The Fertile Heart Way of Baby Making and Birthing a Family

Welcome, and thank you for your interest in the Fertile Heart community. Eighteen years ago, a diagnosis of irreversible secondary infertility marked a turning point in my life. Though I didn’t know it at the time, my soaring FSH levels were a gift that continues to unfold each day. The journey that began with trying to conceive my younger daughter sparked a pilgrimage that led to re-claiming my fertility in the most awe-inspiring ways. Perhaps the most compelling reason for conceiving this community was a deep knowing that a similar pilgrimage and gifts await every single person longing for a child, no matter what obstacles your latest fertility test revealed. 

So thank you again for visiting.

Look around, connect with others by joining a fertility forum. We are free of sponsors of any kind, which means that you are free to ask for feedback on a a fertility doctor you intend to consult with or ask for a recommendation for a fertility clinic that might be a best match for what you are looking for. There are many dedicated fertility specialists who will not treat you as a statistic and many of them are friends of Fertile Heart.   

Perhaps you're interested in learning about so called alternative fertility treatment options. That term of course is highly misleading. Shouldn't -- fertility foods, herbs for fertility, creating a fertility calendar or working through inner conflicts you might have about motherhood -- be the first common sense steps to take when trying to conceive? Wouldn't it make sense to hear your body's call for attention before you turn to the big guns of in vitro fertilization? 

Acupuncture for fertility, though becoming increasingly more popular and helpful for some, may not  be the right match for you. So iIf you are looking to learn about other health-enhancing treatment options such as cranio-sacral ttherapy, or -- osteopahy to revive sluggish ovaries after years of birth control pills--, or classical homeopathy, or other lesser known healing modalities, take a look at the Holistic Fertility Treatment Options CD or read one of the article in our archives. 

Male Fertility -

The piece on natural treatment options for increasing male fertility has been one of our most popular. I'm often asked in the workshop whether men can benefit from the same diet adjustments and inner work as women do? The answer is a resounding yes! Before you start searching for sperm banks or spend a penny of artificial insemination, consider slipping dad-to-be a few tea bags of organic-decaf green tea, and place on his dinner plate a high quality fertility supplement. I have seen sperm counts go from poor to perfect - including count, motility,and morphology-- just by a little extra attention to meal plans. Combined with a  little more fun in the bedroom. (We had lots of fun with that subject in one of my blogs.)  

Of course in the best possible worlds I'd like to have a chance to meet you at one of our all day workshops.  I do wholeheartedly believe that there is no substitute to the power of the medicine we o conceive when we gather in a face to face community. The second best thing is to join us for a phone circle. In the last five years since I inititated that resource it has proved to be a wonderful compassionate safe space for practicing the tools I speak about in the Fertile Female.  

Please let us know what you find useful and what you’d like to see added or changed. Thank you for co-creating this community!

In parting I’d like to share the quote from my second book, The Fertile Female: How the Power of Longing for a Child Can Save Your Life and Change the World. “I guess I might as well confess my bias right at the start: In the range of human experiences, motherhood, for me, is very near the top of the list. But motherhood will not save your life. To let all that comes -- the difficult and the easy -- move through you, and to respond to it as truthfully as you can, can not only save your own life, it can heal generations’ worth of grief in your family line. And it can help you find the courage to speak up and add to the Power of Good”-Julia Indichova Founder, FertileHeart.com

Julia Indichova is the author of Inconceivable (Doubleday 2001) and The Fertile Female (Adell Press 2007) She is the director of the Fertile Heart™ Studio in Woodstock, New York, which offers daylong workshops. Julia also leads an international fertility phone support group, and a monthly open circle in New York City. Her work and story have appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Good Morning America, Oxygen, Chicago Fox News, Chicago Parent magazine and in Health magazine, and the San Francisco Chronicle. After 9/11 she founded the Birthing a Child-Friendly Planet Project, with an ongoing series of seminars meant to inspire individuals to give birth to healthier bodies, books, and businesses, all in the context of repairing the world.