:

• Chances of conception

• Miscarriage risk

• Success in IVF and embryo transfer outcomes

Tailored probiotic and herbal medicine are common tools used to address issues in this area. Not all women with issues have symptoms so testing is important.

Holistic Care

Whilst we focus on conception as the ultimate goal, we also work on your overall health as this is paramount of optimal fertility outcomes. If you or your partner are struggling with other underlying health issues, then we will work through these in order of priority and relevance to remove any barriers to conception.

About Chelsey:

In the area of natural fertility management, Chelsey has received intensive mentorships and post-graduate education and has assisted hundreds of couples in their fertility journey. She is specialised to assist with naturopathic support in:

• Natural fertility management.

• Preconception and pregnancy care.

• Vaginal health, including vaginal microbiome issues.

• Male fertility and sperm-related issues.

• IVF preparation and support

• Recurrent miscarriage or implantation failure

• Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome and other ovulation irregularities

• Endometriosis

• Support prior to egg freezing for fertility preservation

• Solo fertility journeys

• Same-sex relationship couples