Grow Baby Grow.

I heard someone say recently "you are both the seed and the soil" and it really struck a chord with me when it comes to nutrition and fertility. ⁠ Once the 'seed' (embryo) implants into the uterus you are the soil that fuels how that embryo will grow and develop. Not only during pregnancy but into childhood and later life.

The 'soil' being the stored nutrients in your body that you've built up over the last few months, along with what you're putting into your body every day. As David Barker, author of Nutrition in the Womb, says, ‘A baby does not live only on what the mother eats during pregnancy. It also depends on the food stored in her body.’ (Barker, 2008, p.55)

When you think of it like that it makes sense that you'd want your 'soil' to be the best it can be. Water it, nurture it, feed it with good stuff, feel it flourish and eventually bloom. ⁠ As the famous saying by Alexander Den Heijer goes, “When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.”

Eating to conceive doesn't have to mean becoming borderline obsessive about what you eat but instead making conscious choices to think ‘will this add extra nutrients to my soil or deplete it?’.

Of course, there are a load of other factors that come into play like genes, epigenetics and the experiences of your ancestors (see my earlier post on ‘3 generations’) but getting your own ‘soil’ in good shape is a great place to start.

References

Barker, D. J. P. (2008) Nutrition In The Womb: how better nutrition during development will prevent heart disease, diabetes and stroke: The developmental origins of health and disease (DOHAD): a call for action. USA: Barker Foundation.